Re: [Marxism] Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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On 9 Jul 2020 at 7:33, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
> 
> The Cosmonaut team inaugurates the ecology series by discussing John
> Bellamy Foster´s seminal book Marx´s Ecology on its twentieth 
> anniversary.

A review of John Bellamy Foster's "Marx's Ecology":
Marx and Engels on protecting the environment

by Joseph Green, August 2007
(http://www.communistvoice.org/40cMarx.html)

Introduction
The writings of Marx and Engels
Alongside and after Marx and Engels
Lenin and the early Soviet Union
Stalinist and state capitalist ecocide
Marxism and global warming
--Not market methods, but direct regulation of production
--Class basis of environmental destruction
--The nature of state regulation
--Bringing the masses into the environmental struggle
Foster's Marxism without teeth

Excerpt from the introduction:

Heat waves, dry spells, storms, floods, and other disasters are raising the 
issue of 
global warming more and more urgently. This is going to put all economic ideas 
and practices to the test. Which ones contributed to global warming and other 
environmental problems? Which ones can help solve these problems? Many 
apparently well-established economic practices and views are going to become 
outdated rather soon.

Will Marx and Engels' ideas be among them? Many people think that they could 
have cared less about ecological questions. But "Marx's Ecology: materialism 
and 
nature" by John Bellamy Foster is one of several books in the last decade that 
show that Marx and Engels were intensely interested in the ecological problems 
of their time. They wrote about these problems; kept abreast of the advance of 
scientific knowledge about them; showed the relationship of these problems to 
the free market and private ownership; regarded these problems as one of the 
important proofs of the need for social planning of production, land use, and 
the 
overall economy; and held that socialist society would have to reunite town and 
country in order to protect the environment.

Moreover, Marx and Engels's views are of interest, not mainly because they were 
right in their controversies with various of the personalities of the time, but 
because Marxism remains relevant to today's ecological problems. ... global 
warming, if anything, raises the question of emancipating the economy from the 
dictatorship of private profit even more strongly than before. The failure of 
free 
market methods, such as carbon trading and carbon taxes, to sufficiently curb 
greenhouse gas emissions will lead to the need for direct regulation of 
greenhouse gas emissions. This and other environmental issues will eventually 
raise the issue of economic planning, locally, regionally, and even globally. 
This 
raises the question of whether this planning will be subordinated to the 
profits of 
the corporations, or whether corporate ownership will increasingly be infringed 
upon. Struggle will take place over who will pay for environmental disasters 
and 
the necessary economic reconstruction, and whether economic planning will go 
on behind the backs of the masses or with their participation. All this raises 
the 
questions of class struggle and socialism, and hence of Marxism.

Unfortunately, Foster is more interested in protracted argumentation on the 
most 
general philosophical questions than with what has to be done to solve the 
ecological issues of our day. For example, he refers repeatedly to the Greek 
materialist philosopher Epicurus (341 - 270 BC), his Roman adherent Lucretius 
(99 - 55 BC), and their connection to Marx's original philosophical 
development. 
Hellenistic philosophy will always retain a certain interest, but it would seem 
rather 
peripheral to a book on Marxism and the environment.

Foster ends up criticizing Engels, Lenin, and just about everyone else, for 
supposedly not being philosophically knowledgeable enough about materialism 
and dialectics, due to lack of sufficient attention to Epicurus. As a result, 
according to Foster, theorists who were "supposedly emphasizing dialectical 
perspectives that rejected both mechanism and idealism" would really be mired 
in 
"Marxist positivism". (2) This sort of windy nonsense aside, he nevertheless 
provides some background information on a number of the major scientific and 
political figures of Marx and Engels' times, both those whose work Marx and 
Engels valued and those whom they opposed.

-

(Footnote 2) Foster, Ibid. , pp. 230, 231. Foster laments that it was only at 
the end 
of his life that Engels, in his view, took real notice of Epicurus. He says 
that, 
worse yet, no subsequent Marxist had obtained even this level 

[Marxism] On the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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On the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic (excerpts)
(from Detroit/Seattle Workers Voice list for March 18, 2020)

by Frank Arango, Seattle Workers' Voice

(full text at http://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-200318.html)

As everyone knows, the novel coronavirus is sweeping the world. It can be 
carried  
by people who show no symptoms. There's no vaccine for it. And it's a killer.  
..  
while the responses of  governments around the world vary, the general response 
to this global pandemic  has been that governments have acted too slowly and 
haven't done enough.  Indeed, the spread of the coronavirus appears to be out 
of 
control in a large  number of countries, including the United States.

Lack of preparations
-

* The CDC. For years WHO and others have been warning of pandemics caused  
by new pathogens. But few countries have taken these warnings seriously,  
particularly the United States. Indeed, while the Centers for Disease Control 
and  
Prevention (CDC) has a tiny budget of around $6 billion, Obama was already  
squeezing it while he was president (1), and Trump has continued on this path. 
In  
February this year--in the midst of the growing coronavirus pandemic--he even  
proposed a 9% cut in the CDC's funding for next year. But that's now history.

* Hospitals beds. Large numbers of people with COVID-19 have to be 
hospitalized in serious or critical condition. But the U.S. only has 2.77 
hospital 
beds per 1000 people (number 32 in the world), whereas Italy has 3.18 beds per 
1000 people, and Italy's hospitals have been overwhelmed! ...

* Test kits. The CDC's handling of testing has been a murderous scandal. It 
should  have ordered crash production of large numbers to test kits in January, 
but it  didn't. The Trump administration then refused the test kit offered by 
the 
World  Health Organization. Then, after weeks of delay, in February the CDC 
sent 
out a  flawed test kit. Moreover, during all this time local labs were 
prohibited from 
using  their own tests.  ...

In Seattle, Dr. Helen Chu and colleagues, bless them, eventually defied the CDC 
 
prohibition and began testing. But had they been allowed to test earlier, this 
might  
have gone a long way toward stopping the spread of the coronavirus throughout  
Washington and the rest of the country.

* Masks, protective clothing and hospital supplies. The CDC or Trump should 
have ordered mass production of these too, but they didn't.

What has been done?
-

Despite their late start, governments and even employers around the country  
have taken unprecedented actions in trying to stop the spread of the 
coronavirus.  
They've all suddenly found money that they've previously denied having. Sick  
leave is being given where it was never been given before. ...

But there are also many failings and bureaucratic blockages in the measures  
taken so far, and they've been taken too timidly. For example, the bans on 
public  
gatherings were often bans on gatherings of 250, 500, or even 1000 people--too  
large of crowds. The CDC then recommended that events of 50 or more people  
not be held for some two months, and Trump has now reduced that number to  
10. Similarly, there was timidity about lockdowns. Hindsight is easy, but it 
appears  
that part or all of King County should have been locked down many weeks ago.  
One reason I say this is that a genome study showed that someone from this  
area carried COVID-19 to California, creating a new cluster there.(2)

And there have been fiascoes. Most notably, Trump's travel ban on flights from  
Europe was probably necessary. But it did not include U.S. citizens and  
permanent residents. Thus, at terribly inflated prices, thousands and thousands 
of  
them flew back to this country from heavily infected Europe. Their temperatures 
 
were not taken as they got off the planes (a strategy used in Asia, but does 
the  
U.S. even have enough thermometers?), and they were packed into huge lines in  
the terminals with no social distancing. More, at Dulles International the line 
for  
infected people was just inches away from the line for (presumably) uninfected  
people. As a local activist commented, "if you were trying to spread COVID-19  
across the country, you couldn't do any better [than this]."

What is to be done?
-

In ordinary times the U.S. government cares very little about the health of the 
 
people. (Witness the minuscule CDC budget, or the fact that the richest country 
in  
the world stands at number 29 in the quality of its health care, or that we do 
not  
have 

Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Marx, Lincoln and Project 1619 | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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On 14 Feb 2020 at 14:24, Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist wrote: 
>It did not seem to matter to Sorge or Marx that Woodhull´s running-mate was 
>none other 
than Frederick Douglass. His willingness to join her had a lot to do with the 
respect that 
her section in N.Y. had earned. 
> 
Sorge and Marx aside, there are some serious issues concerning Woodhull's 
party. 
According to Wikipedia, 
"In 1872, Douglass became the first African American nominated for Vice 
President of the 
United States, as Victoria Woodhull's running mate on the Equal Rights Party 
ticket. He 
was nominated without his knowledge. Douglass neither campaigned for the ticket 
nor 
acknowledged that he had been nominated." It also says that, however, "he would 
serve as 
a presidential elector in the United States Electoral College for the State of 
New York". 
I suspect Wikipedia is right about this, because if Frederick Douglass had 
campaigned 
against the Republican Party in 1872, there would probably be a number of 
notable 
speeches by him on this subject, including answers to the objections of a 
number of other 
African American leaders of the time. And there's a serious issue about whether 
it shows 
respect for a movement to claim one of the most prominent activists of that 
movement as 
one of one's leaders without that activist's permission. And it's not as if he 
had been 
unavailable for consultation. 
Meanwhile the party may have had as many names, if not more, than years of 
active 
existence. I don't think it ever ran another presidential ticket. And Wikipedia 
claims it was 
called such things as the Equal Rights Party, the People's Party (but it was 
*not* the 
famous later People's Party), the Cosmo-Political Party, and the National 
Radical 
Reformers. But maybe someone can fill us in as to what happened during its 1872 
campaign. 

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[Marxism] Alliance of MENA Socialists on Iranian protests

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Excerpt from Frieda Afary, Nov. 19, 2019:
"It is very difficult for socialist activists inside Iran and Iranian 
socialists in exile to 
promote socialism as an alternative when some socialist activists either 
actively 
ignore solidarity with the Iranian protests or actually side with the Iranian 
regime 
as 'anti-imperialist.'

"This is a critical moment in world history in which the severity of the crises 
and 
the inhumanity of capitalism are pushing people into the streets in various 
countries to oppose both poverty and repression. We need solidarity actions 
that 
connect the labor, feminist, anti-racist and environmental struggles in the 
countries in which we reside to those in the Middle East and North Africa, 
China, 
Chile, Haiti and beyond. We need to oppose both neoliberal policies and state 
capitalist models such as those of China and Iran."

That's an excerpt from the the statement of the  Alliance of MIddle Eastern and 
North African Socialists on the situation in Iran. It begins as follows:

Iran Nationwide Popular Protests Call for Overthrow of Demagogic Regime

Police stations, banks, some public buildings,  a few religious seminaries and  
many posters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have been set on fire.  
Demonstrators have blocked roads.  Slogans include:  "Gasoline is becoming 
more expensive and the poor are becoming poorer."   "Khamenei is a murderer.  
His rule has expired."   "Death to the Dictator."   "Death to this Demagogic 
Government."  Even some members of the parliament have resigned in protest.

by Frieda Afary

It took the  popular uprisings in Iraq and Lebanon following  the earlier 
uprisings in 
Sudan and Algeria this year for the Iranian masses,  especially unemployed and 
student youth to gain the courage to go out into the streets in large numbers 
again and for the first time since the December 2017-January 2018  uprising,  
call 
for an end to the Islamic Republic.

What set off the nationwide protests was a 300% increase in the price of 
gasoline 
announced suddenly on Friday November 15.  That is a huge increase for the 
majority of   Iranians who have already sunk to extreme poverty levels because 
of 
the cost of Iran´s military and political interventions in the region,  its 
nuclear and 
missile development programs,  and the severe sanctions imposed by the United 
States.

Since Friday, tens of thousands have been protesting in 22 of Iran´s 31 
provinces 
throughout the country and representing 100 cities as well as some rural areas. 
 
Anti-riot police and security forces have been battling the protesters.   
According 
to Amnesty International,  more than a hundred have been killed by the 
government.   Hundreds have been injured and over one thousand arrested.   
Government sharpshooters have been standing at rooftops and shooting at 
demonstrators directly in the head.  Military helicopters are also being used 
to 
shoot demonstrators. ...

Read the rest of the statement at 
https://www.allianceofmesocialists.org/iran-nationwide-popular-protests-call-for-ov
erthrow-of-demagogic-regime/
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[Marxism] The world in struggle, the left in crisis

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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October 2019 - the world in struggle (excerpts)

from the Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice list, October 31, 2019

The last few months have shown a resurgence of mass protest around the world. 
October alone has seen the outbreak of gigantic mass protests in Lebanon, Iraq, 
Chile, and elsewhere. Demonstrators have defied security forces, arrests, and 
curfews, to shake regimes from Africa to Latin America to Hong Kong.

This year saw millions of people demonstrate against governmental inaction 
about climate change. But it has also seen people rise in one country after 
another, fed up with unemployment, lack of public services, corruption, and 
oppression. The people have demanded the fall of corrupt and sectarian regimes 
(Iraq, Lebanon), the end of austerity and the resignation of conservative 
presidents (Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti), and the right to 
self-determination 
(West Papua, Kashmir, Catalonia). They have brought down two long-standing 
tyrants (in Sudan and Algeria), and are fighting to prevent the substitution of 
military regimes for these dictators. They have stood together in defiance of 
sectarian divisions (Lebanon, Iraq). And this is just a partial listing.

It is not an accident that protests break out around the world. Globalization 
has 
brought to every corner of the world, not just naked capitalism but also mass 
protest. The demonstrations in country after country have their own particular 
triggers -- whether a metro fare increase, a taking away of subsidies, or a 
racist 
atrocity. But they are not just demonstrations against this or that individual 
act; 
they are mass uprisings against year after year of conservative economics, year 
after year of privatization, year after year of contempt for the well-being of 
the 
people.  ...  They are a sign of the cracking of neoliberalism. The world 
tomorrow 
will not be what it is today. ...

The present-day governments are meeting these protests with force, with 
shootings, arrests, curfews, and shutdowns of mass media. ...  So much for 
international law, which protects corporations but not workers. But in one 
country 
after country, the presidents or prime ministers, splattered as they are with 
workers' blood, have had to make concessions. And in some cases, they have 
been kicked out, although the whole regime has only been shaken.

The leadership of these protests are mainly not the old trends of the left, not 
the 
Stalinist, Trotskyist, anarchist, religious sectarian, or nationalist trends. 
In many 
places, these long-time trends have dirtied their hands in taking part in the 
ruling 
regimes, or making corrupt deals with them. New activists and groupings are 
arising. In Lebanon and Iraq the slogan of the day is "all means all" -- that 
is, we 
want the fall of "all" the politicians in the current regime, they are all 
corrupt, not 
just the president or the dominant party.

This crisis of the left forces embraces the environmentalists as well. This 
year has 
seen mass climate strikes, which are an important part of the world movement, 
but it is notable that the establishment environmentalists -- or even most 
ecosocialists -- have little to do with the other movements. The establishment 
environments look for supposedly realistic deals with the corporations and 
present ruling forces, and recoil with shock from what is for them, and not 
just for 
the tyrants, troublesome mass protests. Indeed, these are protests which, 
likely 
as not, denounce governments implementing austerity in the name of carbon 
pricing.

Today's struggles are not the precursor to immediate social revolution or 
workers' 
regimes; they are instead important and necessary steps on the road to the 
working class gaining its political independence. This is a wave of struggle 
that 
faces many dangers, and also faces the need to develop its own durable 
organization and orientation. If the people are rising up around the world, the 
far 
right is also organizing around the world, while the clock is ticking on 
environmental catastrophe. We are moving not towards an inevitable gradual 
victory, but towards great clashes in the world. But so far, the working 
masses, 
while uniting for a time in uprisings against  various exploiters, don't have a 
clear 
picture of what system should replace them. The old trends are discredited, and 
a 
new trend is yet to establish itself. So dealing with the crisis in the left is 
a 
necessary part of solidarity with the heroic struggle of the demonstrators 
around 
the world.

Solidarity with the workers and oppressed people of the world! <>

A partial listing of countries where the people have 

[Marxism] Mixed class nature of the historic climate strikes

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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The class nature of the historic climate strikes

(Excerpted from the Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice list, October 17, 2019.
Full text at http://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-191017.html.)

--A mass outpouring
--Supported by a section of the bourgeoisie
--Listen to the scientists!
--What should the attitude of the radical left be to the climate strikes?
--Notes

 by Joseph Green

--A mass outpouring--

Since November last year there have been repeated demonstrations around the 
world demanding action to deal with global warming. This has included three 
waves of youth and school climate strikes this year, in March, May, and 
September. Monster demonstrations of several hundred thousand people took 
place in several cities. Some countries had over a million people take part in 
a 
proliferation of demonstrations in many cities. A number of countries saw 
substantial demonstrations of tens of thousands of people, while modest 
demonstrations took place around the world. Some type of action is said to have 
taken place in over 150 countries, with several millions of people involved on 
a 
world basis. ,,,

The demonstrations condemned the do-nothing policy of the various 
governments. Even when the politicians claim to be doing something and sign 
various environmental accords, it is not sufficient and the problem gets worse. 
The demonstrators stressed that the past generation had left it to the children 
to 
do something.

No doubt different groups that participated in the event had their own 
standpoint 
and demands. But on the whole, the movement avoided political differences by 
avoiding politics. It was based on condemning the lack of environmental action 
and demanding that the science be taken seriously, rather than mobilizing for a 
particular program of action. This allowed broad unity, but it also left open 
the 
question of what should be done aside from these protests. The non-politicism 
was also manifested in that, while the demonstrators no doubt hated the policy 
of 
Trump and other notable environment pirates, there was a limit to what appeared 
on placards. In Detroit, it was slogans like "Fight for our Future", "Unite 
Behind 
the Science", "There is no Planet B", and "Climate Emergency" that expressed 
the overall spirit, although some placards like "System Change, not Climate 
Change" were present. Despite some radical slogans, the overall impression was 
an attempt to prod the powers that be, not carry out radical change.

 These protests brought many new protesters into the streets. The actions have 
encouraged people; they have not yet run their course; and the extent of these 
actions will not be forgotten. At the same time, there was a limited outlook in 
the 
protests. This expressed a certain stage of the overall movement, in which the 
activists are welcomed even by many of the politicians and businesspeople who 
are their target. This will change over time, as the radical nature of the 
steps 
needed to protect the environment becomes clearer, and serious 
environmentalists come into greater and greater conflict with the liberal 
bourgeoisie as well as the climate denialists.

--Supported by a section of the bourgeoisie--

For now, while it is the masses who came out in huge numbers, they were 
welcomed by a section of the bourgeoisie. Part of the bourgeoisie is climate 
denialist and is letting the earth burn while it counts its profits, but 
there's also a 
section of the bourgeoisie who are corporate or establishment 
environmentalists, 
whose half-hearted steps are also leading to disaster. The UN has its yearly 
climate conferences and its scientific body on climate change, the IPCC; first 
the 
Kyoto Protocol and then the Paris Agreement expressed a certain international 
agreement; various cities are taking environmental measures, etc.; the IMF and 
the World Bank favor the carbon tax, albeit at the same time as they finance 
new 
fossil fuel plants; Al Gore writes books about the dangers of climate disaster, 
while at the same time backing market measures that are bound to fail; etc.

Speaking for the youth climate strikers, Greta Thunberg denounced the various 
governments and bureaucrats for the failure of what they have done; yet she was 
repeatedly invited to various government bodies to repeat this denunciation. 
She 
spoke, not just at demonstrations, but "at UN climate conferences, at the 
European Union, at TEDxStockholm, at the Vatican, at the British Parliament. 
She was even invited to go up that famous mountain in Switzerland to address 
the rich and mighty at the annual World Economic Summit in Davos." *(1)*

At these meetings, Thunberg 

[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Assessing the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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More hot air from the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit

(from the Sept. 24th Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice list)

The UN's 2019 Climate Action Summit took place on Monday, September 23, in 
the midst of the week-long youth climate strike. It was addressed by the 
16-year 
activist Greta Thunberg, but this didn't make any difference to the 
politicians. The 
UN Summit was firmly dedicated to protecting profits, not ensuring the world's 
survival.

The UN has been holding climate conferences since 1995. This year there will 
see the 25th UN Climate Change conference (COP 25) in Chile in December, as 
well as the present Climate Action Summit in New York. And yet, according to UN 
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres himself, "on our current path, we face at 
least 3-degrees Celsius of global heating by the end of the century" 
(https://secure-web.cisco.com/1t-YbNXt5cYBSXUeAvO6GFB3EBNo0A_wKoRjbc8wbtdJDjMC7PtDir5LrHhuzrYBLeRnF5FAIR2potUJ9YbdvtfB01VLirEdXsjSrJKV6vBhYqpF0PjX4FBR-CzY5hWx6zkphDqvqunjNw0u5Tugj71Us-5Yz__0AG9Q0lehwDJV0dwWJl2UiGF61V0aov-bq2fnYcMMnlez-o4AGT2UliahqnwfGDqf5JEW7KZBXK870pPfTVCrhw1Bf5l3CaQq_4-vL6kqybznYdeAf6Ek-qgGc9joystj3WuO0aGY2Rk-LjmsbRK2tOgWdiMiPr5bo2KC2pRzIECLpm2cBf7Y3LLxvoUPTpZCmsOvu9DZ1qfb7i_5OYNuQ8r-TwcQhZG8xGLwK1qWwuDmZq_y8h4Qn_Q/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.un.org%2Fen%2Fclimatechange%2Fassets%2Fpdf%2FCAS_main_release.pdf).
 The 
UN "estimates the world would need to increase its efforts between three- and 
five-fold to contain climate change to the levels dictated by science -- a 1.5° 
C 
rise at most" (Ibid.) Shouldn't Guterres have asked whether the UN, 
representing 
the bourgeois ruling classes around the word, bears some responsibility for 
this?

No, he didn't. Instead the UN is determined to stay the course. The very same 
press release that contains these dire figures declares that "The Summit is 
designed to showcase government, business, and civil society efforts", and that 
these show the "concrete ways in which countries can better adapt to climate 
change and cut emissions". Geez, can one showcase the process that has gotten 
us to the brink of disaster and at the same time believe that progress along 
the 
same lines will lead to saving the earth? An article in the *New York Times* 
sums 
it up as follows, the Summit "was meant to highlight concrete promises by 
presidents, prime ministers and corporate executives to wean the global economy 
from fossil fuels..." But, the article continues, China "made no new promises, 
the 
US "said nothing at all", and "a host of countries made only incremental 
promises." 
(https://secure-web.cisco.com/1yK0ZN9GmeXcfg7lK85Vv2eW-gu-0ponm6PXWsykjbBXJG33qjEK7i-qOVHzPYk8qU-r9s8sULTxw6pwJbre3NlYsFB_2JNtWR5-p_n2Z0pcp8oanyBPKAUNNeXFhJn_go9NUycZ-FpofOEsYiq7LW1Cj4X1RFC0oWv0bW1vhtl3f-X_5jQakByb0UMlNdKdW4QcUe6nKMj2FPck-CrNqMCF73TdPWk8rXdPC7oYSdE6n74vPOhQN3-bzuXw9iw9IhNwn5Uq0Q2Df5Fj6lZsByZqYDyesFRpTDYP9_7XizSQDt03bKqjFeqQvC71IQpjsHu9nJeEg8KEII0e1hLM3UKOAAoNZfXphMjl_runxr2VHxB4iH9IbO4wJ3w8hBKmQU8n5cnmku3RQ1dpLxTEn4w/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F09%2F23%2Fclimate%2Fclimate-summit-global-warming.htm
l)

Indeed, the Summit was silent or mumbled on one current problem after another:

* It met while the Amazon forest burned, and it turned its back on the problem.

* It met while the Arctic is burning, and turned its back on the problem. Yet 
these 
fires, and the resulting faster melting of the permafrost, not only threaten a 
vast 
increase in greenhouse gas emissions, but could lead to the destruction of the 
atmospheric ozone layer, a catastrophe which, until now, had been thought to 
have been avoided by international action under the Montreal Protocol.

* It didn't deal with the problem of countries that are backing out of any 
commitment to environmental action, such as the Trump administration in the US 
or the Bolsonaro administration in Brazil.

* Despite this year's report from the IPCC, the UN's scientific body on climate 
change, it had nothing too serious to say about the need for major changes in 
agriculture.

* It mainly dealt with global warming in isolation from other looming 
environmental 
issues. One looked in vain for any serious discussion of the problem of the 
contamination of the world by plastics, pesticides, fracking waste, and other 
chemicals. Or for any serious discussion of the threat facing the ocean.

* It didn't even establish any way to keep track of and verify the progress 
towards 
fulfilling the many promises that were showcased at the summit. That's aside 
from 
the fact that many of the promises, even if fulfilled, would result in action 
that was 
10 or 20 years too late.

What the Summit was 

[Marxism] March with the Seattle Youth Climate Strikers

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Help build the movement to save this green earth--
March with the Youth Climate Strikers on September 20!
(from "Seattle Workers' Voice", Sept. 16, 2019)


Seattle Climate Strike on Friday, Sept. 20, 2019
Meet at Cal Anderson Park at 9 AM.
March to City Hall begins at 12:30 PM.
Amazon and other tech workers will meet at the Amazon Spheres  (7th Ave and 
Lenora)  at 11:30 AM and march to City Hall
Hosted by Washington Youth Climate Strike and 11 other groups

As global temperatures rise, this summer the world has been burning from the 
Amazon to Africa, Siberia and Alaska. But the long-known cause of this global 
warming, greenhouse gas emissions, is not seriously being addressed. That's 
why last year global carbon emissions hit another record, while the United 
States 
burned through more crude oil and related products than ever, and the Canadian 
government has again approved expansion of the Trans Mountain project so that 
more profits can be made by exporting Alberta oil. This business-as-usual 
approach is leading the world to climate chaos and catastrophe.

But over the past year millions more working people, and especially young 
people, have gotten into motion against this nightmarish future. In the face of 
the 
climate change denialism of Trump and others they've been in the streets 
demanding that governments take action. Now, the New York City schools are 
excusing students for the September 20 climate strike. As well, workers at 
Amazon are denouncing Amazon's use of fossil fuels and denouncing Jeff Bezos 
for giving money to climate denying think tanks and politicians. Hundreds of 
them 
are pledging to walk out this Friday, and they'll be joined by Microsoft 
employees 
who are also organizing their fellow workers. These are welcome developments.

System change, not climate change!
--

There must be extensive change in the present economic system, i.e., direct 
government regulation and planning of the economy to achieve rapid transition 
to 
an economy that relies on renewable energy sources. But since the corporations 
will fight to make any regulation be at the expense of the workers and poor, 
there 
must be direct participation of the working people who live with the effects of 
industrial pollution in this planning, and protection of the living standards 
of those 
workers who will be worst affected by environmental regulation. And there 
should 
be overall economic planning to back up the planning and regulation of energy 
in 
order to deal with other environmental problems, and to protect peoples 
livelihoods in the massive economic dislocations that are coming.

Tax the rich to pay for environmental and social programs!
--

Since the big corporations and financiers control society's resources, there 
won't 
be any serious environmental program without taxing them. It's a farce to ask 
the 
poor for more sacrifice. In fact, if the environmental movement is to be 
successful 
it needs to become a class movement. That's because the polluting and 
otherwise earth-destroying corporations and their financiers are bitterly 
driven to 
oppose any environmental measures that infringe on their profits. And further, 
the 
corporate politicians defend them. The billions of working people of the world, 
however, have no interest in preserving the profits of those destroying the 
earth 
and every interest in preserving and replenishing it.

Fight Trump's rampage against the environment!
-

Trump's latest atrocity is an executive order that rolls back a rule that 
somewhat 
protects waters and wetlands. We should fight this along with all the corporate 
frackers, water poisoners, and climate denialists. Among many other things this 
means fighting against the liquefied natural gas plants in Tacoma and Kalama, 
fighting against expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline project in B.C., and 
fighting against pollution and other ravaging of the earth by our own employers.

There's also a need to oppose false solutions
-

One of these is reliance on carbon pricing, which is pushed by the IMF and 
World 
Bank, big oil and coal companies, Gov. Inslee and mainstream environmental 
groups. But carbon taxes around the world have either failed to meet 
environmental goals or are highly unlikely to. For example, Sweden implemented 
the highest carbon tax in the world in 1991, with the 

[Marxism] Disappointing results of the highest carbon tax in the world

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Fiddling while the world burns -- the Swedish experience with the carbon tax

by Frank Arango, Seattle Workers' Voice

The average global temperature is now estimated to be one degree Celsius 
higher than pre-industrial levels, with two-thirds of the warming having 
occurred 
since 1975. The primary cause is human activity releasing greenhouse gases like 
carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, with carbon 
dioxide released by burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) the biggest 
culprit. And 
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been issuing 
assessment reports that have painted a nightmarish picture of what the world 
will 
be like with more warming, and called for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 
net zero by mid-century. But for all that, global carbon emissions hit record 
levels 
in 2018, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres warning in December that 
meeting a target of 1.5 degrees C warming is an "impossible" task. And he 
added, "It is hard to overstate the urgency of our situation. Even as we 
witness 
devastating climate impacts causing havoc across the world, we are still not 
doing 
enough, nor moving fast enough, to prevent irreversible and catastrophic 
climate 
disruption." *(1)*
 
But despite the UN recognizing the dire situation, it continues to push the 
same 
failing market measures that the CVO has long exposed. One of these is the cap 
and trade system *(2)*, which may reduce emissions where it's in effect, but 
not 
nearly enough. For example, the biggest gas emitter in Europe, Germany, has 
been in the European cap and trade system since 2005. Yet it's extremely 
unlikely that it will meet its 2020 and 2030 reduction targets. *(3)* Another 
market 
measure the Communist Voice Organization has dwelt on is the carbon tax *(4)*, 
which has been in effect in numerous countries and British Columbia for many 
years, and which is heavily pushed by everyone from the World Bank and IMF, to 
Washington Governor Inslee, to major oil and coal companies, to mainstream 
environmental groups.

Now carbon taxation is regressive, i.e., the working people and poor pay a 
higher 
percentage of their incomes than the rich do, and the polluting corporations 
can 
pass on their tax costs by raising prices. This caused the French people to 
rise in 
the powerful "yellow vests" movement last year, which beat back President 
Macron's attempt to increase the French carbon tax. But does the carbon tax 
meet its environmental goals despite its regressive nature? For many countries 
the answer is obviously no. For example, Norway has had a carbon tax since the 
early 90s, with a current rate of $64 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions on 
the 
energy industry, and drivers paying 53 cents extra for a gallon of gasoline. 
But 
after 18 years emissions from road traffic were ***up*** 25.8 per cent from 
1990, 
and Norway's overall gas emissions had ***grown*** by 3.4 per cent! *(5)* So 
let's 
look at Sweden, the country where the carbon tax is the highest in the world 
*(6)*, 
and where it is claimed to be a big success.

Sweden implemented its carbon tax in 1991 at a rate of $100 per ton of carbon 
dioxide emissions. That was several times higher than anything now proposed or 
in effect in North America, and the Swedish rate is now $168 per ton of carbon 
dioxide. The result is that over a period of some 28 years emissions have been 
reduced by a little more than 25 percent. Thus, to reach its goal of reaching 
what 
it calls zero net emissions by 2045 (26 years from now) it will have to reduce 
emissions much, much more rapidly. *(7)*

Now the Swedish government talks as if everything is fine and that it will 
still meet 
its goal. Is that believable? Let's consider the following:

--Sweden's emissions reductions leveled off in 2014-15, and have now begun to 
slightly increase. *(8)*

--The United States today generates 63.5 percent of its electricity with fossil 
fuels, 
and the world 66 percent. Sweden, however, only generated around *three* 
percent of its electricity using fossil fuels in 1991. *(9)* Thus, it was 
relatively easy 
for Sweden to shrink this source of emissions. But it has not been easy to 
reduce 
emissions from transport, which the Climate Minister says now account for a 
third 
of Swedish emissions. *(10)* They're down only five percent in the 19 years 
years 
since 1990. The government talks about improving infrastructure for electric 
car 
use and expanding and improving rail networks to discourage flying, but it has 
been talking about such things for years now.

So it seems unimaginable to me that Sweden will reach its 

Re: [Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Re: Moderator's note

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Ah, I see now. What happened is that I have been clicking on the link, and that 
didn't work because, with the fabulously long multi-line URLs, this only picks 
up 
the underlined section of the URL  One has to manual copy the full URL to the 
clipboard and paste it into the browser. 

I didn't notice the problem with a section of the URL being cut-off because, 
before 
clicking on the underlined URL, I would remove line wrap so that the URL would 
appear on one line. I thought that this would ensure that clicking on the link 
would 
give the entire URL, because apparently -- after the removing line wrapping -- 
the 
underlining was restored for the entire URL. But that's not the case. The URL 
is 
so very long, and it is so far off the page when there isn't line wrapping, 
that I 
didn't notice that part of the URL was still cut off when it was on a single 
line.

I mention these details in case anyone else had the same problem.


> > 
> 
> You must be doing something wrong. After clicking the warning link,
> you 
> should end up on a page that says this:
> 
> Cisco Security
> The requested web page may be dangerous
> Loading and analyzing 
> http://secure-web.cisco.com/19SLqQknp9P1qcp5jEjRNqGWyzvwy8EW-mIozoad
> b48zCqJ7L4qQ2Q91LJ28Y1dd7IGAPUzvCA4dwr-Y5rBw_pNMVthCjYwSGNTjvOrQ_0WG
> oXltnaOLI-JpgkVTq0mMBlUxHNwY1U5EVT8K2kx8Rc2UjGYz65xxuqNzCO89dB4IKK1e
> xm6pHOMTr_lR8KTRfy0eUF3TNKQAPW3vfnXwJhKKtzuKvDyCcM71bCRYaRx3YtMb8SE7
> KABv-qPdvLT-6TPitn06DS-pZhLxXiErKSFJ-k-qDpJTbj_0jseiuN1-nCTdix5hwd_f
> 7fB3Qi4_6m2tNBafL6iDWCM2bQWGi3Vu_iS1z__cbxVGoJCKUL5nVAfZmxTWPlGGNf3M
> vZPURESFrAvj9XZIW7zy2IltphQ/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.historicalmaterialism.o
> rg%2Findex.php%2Fblog%2Fdutch-capitalism-and-slavery
> 
> Cisco Email and Web Security protects your organization's network
> from 
> malicious software. Malware is designed to look like a legitimate
> email 
> or website which accesses your computer, hides itself in your
> system, 
> and damages files. Your email administrator has configured this 
> prevention system to ensure against such damage.
> 
> ---
> 
> Once you are on that page, you will see this pop-up almost
> immediately 
> that gives you a choice:
> 
>   Do you trust the rendered site?
> 
>   Leave this site and report it as malicious (in red)
> 
>   Leave protected area and visit this site directly (in green)
> 
> 
> Click the one in green and you will end up at the intended page.
> 
> _
> Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
> Set your options at:
> https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/jgreen%40communistvoice.
> org



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Re: [Marxism] Moderator's note

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Louis, that's not my experience. Instead of being connected to a page that asks 
permission to go to the website it deems suspicious, I always get a Cisco 
Security 
page that simply says "404 Bad Request".   I have to use google to get to the 
actual page. 


On 6 Sep 2019 at 22:06, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
> 
> A reminder.
> 
> When you see that scary "suspicious message" thing, it only means
> that 
> the malware-protection system at U. of Utah has issued a "warning".
> It 
> is not a real problem since the target links are ALWAYS legitimate.
> All 
> you need to is click the U. of Utah-generated link and then you will
> be 
> connected to a page that asks your permission to go to the website
> it 
> deemed suspicious. A bit of a hassle but only 15 seconds worth.
> _
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> Set your options at:
> https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/jgreen%40communistvoice.
> org



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[Marxism] The lockdown in Kashmir and the citizenship purge in Assam

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Three weeks, and the brutal lockdown of Kashmir by the Hindu fundamentalist 
government of Narendra Modi continues
=

By Joseph Green
in the Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice list for Augujst 27, 2019

Ever since the Hindu fundamentalist Narendra Modi became Prime Minister of 
India in 2014, there have been increasing attacks on Muslims. Modi´s right-wing 
and chauvinist BJP party won an even greater victory in this year´s general 
elections than in 2014, and Modi has now moved to eliminate the political 
rights of 
the people of Jammu and Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in India. This 
takes place while the Modi government is also planning to build more detention 
camps in the Indian state of Assam to hold Muslims who are being stripped of 
Indian citizenship. And it is expected that Modi will seek to change the 
demographic balance in Kashmir, and end the Muslim majority there.

The brutal treatment of Kashmir will be a model that will help undermine the 
situation of Muslims throughout India. It has created outrage around the world, 
and some people are talking about boycotting Indian goods. It also brings the 
threat of another war over Kashmir between India and Pakistan, both of whom 
are now nuclear-armed states; there have been several such wars already in the 
past.

The elimination of Kashmiri autonomy
-


On Monday August 5, Indian Prime Minister Narendra ended the autonomy of the 
state of Jammu and Kashmir by revoking Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. 
Indeed, the very state of Jammu and Kashmir has been eliminated, replaced by 
two separate "union territories", both of which will be ruled directly from 
India´s 
capital New Delhi.

Modi imposed a lock-down on Kashmir, showing his fear of the entire population. 
He sent tens of thousands of Indian troops into Kashmir, reinforcing the huge 
number already there. Telephone and internet communications for the entire 
population were blocked, and people were prevented from coming out on the 
street. Over two thousand Kashmiris were arrested, including political leaders, 
activists, teachers, even students. Even politicians associated with pro-India 
parties were arrested. Three weeks later, the repression continues. There is 
still a 
lockdown, albeit some telephone calls are now permitted, and it is somewhat 
easier to get to hospitals or mosques.

This is what the Indian government believes is necessary to prevent large-scale 
protest. Despite everything, though, modest-sized protests have already taken 
place.

The lockdown in Kashmir is a continuation of the Indian government´s 
longstanding oppression of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, an area which 
embraces the Kashmir Valley (or Vale of Kashmir), Jammu, and Ladakh. The 
Indian government has always refused to let the status of Kashmir be settled by 
plebiscite. Eventually extensive vote-rigging by pro-India parties in the 1987 
legislative elections for Jammu and Kashmir led to the start of armed 
movements, 
some for independence and some for joining Pakistan. To suppress this, the 
Indian government has maintained over a half million troops in Kashmir. There 
are as many as one soldier for every 10 people in the Kashmir Valley. Over the 
years, thousands of Kashmiris, mostly civilians, have been killed by Indian 
troops. 
The Pakistani government has financed and trained fundamentalist fighters to be 
sent into the Indian sector of Kashmir, but the main role of the Indian troops 
is to 
keep the local population down. But Kashmir did retain at least some rights 
until 
August 5 this year.

The dividing up of Kashmir
-

Kashmir is located on the northern edge of the Indian subcontinent. When India 
and Pakistan became independent in 1947, the "princely state" of Kashmir and 
Jammu ended up divided between China, India, and Pakistan. China controls the 
sparsely-populated northeastern section (Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoran 
Tract). Pakistan controls the northwest section, which is almost entirely 
Muslim 
(Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan). India controls the largest section with 
the 
largest population, the central and southern portion.

The Kashmir Valley is the most populous part of the Indian state of Jammu and 
Kashmir, and it is almost entirely Muslim. Jammu is about one-third Muslim, and 
the political balance there differs from that of the Kashmir Valley. Ladakh is 
part 
half Muslim, half Buddhist, and is sparsely-populated.

Re: [Marxism] Evo Morales Calls for UN Assembly to Address Amazon Fires

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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"The perpetrators aren't known, but Bolivian President Evo Morales has 
justified 
people starting fires, saying: 'If small families don't set fires, what are 
they going 
to live on?'

"The disaster comes just a month after Morales announced a new 'supreme 
decree' aimed at increasing beef production for export.

"Twenty-one civil society organisations are calling for the repeal of this 
decree, 
arguing that it has helped cause the fires and violates Bolivia's environmental 
laws. Government officials say that fire setting is a normal activity at this 
time of 
year and isn't linked to the decree.
.
"Some Indigenous leaders are asking for a trial to determine responsibility for 
the 
fires, and the response to them. Alex Villca, an Indigenous leader and 
spokesperson, said: 'It is President Evo Morales who should be held 
accountable. 
What are these accountabilities going to be? A trial of responsibilities for 
this 
number of events that are occurring in the country, this number of violations 
of 
Indigenous peoples and also the rights of Mother Nature.'"

https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-not-just-brazil-s-amazon-bolivia-s-vital-forests-ar
e-on-fire-too/amp



Also,  an important indigenous coalition, the Coordinator of Indigenous 
Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA) declares Morales and 
Bolsonaro as persona non grata 
https://www.eldia.com.bo/index.php?c=Portada=Coica-declara-personas-
-no-gratas--a-Evo-y-Bolsonaro-tras-incendios=1=3_articulo=285193

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[Marxism] The American left and the Hong Kong protests

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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The American left and the Hong Kong protests
Extract from the D/SWV list for July 23, 2019

2. Braving repression, the Hong Kong protests continue
3. The American left and the Hong Kong protests
3a. Reply to Norma Harrison re the Hong Kong protests
3b. Reply to I.Z. on the supposed "communist" governments


2. Braving repression, the Hong Kong protests continue!

Since the Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice list article of June 25 in support of 
the 
Hong Kong protests against the bill allowing extradition to mainland China 
(http://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-190625.html), mass demonstrations have 
continued. Certain differences have appeared among the demonstrators, with 
most engaging in marches, but a section of youth engaging in more 
confrontational tactics, such as confronting the police and occupying the 
Legislative Council chamber on July 1. Among the protests was that of July 17, 
where older Hong Kong people marched in support of the youth activists and 
against police suppression. Police abuses have become harsher over time. On 
July 21, an anti-extradition march was attacked with tear gas and rubber 
bullets 
by the police. And then the police stood by as a gang of men with wooden bats 
attacked demonstrators and other people at a subway station.

The demands of the youth who occupied the Legislative Council are as follows 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7LYrLemXOw):

>1. Fully withdraw the proposed amendments (the extradition bill is officially 
>a 
series of amendments);
>2. Rescind the characterization of the movement as a "riot";
>3. Drop all charges against anti-extradition protesters;
>4. Fully investigate and hold responsible  abuses of the power of the Hong 
>Kong 
police;
>5. Dissolve the Legislative Council and introduce Universal Suffrage



It's notable that so many rich businesspeople are pro-Beijing. They realize 
that 
the Chinese revolution faded away a long time ago. They know that present-day 
China isn't really socialist, although they are concerned not to be arrested in 
the 
course of the factional fighting in the Chinese ruling class. ...

The opposition to the extradition bill is not a radical social movement. It 
embraces 
a variety of different social groups, and many people even have illusions about 
Western imperialism. What ties it together is that the mass of people are 
afraid 
that mainland China is going to tighten its grip on Hong Kong.  ,,,

The movement against the extradition bill takes place while mainland China is 
stepping up repression in China. It is putting in place surveillance cameras 
and 
computer systems in China. It has clamped down on journalists, Uighurs, eve 
Chinese university students going to the workers in the name of Marxism. ...

The Hong Kong protest movement is a struggle to support people's rights. It is 
not 
a movement for socialism, or for radical social demands. It is not clear about 
what 
is the nature of mainland China, and it embraces a variety of political and 
social 
trends. But it is a courageous movement that deserves support from workers 
around the world, for democratic rights grease the road towards a more 
conscious 
and class-conscious workers' struggle.

-- Joseph Green <>

3. The American left and the Hong Kong protests

The radical left is supposed to be the standard-bearer of struggle against 
oppression everywhere. But in fact, a substantial part of the American left is 
silent 
about, or opposed to, the Hong Kong protests.

For example, the Workers World Party regards the democratic movement as a 
US imperialist plot. They argue, in essence, that since US imperialism is the 
greatest enemy of the world's peoples, the democratic movement -- in which 
there are illusions about Western imperialism -- is therefore also an enemy of 
the 
world's people. 
(https://www.workers.org/2019/06/30/u-s-role-in-hong-kong-protests/) They take 
a 
similar stand on many other struggles around the world. For example, they 
denounce the struggle against the dictator Assad in Syria as a "US war on 
Syria".

The Party for Socialism and Liberation also denounces the democratic movement 
in Hong Kong, and pretends that is an equally large opposition to the movement. 
(https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2014/10/party-for-socialism-and-liberation-
analyzes-protests-in-hong-kong/) In general, PSL denounces all the movements 
for democracy or social justice on China on the grounds that  "these struggles 
can 
only, under the current political circumstances and absent an organized 
revolutionary communist leadership current, move into the camp of reactionary 
counterrevolution". PSL even denounces the 

Re: [Marxism] An anatomy of revolution: Trotsky and the Spanish Revolution, 1931-1935 (Part I) | Links International Journal of

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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On 29 Jun 2019 at 8:15, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

> http://links.org.au/anatomy-revolution-trotsky-marxism-pre-revolutio
> nary-spain

This article, and part 2, 
http://links.org.au/anatomy-revolution-trotsky-marxism-test-events-spain,
hide a number of crucial facts that discredit Trotsky's stands and actions. 
With 
regard to Trotsky, it is hagiography. Take for example, its description  of 
Trotsky's 
attitude to POUM, and of his attitude to the right to self-determination of 
Morocco. 
Let's start with POUM.

Part 2 tells us that "This decision [POUM's participation in the Popular Front] 
provoked a political and organizational break with ILO, although Trotsky 
remained 
open to communication with the POUM through the Civil War."

This passage creates that impression that Trotsky was a principled comrade 
despite differences. In reality, Trotsky sought to crush POUM through the most 
unscrupulous and uncomradely methods, calling them criminal betrayers of the 
working class, and calling Victor Serge a "strikebreaker" for maintaining 
contact 
with them.  After a careful study of Trotsky's stands, I wrote

"An  example of Trotsky's version of centralism can be seen in his fight 
against 
the Spanish Trotskyists of POUM. Because of its role in the Spanish Civil War, 
POUM is one of the best-known of the Trotskyist parties of that period. In the 
mid-30s, it achieved a certain mass support and was larger than the rest of the 
world Trotskyist movement combined. But due to differences between Trotsky 
and POUM's leadership, it was regarded with hostility by the official world 
Trotskyist organization. The differences weren't dealt with by comradely means 
but by raw sectarian pressure; Trotsky sought to destroy the POUM. He 
denounced its leadership in harsh terms as bankrupt, criminal, betrayers of the 
working class. In 1936 the International Secretariat sent people to Spain to 
form a 
Trotskyist 'section' in Barcelona with the intention of replacing POUM; it 
spent a 
good deal of its time issuing material denouncing POUM, but accomplished 
little. 
And Trotsky promoted the development of factional work within POUM. (See note 
28)

"Meanwhile Trotsky and the International Secretariat (IS) pressured Trotskyists 
elsewhere to denounce POUM; for example, Trotsky turned on Victor Serge and 
others, calling them 'strikebreakers' for their friendly relations with POUM. 
The 
intervention by the IS in the factional disputes of various other Trotskyist 
sections 
was made dependent on the attitude of the local Trotskyist leaders towards 
POUM; it wasn't sufficient for Trotskyists to have criticism of POUM's 
policies, 
they had to be hostile to POUM. For example, the Belgium Trotskyist leader 
Vereeken was critical of the POUM leadership, but wouldn't call them 'traitors' 
or 
'renegades'. As a result, while Trotsky and the IS agreed with Vereeken on the 
main local dispute of the moment among Belgium Trotskyists, they denounced 
him [Vereeken] anyway, saying he 'wants to separate the Belgian question from 
the Spanish question'. World Trotskyist organization amounted to mechanical 
dictation against its local sections. (See note 29)

"The murderous Stalinist repression against POUM put Trotsky's attacks on it 
into 
the background. The Stalinists killed large numbers of members and leaders of 
POUM, and viciously slandered POUM in order to justify these murders. But 
Trotsky's campaign against POUM illustrates his own attempt to deal with 
differences by suppression.

"Overall, Trotsky as leader of the Fourth International didn't pay serious 
attention 
to building up durable organization, but reduced matters to centralism alone, 
and 
he created a repulsive form of centralism. From an organizational point of 
view, 
the world Trotskyist movement of that time, and since then, has displayed two 
contrasting aspects. The many splits--along with the theorizing on factionalism 
that will be mentioned in a moment--gave rise to a loose splintered movement, 
while the official movement around Trotsky, and some of the subsequent 
Trotskyist organizations, was rigidly and bureaucratically centralized. This 
was not 
party-building, but a caricature of it."

Notes:

(28) See Vereeken, Chapter 11 "The Spanish Civil War" and Chapter 13 "The 
final break between the International Secretariat and the POUM", The GPU in the 
Trotskyist Movement. Trotsky defended carrying out "factional work" within POUM 
and other dissident Trotskyist organizations in "Once More on Comrades 
Sneevliet and Vereecken", Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38), p. 33. (Text)

(29) For Trotsky's denunciation of Serge as a 

Re: [Marxism] Statement of solidarity with the Sudanese and Algerian Uprisings

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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It's excellent that this statement appeared at this time. I've signed it, and 
also 
written in support on it on the Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice list (April 27):

Support the Sudanese and Algerian uprisings!

We reproduce below a statement of solidarity by many prominent leftists with 
the 
mass uprisings in Sudan and Algeria. It calls for people to learn more about 
these 
struggles and take part in solidarity actions supporting them. At a time when 
one 
struggle after another in the Arab Spring has been drowned in blood, the new 
upsurge in Sudan and Algeria has shown that the masses will never submit to 
tyranny. It's important to express solidarity with these struggles so as to 
help 
paralyze foreign intervention against them. And, in our view, another reason to 
support solidarity statements is to prevent these struggles from being 
denounced 
by sham "anti-imperialists" as the struggle against the Syrian dictator Assad 
has 
been denounced. 

So we wholeheartedly welcome this solidarity statement, although we have a 
somewhat different view of the perspective for these struggles than is put 
forward 
in this statement. It points to the important stand of the people of these 
countries 
that it isn't sufficient to get rid of "an individual figurehead", but that 
there has to 
the complete removal of the old regime. Very true. But the statement creates 
the 
impression that the overthrow of old regimes would mean the not just political 
liberation from dictatorship, but economic liberation as well. In our view, 
these 
important uprisings in Algeria and Sudan will, even if completely successful, 
only 
achieve some economic relief, but not economic liberation. These uprisings, if 
successful, will open the road for the working class to be able to organize 
itself in 
a wider and more profound fashion. It will be the start of an intensified class 
struggle, in which the working masses will struggle for their needs and for 
fundamental economic change. This is the path forward; there is no other. But 
it is 
a long path, and there will not be a decisive economic victory at the outset.

This was the perspective for the Arab Spring as well. We supported it 
unwaveringly from its beginning in 2011, both during the moments of inspiring 
success and in the long years of bloody setbacks as the old forces or 
dictatorship 
sought revenge. But we also pointed out, even at the beginning of the 
struggles, 
even during the moments of revolutionary euphoria, that even if these struggles 
were completely successful, they would not bring economic liberation. They were 
neither anti-imperialist struggles nor even very radical economically, and even 
if 
the old regimes were uprooted, the resulting regimes would likely be 
disappointing in many ways. This is because the democratic movement isn't the 
same as the socialist movement. And the forces behind this great democratic 
upsurge in the Middle East and North Africa were variegated in class 
composition, 
while the local working class movements had limited strength. Nevertheless the 
overthrow of the old dictators would lift a heavy weight from the backs of the 
working people, and open the way for further struggle. It would be a momentous 
occasion that would change the Middle East and North Africa and end the long 
stagnation of political life.

We put forward this perspective not to throw cold water on solidarity, but to 
encourage solidarity and to fight the doubts about the Middle Eastern and North 
African movements that were growing in the left. We said this not to inhibit 
economic demands in these movements, but to provide the best support for 
them. Not the theory of "permanent revolution", nor the idea that 
"self-organization" would immediately cast aside capitalism in one community at 
a 
time, but a realistic assessment of the class struggle would sustain support 
for 
these struggles. (See our articles from 2011 "Against left-wing doubts about 
the 
democratic movement" and "Leninism and the Arab Spring" [1].

 The same perspective is true for the struggles in Sudan and Algeria. The 
different economic interests in the opposition to the dictatorship, and the 
state of 
organization of the masses has to be taken into account. Just because the 
solidarity statement doesn't mention these issues directly, doesn't mean that 
they 
don't affect what happens in these countries and the world. Just because some 
political trends don't understand the difference between democratic and 
socialist 
movements, doesn't mean that this difference doesn't exist. And failure to 
understand it inhibits the development of the working class section of 

Re: [Marxism] [New post] A Socialist Defector

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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One would think socialism refers to a society in 
which the workers, the masses, are in control. They were not in control in East 
Germany. Yet Proyect puts forward the old GDR (East Germany) as an example 
of "genuine socialism", writing that it was "a society based on socialist 
principles, 
even if distorted", and that it showed "how socialism provided major benefits 
to 
East Germans (I should add genuine socialism as opposed to the ersatz product 
being peddled today by some on the left.)" (The parenthetical comment is 
Proyect's.)

East Germany saw the uprising of 1953. It sought to stabilize its existence  by 
draconic restrictions on foreign travel, including the building of the Berlin 
Wall in 
1961. The people were spied on by the Stasi. The elections of 1989 signified 
the 
coming end of the regime in 1990. How can it be said that this was a society 
run 
by the workers?  The people did not determine the structure of the this 
society, 
but they did usher in its dissolution.

But then, is anyone really saying that it was a society run by the workers? 
Proyect 
refers to the social programs in East Germany and the expropriation of the past 
capitalists. But he does not refer to how it was governed, for the GDR was 
indeed 
governed by a new elite, albeit this was an elite in turn subject to the Soviet 
Union.  

Proyect says that Grossman is "brutally honest about what happened in East 
Germany." I haven't read Grossman's book, so I can't judge that, but I don't 
think 
Proyect's review is "brutally honest". He evades unpleasant facts, referring to 
them only indirectly.

 The review doesn't say directly that the GDR didn't have popular support. It 
says 
the GDR couldn't "withstand the onslaught of West Germany that was facilitated 
by Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost." Onslaught - wow that sounds like the 
Wehrmacht was in motion. But it's a reference to the fact that the people of 
the 
GDR dissolved it. And Proyect just can't get himself to say that directly. He 
talks 
of Grossman's "sense of outrage over the way in which East Germany was 
'liberated'..."  But does Grossman directly talk about the GDR losing popular 
support? Proyect doesn't say.

If one were "brutally honest", one would take it more seriously that the people 
were upset with the regime.  And one would say directly whether one believed 
that a regime should be able to maintain itself in power indefinitely, even if 
had to 
rule against the will of the majority of the people. We are seeing one regime 
after 
another which believes it has the right to rule even though it has lost 
support, and 
yet gets support from a certain section of the left for this. Should this 
depend 
simply on how many social programs are enacted and how many nationalizations 
have taken place? And should we be the ones to decide, or should the local 
population have that right?

Proyect gives as an example of brutal honesty the analysis that the GDR's 
economic problems, insofar as they were caused by outside pressure, was due to 
the fact that "Essentially, socialist East Germany lacked the two tools that 
capitalist production relied on: the carrot and the stick. ... Generally, both 
the 
factory and the retail worker never felt the same kind of lash that kept their 
counterparts in the West in line. This gave rise to a certain haughtiness in 
the 
service-oriented fields where, for example, tips were never expected in East 
German restaurants."

The GDR's economy wasn't run by the workers. The major decisions on its 
structure were decided by the East German elite and the Soviet Union, and 
factory management was run according to the Soviet model. The elite themselves 
had bonuses and carrots. But "brutal honesty" is supposedly to blame the 
problems of the economy on the workers. 

There are questions of fact to deal with in assessing what happened in the GDR. 
But there are also questions of principle. Should we consider that genuine 
socialism must be the act of the masses or of a hopefully benevolent elite?

The GDR was not an example of the working class running society. In my view, to 
use it as an example of "the universal appeal of socialism" is to substitute 
the 
ideology of benevolent despotism for socialism.

It's worth recalling a poem of Brecht's about the 1953 uprising that Proyect or 
someone else posted earlier. Is this just a poem against some faceless 
bureaucrat or does it tell a deeper truth about what was happening? 

The Solution - Poem by Bertolt Brecht

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited 

Re: [Marxism] SWV on Earth Day 2019 and trends in environmental movement

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Thanks for your comment on the SWV leaflet, Patrick. 
It's important to have consultation on what's going on in 
the movement. As to Seattle Workers' Voice and DWV, we 
support the struggle for climate justice as an important 
part of the overall environmental struggle.  Both in Seattle 
and Detroit, we have raised the issue of environmental 
racism repeatedly. This can be seen by looking for 
"environmental racism" in the search engine on the Communist 
Voice Organization website. And for example, the 
Detroit/Seattle Workers Voice mailing list has been covering 
the struggle against the expansion of the toxic waste 
facility deceptively called "US Ecology" in Detroit, which 
is a fight against environmental racism as well as against 
poisoning in general. 

That said, I would be happy to know more about the 
current state of the climate justice movement. We see what 
it's doing in the Detroit and Seattle areas, but I would be 
eager to hear your description of its activities elsewhere 
and of its overall direction. The SWV article didn't 
describe the militant section of the environmental movement; 
a short article can only deal with so much. Instead it 
focused on showing not just the necessity, but the 
possibility, of extending the relationship of the 
environmental movement to the working masses. Elsewhere we 
have talked about the militant section of the movement, and 
what its present limitations are. The climate justice 
movement contains many militant groups, is involved in many 
struggles,  has more criticism of market measures than most 
other sections of the movement, but it's not the whole 
militant movement, and it has limitations in its standpoint. 

With respect to Earth Day activities in Seattle this 
year, the climate justice groups didn't seem that 
interested. Some years ago, various climate justice groups 
in Seattle were much more visible in the general 
environmental movement. But since then some political groups 
that had been excited about climate justice, seem to have 
abandoned it, while Got Green Seattle focuses simply on 
community organizing on various fronts. Got Green, for 
example, is having its annual Green-A-Thon close to Earth 
Day, but this event is solely to ask people to promote or 
contribute to community organizing. Got Green also is taking 
part in a protest in the Washington state capital of Olympia 
against Governor Inslee's cap and trade proposal, but that 
action is barely mentioned on its website. Thus, with regard 
to Earth Day, the events organized by Extinction Rebellion 
stood out.

Environmental racism is also a major issue in Detroit 
and Southeast Michigan. The poisoning of Flint is 
well-known, but there are many issues in Detroit as well. 
But while there are many groups concerned with climate 
justice and environmental racism, they are connected to 
different political or activist trends, and don't form a 
unified climate justice movement. The different groups are 
involved in different spheres of community organizing, and 
different struggles. We have carried material about some of 
these struggles in the D/SWV list.

But to help strengthen these struggles, there is the 
need to develop a conscious alternative to establishment 
environmentalism. Naomi Klein talked about the treacherous 
role of "Big Green" in her book "This Changes Everything", 
albeit a bit ambiguously; this was a very important part of 
the book, although I don't know if she still uses this 
phrase.  The denunciation of "false solutions" by various 
climate justice groups is also important, but the issue 
eventually arises of what lies behind them, and this is 
connected to who will fight against them. I don't think that 
denigrating the phrase "climate action" is very helpful or 
understandable; there is always going to be a fight within 
the environmental movement between different standpoints. 
This difference occurs even within the struggle for climate 
justice, while the clash with establishment environmentalism 
will become even sharper in the future. The militant 
movement, if it is to grow and become a consistent 
opposition to establishment environmentalism, is going to 
have to take this into account. It needs to discuss this 
with activists.

But look what happens at present. In 2017,  the Climate 
Justice Alliance and the Indigenous Environmental Network 
put out a valuable 32-page pamphlet, "Carbon pricing: A 
Critical Perspective for Community Resistance/Building 
Solidarity Against the Threat of Linking Carbon Markets" 
(October, 2017). It vigorously and vehemently denounced 
market measures, including the carbon tax. At one time, the 
climate 

[Marxism] Reliving the Vietnam War

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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--To those of my classmates who are watching the documentary by Ken Burns and 
Lynn Novick on the Vietnam War--

(A comrade's personal comment that appeared on Facebook and was reprinted in 
the Sept. 24 issue of the Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice list)

So am I. For those of our generation, the Vietnam War was one of the major 
traumatic events of our lives. It changed the lives of all those who were 
sent to Vietnam and were forced to kill in an unjust cause; not only did many 
die, but many more were haunted by the war for the rest of their lives, even 
if they were among the many, many heroic GIs who opposed the war and the 
slaughter. But it also changed the lives of those like myself who were 
fortunate enough to stay out of the army. Millions of Americans hated this 
war and took part in the struggle against it; many -- inside and outside the 
army -- suffered reprisals for their opposition. As for myself, this war was 
one of the main reasons I abandoned the aim of becoming a mathematician, 
although I loved mathematics and science, and instead devoted my life to the 
struggle to build a revolutionary working class movement.

The Burns/Novick documentary "The Vietnam War" is not perfect. Nothing 
sponsored by ruling class foundations and even the reactionary David H. Koch 
could be. So far, it neglects, for example, to talk about the struggle in 
country after country against colonialism that was going on while the Vietnam 
War raged. But I've seen so far the first four parts, and it's detailed 
enough that it gives a picture of the racism, atrocities, massacres, lies, 
lies, lies, and mass slaughter that accompanied this imperialist war. 
Watching it is like living through these years again.

* This war was a colonial war, which continued the war which had been waged 
by the French.

* This war was fought by an army which trained its soldiers in basic training 
to hold subject peoples in contempt as subhuman gooks, and whose mode of 
operation was mass slaughter. Torture, devastation, mass slaughter, and more 
mass slaughter.

* The burden of this war in the US fell disproportionately on poor working 
people, African Americans, and other oppressed peoples. The war was not only 
based on racism against the Vietnamese, but was carried out in a racist way 
inside the US.

* This war was brought to us by the Democrats as well as the Republicans, by 
JFK and LBJ, as well as the reactionary dreg Nixon. The run-up to this war 
was brought to us by Truman as well as Eisenhower. The liberal Democratic 
heroes like JFK were just as willing to wade through the blood of the 
Vietnamese people as any other American capitalist leaders.

* The warmongers kept insisting that the US government could win the war in 
Vietnam if only more troops were committed, but they lost the war anyway.

* This war was justified by fanatical anti-communism as well as racism. It 
showed that there is no crime that the ruling class isn't willing to justify 
under the name of anti-communism.

* Ho Chi Minh and many other Vietnamese patriots turned to communism because 
it was the communist movement that really backed the anti-colonial struggle. 
None of the other main political forces in the West really did, not even most 
socialists who had at one time pledged to do so. This was still true after 
World War II, when the victorious powers, despite their democratic rhetoric, 
sought to reestablish their colonial empires.

There are important things not in the documentary, or which it gets wrong. 
And there are a number of left-wing commentaries that describe these things.

It's also the case that the Vietnamese communists were subject to the same 
problems that also afflicted the world revolutionary movement; the building 
of state-capitalism in Russia and China affected the working class movement 
around the world. So while the Vietnamese communists remained independent of 
outside powers, Eastern or Western, the regime they built was not one of real 
communism. They successfully defeated French and American colonial 
domination, but the subsequent history of their joining together with 
Washington in spreading market capitalism is one of the things that shows 
that none of the present-day "socialist" or "communist" regimes are actually 
socialist or communist or Marxist. It may also be one of the reasons that 
some of our filthy-rich ruling class is willing to finance a documentary 
showing some of the crimes of the war.

But that's another story. What the documentary illustrates is the nature of 
the militarist system here. No doubt everyone takes from history and from 
documentaries different lessons, depending on 

[Marxism] What Puerto Rico needs vs what Puerto Rico is getting

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Trump dithers while Puerto Rico faces disaster 
(from the Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice list for Sept. 29, 2017)

Puerto Rico has been devastated by hurricanes Irma and Maria. Not only 
buildings and infrastructure were damaged, but even plants have been stripped 
of vegetation, leaving the island bare and wiping out agricultural 
production. The electrical grid, shaky before the storms, failed over the 
whole island, and it is expected to take a months before power is restored to 
everyone.

Puerto Ricans need food and water immediately. Without power, medicines and 
food spoil, and the water system is paralyzed, leaving many Puerto Ricans 
forced to drink contaminated water. Supplies have reached the capital San 
Juan, but rural areas have been isolated, and left without supplies.

This is a desperate situation. Now, it was known in advance that Puerto Rico 
might be hit hard by hurricanes Irma and Maria, but the Trump administration 
didn't care. And it has dithered in supplying aid even after the disasters 
have occurred.

It wasn't until five days after the Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico 
that Trump even bothered to tweet about it, and when he did, it was in large 
part to assure financiers and bankers that the Trump administration would 
insist on Puerto Rico paying them despite the devastation. The Trump 
administration didn't even arrange for a hospital ship to go to Puerto Rico 
until pressured by a petition, and it will still take a few days before the 
USNS Comfort is ready to go. After a week, he finally appointed someone, 
General Jeffrey Buchanan, to oversee military efforts to help Puerto Rico. 
And yet he is still hiding the extent of the danger facing Puerto Rico; and 
he is still boasting of his supposedly wonderful response to the hurricanes 
while not taking needed measures to ensure that supplies get beyond San Juan. 
Meanwhile Trump has concentrated on other things, from harassing anti-racist 
NFL players to having ICE carry out an oppressive four-day series of 
country-wide immigration raids against Latinos.

This has been a major scandal, as Puerto Rico and the much less populated US 
Virgin Islands have been treated shabbily even compared, not to their needs, 
but to how states on the US mainland have been treated after Hurricanes Irma 
and Maria. Preparations were taken ahead of time to prevent mass suffering in 
places like Texas and Florida, and government agencies acted relatively 
quickly. It shouldn't be forgotten that these steps have been flawed: for 
example, the vast amount of chemical poisoning caused by damaged oil 
refineries and chemical plants and Superfund sites has been glossed over by 
the government; undocumented workers in the hurricane areas will be left 
without recovery funds; insufficient attention is being paid to rebuilding 
properly to deal with future hurricanes; etc. But at least immediate steps 
were taken to prevent mass casualties. By contrast, the steps for Puerto Rico 
have been slow and ineffective, while financiers are preoccupied with how to 
squeeze Puerto Rico further despite the hurricanes.

Thus the federal government has taken a different attitude to Latino Puerto 
Rico and the largely black Virgin Islands than to other areas of the US. 
Well, Puerto Rico has been an "unincorporated territory" of the US since the 
Spanish-American war of 1898. Puerto Ricans have been US citizens since 1917, 
but they are second-class citizens, and Puerto Rico has been a colony. Puerto 
Ricans cannot vote in federal elections; Social Security benefits are less 
for those living in Puerto Rico; Puerto Rico receives less Medicaid funding 
then a state of similar size would; etc. Puerto Ricans in the US have also 
faced discrimination like other Latinos. And now we see this second-class 
status taking place with regard to hurricane relief.

There needs to be major aid for Puerto Rico. Hurricanes Irma and Maria 
weren't simply a passing inconvenience that will be overcome in a few days or 
weeks; we are now entering the era where one can't simply restore business as 
usual with a modest amount of emergency funds. Puerto Rico's economy has been 
annihilated for some time, and who knows what storms it will face next year 
or the year after. The following list is a start at indicating some of the 
steps that are likely to be needed.

(1) There must be immediate and effective relief throughout Puerto Rico. Full 
account must be taken of the destruction of the infrastructure and the 
isolation of rural areas. It is essential that water, food, emergency 
generators, and medicines be provided, and effective communications restore.

(2) There 

Re: [Marxism] Soviet economic model

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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> 
> On 7/29/17 5:54 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
> 
> I cite Moshe Lewin:
> 
> https://louisproyect.org/2009/09/14/joseph-stalin-nostalgia/
> 
> Stalin´s rule was marked mostly by a lack of planning. Despite the 
> announcement of 5-year plans, the economy had more in common with 
> bureaucratic fiat than scientific planning. All this is discussed in 
> chapter 5 entitled "The Disappearance of Planning in the Plan" in Moshe 
> Lewin´s  "Russia USSR Russia".
> 

The material cited by Proyect is quite useful. At the same time, it is should 
be understood that Soviet state-capitalism had *both* planning and anarchy of 
production. Clearly the state apparatus sent vast resources into industry 
through a decision, not the spontaneous operation of market forces, while the 
way the enterprises operated, and the precise allocation of various 
resources, displayed the vast anarchy of production in the Soviet economy. 
The unrealistic or even absurd nature of various features of the plan, 
discussed in the material cited by Proyect, was part of this anarchy of 
production. 

The anarchy of Soviet production was noted by all serious economic 
commentators, but they differ on its significance. I discussed the Stalinist 
anarchy of production, and how it existed alongside planning, and why it 
existed alongside planning, in the following article, which was based on 
material from a number of different careful studies of the Soviet economy:

"The anarchy of production beneath the veneer of Soviet revisionist 
planning", March 1, 1997, by Joseph Green

http://www.communistvoice.org/12cSovAnarchy.html

Earlier in this thread, Walter Daum posted a chapter from his book on 
statified capitalism. I think that his book comes the closest of any major 
Trotskyist work to a correct assessment of the Stalinist economy. For 
example, unlike Tony Cliff, Daum pays attention to the *internal* sources of 
anarchy (which he calls decentralization) in the Soviet economy, rather than 
simply blaming the anarchy on the connection of the Soviet Union to the 
surrounding capitalist world economy. But at the same Daum's attempt to put 
everything into a Trotskyist framework and defend Trotsky's statements about 
the Soviet economy involved him in a number of crying contradictions; it 
sometimes seems that Daum strongly asserts things only for the sake of 
denying them later in his book. In this sense, Daum not only discusses the 
life and death of Stalinism, but gives an illustration of the life and death 
of Trotskyist theorizing.

See my review of Daum's book:

"On Walter Daum's 'The Life and Death of Stalinism': 
Competition among Soviet enterprises and ministries, and
the collapse of the Soviet Union"
by Joseph Green, Dec. 1998

http://www.communistvoice.org/19cDaum.html 

The basic features of state-capitalism appeared not just in the Soviet 
economy, but in other state-capitalist economies as the well.This includes 
the Cuban economy. Mark Williams of the Detroit Workers' Voice has written a 
series of articles on different time periods of the Castroist economy. This 
includes:

Cuba in the 1960s: Bureaucrats head to 'communism' without the workers"
by Mark Williams, April 1998

http://www.communistvoice.org/17cCuba60s.html

and

"Did Castro steer Cuba towards socialism in the late 1980s?"
by Mark Williams, December 1996

http://www.communistvoice.org/11cCuba1980s.html

For more on Cuba, see

http://www.communistvoice.org/00Cuba.html.


---
Joseph Green
m...@communistvoice.org




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Re: [Marxism] Making America first in climate change denialism

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Patrick Bond wrote:

> Superb, but I hope the next part(s) address the strategic question of 
> stripping away capitalist support from Trump, by invoking invoking 
> climate sanctions against US goods and services. There is talk of this 
> strategy from Naomi Klein, Joseph Stiglitz and a few far-sighted 
> capitalists, and the largest European eco-network (EEB) also just called 
> for a carbon tariff against the US. (I know your strong opposition to 
> relying on 'market-based strategies' such as a carbon tax and generally 
> I agree - but this is different.)
> 

 Thanks, Patrick, for the comments. As far as climate sanctions against US 
goods and services, I'm not sure what you have in mind. Are you imagining 
that the EU as a whole, or individual countries, will impose an environmental 
tariff on US goods and services? Or is the plan that there will be pressure 
for institutions to divest from US companies? Or to boycott American goods 
and services? All goods and services, or just ones which aren't judged to be 
making the progress they would be if the US hadn't declared that it was 
leaving the Paris Accord (and if so, how would one judge that)? Would there 
be any comparison between the carbon content of American goods and services 
and that of the alternate ones which would replace them? Are the sanctions to 
be only against the withdrawal from the Paris Accord, or for the many steps 
of the Trump administration against the environment?

 When the plan is better formulated, it could be evaluated more concretely. 
For now, it doesn't seem very realistic to me. It may seem analogous to BDS 
in form, but I don't think it actually is. It seems to me that the hope that 
the other capitalists will institute sanctions against Trump over the issue 
of the environment is mainly a product of despair, reminiscent of Hansen  and 
Monbiot turning to nuclear. I'm sorry to hear that Naomi Klein is considering 
this. I think her book "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate" 
was a real contribution to the movement, and it talked about some important 
things, such as the collaboration of Big Green with the energy corporations, 
that are not usually mentioned. But this new strategy seems to me like a 
reversion, for the time being, to "This Changes Nothing".

 Presently the left pole in the environmental movement, despite many 
important and dedicated actions against pipelines and on other issues, has 
limited strength. And the situation is really dangerous, as the time is 
running out for preventing drastic climactic change. So there is pressure to 
look for quick remedies.  But the political realities and the class 
alignments don't change just because the situation is dangerous. We need to 
work to build up a truly working-class wing of the environmental movement.  
We need to work to build the left pole of the environmental movement up, in 
strength, in its class character, and in its program. The fate of the 
environmental movement depends on how far the left can strengthen itself as 
well as on when market fundamentalism finally cracks. 

 There is also the issue of the Paris Accord itself.  Your powerful article 
on it back in December 2015 characterized it as "implicit terrorism by carbon 
addicts". This doesn't mean that activists should boycott protests against 
Trump's withdrawal from the Accord, which is a rallying point for explicit 
terrorism against the environment. But a strategy of expecting very much from 
the green-talking wing of the carbon addicts seems futile to me. If we really 
want to fight global warming, we have to bear in mind that this fight must go 
beyond the Paris Accord, and we must do our best to bring forward demands 
that go beyond simply condemning withdrawal from the Accord. We shouldn't 
boycott anti-Trump environmental actions because of the domination of those 
who don't go beyond the Accord or of establishment environmentalism, but we 
need to patiently strive to have the movement go beyond the Paris Accord and 
the sham environmentalism of the carbon (and fracking) addicts.  


---
Joseph Green
m...@communistvoice.org



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Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Making America first in climate change denialism

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Correction: That's Thursday, June 1, not Wednesday, May 31. 
-- Joseph Green

> Making America first in climate denialism:
> Trump withdraws the US from the struggle against global warming 
> (part one)
> 
> On Wednesday May 31 Trump announced that he will withdraw the United States 

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[Marxism] Making America first in climate change denialism

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Making America first in climate denialism:
Trump withdraws the US from the struggle against global warming 
(part one)

On Wednesday May 31 Trump announced that he will withdraw the United States 
from the Paris Accord on climate change. This is the accord stemming from the 
UN Climate Summit of December 2015 in Paris. From day one of his presidency, 
Trump has been doing his best to roll back any environmental protections, and 
the withdrawal from the Paris Accord is his overall declaration of climate 
change denialism.

Of course, Trump did say that he was open to renegotiating the Paris Accord 
or taking part in a new one. But based on his complaints about the Paris 
Accord, the new treaty would have to have the following provisions:

1) it would not interfere with fossil fuel production;

2) it would not cost anything to implement;

3) it would not provide any help to poorer countries; and

4) it would put America first.

It's no wonder that no one took this proposal seriously.

Trump's withdrawal has already met with widespread condemnation, and a number 
of modest-sized mass protests. It may become a new focal point of mass 
resistance. It is another chapter in a movement that already saw in April the 
March for Science on Earth Day and the People's Climate March.

These broad protests against Trump bring together a number of different 
trends, from bourgeois trends to militant activists. The defense of the Paris 
Accord by establishment figures generally glorifies the weak measures taken 
by various government and the green declarations of polluting corporations. 
But if large protests develop, this serves the interest of the overall 
environmental movement. It may help spread consciousness of the urgency of 
the problem to yet wider masses.

But while taking part in the overall movement, it's also important to help 
build up a militant pole inside it. It's important to talk about the need for 
mass struggle. Matters can't be left in the hands of the pro-business 
politicians and the polluting corporations, who may say they support the 
Paris Accord while they lobby for the right to drill more oil and gas wells. 
Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accord shows, if anything, the need for the 
masses to take matters into their own hands.

There is already a discussion beginning among activists of how to react to 
this new phase of the struggle. These discussion tend to focus among tactics, 
but they should also look more deeply into the question of what measures are 
needed. This is important to develop a strong working-class trend in the 
environmental movement.

The nature of the Paris Accord
--

The importance of denouncing Trump's withdrawal form the Paris Accord isn't 
that this Accord is very good. It's actually a flop: pretty words masking an 
inability to agree on serious measures. The governments and bourgeoisie have 
lauded it to the sky, but back when the Paris Accord was first hammered out, 
many environmentalists, such as James Hansen, were horrified by its 
provisions.

For that matter, today a number of commentators say that Trump didn't have to 
withdraw from the Paris Accord: the Accord doesn't require any country to do 
anything but present it's own plan with whatever goals it sees fit to adopt. 
But doesn't this show how weak the Paris Accords are? If Trump could have 
stayed in the Accord while seeking to increase carbon emissions, doesn't this 
show that something is missing in this Accord?

Against bourgeois complacency
---

Some media commentators are saying that it really won't matter so much that 
Trump is withdrawing from the Accord. Why, market measures are supposedly 
already bringing down greenhouse emissions. But if you listen carefully, they 
are generally promoting natural gas. And yet the extraction of natural gas 
(mainly done through "fracking") is destroying the land and poisoning our 
water, and leakage of methane from natural gas wells and pipelines makes a 
mockery of the supposed decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.

Other commentators are saying that large numbers of cities and states as 
already quite green. It's surprising, though, that lead poisoning, a problem 
known to the cities and states for decades, is still so prevalent, if states 
and cities are already allegedly so vigilant. What we often see is things 
like the Detroit City Council saying that, oh yes, it opposes the increased 
bringing of toxic and radioactive wastes into the city for processing, but 
its hands are tied. It can't really stop this, it can just negotiate with the 
companies for more blood 

Re: [Marxism] Orwell-bad history?

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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The murderous acts of the Stalinists against POUM in Spain are well-known. 
Less well-known is that Trotsky was bitterly opposed to POUM, denounced its 
comrades as traitors and renegades, and denounced Victor Serge and others as 
"strikebreakers" for having any relations with POUM.

The lack of recognition of the right to self-determination of the Moroccan 
people by the Spanish Republican government is well-known. Less well-known is 
that Trotsky wasn't that interested in the right to self-determination of the 
Moroccan people either. While against the colonial domination of Morocco in 
theory, he rarely refers to it in writing about Spain. He does refer to it in 
"The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning, which appeared in the Socialist 
Appeal on January 8 and 15, 1938" 
(https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/xx/spain01.htm), but even here 
it's a minor point, barely mentioned, without even mention of the word 
"Morocco" or the right to self-determination or some other formulation. There 
is no discussion of the attitude of different sections of the people in Spain 
to this issue, and what serious agitation on the issue of Morocco would be.  
He simply expects that the "colonial Rifians" would immediate react to 
socialist revolution in Spain. And if one checks various of the accounts of 
Trotsky's work and views, there is hardly anything about his attitude to the 
Moroccans.

Even that is better than his complete lack of recognition of the relationship 
of national oppression inside Ethiopia to the struggle against the Italian 
invasion of Ethiopia. There are certain similarities between the Italian war 
against Ethiopia in the mid-1930s and the Spanish Civil War. Both the 
resistance against Mussolini and the resistance against Franco were damaged 
by the failure to deal with the right to self-determination of oppressed 
nationalities.  The Eritirean and Oromo peoples and certain other 
nationalities were oppressed inside the Ethiopian empire, as the Spanish 
Moroccans were under Spanish domination. Franco used Moroccans as 
cannonfodder, while the Italian fascists sought to make use in their invasion 
and occupation of Ethiopioa of the anger of the Eritrean and Oromo peoples. 
And, for example, when Haile Selassie fled Ethiopia -- which occurred right 
after Trotsky imagined that Selassie would be the great anti-imperialist 
liberator -- he was motivated in part by fear of the Oromo people.  The 
alternative to his fleeing Ethiopia would have been to risk accompanying 
Ethiopian troops in a retreat through Oromo areas, and Selassie feared for 
his safety there. But Trotsky, in discussing the Italian invasion, never 
referred to the issue of national oppression in Ethiopia itself.

So it seems that there is more in common between the Trotskyist and Stalinist 
positions than is usually imagined. 

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Re: [Marxism] Marx was not a Greeny

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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David McMullen wrote,
> 
> The attempt by John Bellamy Foster of Monthly Review to show that Marx 
> was a greeny requires some rather weird interpretations of Marx's writings.
> 

Not just Marx was concerned with the environment, but many socialist workers 
in the Germany of his time. But Marx wasn't a bourgeois environmentalist. His 
writing brought out the need for economic regulation and planning by the 
working people as a whole, while today's establishment environmentalists look 
towards market measures, or dream that restricting growth will solve matters 
without planning. Foster is right to point to the importance of Marxism for 
the environment. But Foster's faults include drowning concrete problems in 
philosophical generalities, prettifying state-capitalism, and evading the 
distinction between different class types of economic planning. "Monthly 
Review" is to Marxism what "green free-marketers" are to environmentalism.

I wrote an article in 2007 which deals with Marx's standpoint, Foster's 
standpoint, and the needs of the present environmental struggle.

"A review of John Bellamy Foster's 'Marx's Ecology':
Marx and Engels on protecting the environment"

(http://www.communistvoice.org/40cMarx.html)

The table of contents is 

* The writings of Marx and Engels
* Alongside and after Marx and Engels
* Lenin and the early Soviet Union
* Stalinist and state capitalist ecocide
* Marxism and global warming
* --Not market methods, but direct regulation of production
* --Class basis of environmental destruction
* --The nature of state regulation
* --Bringing the masses into the environmental struggle
* Foster's Marxism without teeth 

-- Joseph Green

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June,

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Thank you, Michael Karadjis, for your comments of March 5 on this thread. 
Although we don't agree on various questions, I appreciate your long-running 
work in defense of the Syrian uprising and on a number of other issues. 

I realize this response has been delayed. But I not only was distracted by 
other work, but spent some time reviewing the history of RS.

> Let's try and have this debate calmly. Andy is right about the RS 
> comrades fighting for democratic demands and getting brutally repressed 
> for it. Joseph is right that they made other serious errors. But he 
> should also mention that they fixed them very fast, and that in itself 
> raises questions about his interpretation of concrete errors in Egypt.

The issue isn't whether RS has serious and dedicated activists. The issue is 
whether RS's astonishing blunder about the Egyptian coup is partly due to the 
influence of the theory of permanent revolution.

More generally, the point is that the experience of the Arab Spring shows the 
bankrupcy of PR.  When the Arab Spring began, there were groups that wrote 
fervent articles applying PR to various of the struggles.  In the main, we 
now see silence.  This is not a serious approach.

An-Nar wrote in his article "The Democratic Wager" about the difficulties the 
left had dealing with democatic struggles that should be supported even 
though they wouldn't lead to socialism.  He said that these theoretical 
difficulties "have generally been based on some return to Trotsky's theory of 
Permanent Revolution", and he then gave his analysis of PR. But I don't think 
his points have been dealt with seriously.

An-Nar used the term "democratic wager", because he  believed that currently 
the main theories on the left were either PR or Stalinism.  The term 
"democratic wager" has some useful connotations, in that it brings out that 
we should support democratic struggles even when the masses don't have all 
the positions that the left would prefer they have. That's an important 
point, and one I have also raised in articles supporting the struggles of the 
Arab Spring. But an-Nar was apparently unaware of the Marxist-Leninist theory 
of the distinction between democratic and socialist movements.

Michael,  you write that RS fixed its errors very fast.  Even if that were 
so, it's no reason to avoid examining why they blundered at the crucial 
moment. But I have gone back to reread various of RS's writings of the time, 
and I think they tell a different story.
 
> Here's what I think. On the broad theoretical questions, I've long been 
> in agreement with much of what Joseph Green says (on the question of 
> Assad an-Nar's article in Khiyana, less so: I agree with some points but 
> it seemed to be greatly over-stated). I agree that permanent revolution 
> is too narrow a lens through which to understand world politics and 
> revolution (and in particular the Arab Spring, as Joseph notes), in as 
> much as we mean the particular aspects of Trotsky's theory that were 
> different from Lenin's views - though in my opinion they are 
> fundamentally similar. 

This is interesting, but it would be helpful if you elaborated it. When you 
say permanent revolution is too narrow a lens, what are you referring to? And 
if PR is too narrow a lens, what is needed to supplement it?

>The main advantage of Trotsky is that he put it 
> all together in a couple of highly readable volumes, whereas Lenin's 
> views are written on the rush in various articles, big and small, 
> throughout 1905-6 and later (not only Two Tactics).

We disagree on this.

> For the record I 
> view Lenin's April Thesis as perfectly consistent with his 1905-6 views. 
> I agree with many of Joseph's comments about the broader sweep. But we 
> can discuss all this calmly.
> 
> Where I don't agree with Joseph is in his attempt to somewhat 
> mechanically explain the actions and errors of small Trotskyist groups 
> as being caused by the Original Sin of PR.

 I don't agree with blaming everything on the activists who tried to carry 
out PR, rather than the theory. To explain away the errors, you refer to 
small groups, the more caricaturish kinds of Trotskyists,  sectarians, and so 
forth. But sooner or later, one has to deal with the theory itself.

> As I see it, the problem with 
> this is that Joseph in a way is doing what the more caricaturish kinds 
> of Trotskyists do: they seek to explain everything on the basis of the 
> need for the "correct program" (and everyone messes up because they 
> don't have it), and Joseph is kind of saying the same about those who do 
> have the PR view. I think in both cases it is an idealist 

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June,

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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David Walters writes: 
>  I don't believe that Joseph Green understands very much about the theory
> of Permanent Revolution.

David, you don't give your definition of permanent revolution, and contrast 
it to how I have described permanent revolution. You don't even show how your 
view of PR is different from that of the Trotskyist groups whose views on PR 
I have quoted in my articles. Indeed, as far as I can see, we have similar 
views on what permanent revolution means: we differ on whether we agree with 
PR, and with our assessment of what has happened in different countries 
around the world. You are entitled to your opinion of course. But unless you 
provide some evidence that you, as opposed to the rest of the Trotskyist 
movement, such as all the Trotskyist groups that I have cited in my articles 
on the Arab Spring, are wrong about PR, I don't see how you can expect your 
assertions about PR to carry much weight.

> It is, as a  theory (and a programmatic perspective) 
> proven by negative example all the time,

Although I don't believe that is true, I think the fact that you make this 
assertion verifies that I have been quite accurate about the meaning of 
Trotsky's permanent revolution. PR really does assert that every democratic 
struggle in the present that does not achieve workers' power will have 
accomplished nothing. That's why, David, you can regard PR as verified by 
failures of the one democratic struggle after another. (Another important 
issue is whether these struggles really were all total failures or whether it 
is rather that democratic struggles and national independence don't live up 
to the exaggerated standard you set for them. Is it really true, for example, 
that  India really has only "formal" independence? But I leave that point for 
next time.)

What a miserable perspective this verification of PR by negative example 
would be for the Arab Spring. In order for Trotskyist groups to say anything 
about what activists should do in these struggles, they would have to imagine 
that they could lead to workers' power (indeed, workers' power on a regional 
scale). Otherwise all PR could say about these struggles is that they were 
fated to be negative examples. All it could say would be -- you will 
struggle, and sacrifice, and see your friends and relatives die, but you will 
accomplish nothing.

And in fact, a number of Trotskyist organizations explicitly stated that the 
struggles of the Arab Spring were doomed unless they obtained workers' power 
(or even regional workers' power). Those who have been defending PR want to 
forget what was said in 2011.

Meanwhile, as this thread on the list has continued, additional defenses of 
PR have been posted on other threads on this list. But I think they manifest 
the problems with PR that I have been talking about.

 Andrew Pollock posted a link to a series of article by Neil Davidson 
onTrotsky's theory of uneven and combined development. 
(https://rs21testblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/uneven-and-combined-deve l 
opment-modernity-modernism-revolution.pd

On page 3 of Davidson's work he writes: 

"The working class...could accomplish the revolution against the  
pre-capitalist state which the bourgeois itself was no longer prepared to 
undertake and -- in Trotsky's version of permanent revolution at any rate -- 
move directly to the construction of socialism, provided of course that it 
occurred within the context of a successful *international* revoltuionary 
movement..." (emphasis as in the original)

Now the Arab Spring did *not* occur in the context of a socialist  
revolutionary wave throughout the world. On the contrary, it has occurred in 
a very difficult period for the world working class. So the conclusion would 
be that all that is left is to be a negative example. It's the inevitable 
conclusion whether Davidson himself draws it or not.  And I think this 
conclusion, stated or not, is one of the things that lies behind the fact 
that there is no discussion  anywhere in the 91-page PDF of Davidson's 
article of the tasks of revolutionary socialists in the situation of a 
democratic struggle where there is no possibility of "mov(ing) directly to 
the construction of socialism". 

Now, Davidson does mention of the Egyptian struggle. He even says that "the 
Egyptian revolution has been the most important of the contemporary social 
explosions". But there is no discussion about what the socialists and 
class-conscious activists should have done in this revolution, or whether we 
can learn from what they did in this revolution. Even though Davidson's 
series of articles extends right up to the present, there 

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Andrew Pollack wrote:
 
> 1. About a month ago tens of thousands of mostly women textile workers went
> on strike in Egypt, and as is always the case faced threats of firing or
> worse:
> 
> http://www.madamasr.com/en/2017/02/09/news/u/mahalla-textile-workers-temporarily-call-off-strike-5-strike-leaders-face-disciplinary-hearings/
> 
> Which side of that combined economic/social/political struggle are you on,
> Joseph?

This is just more abuse, Andrew. That's your answer to every refutation of 
permanent revolution. You don't deal with the alternative theory set forward, 
or with the facts concerning the democratizations of the last few decades. 
No, it's just abuse, abuse, abuse. It reminds me of the way you-know-who 
deals with people who contradict him.

> 
> 2. Also recently several South African revolutionaries described in
> Pambazuka the battles, both in the workplaces and streets and in ideas,
> between South Africa's bourgeois rulers and its workers:
> 
> http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article40214
> 
> Some of the articles mention that NUMSA's "marxist-leninist" leadership is
> backtracking from its promised drive for socialist politics and strategy.
> Where do you stand on that, Joseph?
> 

If you have important information about what's going on in South Africa, 
Andrew, please post it. Describe what's going on, how you see the different 
paths being proposed and the different organizations that exist, and so on.  
I would be interested, even if I disagree with your analysis, and it might 
also encourage contributions from other people on South Africa.

> And for god's sake don't just copy and paste your old emails.

I don't know why you're so upset by this. You don't read it anyway. But in 
any case I didn't just "copy and paste". I mainly gave a new exposition of my 
standpoint, in the reply to the current discussion, and it has analysis which 
you haven't replied to. Except with abuse. However, it's significant that I 
can include what I wrote about the Arab Spring in 2011, and it holds up 
pretty well. But the statements of the time which were based on the  theory 
of permanent revolution were haywire.


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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Louis Proyect wrote:
> 
> I don't know what "according to the permanent revolution" means. Trotsky 
> didn't write a formula, even though his epigones turned it into one. The 
> obligation of Marxists is to analyze capitalist society and develop 
> strategy and tactics that will help to overthrow the capitalist class. I 
> don't read Trotsky's writings from 1905 in order to understand Thabo 
> Mbeki or Nelson Mandela. I read Patrick Bond. I am afraid your argument 
> is with Trotskyism, not Trotsky.

I have read Trotsky, and he has a definite viewpoint. And I also take account 
of the applications of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution made by 
Trotskyists, such as during the Arab Spring.  I think their application of 
permanent revolution is a legitimate and straight-forward reading of the 
theory, but the theory's wrong. It goes against what's happened in the world. 
With so many different Trotskyist groups and theorists, one would have 
thought at least a few would have been able to get it right. 

Now if Trotsky was so obscure that no one know what he meant by permanent 
revolution, that's a devastating indictment of his theorizing. And it would 
make him irrelevant. But I think that many later Trotskyists did understand 
the theory and tried very hard to apply it, and it's just that the  theory 
failed.



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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Louis Proyect wrote:
>>https://mondediplo.com/2013/06/05brothers

(The link is to an Achcar article entitled
"The neoliberal policy of Egypt´s new president Mohamed Morsi looks very much 
like a continuation of that of Mubarak. It is increasing social tensions.")

Thank you Louis for posting this. It illustrates one of the major points I 
have been stressing for years.

Gilbert Achcar's article of June 2013 pointed to the contradiction between 
the  policies of President Morsi and the expectations  of the masses after 
the downfall of Mubara, and it referred to the increased "social tensions". 
It should also be noted that the bourgeois leadership of the secular liberal 
trend in the Egyptian movement also backed such economic policies.

This is in accord with what I wrote in November 2011 about the nature of the 
Arab Spring. I firmly supported  the fight against the dictatorships, but 
didn't glamorize the regimes that would follow the dictatorships. I pointed 
out that conservative and neoliberal policies had in general followed the 
victory of democratization movements in this period. But in general, 
democracy leads to an extension of the class struggle. The class struggle is 
the path towards socialism, and to recoil from the anti-dictatorship movement 
because the governments that come to power following the tyrants were likely 
to be  conservative or neoliberal would mean to abandon both democracy and 
socialism. 

In South Africa too, we saw that the great victory of liberation from 
apartheid was followed by an ANC government that followed neo-liberal 
policies. In some ways, it was and is more free-market than the horrendous, 
inhuman, ultlra-racist apartheid regime that preceded it.

Again and again, the theory of permanent revolution has been proved wrong. 
According to the permanent revolution, the neoliberal nature of the ANC 
government should have meant that all the democratic gains were lost, and we 
should have seen South Africa suffering again from apartheid, indeed perhaps 
an even more intense apartheid than before. Instead we see that the old 
apartheid is dead, but the "social tensions" are increasing, and the 
extension and intensification of the class struggle is on the agenda. We see, 
for example, the massacre of miners at Marikana, and the struggle of the 
miitants in, for example, the National Union of Metworkers of South Africa 
(NUMSA) to resist the ANC's neoliberalism both economically and politically.  
The issue of the oppression of the black masses is still present, but it 
presents itself in a different form than before.

This is in accord with the Marxist theory, not permanent revolution. While I 
don't agree with everything in An-Nar's article, I think it's strong point is 
that it puts stress on the actual political situation facing the Egyptian 
political masses, while the dreams based on permanent revolution glossed 
over, obscured, and effectively ignored this reality. A realistic assessment 
is needed if revolutionary socialists are to know what special role they need 
to play in the movement in order to both help the democratic struggle and 
prepare a revolutionary workers movement with the goal of socialism.

Permanent revolution led various Trotskyist groups,, when the Arab Spring 
broke out, to paint glorious pictures of workers' power sweeping across the 
Middle East and North Africa, if only a revolutionary leadership was in 
charge of the struggle. It blinded them to a realistic assessment of the Arab 
Spring, and of what had to be done. It is a realistic assessment that is 
revolutionary, not idle dreaming and phrasemongering. Lenin stresses the 
importance of knowing how to pursue revolutionary goals in a backward period. 
Permanent revolution fails this test.

Below I give some excerpts from what I wrote in 2011, in the course of 
defending the importance of the Arab Spring. 

>From "Against left-wing doubts about the democratic movement", November 2011
(http://www.communistvoice.org/46cLeftWingDoubts.html):

"But this [the Arab Spring] is not a socialist movement, nor even a radical 
anti-imperialist one. Instead it has a lot in common with the liberalization 
movements which we have seen elsewhere around the world in the last several 
decades. These movements brought down various dictatorships, but often left 
conservative or even market-fundamentalist regimes in their place."

"In the case of the Arab Spring, everywhere the insurgent masses are split up 
in disparate groupings. Everywhere different class factions take part in the 
struggle, and different class interests are expressed. Nowhere is the 
struggle led by a clear 

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Before Lenin: Bolshevik Theory and Practice in February 1917 Revisited | Historical Materialism

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Proyect wrote:
> Joseph Green via Marxism wrote:
> > So what does history show? The theory of permanent revolution was
>> completely bankrupt with respect to the Arab Spring.
> 
> [Proyect replied} To some extent, the Khiyana article that makes this point
>reflected the  influence of Sam Hamad who viewed any opposition to the Morsi
> government as coinciding with the al-Sisi.

Bull. An-Nar did not oppose agitation against the Morsi government, but 
called for a more intelligent form of it than backing the military coup.  

Moreover, the point isn't what Sam Hamad thinks, nor is it the many other 
debates among activists. The point is that in his article on the "democratic 
wager", an-Nar raised serious points of theory against permanent revolution. 
These should be dealt with.

The theory of permanent revolution sees only two alternatives: a struggle 
that becomes a socialist revolution led by the working class, or the 
bitterest counterrevolution. But how can one support the Syrian uprising or 
the Egyptian ovement with this perspective when, even if they are successful, 

it is not going to lead to workers power? There is a long path between these 
struggles and the eventual socialist revolution. 

An-Nar raises another alternative: what he calls the "democratic wager".  He 
points to the limited viewpoint of the working masses as well as the splits 
among them. A serious theoretical study would have to address this directly.

I don't agree with all of the views and formulations in An-Nar's article. But 

he emphasized looking at the actual situation among the masses. This was in 
contrast to the revolutionary phrasemongering of permanent revolution.

> If being a supporter of the "democratic revolution" means functioning as
> an ideological handmaiden to the Muslim Brotherhood, I'll stick with
> "permanent revolution" ...

More bull. Basically this amounts to saying that anyone who recognizes the 
split among the working masses and seeks way to overcome it is an apologist 
for the Muslim Brotherhood.  An-Nar searches for ways to deal with the 
political split among the masses, and this includes dealing with the  
"disenfranchised mass social base" of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is not 
easy, and mistakes will be made as one seeks for how to do this. But it is a 
path that the is needed for increasing the strength of the working class 
smovement.

The type of super-revolutionary thinking that overlooks the trends of thought 

manifested among the working masses is part of what led the Revolutionary 
Socialists (RS) of Egypt to overlook the need for a protracted mass struggle 
rather than an immediate coup. At one time, the RS had dealt more seriously 
with the divisions among the people. But for a time they were euphoric over 
the masses in the street against Morsi, and didn't stop to think that the 
divisions among the workers were still there.

During the Morsi presidency, the mass struggle had started to bloom. There 
were many strikes and protests. Moreover, this included such things as 
Muslims coming out to defend Coptic churches. The longer these struggles 
continued, the more possibilities existed to make progress in uniting the 
working masses. The struggle under the Morsi regime was difficult, dangerous, 

and required sacrifice, but it was possible and it had the possibility of 
leading to progress.

An-Nar refers to "an alternative political space the revolutionary left could 

have occupied". I presume that he is referring to the squabbles and splits 
among the non-proletarian forces creating an opening for the working class 
movement. Under Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood, the military, the judiciary, 
the Mubarak loyalists, and the liberals were divided among themselves. So 
they couldn't come to agreement against the masses. This was the class 
situation that created a certain "political space", but one which required 
determination, courage, and some political clarity to occupy. The coup would 
remove this space by uniting most of the hostile forces except the Islamists.

But it was not just the hostile class forces that were divided. So were the 
working masses, and this too had to be kept in consideration. The large 
demonstrations against Morsi didn't mean that the splits among the masses had 

been overcome, nor did it mean that strong organization had spread widely 
among them. To have faith that the working masses could gradually unite 
against the hostile political trends is presumably part of what an-Nar means 
by the democratic wager. To believe that t

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Before Lenin: Bolshevik Theory and Practice in February 1917 Revisited | Historical Materialism

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Louis Proyect wrote: 
>.
>  I may or may not deal with Eric's article per se but I wrote a critique
> of  Lih here that is germane to the discussion:
> 
> https://louisproyect.org/2015/08/15/lars-lih-and-lenins-april-theses/
> 

I read Proyect's critique of Lih. It has some notable points, such as raising 
 again the question of permanent revolution. Proyect speaks to this as 
follows:

>To start with, it is questionable whether permanent revolution was
> any kind of theory. I always regarded it as an analysis of the class
> dynamics of the Russian revolution and not something that could 
> be applied universally. In fact, Trotskyism turned [it] into a formula 
> that was always invoked in order to establish its own purity just as 
> it is doing now with respect to Greece. It says that unless nations 
> follow through with socialist measures, the goals of the
> bourgeois-democratic revolution (land reform, democratic rights,
> national independence, etc.) will not be guaranteed. For me
> this has always been something of a tautology, amounting to
> a statement that unless there is a revolution there will
> be no revolution.

Unfortunately, this passage is contradictory. It starts by asserting that 
permanent revolution is "not something that could be applied universally", 
and ends by asserting that it is "something of a tautology", which would mean 
that it is true universally.

Proyect asserts that
 >It says that unless nations 
> follow through with socialist measures, the goals of the
> bourgeois-democratic revolution (land reform, democratic rights,
> national independence, etc.) will not be guaranteed.

But the question isn't whether the gains are permanent. The question is 
whether democratic movements and revolutions are still of extreme interest to 
the socialist proletariat, even in the situation where these movements aren't 
going to be immediately followed by a socialist revolution . A revolutionary 
theory faces the problem of judging whether an uprising could lead to 
workers' power, which is much more than simply undertaking some "socialist 
measures". The question is whether it is true, as permanent revolution 
asserts, that  all meaningful uprisings must either lead to workers' power, 
or end up accomplishing nothing.

So what does history show? The theory of permanent revolution was completely 
bankrupt with respect to the Arab Spring. It was clear even in 2011 that the 
uprisings of the Arab Spring, even if they were victorious, were not going to 
lead to workers' power. Yet the Arab Spring deserved socialist support.
 
Now, I don't agree with everything Assar an-Nar says, but some of what he 
writes about permanent revolution in "Socialism and the Democratic Wager" in 
the book "Khiyana: Deash, the Left and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution" 
is right on target. Indeed, it is notable that he feels compelled to argue 
fiercely in favor of the "democratic wager" because he is writing for a 
milieu that is heavily influenced by Trotskyism and permanent revolution and 
hence has trouble understanding the role of the "democratic wager". He 
denounces various forms of Stalinism, which is important to do, but he is 
clearly also  writing against much of the Trotskyist creed. He writes:

 >...Permanent Revolution suggested that there were either two
>  alternatives: socialist revolution led by the working class or
> Tsarist counterrevolution." (p. 11) 

And an-Nar says:

>We believe that this 'useless dogma' has become a substitute 
>for analysis and leads to catastrophism: the erroneous view 
> that there are only two courses in any historical situation--either
> proletarian revolution or counterrevolution. Evidently this is not
> the case for most history since 1917. On the other hand, it may lead
> to the false conclusion that there is an automatic pattern of
> radicalisation and that history is necessarily on our side. It leads 
> most obviously to repeated efforts to make reality fit our theory 
> instead of using theory to explain reality." (p. 14)

Among other things, an-Nar is furious that the theory of permanent revolution 
had something to do with "the leftist misreading of the army coup [in Egypt] 
as the 'next wave' of the revolution", as the Egyptian Revolutionary 
Socialists did briefly.

But also it is one of the sources for denigrating the Syrian uprising, which 
is why an-Nar feels compelled to discuss it. Indeed, back at the start of the 
Arab Spring, a number of Trotskyist groups proudly and zealously applied the 
theory of permanent revolution to the Arab Spring and asserted explicitly and 
emphatically  that these struggles would either lead to workers' 

[Marxism] Anti-Trump must be anti-Assad

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Below are excerpts from an important statement from Syria Solidarity 
International.

The full text is at
https://www.facebook.com/AssadOut/posts/709302565896741

"Answer" Trump's Racism & Islamophobia:
Build Solidarity with the Syrian Democratic Revolution!

Democracy is the Alternative to the Phony War on Terror, Sectarian Violence 
and Dictatorships!

The handover of power in Washington DC this week will inaugurate a deeply 
unpopular president-elect Trump into the White House, and a new era of 
unprecedented threats to hard-won civil liberties and basic democratic rights 
across the country.  ...

This new era also poses grave challenges for supporters of peace and justice 
internationally. ...



We cannot oppose the War on Terror while being silent about Putin´s methods 
of genocide in Ichkeria, Russian occupied Chechnya, and Putin´s intervention 
to defend the 46-year Assad dictatorship in Syria against the popular 
uprising for freedom and democracy, which began in 2011 as part of the 
immensely hopeful Arab Spring. ...

...

We can only stop fascism at home by standing against fascism everywhere!

We can only fight for democracy at home by fighting for democracy everywhere!

There is a great deal we can do if we stand together to stop Trump´s agenda. 
But we can only do this from a position of principled solidarity with the 
democratic struggles of the Arab people - and in particular, the Syrian 
Democratic Revolution! Sadly, the antiwar coalitions we build together in 
struggle against the Bush-era wars have been coopted by leaderships who seek 
to substitute isolationism --Trump´s program!--for international solidarity 
with democratic struggles and principled opposition to attacks on civilians. 
Leaderships such as UNAC and ANSWER do not understand that peace,justice, and 
democracy are international principles, that these principles should never be 
surrendered!

The leaderships of the ANSWER Coalition, UNAC and other remnants of the broad 
Anti-War Movement built in opposition to Bush and Clinton´s criminal war 
against the Iraqi people, propose to ANSWER US wars abroad and repression at 
home by supporting Russian imperialism and Assad´s repression! These 
organisations have stood resolutely in defence of the Assad dictatorship, and 
support the intervention in Syria by Russia, Iran and its proxy militias, 
including Hezbollah. To oppose US imperialism, ANSWER and the like support 
sectarian genocide and the disintegration of Syria! Ironically, by 
apologizing for the regime´s crimes against humanity, ANSWER and the like 
have resorted to the same arguments used by Israel to justify its terrorist 
attacks on civilians in Gaza or by previous administrations to dismiss 
civilian casualties as "collateral damage". Worse still, by repeating Assad´s 
lies that all who oppose him are terrorists, ANSWER and company have adopted 
Orientalist and Islamophobic rhetoric. Even as they exclude Syrians from 
speaking about their revolutionary experience and Assad´s repression, ANSWER 
and their followers propose themselves to lead the fight against racism, 
sexism, Islamophobia and xenophobia! Hypocrisy! It is high time to Listen to 
Syrians!

To stop Trump and his ilk leading us into the abyss of fascism, we must cut 
off the tree at its root! The root from which this right-wing shift in the 
world has grown includes the isolation of the Syrian democratic revolution - 
an unacceptable injustice vigorously promoted by the very forces who today 
pretend to lead our resistance! Leaving the Syrian revolution behind cannot 
be the way forward!

How can we fight racism in the US while asserting Arabs must choose between 
dictators or jihadists? Who is ANSWER to choose for them! Orientalist and 
Islamophobic garbage! Chauvinism! The same kind of vicious logic was once 
used in an attempt to discipline African Americans and postpone their 
struggle for civil liberties until after defeating fascism in WWII.

.

The real "ANSWER" is that we cannot!

Our failure as the broad progressive forces of the US to defend our Syrian 
sisters and brothers these past six years has contributed greatly to the 
crisis we face here today. ...

The Syrian revolutionaries have shown international solidarity in their own 
struggle. Even as they struggle against the Assad regime, Syrians have built 
solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. As their own struggle has grown 
into the current revolutionary struggle 

[Marxism] The petition, Christine Lagarde, and the environment

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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There is currently a petition being circulated to have Congress "Demand that 
IMF Chief Christine Lagarde resign or be forced from office following her 
conviction in a French government corruption case". I'm not sure whether 
anyone really believes that the problem with the market fundamentalist IMF is 
that Lagarde is its chief, or that Congress is better than Lagarde. But 
there's no harm in denouncing a bit of corruption. That aside. No doubt many 
of those who are pushing the petition are supporters of the carbon tax. Yet 
they are silent on the fact that Lagarde and the IMF are major backers of the 
carbon tax, and no doubt the IMF and the World Bank will have a much greater 
impact on how the carbon tax is implemented than ecosocialists and leftists. 
What's the point of denouncing the IMF if one has the same policy as the IMF? 
What's the point of having a petition on Lagarde if one doesn't denounce 
Lagarde's policies? To implement Lagardism without Lagarde?

The IMF and the World Bank are committed to the use of carbon pricing as the 
main tool for dealing with global warming and as a replacement for a system 
of comprehensive regulation. Lagarde says so -- down with all those pesky 
regulations that might otherwise proliferate! The IMF is more committed to 
the carbon tax, while the World Bank would be happy to accept cap and trade. 
But the important thing for them is to back carbon pricing, not a system of 
comprehensive regulation and planning. In my opinion, these market measures 
help pave the way for climate disaster. This is a false path, a market 
fundamentalist path, for the environmental movement. 
(http://www.communistvoice.org/DWV-160429.html)

Now perhaps some pro-carbon tax activists have a rationale for why it is 
supposed to be correct to be on the same side as Lagarde and the  IMF on the 
issue of global warming and the carbon tax. But it isn't discussed. It isn't 
good form to mention it. There may be indignation about Lagarde and the IMF 
and the World Bank and the Washington Consensus, and the horrors their 
neo-liberal policies have caused to entire countries such as Greece, but 
there is silence on how it could be that Lagarde and these institutions are 
supposedly correct about carbon pricing. How can it be that market 
fundamentalism is a disaster for the people, but supposedly wonderful for the 
environment?

Or if activists disagree with the way Lagarde and the IMF  would implement 
the carbon tax, well, there isn't much discussion of it. (To be precise, 
everyone puts forward their own version of the carbon tax, whose supposed 
simplicity is belied by so many different versions, but they do not compare 
them to Lagarde's version.) If the carbon tax were being honestly discussed 
in front of the working class and progressive activists, there should be lots 
of discussion of whether the carbon tax proposal being put forward differs 
from that of the IMF and the World Bank, and why one could imagine that one's 
idea of a carbon tax, and not Christine Lagarde's, is likely to be 
implemented. But one looks in vain towards the main propagandists for the 
carbon tax for such a discussion. Occasionally one finds such things as James 
Handley of the Carbon Tax Center lauding the stand of Christine Lagarde 
("Carbon Tax Convergence, as IMF and IPCC Chiefs Speak Out", October 8, 2015 
By James Handley). But in that article there is no criticism of Lagarde and 
the IMF, only celebration.

In the absence of a discussion of Lagarde's  and IMF policy on the 
environment, or any other major issue, the critique of Lagarde may reduce to  
shouting "The King is dead! Long live the King!" Only market fundamentalists 
could be enthusiastic about that.

---
Joseph Green
m...@communistvoice.org



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[Marxism] Not my president

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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He's not my president!
(from the Detroit Workers' Voice mailing list for Nov. 14, 2016)

Demonstrations have spread across the country against the election of Donald 
Trump. While Democratic Party bigwigs and establishment media were calling on 
people to give Trump a chance, indignant people have come out on the street 
declaring that Trump was "Not My President". The establishment figures are 
consoling themselves that market forces will supposedly tame Trump and the 
government will run as usual. But Trump's election marks a shift in the 
dominant trend in bourgeois policies, and activists aren't waiting for Trump 
and Congress to trample them. For day after day, there have been 
demonstrations against Trump and against racist incidents inspired by Trump's 
campaign. They have occurred around the country, including California, 
Michigan, Massachusetts, Oregon, Illinois, New York, Washington state, 
Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Maryland, Texas, Florida, Iowa, 
Kentucky, Georgia, and Louisiana. A Million Women March is being organized 
for January 21, the day after Trump's inauguration.

At the same time Trump's campaign has unleashed a lot of pent-up racism. His 
election has been taken by racists as an endorsement. The KKK in North 
Carolina is planning a victory parade to celebrate Trump's presidency. Across 
the country bigots are demonstrating in their own way: they are seeking out 
minorities and women in hijabs to insult and harass. It is a sign of the 
danger that confronts us.

Trump's racism and bigotry is fostered by the conservative section of the 
bourgeoisie. But Trump united the conservative and racist core of the 
Republicans with a section of the working masses who were susceptible to his 
demagogy or willing to ignore that aspect of Trump's campaign because they 
were tired of hearing the Democrats saying for year after year that 
everything was getting better, when this isn't true except for the wealthy.

Something similar has taken place elsewhere around the world where the bigots 
and reactionaries are on an offensive. In the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte was 
elected president earlier this year, and he is notorious for sponsoring 
vigilante murders and death squads in the name of a war on drugs and crime. 
In France, President Francois Hollande is vastly unpopular, and there is the 
danger that Marine Le Pen, leader of the fascistic National Front, will be 
elected president in next spring's elections. In Europe, as in Trump's 
campaign, the far right combines racism and anti-immigrant hysteria with the 
claim of opposing austerity. Hollande and his party may call themselves 
socialist, but many "socialist" parties combine the claim to be socialist 
with neoliberal measures against the masses; the French workers need 
something different to fight austerity and the right-wing.

With Trump's presidency, we are entering a period of intensified crisis in 
the US; this will be a period of yet more harassment and hardship for the 
working class. But it will also be a period in which many people are going to 
be drawn into action in one direction or the other, right or left. The 
demonstrations against Trump are important in setting an orientation of 
struggle.

The lack of a mass alternative on the left to the Democrats and Republicans 
is a problem. Many people can recognize the hatred and bigotry in Trump's 
declarations, and they want to fight it. It's harder for people to recognize 
all the neoliberal steps that make up the austerity program of the 
bourgeoisie. It's easy to recognize the absurdity of climate denial, but 
harder to recognize the futility of the neoliberal market measures that claim 
to deal with the environment. It's easier for people to build organizations 
that fight individual capitalist atrocities, but harder to build an overall 
opposition to the establishment and the program of the capitalist class.

Indeed, the radical left itself is still mired in a crisis of orientation, 
with some activists even supporting Russian imperialism in the guise of being 
"anti-war". The Green Party was the largest "third" party on the left, and it 
didn't do well in the recent elections. It makes a lot of economic promises, 
but is unable to make them sound credible. And in fact, the Green Party 
hasn't emancipated itself from neoliberalism: it's backing of tax and market 
measures as a main tool to fight global warming is in line with World Bank 
and IMF orthodoxy.

Bernie Sanders caught the mood of working people for change, and many more 
people are now talking about socialism. Most, like Sanders, see socialism as 
simply better policies within the 

Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Re: Is It Time to Abandon GDP?

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Thanks, Patrick, for a significant description of the movement.

Patrick Bond wrote:

>  Here in South Africa, a very talented colleague from University of 
> Pretoria - Lorenzo Fioramonti (cc line) - makes a convincing case in two 
> recent works from Zed Books that GDP needs to be scrapped.
> 
>  I'm very sympathetic, but I do think that tactically, our comrades 
> fighting 'extractivism' might try to adjust GDP in the short term, by 
> adding an economic argument (to their ecological, political, social, 
> spiritual arguments) against mining and oil/gas drilling. The tactical 
> point would be to calculate the net losses from non-renewable resource 
> depletion, to show net losses from extraction ... but this is highly 
> controversial as it might (unless we work hard at the arguments) 
> degenerate into 'neoliberalising nature' by making markets out of 
> environmental valuation...

Your work and those of others showing the losses involved is an important 
correction to the orthodox economic discussion. And comparing the losses to 
the GDP may give some idea of the magnitude of the problem.

But I don't see why this requires creating an overall corrected GDP; such a 
figure becomes subject to the problems of the original GDP. And there is the 
danger that the correction itself becomes arbitrary. For example, what should 
the loss figure for mining and depleted resources be: the amount the depleted 
resources are sold for? The amount needed to restore the land from which the 
resources were ripped?  Is a figure used for the lives of workers who die?

The result is many figures for the corrected GDP. Furthermore, the  GDP 
doesn't include many things of economic importance, but for that matter it 
ignores things that should be added as well as things that should be 
subtracted. For example, education appears only as the expense of the 
educational system. The misery of lack of educational cuts doesn't appear, 
nor the tremendous positive value of the education either.

Indeed,  the abilities and consciousness that develop among the masses is an 
important economic factor, but it can hardly be quantified in a way that is a 
correction for the GDP. But if we ignore these things, the only conclusion 
can be that the world is doomed, because the corrected GDP is always 
declining sharply.

I fear that if the idea of a corrected GDP is taken too seriously, it will do 
more harm to the activists and environmentalists then to the polluters. The 
probem is that it will distract from a scientific way of considering the 
problem and it will obscure the difference between the militant environmental 
movement and various neo-liberal agencies that talk green. It will distract 
from the need to consider the needed  planning and reconstruction, which must 
take place in a way that is different from the past and which the working 
class must link with the class struggle against the capitalist interests.
 
> http://www.triplecrisis.com/can-natural-capital-accounting-come-of-age-in-africa-part-1/
> 

This article points out that

>"The head-in-sand, ostrich-mimicking economists and financial
>journalists who use GDP without correction probably aren´t even
> aware that the figure does not include resource depletion,
> unpaid women´s and community work, pollution, loss of farmland and
> wetlands, family breakdown and crime. There are many substitutes
> for GDP, and one-the Genuine Progress Indicator-shows 
>a substantially lower level of world welfare, around $36 trillion using GDP
>compared to less than $10 trillion using GPI in 2005, once 
>these corrections are made."

This points to many key issues ignored by the GDP, and it's important to do 
this. But the very existence of many substitutes for the GDP suggests that 
the figures are arbitrary. And the financial figure doesn't really give an 
idea of what resources are available to deal with the problems facing us, or 
how likely present resources are to be cut down by climate change.

> http://www.triplecrisis.com/can-natural-capital-accounting-come-of-age-in-africa-part-2/
> 
>

This article discusses concretely some of the ways the issue has come up. It 
talks about "natural capital accounting" and cites the Gaborone Declaration 
for Sustainability in Africa, which is a program in which 10 African 
countries take part. But the governments involved in the Gaborone Declaration 
and the militant environmental movement have very different interests, and it 
would be helpful if the movement had theoretical tools that go beyond 
"natural capital accounting".

 After describing various corrections that should be made to the GDP, the 
article says:

Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Is It Time to Abandon GDP?

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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An excerpt from "Is It Time to Abandon GDP?"
by Edoardo Campanella

> Rather than dismissing GDP, it would be wiser to refine it and combine
> the information it contains with other socioeconomic indicators,
> including GNH. Statisticians should focus on placing a monetary value on
> environmental depletion and free digital services, collecting better
> household data for disposable income, giving more weight to quality
> changes, and building so-called satellite accounts to measure non-market
> activities.

This won't solve the problem; it's an attempted neo-liberal solution to one 
of the problems of neo-liberalism.  Campanella would collect information on a 
variety of issue, but he would still aggregate them into a single index. But 
any single index would have most of the problems of the GDP. No single 
numerical index can provide an appropriate measure of the economy.  An 
approximate useful natural measure of the economy would require keeping 
several indices distinct, and not aggregating them into a corrected GDP. 
Trying to run things according to a corrected GDP is like trying to eliminate 
exploitation by having monetary prices reflect the "true value" of things. 

Campanella connects the idea of a corrected GDP to putting a monetary value 
on environmental depletion. This is a common idea among various would-be 
ecosocialists and the Green Party who hold that carbon pricing (such as the 
carbon tax) can be one of the main effective tools to deal with global 
warming. This is a neo-liberal solution, also advocated by the World Bank and 
the IMF; they are fond of such things as the  carbon tax and cap and trade. 
It is a feature of our time that would-be socialists, who regard themselves 
as the most fierce opponents of the Washington Consensus and neo-liberalism,  
advocate the favorite environmental solution, carbon pricing, of the World 
Bank and IMF.

Marx advocated that the basic problem of capitalism wasn't that it didn't 
trade things at their proper value; on the contrary, the capitalist evils 
resulted from such trading. To try to overcome capitalism and evils by 
replacing value by true or corrected value was like trying to overcome
religion by elevating the true Pope. The law of value was the law of 
exploitation, not the law of overcoming exploitation. And it is also the law 
of destroying the environment.

I wrote a three-part series in 2000-2001 debunking the idea of there being a 
single natural unit for economic planning, whether the dollar, the labor 
content, or any single unit.
(http://www.communistvoice.org/00LaborHour.html). 

Part one of the series concentrates on whether the  labor content (as 
specified by the labor theory of value) is the natural unit of economic 
calculcation, and is available at

http://www.communistvoice.org/25cLaborHour.html

Part Three deals in part with various passages from Marx and Engels, and 
corrects some fashionable misinterpretations of what they are saying. See 
http://www.communistvoice.org/27cLaborHour3.html

-- Joseph Green
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Re: [Marxism] Socialist Action on Libya and Syria - Reply to Louis Proyect

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Louis Proyect wrote:
> 
> On 10/22/16 8:58 AM, Joseph Green via Marxism wrote:
> > But it's not a bastardization of Trotsky's view
> > of anti-imperialism, it's directly in line with it.
> 
> So you think it was wrong to support Ethiopia against fascist Italy's
> invasion? As I pointed out, precapitalist revolts against capitalist
> states, especially in MENA, don't fit neatly into stagist schemas as I
> pointed out by referring to Omar Mukhtar. I should add that this is a very
> old debate that pitted Eduard Bernstein against Belfort Bax:
> 

Louis, I emphatically agree with supporting the Ethiopian people against the 
Italian imperialist and fascist aggression of the 1930s. This was discussed 
last year on the Marxism list, and you were part of this discussion. True, 
you didn't agree with the distinction I drew between backing Haile Selassie 
in the way Trotsky did, envisioning that the Ethiopian emperor might well be 
a wonderful anti-imperialist dictator who would inspire all of Africa, and 
instead supporting first and foremost the Ethiopian people in their 
resistance to Italian aggression, a resistance which was upset with 
Selassie's absolutism as well as with the  fact that he fled Ethiopia in the 
face of Italian aggression. You didn't even understand the distinction I was 
making, and you claimed that it was "splitting hairs. In the concrete 
situation, one ruler (Mussolini) made war on another (Selassie). It makes no 
sense to say that you support Ethiopia but not the head of state."  But in  
the discussion on this list and elsewhere at the that time, I not only posted 
a history of the Ethiopian resistance to Italian aggression, but also showed 
how Selassie's absolutism impeded the resistance. This was not simply or even 
primarily a war between two rulers: it was a war that involved the peoples of 
Ethiopia. 

It's notable that the Trotskyist movement has had an almost complete 
conspiracy of silence about what happened in the Italo-Ethopian war. It has 
praised Trotsky's stand in this war and used it as a model, but refused to 
evaluate this stand in the light of what happened. I wonder how many 
Trotskyists even know that Selassie fled Ethiopia right after Trotsky praised 
him to the skies. 

Naturally it's a sensitive question about how Selassie should have been dealt 
with at the time of the war. It wasn't a question that the Ethiopian people 
were about to overthrow him. But the resistance wanted reforms so that 
absolutism would not continue after the war, and the Oromo people in Ethiopia 
was so angry at the national oppression represented by Selassie's rule that 
it is said that when Selassie fled Ethiopia, he was fleeing them and not just 
the Italian troops. How does one support an Ethiopian resistance officially 
led by Haile Selassie but in fact with major internal divides? Surely saying 
the war is simply a war between two rulers or two dictators is not the way to 
do it. 

So it was right for Trotsky to support Ethiopian resistance, but the way he 
did it gave rise to bad effects which we are still feeling today. It was not 
a bastardization or misuse of Trotsky's views when Socialist Action denounced 
the Libyan democratic movement.  It is  not a bastardization or misuse of 
Trotsky's views when various Trotskyist groups defend reactionary rulers in 
the name of anti-imperialism. Indeed the Trotskyist movement has even debated 
whether the example of Trotsky's stand towards Selassie would justify support 
for the Taliban. 

Moreover, there is a strong connection between Trotsky's mechanical stand on 
anti-imperialism and his theory of permanent revolution. Permanent revolution 
was bankrupt in dealing with the class and social struggles inside Ethiopia. 
It had nothing to say on this subject. That's why Trotsky praised Selassie to 
the hilt instead. And in the years since, the theory of permanent revolution 
and Trotsky's stand on anti-imperialism have worked together in obscuring the 
class struggles in various countries.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, Louis and assume that you just forgot 
the discussion on the Marxisn list  last year, and also that you forgot that 
I am part of a trend that has fervently supported the anti-imperialist and 
anti-colonial struggles from day one. You deal with many things on this list 
every day, and I understand that you might forget some things. But really, 
Louis, if you want to know my views you should look at what I have written, 
not the debates between the revisionist Edouard Bernstein and Belford Bax. 
Perhaps its time to move into the 21st century

Re: [Marxism] Socialist Action on Libya and Syria -- Reply to David Walters

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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David Walters wrote:

> All Permanent Revolution says/advocates/predicts is that
> in order to actually *achieve* those democratic *tasks* it will take the
> complete overthrow of the existing capitalist regime and the installation by
> the working class of Workers Government. That's it.

The prediction is completely wrong. For example, many countries have become 
independent, and most of the colonial system has collapsed. And yet there 
wasn't workers' government.

National independence hasn't brought the prosperity that people expected. It 
has also  left countries subject to political and economic domination. It has 
not fulfilled the program of radical parties, nor the promises that were made 
to the masses.

But this doesn't mean that national independence doesn't exist. It means that 
national independence, like all democratic changes, doesn't end exploitation; 
doesn't eliminate capitalism, but generally vastly expands it; doesn't usher 
us into the petty-bourgeois idea of the democratic utopia; doesn't guarantee 
that the working masses will obtain a lot of democratic rights; and so on. 
Socialism, not mere democratic changes, is necessary for working-class 
liberation.

But national independence changes the class alignments in a country, as 
various other democratic changes too. The situation in the former colonies is 
vastly different than what it was before; the struggles in these countries 
occur in a different social and economic context than before.  And democratic 
changes can also open the way for an expanded class struggle. These changes 
are of the utmost importance for the working class. To say that national 
independence or other democratic changes "will take the complete overthrow of 
the existing capitalist regime and the installation by the working class of 
Workers Government" means replacing a serious assessment of the social, 
economic, and political situation with empty Trotskyist dogma.

The idea that these changes can't take place until socialism is generally 
defended by replacing the idea of democratic changes as they occur in the 
world, with a glorified idea of democracy. It might be said that the 
democratic struggle cannot be "completed" until the socialist revolution. By 
this  means judging the completion of the democratic movement by whether so 
many democratic changes have occurred, rather than by the changes in the 
class alignments and social conditions. If a very backward and abortive 
change nevertheless results in breaking up the impetus for democratic change, 
then the overall movement will have to grow up on a new basis. Even though 
various of the old democratic demands are still set forward, the overall 
character of the movement will have changed.

Marxism showed from the start that democratic changes alone do not end 
exploitation; the working masses have to continue the struggle to socialism. 
But any truth can be exaggerated until it's nonsense. From the truth that 
democratic changes are limited and are not the end of exploitation, one can 
pass on to the claim that democratic changes can't even take place until 
socialism. 

> There are none, ZERO,
> preconditions about who or whom to support in achieving this except that to
> go "all the way", again to achieve the reason people were rebelling in the
> first place, means to break with the capitalists *politically* who may be
> part of the initial phases of the revolution and keep the working class
> independent.

And yet  one Trotskyist group after another denounced various struggles in 
the Arab Spring. If nothing can be achieved unless one goes "all the way" and 
achieve workers' government, then this does affect what to organize and which 
struggles to support.

However,  I think the statement about zero preconditions does reflect one 
aspect of "permanent revolution". It reflects the idea that I have seen 
expressed elsewhere that everything is tactical, except that the revolution 
must continue to workers' government.  I think this view has had bad 
consequences.  But that for another time. 

-- Joseph Green

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Re: [Marxism] Socialist Action on Libya and Syria

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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I will deal in this note with some issues which I think apply to everyone who 
replied to my contribution to this thread,  and I will deal in separate notes 
with specific points raised by individual comrades.

I was disappointed that no one dealt with whether the theory of pernmanent 
revolution was responsible for Socialist Action denouncing the anti-Qaddfi 
struggle in Libya. It pretty clearly was, but it seems that various people 
would prefer this swept under the rug. There is a theoretical crisis in the 
left, and the left is going to deal with it seriously, it has to look at 
these examples seriously. Otherwise it's just a matter of clinging to dogmas 
of the past, and refusing to see what has to be changed.

It's not as if Socialist Action is some kind of outlier and exception. It was 
hardly the only Trotskyist group which was led astray on Syria and the Arab 
Spring by permanent revolution. I have given quotes elsewhere from a number 
of Trotskyist groups. True, some Trotskyists do support the democratic 
uprising on Syria and write useful material on it, but that's not the result 
of the theory of permanent revolution and it's not representative of the 
Trotskyist movement as a whole.

It has been charged that I have distorted the meaning of permanent revolution 
or don't really understand it. But that charge was made with respect to the 
definition of permanent revolution that came from Socialist Action: I quoted 
their own description of "permanent revolution".  Moreover, I have studied 
"permanent revolution" from the writings of Trotsky and various Trotskyist 
groups. Indeed it's notable that one comrade, while writing that my 
understanding of permanent revolution was supposedly shallow, went on to 
criticize Trotsky's formulations as well.  Apparently Trotsky didn't really 
understand it either.

The fact is that the Arab Spring is a major problem for permanent revolution. 
But the defenders of permanent revolution want to avert their eyes from this. 
One way they do it is by not mentioning permanent revolution when they have 
to go against it in practice, such as when supporting the democratic movement 
in Syria. Another way they do it is by pretending that the critics of 
permanent revolution are Mensheviks or have distorted it;  they pretend that 
no serous issue has been raised by the practice of the Arab Spring or by the 
critics of Trotskyism. There's a certain "code of silence" that is widely 
observed, in which the important thing is to rally around the "old man" or 
permanent revolution, not to test revolutionary theory in the light of 
events, not to advance revolutionary theory, not to examine why things have 
gone wrong repeatedly.. 

In line with this, it also seems that various people who commented on my 
views didn't bother to first see what my views were. Instead they repeated 
shopworn arguments from the past, and stock curses. But theory does advance 
over time, whether the Trotskyist movement cares to look at it or not. The 
fact is that Trotskyist theory is backrupt with respect to the Arab Spring, 
and so far no one I've seen has been able to produce an analysis based on 
"permanent revolution" that has stood up to the events of the Arab Spring. 
The Communist Voice Organization can reproduce what we wrote at the beginning 
of the Arab Spring, and the general framework still stands. But the 
predictions based on the permanent revolution were wishful thinking at best

-- Joseph Green




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Re: [Marxism] Socialist Action on Libya and Syria

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Ken Hiebert noted that Socialist Action hadn't always opposed the anti-Assad 
struggle in Syria, but had originally been favorable to it. In regard to 
this, he gave a link to an interesting criticism he had of their stand on 
Libya. He wrote:
> 
> In September of 2011 I was taken aback by the SA statement on Libya and I
> wrote this comment.
> http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2301
> 

The last two paragraphs of Hiebert's comment in International Viewpoint were

"The statement of September 2nd has only one course of action to propose. 
'The liberation struggle in these countries also rests in the development of 
mass revolutionary socialist parties there,...'

"This advice is not very timely. Supporters of Socialist Action know through 
their own experience that it takes years, even decades, to build a 
revolutionary party. In any case, this will not be done separate and apart 
from participation in the struggles of today. If there are people in Libya 
who wish to follow the advice of SA, how should they be relating to the 
struggle today? Should they be putting forward a course of action for Libyan 
working people? What should that be?"

Now, how could Socialist Action make this sort of mistake? Well, it follows 
from their political program. As expressed "in a nutshell" (see 
https://socialistaction.org/program/ ), the following describes the only type 
of uprising they will support:

"Permanent Revolution:  This famous theory by Leon Trotsky holds that 
revolution in modern times, even in under-developed countries, has to be led 
by the working class and has to be a fully fledged socialist revolution - 
revolution cannot go through stages and cannot be made in alliance with any 
wing of the capitalist class. To be ultimately successful it also needs to be 
an international revolution. We believe that a successful socialist 
revolution will result in a workers´ government that is based on elected 
workers´ councils."

At the beginning of the struggle in Syria, Socialist Action could convince 
themselves that the struggle was an anti-capitalist one, and hence presumably 
it would develop according to the precepts of "permanent revolution". But as 
the situation developed, this would become impossible for anyone who hadn't 
been binge drinking on dogma to the point of unconsciousness. This left four 
alternatives for those who maintained a Trotskyist standpoint. 

One could renege on support for the Syria struggle; this would give rise to 
changes in position such as that by "Socialist Action". It wasn't simply an 
accident that "Socialist Action" fell backwards.

A second possibility is diehard unconsciousness, as show by the Communist 
Workers' Group of Aotearoa/New Zealand. It is convinced that the  Syrian 
struggle will continue along the path of permanent revolution. Its website 
"redrave" declared recently that  the local committes are "institutions... of 
workers' democracy. They are the result of proto workers communes that if 
joined up would be the basis for an embryonic workers' state. ...  That is why 
our program in Syria is ... armed workers soviets everywhere!" 

A third possibility is to repudiate permanent revolution, but try to keep 
most of Trotskyism, as put forth in the important article by Assad an-Nar, 
"Socialism and the Democratic Wager" (see the book "Khiyana: Dasesh, the Left 
& the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution").

But a fourth possibility, almost universal among Trotskyist supporters of the 
Syrian struggle, is to fall silent on the relationship of permanent 
revolution to the anti-Assad struggle or the Arab Spring altogether. This 
allowed some activists to produce a lot of good material in support of the 
Syrian democratic struggle, but at the price of avoiding a  very important 
theoretical issue and thus leaving open the possibility of future errors in 
judging democratic struggle. This position might be supplemented by shouting 
"Menshevik" at the top of one's voice against any non-Trotskyist who pointed 
out the incompatibility of "permanent revolution" with support for the Syrian 
democratic struggle. 

To return to Hiebert's critique of the 2011 article by Socialist Action, he 
asked how long it would take to build a revolutionary party in Libya, and 
said it might be decades. Now, from the point of view of "permanent 
revolution", the only thing lacking anywhere is "revolutionary leadership".  
But once emancipated from this standpoint, one can examine social, political, 
and economic factors that underlie why it might take decades to finally have 
the envisioned revolutionary party and its firm backing by the masses. And 

[Marxism] The Syrian uprising and the illusions of the permanent revolution

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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>From the Detroit Workers' Voice list for October 2, 2016:
A reply to some supporters of the permanent revolution

1. Reply to redrave: The reality of the Syrian uprising
vs. the illusions of the permanent revolution
2. Redrave's polemic against the Communist Voice Organization 
3. A list of some CVO articles on the Arab Spring and the Syrian uprising

Reply to redrave: The reality of the Syrian uprising
vs. the illusions of the permanent revolution 


By Joseph Green, Communist Voice Organization

A polemic has appeared against the Communist Voice Organization's position on 
Syria. It was written by the Communist Workers' Group of Aotearoa/New 
Zealand, which is a Trotskyist group which calls its website "red rave". By 
putting forward absurdly unrealistic scenarios for Syria, it inadvertently 
shows how useless the theory of "permanent revolution" is in dealing with the 
struggle against the dictator Assad. Redrave denounces as "unconscious 
Assadists" all those who "support the Syrian revolution", but don't see the 
democratic struggle in Syria as a socialist revolution.

So at a time when there's a major fight in the left over the attitude to the 
dictator Assad and whether to support the democratic movement in Syria, 
redrave says that all those who don't agree with the Trotskyist theory of 
"permanent revolution" are really "unconscious Assadists". That's an 
astonishing feat of sectarianism. As those who read the Detroit Workers' 
Voice list know, the DWV list has reprinted statements from Syrian and 
American activists denouncing the US-Russian deal and opposing the Assad 
dictatorship. We have indicated where we have disagreements with these 
statements, but despite our disagreements we have welcomed statements from 
Terry Burke, from prominent Syrian intellectuals, and from a number of 
American activists. Redrave, however, would regard them all as "unconscious 
Assadists".

Redrave insists that the Syrian uprising is a socialist movement. It writes 
that "There can be no victorious bourgeois national revolution anymore unless 
it is a permanent or socialist revolution."

But anyone who looks seriously at the situation in Syria knows that even a 
successful overthrow of Assad will not lead to socialism. It would be of 
immense importance; it would spread political life throughout Syria; and it 
would change the Middle East. It would open the way for class struggle. But 
socialism itself isn't imminent in Syria, or any country at this time.

Redrave, however, insists that one can see "Permanent Revolution in the 
flesh" in Syria, arguing that workers' soviets are being built there. It 
exaggerates beyond measure the nature of the committees and local groups that 
exist in opposition-run areas of Syria, saying that "These are not 
institutions of bourgeois democracy but of workers' democracy. They are the 
result of proto workers communes that if joined up would be the basis for an 
embryonic workers' state. ...  That is why our program in Syria is ... armed 
workers soviets everywhere!"

The Syrian people have shown tremendous initiative in building local 
committees, militias, and groups. They have done so despite half a century of 
enforced political passivity under the Ba'ath dictatorship. They have 
continued to  struggle despite incredible hardships. These are heroic actions 
of the Syrian people, which will never be forgotten.

But the local groups aren't soviets. They are groups that deal with the 
immediate necessity of the democratic uprising, and have a mixed class 
character. Only people with their eye's closed, people drunk on abstract 
dogma, can see this as the spread of armed workers' soviets. The theory of 
"permanent revolution" encourages this wild speculation. It leaves no room 
for considering what these committees really are, what their immediate tasks 
are, or even what is the specific role of socialists in this situation.

Redrave goes on to talk about what it thinks is the true immediate 
perspective for the Syrian struggle. Based on the theory of "permanent 
revolution", it looks forward to the Syrian uprising doing such things as the 
following:

* "fight(ing) the Arab and Kurd national revolutions as one workers' 
revolution".

* "...the workers and peasants ... split(ting) decisively from their 
treacherous 
bourgeois and petty-bourgeois class leaders and join(ing) forces with workers 
and peasants of the whole MENA [Middle East and North Africa]."

* "Iraqi, Egyptian, Palestinian, Kurd, and Iranian workers and peasants ... 
tak(ing) the lead in their own national revolutions against imperialism, and 
turn(ing) 

[Marxism] Solidarity with Syrian people + crisis in the left

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Support the struggle of the Syrian people
to overthrow the Assad dictatorship!
(from Detroit Workers' Voice #121, Sept. 5, 2016,
distribution beginnng at the Labor Day march in Detroit)

The Syrian uprising against the dictator Bashar al-Assad has lasted more than 
five years. The people have had enough of dictatorship after living through 
half a century of the rule of the Ba'ath party and its state of emergency.

Peaceful demonstrations against the rule of Bashar al-Assad began in February 
2011; this was part of the Arab Spring. But the regime replied by shooting 
down demonstrators and imprisoning and torturing opponents. The result was a 
mass rebellion that swept across the country. Local Coordination Committees 
were formed in one town after another; thousands of soldiers deserted from 
the official Syrian army to form the Free Syrian Army; militias also formed 
to fight against the regime. Thus the Civil War began. It has lasted year 
after year, while the regime dropped thousands of barrel bombs on civilians, 
devastated town and after town, systematically bombed hospitals and killed 
medical personnel, and gave the people the ultimatum to "starve or kneel".

The civil war would have been over long ago, and Assad would have fallen from 
power, but one outside power after another has intervened. Some want to prop 
up the Assad regime at all costs; others wouldn't mind seeing Assad fall, but 
want the outside powers, not the Syrian people, to determine the nature of 
the next government. The theocratic regime of Iran has financed Assad's war 
and sent troops to kill the rebels. Russia provided Assad with heavy weapons 
to be used against cities, sent military advisors, and then began massive 
bombing last year. The murderous fundamentalists of ISIS have sought to carve 
out territory in Syria and establish their own hell on earth. The US 
government blocked the rebels from getting the weapons needed to fight the 
regime's tanks and aircraft. And so on.

But with incredible heroism, the Syrian people have persisted in struggle 
despite suffering immense casualties. Over 400,000 people, almost 2% of the 
pre-war population, have been killed. Many more have been wounded or 
imprisoned. Half the population has had to leave their homes, either being 
displaced in Syria or becoming refugees abroad. And yet the struggle 
continues.

The crisis of the American left
---

Workers around the world naturally sympathize with struggles for democracy. 
So their impulse was to welcome the uprising against the brutal Ba'ath 
regime. But they have been held back by the fact that many left-wing 
organizations have opposed the struggle against Assad. The support for the 
dictator Assad by such groups as the Workers World Party or the United 
National Anti-war Coalition shows that something is really, really wrong with 
these groups. The left-wing is supposed to support democratic rghts, not 
oppose them. Yet these groups find excuses for Assad or even organize trips 
to visit Assad. In the name of opposing war, these groups give aid and 
comfort to one of the worst wars of the present-day: the Syrian government's 
war on its own people. In the name of opposing intervention, these groups 
approve those interventions that benefit the Assad regime.

According to the supporters of Assad, the Syrian uprising is a U.S.-organized 
plot for "regime change". But they cannot explain why in two years of U.S. 
bombing in Syria, the U.S. and allies have only targeted ISIS, and never the 
regime and its foreign props. They can't explain why the U.S. "boots on the 
ground" in Syria are not there to help the rebels overthrow the Assadist 
dictatorship, but only to assist some groups in the fight against ISIS. They 
can't explain why the U.S. has made Syrians sign contracts saying they would 
NOT fight Assad, only ISIS, before providing any assistance. And these 
fraudulent anti-imperialists cannot explain why the U.S. and Russia 
coordinate their imperialist air wars, with the U.S. mostly bombing ISIS, and 
with Russia bombing the hell out of the rebel-controlled areas, and neither 
side interfering with Assad. 

Support the Syrian people!
---

Let's oppose the lies of the apologists for Assad. Let's listen to the voices 
of the Syrian democrats who have suffered incredible hardship. Accounts by 
them, such as the book _Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War_ by 
Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, tell the story of the uprising 
against Assad. Let's understand how to really oppose imperialism in the 
Middle East. See articles on the 

[Marxism] The politics that led to the mass uprising against the Ba'ath dictatorship

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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The civil war in Syria
Part 1: the policies that led to it 
by Frank Arango, Seattle Communist Study Group
(From the Detroit Workers' Voice list for August 31, 2016)

"War is a continuation of policy by other means. All wars are inseparable 
from the political systems that engender them. The policy which a given 
state, a given class within that state, pursued for a long time before the 
war is inevitably continued by that same class during the war, the form of 
action alone being changed."

A mass uprising against a more than 40-year-old dictatorship that has 
developed into civil war. More than five years of it. Over 400,000 people 
killed and nearly half the population turned into refugees. Regional and 
world imperialist powers intervening to bail out the dictatorship. But also a 
fight in which great mass heroism is taking place each and every day.

Such is the struggle of the Syrian people to free themselves from tyranny.

Themselves oppressed, the working people of the world naturally sympathize 
with and support this great struggle. But a whole section of the left does 
demoralized propaganda opposing such a stand. According to them, the Syrian 
uprising is an U.S.-organized "regime change" operation. And that's 
interesting. After five years of war, these supposed anti-imperialists cannot 
explain why in two years of U.S.-imperialist bombings in Syria, the U.S. and 
allies have only targeted ISIS, and never the regime and its foreign props. 
They can't explain why the U.S. "boots on the ground" in Syria are not there 
to help the rebels overthrow the Assadist dictatorship, but only to assist 
various Kurdish groups and others in the fight against ISIS. They can't 
explain why the U.S. has made Syrians sign contracts saying they would NOT 
fight Assad, only ISIS, before training or arming them. And these fraudulent 
anti-imperialists cannot explain why the U.S. and Russia closely coordinate 
their imperialist air wars, with the U.S. bombing ISIS, and Russia focused on 
bombing hell out of the rebel-controlled areas the U.S. supposedly supports!

Today, the World "Socialist" Website, UNAC and others continue to absurdly 
call this a "US-initiated war for regime change." But it has never been that. 
That's why rather than use the Assad regime's August, 2013 murder of some 
1400 people with nerve gas as an excuse to launch military strikes against 
the regime, Obama made a deal with Assad and Russia to remove sarin from 
Syria, while essentially giving Assad the green light to continue using every 
other barbarous means to suppress the uprising. But that time the leaders of 
WSWS, PSL, WWP, ANSWER and others had an answer: demonstrations of scores of 
peope in various cities, and maybe 200 in NYC, had stayed the hands of U.S. 
imperialism! That was lying by scoundrels who know that when U.S. imperialism 
really wanted a war for regime change, as it did in Iraq in 2003-04, it 
ignored the repeated protests of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people 
in this country, and tens of millions globally.

99 years ago Lenin wrote something our sham socialists, sham 
anti-imperialists, Assad-prettifying pacifists and others would rather hide 
or not think about:

"War is a continuation of policy by other means. All wars are inseparable 
from the political systems that engender them. The policy which a given 
state, a given class within that state, pursued for a long time before the 
war is inevitably continued by that same class during the war, the form of 
action alone being changed."

But I think this is a correct approach to looking at a war, including the 
Syrian civil war.

So what was the policy of the Syrian capitalist rulers before the mass 
uprising?

Domestically: Neo-liberalism, which impoverished the masses and fattened the 
pocket-books of the rich with a vengeance. All-encompassing police-state 
tyranny enforced under a 48-year-old "emergency decree." Internationally: 
Establishment of closer ties with the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and 
others.

And what was U.S. imperialism's policy?

Establishing closer ties with the Assad dictatorship.

Hafez al-Assad (the father) had shown his loyalty to U.S. imperialism by 
sending troops to fight on its side in the 1990-91 Gulf War. Bashar al-Assad 
continued on this path by opening his dungeons to be a favorite place the CIA 
delivered people for torture under Bush's "extraordinary rendition" program. 
That relationship did grow bumpy when Assad refused to close the Syrian 
border during the U.S. imperialist occupation of Iraq, and over the 
assassination of Rafik Hariri in Lebanon. But with the Iraq war winding down, 
the new 

[Marxism] Terry Burke, UNAC's reply, Syria, Russia

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Terry Burke exposes the apologists for the Assad dictatorship 
from DWV mailing list for August 27, 2106

 "U.S. Peace Activists Should Start Listening to Progressive Syrian Voices" 
by Terry Burke is an important article. It can be found at 
http://inthesetimes.com/article/19388/u.s.-peace-activists-arent-listening-to-
progressive-syrian-voices.

Burke exposes the horrendous support for the Syrian dictatorship of Bashar 
al-Assad by a large section of the left, such as "UNAC, ANSWER Coalition, 
Anti-War Committee Chicago, Minnesota Anti-War Committee, Veterans for Peace, 
Women Against Military Madness, Workers World Party, Freedom Road Socialist 
Organization and others". She shows how they abuse the idea of 
"anti-imperialism" by turning it into defense of the atrocities of the Ba'ath 
regime of the dictator al-Assad.

The devastation of Syria is not a minor event, but a Syrian nakba or 
catastrophe. One can no more wash one´s hands of what is being done to the 
Syrian people than one can ignore what has been done to the Palestinian 
people. The massacre in Syria is on an astonishing scale. Whatever the 
outcome of the Syrian civil war, it will leave scars on the Syrian people 
that will last for years, and it will effect not just the Middle East, but 
the world, for years to come.

Burke refers to the imperialist attitude of those who justify the al-Assad  
regime. She talks about the importance of listening to the Syrian activists, 
and she refers people to their writings on what has been going on in Syria. 
For example, there is the book "Burning Country" by Robin Yassin-Kassab and 
Leila Al-Shami. The book documents how a people who have been silenced for 
decades by the Ba´ath dictatorship began to take matters into their own 
hands, demonstrate, argue, organize committees, and resist -- defying the 
torture, repression, and mass murder by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

However, the support by a large section of the American left for the 
murderous regime of al-Assad is not just because they don´t listen to the 
Syrian people. UNAC, Workers´ World, the Party of Socialism and Liberation 
and others listen to certain people from other countries, but they often give 
credence to notorious dictators, rather than the democratic movement or the 
workers who have been silenced or the youth who have been repressed. This is 
a sign that something is very wrong with the orientation of much of the left. 
Something rotten has grown and grown over the years.

For example, this rot has been seen for years in the the Trotskyist groups 
who have given "military but not political support" to dictator after 
dictator, from Saddam Hussen to Muammar Qaddafi and who called repressive 
regimes deformed or degenerated "workers' states". It led the Workers´ World 
to see something anti-imperialist in the Taliban. It has been seen in the 
failure of much of the left -- whether Stalinist, Trotskyist, or one-time 
anti-imperialist -- to show any shame over allying with certain liberal 
imperialists who denigrate the struggle of oppressed peoples; the liberal 
imperialists do this in order to promote cooperation among the big powers, 
while UNAC and company do this out of the love for the particular 
dictatorships. It has come up with respect to mass movements in Syria, Libya, 
Hong Kong, the countries of the former USSR, and so on.

Burke sidesteps some things such as whether it is possible for the oppressed 
Syrian people to gain needed weapons other than by utilizing contradictions 
among the outside powers. Nevertheless, this article is an important 
contribution by Burke to the discussion of the situation in Syria, and it 
deserves a wide readership. It has already struck a sore point among the 
apologists of the Bashar dictatorship.

Stung by the exposure of their support for tyranny, the leadership of the 
United National Antiwar Coalition has tried to reply to Burke´s article: see 
http://nepajac.org/AWdefense.html. Proper leaders in the left movement would 
take seriously Burke´s remarks and seriously reconsider their stands. But 
that´s not UNAC´s way. Following the example of various repressive regimes 
around the world, the UNAC leadership wants critics to be isolated and 
denounced.

UNAC´s reply consists of a zealous defence of the Assad regime, and of one 
lie after another in order to discredit for the democratic movement. 
According to them, Burke´s opposition to the Assad regime is an "attack on 
the anti-war movement" and would logically have led "to support[ing] the US 
backed Contra forces in Nicaragua as "democratic and progressive forces." 
Geez, Burke was involved in the struggle 

[Marxism] The 2016 Summer Olympics and the BRICS

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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>From the Detroit Workers' Voice mailing list
August 20, 2016
RE: Sports mega-events and the BRICS

--Neo-liberalism and the 2016 Rio Olympics--

The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio are coming to an end. Sports can be exciting, 
and millions of people love to watch mega-events like the World Cup or the 
Olympics. But unfortunately these games aren't organized simply for the love 
of sports. They have involved big business and nationalist competition. Huge 
amounts of money are spent on these events, large profits are made by 
capitalist interests, and the masses of people have been left to pay the 
bill. For example, the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal left the city with a 
debt of about $1.5 billion dollars: it took 30 years, until 2006, for the 
debt to be paid off.

These mega-events are also used to promote neo-liberal transformation in the 
host cities. This is pointed out in a chapter of the book "BRICS: An 
Anti-capitalist Critique" (2015), which is an anthology edited by Patrick 
Bond and Ana Garcia. Most of this informative book deals with the economic 
nature of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), and the 
political nature of their governments. The articles show that the BRICS have 
developed one characteristic feature of imperialism after another, and they 
tend to call the BRICS "sub-imperialist". There is, for example, lots of 
material on how the BRICS are falling like wolves on Africa and exploiting it 
to the hilt in a ravenous race that resembles the notorious "Scramble for 
Africa" by the traditional imperialist powers. For example, we see how the 
BRICS look to Africa for the extraction of natural resources, while regarding 
Africa as a market for the industries of the BRICS. But Chapter 12, written 
by Einar Braathen, Gilmar Mascarenhas and Celina Sorboe, takes time off for 
sports; it is entitled "Rio's ruinous mega-events" and deals with the world 
sports spectaculars.

It points out that in recent years not just Brazil but "all the BRICS 
countries have invested enormous financial resources and political prestige 
in hosting mega-sports events" (BRICS, p. 186). These events are supposed to 
be an economic boon to the people of these countries, and especially to those 
in the host cities. But in reality they have helped wash away barriers to 
neo-liberalism: "As existing institutional frameworks are overruled to 
respond to the needs of international sponsors and private interests, the 
Olympic bid books become the _de facto_ urban planning documents in host 
cities.  ...  the overriding of institutional guidelines and the 
implementation of a neoliberal regime can only happen by unifying the city 
around a common project." (p. 188)

Brazil's sports mega-events have been the 2014 FIFA World Cup (soccer), held 
in 12 Brazilian host cities, the present Summer Olympics in Rio, and the 
coming Rio Paralympics. As a result, 12,000 people in a number of 
working-class and poor neighborhoods have faced relocation (Jonathan Watts, 
"Favela residents protest forced Olympic relocation by blocking Rio roadway," 
Guardian, April 1, 2015, 
theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/01/rio-olympics-protest-vila-autodromo-relocati
on). Also democratic rights have been restricted in Rio's favelas, partly in 
the name of providing security for the mega-events. To make this acceptable 
to the local population, promises were made that social projects would be 
completed as part of the preparation for the mega-events, but many promises 
were broken. This was one of the causes of the giant demonstrations several 
years ago when "millions of Brazilians took to the streets in June 2013 in 
what became the largest street demonstrations in recent history. What started 
as a protest against a price hike in public transportation in Sao Paulo 
quickly escalated to mass mobilisations against the massive public sending on 
stadiums and infrastructure related to mega-events while the quality of 
public services remains precarious. They also revolted against the violence 
used by the police force to quell the demonstrations". (p. 195)

It was the Brazilian administration of the Workers' Party of Luis Anacio Lula 
da Silva and Dilma Vana Rousseff that won the right from the world sports 
governing bodies to hold these events, and that -- until the current 
political crisis -- carried out the preparations for them. It carried out 
these mega-events in the same general way that every other country has. 
Holding these mega-events is one way that the host countries pledge loyalty 
to the neo-liberal system; it's a way in which the bourgeoisie of the host 
cities gets an international stamp of 

[Marxism] The battle of Aleppo and the question of solidarity

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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The breaking of the encirclement of Aleppo
 by Joseph Green

 *  [Introduction]
 *  Not just a military struggle
 *  Why is Assad still in power?
 *  Russian imperialism
 *  Western imperialism
 *  The seamy side of the YPG
 *  The lack of solidarity with the uprising
 *  Some background sources ("Khiyana", "Burning Country", and CVO 
theoretical articles)

>From the Detroit Workers' Voice list for August 8,2016

http://www.communistvoice.org/DWV-160808.html

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Re: [Marxism] Khiyana and the betrayal by much of the left of the Syrian uprising

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Andrew Pollack wrote: 
> Yesterday I read the two CV articles you mentioned.
> They're boilerplate Stalinism, 

You don't quote anything from those articles.  This shows that you couldn't 
find anything in those articles that denigrated class demands.  And yet you 
won't retract your charges against me, but just keep adding new ones. I'm 
sorry, Andrew, but that's not honorable.

The fact is that the CVO has been fighting Stalinism as well as Trotskyism 
right from our foundation. We have patiently re-thought the critique of 
Trotskyism, and have set forth a modern critique that shows that Trotskyism 
and Stalinism are two sides of the same coin.  (See 
www.communistvoice.org/00Trotskyism.html) 

>there is no meaningful discussion to be had with those who deny
>the revolutionary potential of the working class in general.

This is your pretext for evading the question of whether the present Syrian 
uprising could, if successful, bring socialism. You proudly make general 
statements such as "ONLY a socialist revolution...will stop regional 
barbarism" (your emphasis). But when I asked you how this statement applies 
to the current situation in Syria, what do we get ... silence. 

So I looked to see if I could find what you had written in the past about the 
Arab Spring and socialist revolution . It turns out that you wrote about the 
Libyan struggle against Qaddafi on March 14, 2011. With regard to socialist 
revolution, you wrote that:

 >Beside their willingness to fight arms in hand, the other major weapon the 
>insurgents have is the deepening of their revolution, the development of a 
>program that would make clear to the population in Tripoli that a mass 
>rising against Qaddafi is worth risking, ...

>Such a program would necessarily seek to replace the capitalist economic 
>system with one that serves the needs of the working people of Libya, and is 
>controlled by them. And it would raise the call for a pan-Arab "Socialist 
>United States" spanning the artificial borders that the colonialists erected 
>throughout the Middle East.

>(http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?auteur236)

So you claim that the only major weapon the Libyan uprising had, other than 
the willingness to resort to arms, was a socialist program that called for a 
"pan-Arab 'socialist United States'.[of the Middle East]." 

I don't think this was a realistic appraisal of the situation in Libya and 
the Middle East. Did you really think that a regional uprising for a pan-Arab 
socialist United States of the Middle East was possible in time to strengthen 
the Libyan uprising?

Or was your idea that it didn't matter whether the the pan-Arab socialist 
revolution would take place soon or many years later, since
 just calling for it would strengthen the Libyan uprising? And do you really 
believe that such a call would have been be supported by any substantial 
section of the Libyan masses, either the Arab or non-Arab ones?

Well, now it's 2016. What do you think about the issue of socialist 
revolution with respect to the current uprising in Syria?  Do you still think 
that the only major weapon of the uprising, aside from being willing to 
fight, would be a program that calls for the pan-Arab socialist United States 
of the Middle East?

You charge me with losing faith in the revolutionary potential of the working 
class because I didn't think socialist revolution was a possibility in the 
Arab Spring, and I don't think it is a possibility in Syria at this time. But 
if you think it is, why don't you repeat your idea that the major weakness of 
the democratic uprising is that it doesn't have a  program for the "pan-Arab 
socialist United States" of the Middle East? Or are you yourself the one 
losing faith in the masses? I don't think you can cover this up by silence, 
for it surely isn't honorable to denounce others for not advocating a 
position that you are reluctant to put forward yourself.

There's also the issue of Egypt, which shouldn't be swept under the rug. It 
was raised in Khiyana, and it is an important issue with respect to judging 
"permanent revolution" with regard to the Arab Spring. But you're still 
silent about it:

JG:

> > And he [an-Nar] wrote that "...the events of Egypt, the leftist misreading 
> > of the
> > army
> > coup as the 'next wave' of the revolution and the subsequent bloodbath is
> > such an appalling error that it should provide food for thought for the
> > whole
> > international revolutionary left." (p. 14)
> >

You are stubbornly refusing to don't say anything about this. Do you think 
that people will forget about what happened in Egypt if only you keep your 
mouth shut 

Re: [Marxism] Khiyana and the betrayal by much of the left of the Syrian uprising

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Correction:
In my last note, the  clause "a situation where, even if successfully  they 
could not lead to socialist revolution"

should be

"a situation where, even if successful, they could not lead to socialist 
revolution".

-- Joseph Green
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Re: [Marxism] Khiyana and the betrayal by much of the left of the Syrian uprising

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Andrew Pollack  wrote
> Assad [an-Nar - the author of the first article in the book--JG]]
> completely misrepresents the nature and history of permanent revolution
> and the groups supporting the theory and using it in their practice.
> 
> The author (and Joseph) somehow have got it into their heads that
> supporting class demands in some inexplicable way cuts across the struggle
> for democratic demands, when the opposite is true and is in fact the core
> of the theory and its implementation. What's more, it is precisely the
> partisans of permanent revolution who are at the core of a regionwide
> convergence of revolutionary socialists who are the best fighters in their
> countries' fight for democracy.

Who said that class demands shouldn't be supported? It's an absurd charge, 
and I defy you to find a single place in my writing or that of Phil West's 
that does this. 

What I do say is that there wasn't a chance in the Arab Spring for socialist 
revolution  or for the formation of workers' states. The Arab Spring 
consisted of extremely important struggles, but they were not going to be 
socialist revolutions or lead to workers states. Only if there is a realistic 
assessment of the actual democratic struggle can one both support it and also 
do the utmost to support any class-conscious working class trend within it. 

Now, I have only been able to read a bit of Khiyana - the review was written 
by a good friend of mine, Phil West, while I am currently reading Bond's and 
Garcia's valuable  book, "Brics, An Anti-capitalist Critique". But I don't 
see where Assad an-Nar denies class demands either.  Perhaps you could point 
out where he does so? 

An-Nar provides a devastating critique of the fantasies and mistakes caused 
by the pattern put forward by the theory of "permanent revolution" that 
"there are only two courses in any historical situation--either proletarian 
revolution or counterrevolution" (p. 14). He says that "What is crucial 
...for the international left is that it not abrogate its responsibility to 
support these democratic movements." And he adds "Only by doing so can it 
create a space to criticise existing leaderships and push for socialist, left 
democratic movement."  (14) I would presume that working towards the 
development of a socialist movement includes putting forward class demands.

Trotskyism went completely bankrupt with respect to its assessment of the 
Arab Spring.  At the outset, article after article on the various struggles 
in the Arab Spring by various Trotskyist groups put forward the perspective 
of either the struggle goes on to lead to a workers' state (or, if I remember 
right, even a regional workers' state), or else it will give rise to nothing. 
This can lead from unrealistic euphoria to condemnation of the reality of the 
struggle. And sure enough, we now have the condemnation of the Syrian 
movement by many groups with Trotskyist theorizing.

A notable example of the influence of the theory of "permanent revolution" 
was that it led the Revolutionary Socialists of Egypt to briefly support the 
military coup against Morsi, which was a devastating mistake. The RS were an 
important force in the Egyptian left and were doing serious work, but 
"permanent revolution" led them to an incredible mistake. They ignored what 
they could see right in front of them about the situation in the working 
class, and the political split that existed among the masses. Instead their 
Trotskyist theory lead them to believe that a further step of the revolution 
had to be imminent. It couldn't be that they faced -- in the best situation 
-- a situation of protracted determined mass struggle to deal with the split 
in the working masses with the Islamists and to deal with the situation under 
the Morsi presidency. No, their Trotskyist theory said that the revolution 
was going to go to a new stage. They let empty rhetoric and false theory 
overpower what they could see of the actual situation among the masses, and 
the actual alignment of the various class forces. 

An-Nar points to the need to make a realistic assessment of what is actually 
happening in the various countries and the state of the working class. He has 
a devastating discussion on such things as the situation in Egypt. I am going 
to have to find the time to read his account more carefully, but I think it 
is quite important that such a critique be made.

As for myself, I pointed out from the start that the Arab Spring and various 
other democratic movements in the last period have taken place in a situation 
where, even if successfully  they could not lead to socialist revolution. And 
at the 

[Marxism] Khiyana and the betrayal by much of the left of the Syrian uprising

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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About the betrayal by would-be anti-imperialists 
of the Syrian democratic struggle
--

Below is a book review by Phil West of the recent book "_Khiyana_: Daesh, the 
Left, and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution".  (From the Detroit Workers' 
Voice mailing list for July 5, 2016)
 
_Khiyana_ means "betrayal" in Arabic, and this book explores the betrayal 
that the Syrian democratic uprising has experienced at the hands of much of 
the established Left since its inception in 2011. Although the contributors 
to this book have varying political backgrounds, they all share a positive 
view of the Syrian democratic uprising, and they present much useful 
information to support this view. In this review, I will summarize some of 
the useful articles included in the book to show the wide range of 
information presented in it.

In his introduction, "Socialism and the Democratic Wager", Assad an-Nar 
argues that the present-day Left has become so narcissistic that its concepts 
have become irrelevant to real democratic uprisings. And since for the left, 
support for democratic mass movements is its main justification, this means 
that a wholesale rethink of its conceptual basis is necessary. He contrasts 
the events of the Arab Spring with the preconceived notions of the Western 
left, which includes Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. He asserts 
that this theory was developed to apply to conditions under Tsarist Russia, 
and it should no longer be applied under current historical conditions. This 
leads him to address democratic uprisings as a distinct category, as 
uprisings which can be instrumental in paving the way to socialism, but are 
also important in their own right since they arise from immediate needs of 
the masses.

An-Nar writes of the Syrian uprising as a revolution, although it could not 
be placed in the same historical class as the revolutions against Tsarist 
absolutism in Russia in 1905 and 1917. The Syrian masses are fighting against 
a stifling tyranny that prevents them from obtaining even an elementary basis 
for their survival. They need freedom from this tyranny in order to breathe, 
gain experience with the bourgeois trends that have participated in the 
uprising, and build organizations with which to fight for any independent 
class demands. This is a stage that must be gone through if there is to be a 
socialist revolution. But Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution pits 
itself against the very idea of necessary stages, not just in Syria but in 
Tsarist Russia too. Not all uprisings are direct class battles; frequently 
they cut across class lines, and become distinct stages of an overall 
revolutionary struggle that need to be carried out in a concrete historical 
context. Trotsky's theory has always been unable to recognise the distinct 
historical character of these stages, and that was as true in Russia as it is 
in Syria.

He goes on to examine the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the 
political trajectory of Hezbollah with regard to the Syrian civil war. In his 
remarks on the Brotherhood, he notes that they were in a unique position 
after the Egyptian democratic uprising, but they began to lose power because 
they did not break with neo-liberalism. The left in Egypt could not develop 
an independent strategy under these circumstances. With regard to Hezbollah, 
he notes the existence of "zombie Stalinism" or "Stalinism without Stalin", 
as an important aspect of current "anti-imperialism" (what we would term 
"non-class" anti-imperialism). He concludes with some perceptive remarks 
about post-colonial struggles, the importance of socialism from below, and 
some general conclusions about the necessity for the left to support 
democratic uprisings even if they don't seem to be immediate transit points 
to a socialist revolution.

In his initial article for this book, Mark Boothroyd informs us about "Who 
are the Syrian Rebels: The Genesis of the Armed Struggle in Syria". He 
describes the source of the armed rebellion and tells us how it made the 
transition from guerrilla resistance to open war. He gives us a history of 
how the rebellion descended into chaos, with token support from the US aimed 
at co-opting the rebels, up to the present stage during which the rebels are 
trying to regroup and regain their advantage. A key aspect of this history 
was the fact that while the rebels sought aid from outside to fight the Assad 
regime, it was only when the Islamist Daesh group emerged that military aid 
was offered, and then only on condition that the rebels would fight Daesh 

Re: [Marxism] [UCE] Re: [pen-l] Fwd: Debates within ecosocialism: John Bellamy Foster, Jason Moore and CNS | Louis Proyect: The

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Fred Murply wrote:
> I don't read the passage below in Foster's 2005 intro as "promoting
> virtues";
 
Foster also said in the same 2005 article that

   "Yet, it [The Soviet Union] remained a post-revolutionary society 
distinguished in many ways from capitalism. Competition between enterprises 
played almost no role in the economic workings of Soviet society. Private 
ownership of the means of production had been abolished. Unemployment was 
virtually non-existent. Many basic social amenities were guaranteed.

   "Despite its veering away from socialist goals, the Russian Revolution´s 
expropriation of capitalist private property, followed by the creation of a 
distinct post-revolutionary society, constituted a grave threat to 
capitalism, especially if other peoples were thereby encouraged to follow the 
same path."

So on one hand, Foster denounces some features of later Soviet society; 
on the other hand, he still holds it's a "post-revolutionary society", a 
threat to capitalism, etc.  It's shameless when someone who knows the crimes 
of the system apologizes for it; but that's what Foster does. 

   Indeed, Foster goes on to repeat the tired old propaganda from the Soviet 
revisionists about themselves; he refuses to look deeply into these claims. 
Thus, Foster writes that  "Competition between enterprises played almost no 
role in the economic workings of Soviet society." This is an important part 
of Foster's view of late Soviet society; it's part of why he believes it's a 
model for environmental planning which we need today.

But in fact, under the Soviet system of "Khozraschet" (self-financing), 
both making a profit and competing with other enterprises were major facts of 
the Soviet economic system. It worked in a somewhat different way than it 
does in Western capitalism, and there was a somewhat cloaked form of 
competition, but the rampant anarchy of production in the Stalinist and later 
Soviet system are well-known. Serious economists studying the Soviet Union, 
economists with varied political trends, recognized this, and differed mainly 
in their explanation of why it took place. 

You, FM, cite his criticism of the Soviet system and his historical account 
(which is more like a series of apologies and excuses for what happened), but 
you leave out the fact that he regards it as a model anyway.

Appendix: On competition between enterprises in the Soviet Union

It's a commonplace in certain circles to say, as Foster does,  that there was 
little competition between enterprises in the Soviet Union. But it's not 
true. One serious study of the Soviet economy after another showed the 
widespread anarchy of production that existed. It's widely known that it 
wasn't true that competition had been overcome.  Soviet managers themselves 
knew it wasn't true. They had to compete, and compete hard, if they were to 
survive in their positions.

In an article I wrote on the anarchy of production in the Stalinist and later 
Soviet system, I pointed out the following situation:

"For one thing, when one looks closely at the Soviet system, one finds a 
swirling struggle of manager against manager and factory against factory 
underneath the overall planning by the ministries. ...  

"In one form or another, this  continued after the First Five Year Plan. It 
was so widely recognized that managers openly wrote about it in the Soviet 
trade journals and newspapers. They said that they had to violate the law and 
the planning directives in order to fulfill their obligations under the plan. 
Even during the height of the bloody repression of the mid-1930s, when 
economic managers were among those most vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, 
or even execution, they continued to write about how they flouted the law. 
One professor, David Granick, who has studied Soviet management extensively, 
wrote that:

. " 'In actual fact, plant directors have possessed great authority. But in 
theory, they have not; and so they have constantly struggled to legitimize 
their power. During the course of this perennial battle, they have often felt 
sufficiently self-confident to ridicule publicly the laws they were 
violating. Even at the height of the 1930's purges, there were some plant 
directors who went out of their way to write signed articles in the national 
press describing how, in their own work, they had been violating both the law 
and instructions from superiors, announcing that they considered these 
violations to be quite proper, and stating flatly that in the future they had 
every intention of continuing and even extending the violations. '(27)

"It might be said that this shows 

[Marxism] [UCE] Re: [pen-l] Fwd: Debates within ecosocialism: John Bellamy Foster, Jason Moore and CNS | Louis Proyect: The Unrepenta

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Correction to my last post on Foster's "Marx's Ecology":

It was not in his book of 2000 but in his introduction to the July-August 
2005 issue of Monthly Review  that John Bellamy Foster promoted the 
"post-revolutionary" virtues of the Soviet Union despite the bad things that 
happened. ("The Renewing of Socialism: An Introduction": 
http://monthlyreview.org/2005/07/01/the-renewing-of-socialism-an-introduction/
)  This is discussed in my review of Foster's "Marx's Ecology" (August 2007, 
"A review of John Bellamy Foster's 'Marx's Ecology': Marx and Engels on 
protecting the environment ": http://www.communistvoice.org/40cMarx.html). In 
the review, I note that Foster glosses over the nature of the Soviet Union in 
his book, and later gives his apology for it as "post-revolutionary" in his 
article of 2005.

-- Joseph Green
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[Marxism] [UCE] Re: [pen-l] Re: Jo Cox, the White Helmets and the Baathist amen corner | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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Robert Naiman wrote:
> If it is outrageous to say that everyone opposed to Assad is a stooge of
> US imperialism, is it not also outrageous to say that everyone opposed to
> US imperialism is a stooge of Assad?

Yet it is among those denigrating the struggle against Assad that we find the 
outrageous lies about what is going on, the denial of the mass slaughter by 
the Assad regime, the denial that anything is going on but a proxy war, the 
denial that there is any democratic content in the struggle. There is nothing 
anti-imperialist in this slander of the masses, and it is outrageous to cover 
that up. 

Those who are actually opposing imperialism are supporting the struggles of 
the masses for basic rights and are opposing the Assad dictatorship and other 
dictatorships. Real anti-imperialism is based on supporting the struggles of 
the masses for freedom, whether the masses are our own political trend or 
not. It means realizing that the road to more radical political stands has to 
pass through the democratic struggle, even though the outcome of that 
struggle may be quite modest or disappointing these days. There are some 
supporters of the democratic struggles in the Arab Spring who were 
overoptimistic about where these struggles would go - for the example,  
Trotskyist theory of "permanent revolution" led in the direction of either 
denouncing various struggles of the Arab Spring or fantasizing about what 
they might achieve. But it is nevertheless the case that it is among the 
supporters of the mass struggle that one will find the most realistic 
assessments of the situation, far different from the fantasies of the backers 
of Assad.

Thus it is not a question of either anti-imperialist or anti-Assad. The two 
sides aren't whether one is anti-imperialist or whether one supports the 
democratic struggle. 

Now, no doubt, many people are skeptical of the struggle against Assad 
because the political forces they believed to be anti-imperialist are opposed 
to it. Moreover, they see both many liberals and much of the supposed radical 
left agreeing in denigrating this struggle. They may not even have access to 
the views of those leftists defending the Syrian masses, while they see 
prominent figures from the past, figures who they trusted in the past, 
denigrating the Syrian masses. But the conscious political forces that oppose 
the struggle against Assad, and the prominent political forces that oppose 
it,  are not anti-imperialist. Some, lilke Workers World, do so because they 
fervently back one imperialist bloc against another, and they don't judge the 
struggle by what the masses are doing, but by which outside powers they 
support. Meanwhile a section of liberal opinion denigrates the struggle 
against Assad precisely because they believe it isn't in what they call US 
interest,  and this standpoint has been put forward in certain articles in 
the New York Review of Books. Can such a standpoint be called 
anti-imperialist in any way, shape, or form? Is it so hard to see that when 
the liberal bourgeoisie talks of "US interest" it is talking of "US 
imperialist interest"?
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Re: [Marxism] [New post] Debates within ecosocialism: John Bellamy Foster, Jason Moore and CNS

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Louis Proyect wrote:

> It has been well over 15 years since I paid much attention to John Bellamy
> FosterTMs writings on Marx and the metabolic rift or his 1999 quarrel
> with James OTMConnor,  
.
> 
> Once again I plunge into controversies that will have very little impact
> outside of the world of journals and academic conferences.

Indeed, but the basic framework put forth by Foster and others does have its 
effect, so it's worth dealing with.  I reviewed one of Foster's earlier 
books, "Marxism and Ecology: Materialism and Nature" (2000) in 2007: see 
/www.communistvoice.org/40cMarx.html

Naturally I agree with Foster  that Marxism is of importance to ecology, but 
I dealt with some of the flaws in  Foster's approach. (Not that Jason Moore 
is any better.) Foster coined the fancy philosophical phrase "metabolic 
rift", but his book obscured crucial issues brought to the fore by the 
environmental crisis . It's not an accident that, as mentioned by others on 
the "Marxism" list in December last year,  Foster prettified the sordid 
record of the present Chinese government. And similtarly, in June of last 
year, in an article "Late Soviet Ecology and the Planetary Crisis", he 
prettified the role that the Soviet Union played in the development of 
ecological thinking "from the late 1950s on".

The  subheads in the review:

* The writings of Marx and Engels
* Alongside and after Marx and Engels
* Lenin and the early Soviet Union
* Stalinist and state capitalist ecocide
* Marxism and global warming
* --Not market methods, but direct regulation of production
* --Class basis of environmental destruction
* --The nature of state regulation
* --Bringing the masses into the environmental struggle
* Foster's Marxism without teeth 

>From the last paragraph of the review:

"...Foster's book is harmed by the lack of the very materialism he preaches 
about: it is an idealist, and even elitist, history of materialism, a 
doctrine which can only really thrive when it becomes a force among the 
masses. Nevertheless, his book does show that Marx and Engels were concerned 
with environmental issues. ... [and] he does end up giving a certain panorama 
of the views and polemics of a number of people of historical interest. ... 
But what he doesn't do, despite the title of his book, is give a picture of 
what Marxism really means for ecology. Foster would drown Marxism, a 
revolutionary doctrine with many sharp edges, in a sea of bland, 
philosophical generalities. So to actually see what Marxism says to do about 
the environment today, one has to go elsewhere."

-- Joseph Green

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Re: [Marxism] [New post] Eritrea and the left

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Louis Proyect wrote:

> If you want to hear the government' defense of its policies, the go-to
> guy is Thomas Mountain who lives in Eritrea and pumps out a steady stream
> of articles with titles like oeThe Cuba of Africa (
> http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/21/the-cuba-of-africa/ ) .

Yes, Thomas Mountain has been at it a long time. Back in 2001, he was upset 
with the "Communist Voice" because while defending the Eritrean right to 
self-determination, we denounced the politics of EPLF and sought to encourage 
the development of an independent working class trend in Eritrea. A number of 
letters were exchanged. Below are some excerpts from CVO comrade Frank 
Arango's summary of this correspondence:

"Can one support proletarian independence [in Eritrea} while upholding the 
right to self-determination?

"Vol. 6, #3 and Vol. 7 #1 of Communist Voice carried a two-part article on 
the 1999-2000 Ethiopian-Eritrean war. This was one of the more bitter 
conflicts of recent times, and although an OAU/UN-brokered peace agreement is 
now in place, a lasting peace is still not assured. The Eritrean people won 
their right to decide whether or not to separate from their former Ethiopian 
colonial masters in 1991. In 1993 they overwhelmingly voted to do so. But the 
1999-2000 conflict was driven by the Ethiopian government's thirst to reverse 
the right of the Eritrean people to remain free. And it killed many scores of 
thousands of people during the war, laid waste to major areas of Eritrea 
during its May-June 2000 offensive, etc. , in order to achieve this purely 
chauvinist aim.

"Part I of the article dwelt on the fact that the right of nations to 
self-determination (or, in Eritrea's case, to decide for themselves whether 
of not to remain independent) remains an important issue on the Horn of 
Africa and in today's world. It pointed out that the present governments of 
Eritrea and Ethiopia stem from liberation fronts, and discussed what can be 
expected from such organizations if they gain power when led by 
petty-bourgeois and/or bourgeois forces. And it stressed that the working 
class should struggle to lead democratic movements itself. Part II dealt with 
some of the questions surrounding the outbreak of the war, the culpability of 
the U. S. and other major imperialist powers in it, etc. It also developed as 
a main theme the crucial issue of the Ethiopian and Eritrean workers needing 
to develop politics and organization independent of the bourgeoisie, and of 
the traditional nationalist illusions in Eritrea. This last theme has gotten 
one of our readers upset.

"As author of 'The right to self-determination and the Ethiopian-Eritrean 
war' I received several comments from readers. Among them was a note from 
Thomas Mountain, a member of the U. S. -Eritrean Friendship Association. 
Mountain's views conform to one of the negative tendencies in today's left: 
to subordinate the working masses to the rule of the local bourgeoisie in the 
name of opposing U. S. interference, bullying and denial of the rights of 
nations to self-determination. But since he says he's 'ready for revolution' 
this causes some tension in what is in reality a common reformist or even 
liberal position.

.

"More letters between Mountain and CVO members showed he's a wild defender of 
Eritrea's ruling party (the EPLF/PFDJ). He tries to explain the U. S. 
appeasement of the Ethiopian aggressors simply on the basis of the Eritrean 
government being a black role model which the white-supremacist CIA wanted to 
wipe out. To do this he has to ignore a wealth of facts showing that the 
dominant imperialist powers--the U. S. , World Bank, etc. --had formed an 
alliance with the Eritrean regime in the 90s. He also makes preposterous 
claims regarding this government, and not just to us. At Dehai. com he says 
to the world that Eritrea (which he calls 'the light of Africa') 'has chosen 
self-reliance over dependency" and "has said no to the World Bank and the 
IMF'. And to me he makes such claims as that 'Eritrean society is the most 
democratic society. . . in the world, if not in all history'!

"But I had had the audacity to point out in my article and in my letters to 
him that this [the Eritrean regime--JG] was a capitalist regime 'tied to 
imperialism by a thousand threads'. I commented on some of the ways it 
restricted democracy for the masses. And I argued that the Eritrean working 
class had to reject the politics of the EPLF/PFDJ and build a class movement 
independent of the bourgeoisie and the traditional nationalist illusions. 
Mountain's response was to accuse me of slandering the great and good 

Re: [Marxism] fwd: in defence of ecological marxisms

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Dr. W wrote: 
> http://climateandcapitalism.com/2016/06/06/in-defense-of-ecological-marxism-john-bellamy-foster-responds-to-a-critic/

Back in 2007,  I reviewed one of Foster's earlier books, "Marxism and 
Ecology: Materialism and Nature" (2000). The review can be found at 
http://www.communistvoice.org/40cMarx.html. It shows the relevance of Marxism 
to fighting the current environmental crisis, but it also shows the flaws in 
Foster's work. (Not that Jason Moore is any better.) Foster is fond of fancy 
philosophical phrases like "metabolic rift", but obscures crucial issues 
brought to the fore by the environmental crisis . The subjects covered in the 
review:

* The writings of Marx and Engels
* Alongside and after Marx and Engels
* Lenin and the early Soviet Union
* Stalinist and state capitalist ecocide
* Marxism and global warming
* --Not market methods, but direct regulation of production
* --Class basis of environmental destruction
* --The nature of state regulation
* --Bringing the masses into the environmental struggle
* Foster's Marxism without teeth 

>From the last paragraph of the review:

"... Foster's book is harmed by the lack of the very materialism he preaches 
about: it is an idealist, and even elitist, history of materialism, a 
doctrine which can only really thrive when it becomes a force among the 
masses.Nevertheless, his book does show that Marx and Engels were concerned 
with environmental issues. ... [and]  he does end up giving a certain 
panorama of the views and polemics of a number of people of historical 
interest.  ...  But what he doesn't do, despite the title of his book, is 
give a picture of what Marxism really means for ecology. Foster would drown 
Marxism, a revolutionary doctrine with many sharp edges, in a sea of bland, 
philosophical generalities. So to actually see what Marxism says to do about 
the environment today, one has to go elsewhere. "

-- Joseph Green

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[Marxism] Break Free from Fossil Fuels!

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 In support of the
"Break Free from Fossil Fuels" protests 


(From a leaflet by the Seattle Communist Study Group for this weekend's 
environmental actions)

This May thousands of people are participating in Break Free from fossil 
fuels protests all over the world. There is no wonder why. Last year had the 
highest global temperatures ever recorded and this year that trend continues. 
And if the main cause of this warming--burning fossil fuels--is not quickly 
stopped the majority of Earth's people face hell.

But it is not being stopped rapidly enough, and the reason for this is a 
question of class struggle:

*On one side* the capitalists are making untold profits by either extracting 
carbon fuels, running industries directly dependent on these fuels (like 
auto), or running industries dependent on these two; and it is the 
capitalists and state-capitalists (as in China) who control the governments 
of the world.  What's more, despite the corporate-paid deniers, the 
capitalist governments know the great crisis global warming is bringing 
humanity. Indeed, many of their politicians have been warning of it all this 
century. But capitalist political opinion remains stuck in neo-liberalism. 
The result is a vain search for market solutions to carbon emissions, such as 
"cap and trade." But market solutions have failed, or will fail (see the 
article below), and often cause major ecological fiascoes of their own. (1)

On the other side are the working and poor people of the world. Every year 
hundreds of thousands of them are already dying or becoming climate refugees, 
with the masses in the poor countries, indigenous peoples, and national 
minorities most severely affected.

But they are not just victims, they are fighting back.  And it is from this 
movement that the solutions to climate change are going to come. Its leading 
edge is saying: Carbon extracting and refining operations must be shut down. 
There must be a rapid transition to renewables and false solutions like 
nuclear power opposed. Workers laid off from fossil fuel industries must be 
given jobs with equal or better pay elsewhere. Indigenous rights must be 
protected and national-minority communities not slighted.

But to accomplish this means the movement must stand up with *political 
demands!*  Central in these must be the call for direct *environmental 
regulations*, including banning certain activities, and the call for 
*economic planning*, e.g., where will laid off coal and oil workers to go? 
Moreover, formulating and enforcing regulations and plans cannot be left up 
to government bureaucrats and the captains of industry meeting in closed 
rooms. There must be demands for openness and mass inclusion in everything, 
and continued protests and struggles when, in spite of everything, 
regulations or plans go against the interests of the working people, national 
minority communities, and indigenous peoples.

We can build a political movement that does this, and wins!  With only 
presently-existing technology, it is possible to drastically cut the use of 
carbon fuels, protect the environment, and still maintain or raise the 
masses' standard of living.(2)

(1) See for example, http://www.communistvoice.org/41cAlGore.html

(2) See for example, http://www.nohairshirts.com/

  
The carbon tax is another false solution,
and the IMF and World Bank are pushing it! 


(The second article on the leaflet)

The carbon tax is the latest fad in the search for market solutions to the 
problem of greenhouse gas emissions, i.e., it lets the polluters decide what 
to do when taxed, while the masses of workers and poor bear its burden. 
Mainstream environmentalism supports it, but some of the most active and best 
Climate Justice organizers support refined versions of it too. We think they 
should ask themselves why the neo-liberal advisor to Reagan and Thatcher, 
economist Milton Friedman, expressed support for the idea of a carbon tax way 
back in 1979, and why the imperialist International Monetary Fund and World 
Bank support it today. The following is a greatly shortened and edited 
version of the post at http://communistvoice.org/DWV-160429.html, which gives 
many references.

Workers around the world are being devastated by the market fundamentalism of 
the so-called "Washington Consensus", which is identified with such 
institutions as the IMF and the World Bank. These institutions are helping 
submerge the world in wave after wave 

Re: [Marxism] [New post] Ukraine, NATO and Noam Chomsky’s deficits

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Louis Proyect wrote:

> Unfortunately, given the geopolitical orientation that serves as
> Chomsky' compass, there is a tendency to adopt a Manichean
> understanding of world politics in which the USA symbolizes Darkness.
> While it is true that the USA is evil, it does not follow that those who
> oppose it are pure as the driven snow. Of course, an anarchist like
> Chomsky would never write the same kind of pro-Kremlin propaganda as a
> Seymour Hersh or a Patrick Cockburn, but he has come dangerously close on
> occasion and even wandered into their territory.

As you say, this has appeared before in Chomsky's writing. When he writes 
about the crimes of Western imperialism, he puts forward a type of 
anti-imperialism without the working class, and that leads to the problem you 
refer to, where the viewpoint becomes restricted to one imperialism versus 
another. Back in 2002, I wrote a review of his book  "9-11"; it began as 
follows:

On Chomsky's book '9-11'
Anti-imperialism without the working class
(from "Communist Voice", vol. 8, #3, issue #30,
December 15, 2002)

In the days and weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, Noam 
Chomsky gave interviews denouncing the stepped-up militarism which the Bush 
administration unleashed in the name of fighting terrorism. The first month 
of these interviews has been collected in the short book "9-11". No doubt 
Professor Chomsky deserves credit for being among the few prominent public 
figures that immediately ridiculed the pretensions of the Bush government.

But "9-11" also shows the weaknesses of the non-class approach to political 
events. True, Chomsky advocates a sort of anti-imperialism. He lays emphasis 
on the crimes of the US and major European powers against the subordinate 
countries. But there is no class struggle in his picture of the causes behind 
the events of Sept. 11, and of the response to it. He downplays the 
difference between rich and poor outside of the most advanced industrialized 
countries, and ignores it within these countries. Elsewhere he may talk about 
the corporations and the ravages of globalization, but in dealing with the 
issue of war and peace, he apparently thinks that this is out of place. In 
"9-11", imperialism comes out of nowhere, not out of the world system of 
oppression of the poor by the rich. The very word "imperialism" is shunned in 
favor of just mentioning the name of various countries. And book advocates 
that the crimes of Western imperialism--beg pardon, of the US and of 
Europe--will vanish if only governments start obeying international law and 
reasonable rules of conduct.

Chomsky's is a protest against imperialism which appeals to *Reason* with a 
capital "R", rather than looking to find any mass force which can resist 
imperialism. If Chomsky is angry about the chauvinism that has taken hold of 
the "Western intellectuals" whom he denounces, it is because he implicitly 
looks towards the liberal wing of the establishment to rein itself in. With 
his moral rhetoric, he sails far above imperialism, but with his practical 
suggestions, he stays firmly rooted within it.

These days, with the working class movement in crisis all over the world, 
this type of anti-imperialism without a social base is very common. It is 
also as old as imperialism itself. Lenin commented a hundred years ago that

"In the United States, the imperialist war waged against Spain in 1989 
stirred up the opposition of the 'anti-imperialists', the last of the 
Mohicans of bourgeois democracy, who declared this war to be 'criminal', 
regarded the annexation of foreign territories as a violation of the 
Constitution, declared that the treatment of Aguinaldo, leader of the 
Filipinos (the Americans promised him the independence of his country, but 
later landed troops and annexed it), was 'Jingo treachery', and quoted the 
words of Lincoln: 'When the white man governs himself, that is 
self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs others, it is 
no longer self-government; it is despotism. ' But as long as all this 
criticism shrank from recognizing the inseverable bond between imperialism 
and the trusts,. . , while it shrank from joining the forces engendered by 
large-scale capitalism and its development [the working class and its class 
struggle--JG]--it remained a 'pious wish'. " ("Critique of Imperialism", Ch. 
9 of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, emphasis added)

Chomsky has been attacked by pro-war liberals such as Christopher Hitchens as 
supposedly justifying the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. This is the same 

[Marxism] The IMF and World Bank as champions of the carbon tax

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Earth Day 2016 revisited:
The IMF, the World Bank, and the neo-liberal carbon tax
(from the DWV list for April 29, 2016) 

by Joseph Green

Workers around the world are being devastated by the market fundamentalism of 
the so-called "Washington Consensus", which is identified with such 
institutions as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. 
These institutions are helping submerge the world in wave after wave of 
privatization, wage-cutting, elimination of entitlements, and "structural 
readjustment". They promised that market measures would bring economic 
development and prosperity, but the result has been misery on a mass scale, 
with entire countries devastated one after another.

So it should cause people to think twice that the IMF and the World Bank are 
now pushing hard for "carbon pricing" as the solution to the threat of global 
warming. Can such harmful institutions be correct about the path forward for 
environmental reform? The IMF is especially dead set on the carbon tax, while 
the World Bank would also accept cap and trade programs.

I have discussed elsewhere what's wrong with carbon taxes and carbon pricing; 
some references are listed at the end of this article. Here let's examine how 
the IMF and World Bank see the issue. How they envision the carbon tax will 
be far more influential than the beautiful pictures drawn by some other 
advocates of the carbon tax.

The UN's global climate summit in Paris of November 2015 ended in a lot of 
promises, but not much in the way of binding commitments. Serious 
environmentalists like James Hansen denounced the results of the Paris 
summit, but 175 leaders of bourgeois governments made a great display of 
signing the resulting accords on Earth Day, April 22, 2016. The "New York 
Times" carried a number of articles on the occasion of these events; one of 
the most significant ones, by Coral Davenport, noted the increasing role 
played by the IMF and the World Bank: "Carbon Pricing Becomes a Cause for the 
World Bank and the I.M.F." (1). She reported that these institutions "are 
pressing governments to impose a price tag on planet-warming carbon dioxide 
emissions, using economic leverage and technical assistance that institutions 
like the United Nations cannot muster."

Perhaps this will sound good to some people, as if these institutions were 
now on our side. But let's see. Christine Lagarde is the Managing Director of 
the IMF. In an article entitled "Ten myths about climate change policy", she 
talks about how the carbon tax is a replacement for direct government action 
on the environment, which she regards as impractical. She supports the carbon 
tax as part of seeking to slow down other actions. (2) She writes:

"Myth number two is that a plethora of complex and cumbersome government 
policy interventions is the best way to reduce emissions, carbon dioxide 
being the most important--subsidies for wind farms, solar panels, biofuels, 
public transport, electric vehicles; regulations on the energy efficiency of 
buildings, lighting, cars, planes, water heaters, refrigerators, industrial 
machinery, etc. I would push back somewhat on this approach as it is 
inefficient for climate policy and administratively complex."

It's notable that in Lagarde can barely conceive of government action beyond 
subsidies and minor regulations, but she doesn't even want to see those 
actions.

The World Bank, for its part, joined with its partners in "formally launching 
the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition." (3) It, too, wants carbon pricing 
to replace direct governmental measures to prevent greenhouse emissions. It 
says that "Instead of dictating who should reduce emissions where and how, a 
carbon price gives an economic signal and polluters decide for themselves 
whether to discontinue their polluting activity, reduce emissions, or 
continue polluting and pay for it." (4) So the governments aren't supposed to 
ban harmful fossil fuels, or dictate a path to their elimination. And 
environmental organizations aren't supposed to push companies to do things 
they don't want to do. Instead, the World Bank wants us to follow another 
path: Leave it to the market. Leave it to the polluters themselves to have a 
change of heart when they look at their pocketbook. Don't restrict and 
eliminate coal mining, fracking, etc. Just change the carbon pricing, and let 
the polluters take care of everything else.

The IMF and World Bank assure us that the carbon tax is supposed to fall on 
the polluters, and imagines that the pain it causes these polluters is 
supposed to cause them to abandon fossil fuels. The World Bank says "A 

Re: [Marxism] [New post] How did the universe begin? How will it end?

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Ed George wrote:
> 
> Good grief. This is Marxism as religion. No wonder so many normal people 
> don't take Marxism seriously any more.
> 
> * * *

Indeed. Adam Booth, speaking for the Trotskyist International Marxist 
Tendency, claims to be able to make important advances in science without 
knowing the facts of the matter. This is truly ludicrous. Thus he writes in 
"The Crisis of Cosmology -- Part Three" that

"We do not claim to have the mathematical tools or the great wealth of 
scientific knowledge and facts that the academic community of theoretical 
physicists has at its disposal. Nor do we claim to have all the answers or 
even fully worked out alternative to the current theories.

"For decades, however, we have carefully followed scientific developments and 
have made important contributions towards the many debates that have 
emerged."

(http://www.marxist.com/the-crisis-of-cosmology-part-three.htm)

This is opposed to how Lenin treated the revolutions in theoretical physics 
in "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism". He dealt with the philosophical 
consequences of the new developments,  but refused to intervene in the 
scientific theorizing itself.

-- Joseph Green
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Re: [Marxism] [New post] How did the universe begin? How will it end?

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Cosmology and the relationship of cosmology to materialism are fascinating 
subjects. I would just like to add some elaboration on two points in the long 
posting on "How did the university begin?"

Louis Proyect wrote:
 > On the In Defense of Marxism website, you can find a three part article
> (  http://www.marxist.com/science-and-technology/ )  by Adam Booth on
> "The  Crisis in Cosmology". In part one Booth wants to make it clear that
> Marxists have no truck with any theory that the Pope could embrace,
>  even mistakenly. The "big bang" and some related theories are just too
>  close for comfort as a kind of creation myth:

Earlier this year Pete Brown commented on Adam Booth's views on cosmology in 
an article entitled "Marxism and Science". This is a brief excerpt from the 
introduction:

"...Booth's series of articles on cosmology appeared on the IMT website 
beginning on November, 17, 2014. Entitled "The Crisis of Cosmology", this 
series is a broadside attack on present-day cosmology and an attempt to 
substitute Marxist-sounding rhetoric for science. This is a completely 
mistaken approach to how Marxists should approach science and scientific 
debates. 

"Marx and Engels were materialists who enthusiastically but critically 
accepted the core of the natural science of their day. They embraced the 
latest scientific achievements and promoted the advances made by Darwin and 
Morgan among others. Booth tries to put himself in the Marxist tradition by 
criticizing contemporary cosmology and doing so with the help of quotations 
from Engels. But in the process he puts himself at odds with the scientific 
attitude of Marx and Engels. If contemporary cosmology were a pseudo-science 
and its practitioners nothing but charlatans, Booth would have a point. It's 
all very well to criticize some wild speculation, but today's cosmologists 
have actually discovered new, important facts about the universe, facts 
ignored by Booth. "

Subheads are:

* [Booth's demagogy on] Creationists and Beginningists
* Booth in the Dark
* Ignoring Facts...
* ...While Spouting "Infinity"

The full text is at 
http://www.communistvoice.org/DWV-150221.html

 > The other two articles in Booth´s series mostly amount to arguing against
> the wisdom of synthesizing quantum mechanics and Einstein´s theory of
> relativity. Plus some quotes from Lenin´s polemic against
> Empirio-Criticism, a work that is mostly of interest to the archivists
> among us.

The problem is Booth not Lenin. Lenin's "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" 
is an exceptionally good work, and it has an approach towards science that is 
diametrically opposed to that put forward by Booth. In this work, Lenin did 
not stand in the way of the new discoveries taking place in physics and 
nitpick at them , but instead saw them as part of the progress of 
materialism, and as showing the necessity of dialectical rather than 
mechanical materialism..Thus he backed Engels saying that each epoch-making 
discovery in science requires materialism "to change its form". That's 
materialist philosophy changing in order to adapt to scientific discoveries, 
not science being held back by dogmatic generalities. This goes against the 
Trotskyist Booth, who embraces the old form of materialism as tightly as he 
can; against the adventures of Stalinism in theoretical physics; and against 
the mechanical materialism that still has a lot of influence in various 
circles.

-- Joseph Green



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Re: [Marxism] Communists and black liberation

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Andrew Stewart wrote: 
> My latest piece on the history of the Old Left and African Americans.
> 
> http://www.rifuture.org/have-a-radical-black-history-month-communism-and-black-liberation.html
> 
> Best regards,
> Andrew Stewart 

It's unfortunate that Stewart's article poses as a defense of Stalin, as he 
ended up as the butcher of nationalities in the Soviet Union. He presided 
over the reversal of the Leninist policy towards nationalities, and his 
regime carried out the bloody mass deportation of entire small nationalities. 
These stands were based on his presiding over the dying out of the Russian 
revolution; under Stalin, the Soviet Union became the land of a new, 
oppressive state-capitalist system with a new bourgeoisie.

But Stewart's article also raises the issue of the history of the CPUSA's 
work against the oppression of the black masses. The pluses and minuses of 
the CPUSA's work against racism at the time when it was still a revolutionary 
party are important to consider. At the that time, it defended the interests 
of the black people in a way different from that of all other left trends in 
the general movement. "On the history of the CPUSA and the CI on the black 
national question in the U.S." goes into some of this history.

I list the subheads below, and the full article can be found at
 http://www.communistvoice.org/WAS8511CPUSA-BNQ.html

On the history of
the CPUSA and the CI on
the Right to Self-Determination

(From the Workers' Advocate Supplement, vol. 1, #9, Nov. 15, 1985)

Subheads:

Introduction:
-The CPUSA Has Become a Corrupt Party Defending the Liberal Bourgeoisie
-The Neo-Revisionists and National Fetishism
-Learn from the History of the Communist Movement

On the history of the CPUSA and the CI on the black national question
 in the U.S.
(Based on a Speech at the 2nd National Conference of the MLP,USA)

-The First Years of the CPUSA
-The Emergence of the CPUSA
-The IWW -- The Industrial Workers of the World
-The Trade Union Education League
-The African Blood Brotherhood
-Backward Features of the Left Wing of the Socialist Party
-Overcoming Social-Democratic Carry-Overs
-The CP, However, Didn't Yet Grasp the Revolutionary Role of the Black 
People's Movement
-The 6th Congress of the Communist International on the Black National 
Question
-The 1928 Resolution of the CI on the Negro Question in the U. S. 
-The Work of the CPUSA Moves Forward
-The 1928 Resolution Found Fertile Ground in the CPUSA
-Resistance to the CI's Analysis of the Black National Question
-The Debate Leading up to the 1930 CI Resolution
-The 1930 Resolution of the CI
-Apparently a Scheme for a Secessionist Revolt
-Limits on the National Fetishism in the 1930 Resolution
-Rapid Growth of the CP's Influence Among the Black Masses
-Liquidationism and the Black National Question
-National Fetishism Helps Sidetrack the Repudiation of Browderism
-Nation-Building and Anti-Assimilationism Versus Leninism
-Omitting the Question of the Revolution
-The Neo-Revisionists Champion National Fetishism
-Oppose National Fetishism While Carrying Forward the Struggle Against Racism 
and National Oppression!
[Notes -- July 2008]
-On the Workers' Advocate Supplement
-On Stalin

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[Marxism] The failure of the Paris environmental summit, COP21

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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The "red lines" demonstration in Paris was the best thing that happened at 
the Paris climate change summit, COP21. It showed that activists aren't going 
to leave things to the governments, and they demonstrated in the face of the 
"state of emergency" of the government of "socialist" president Francois 
Hollande. "We are the red lines" demonstrations also took place elsewhere, 
such as in Seattle and New York City. The demonstrators were concerned that 
the negotiators in Paris would cross various "red lines".

The media is making a big fuss over the outcome of the Paris summit on global 
warming. The Paris agreement has been hailed as encouraging progress, more 
than what various environmentalists expected, or even a landmark agreement. 
Even many demonstrators and critics of COP21 generally regarded that it was 
positive in many ways. Yet the reality is that the Paris summit was an 
environmental flop. Compared to the infamous Copenhagen summit of 209, Paris 
was a smashing success in giving positive spin to the actions of the 
bourgeoisie and the governments, but it remained an abject  failure in 
dealing with the danger of global warming.

It declared grand goals while ignoring the question of how to achieve them. 
Its standpoint: let everyone do what they want - "clean coal", nuclear, 
so-called transitional fuels, biofuels, or just hocus-pocus - so long as they 
declare it part of a plan. It closed its eyes to the failure of the market 
measures of the past, such as cap and trade, and these measures will 
continue. It talks about "transparency", and there will be no real 
transparency.

The environmental writer George Monbiot wrote about the Paris summit as 
follows: "A combination of acidifying seas, coral death and Arctic melting 
means that entire marine food chains could collapse. On land, rainforests may 
retreat, rivers fail and deserts spread. Mass extinction is likely to be the 
hallmark of our era. This is what success, as defined by the cheering 
delegates, will look like." ("Grand promises of Paris climate deal undermined 
by squalid retrenchments", Dec. 12, "Guardian")

His article added:"In Paris the delegates have solemnly agreed to cut demand, 
but at home they seek to maximise supply. The UK government has even imposed 
a legal obligation upon itself, under the Infrastructure Act 2015, to 
'maximise economic recovery' of the UK´s oil and gas. Extracting fossil fuels 
is a hard fact. But the Paris agreement is full of soft facts: promises that 
can slip or unravel. Until governments undertake to keep fossil fuels in the 
ground, they will continue to undermine the agreement they have just made."

Yet, surprisingly, while saying that the Paris agreement is a disaster 
compared to what's needed, Monbiot also writes in his article that "By 
comparison to what it could have been, it's a miracle." No, not at all. 
There's nothing positive in the destroyers of the environment pretending that 
they are protecting it. In that respect, the environmental scientist and 
climate change activist James Hansen hit the nail on the head when he said of 
the Paris summit that "It's a fraud really, a fake. It's just bullshit for 
them to say: 'We'll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little 
better every five years.' It's just worthless words. There is no action." 
("James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks 'a 
fraud'," Dec. 12, "Guardian")

Unfortunately, Hansen advocates that the carbon tax is the solution (as well 
as mistakenly backing an increase in the use of nuclear power). He doesn't 
understand that the carbon tax is simply a variant of the market methods that 
have gotten us into this mess in the first place. We need direct planning and 
regulation of energy production, not reliance on market incentives. We also 
need economic planning to back up the planning and regulation of energy, to 
deal with other environmental problems, and to protect people's livelihood in 
the massive economic dislocations that are coming. None of this will happen 
unless there is a militant movement insisting that the planning be done in 
public with the broadest mass participation, and unless there is a strong 
working class trend within the environmental movement. Neo-liberal fake 
planning and regulation, which means companies "self-regulate" and 
governments subcontract out their functions to company stooges, is worse than 
useless.

---
Joseph Green
m...@communistvoice.org




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Re: [Marxism] "49 armed factions in Syria" was: Syria rebels, activists denounce IS attack on Paris - Yahoo News

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Luko Willms distinguishes between "concrete democratic rights" and universal 
suffrage, and insists that Engels makes the same distinction. This is an 
important issue, and I will show below that he is turning Engels on his head.

Luko Willms wrote:

 >  No, that is wrong. Engels even took great pains to explain to the German 
>movement that the concrete democratic rights are indispensable, first and 
>foremost the freedom of the presse, the freedom of assembly and the freedom 
>of association, while parliamentary elections, even common and secret and 
>equal elections are mostly a trap. I think that I mentioned not long ago 
>this article, a veiled polemic against the Lassaleans in the article "The 
>Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party", in english in the 
>MIA at 
> >   For example:
> 
> >{Engels]  If the government decreed universal direct suffrage, it would from
> > the outset hedge it about with so many ifs and buts that it would in
> > fact not be universal direct suffrage at all any more.

But Willms takes the argument out of context. Engels is talking about a 
particular situation: 1860s Germany. Let's look into this.

 Engels distinguishes what might type of elections might be conceded by the 
bureaucratic-absolutist government of Bismarck representing "the feudal 
aristocracy and the bureaucracy" and elections under different conditions. In 
Germany in the 1860s, there was still the question of whether there would be 
a democratic revolution. Engels analyzes the concrete situation of that time, 
and distinguishes the type transformation Bismark aimed at in order to stave 
off revolution, and the type transformation that would be of most use for the 
masses.

When one reads the entire article, one sees that Engels is fervently in favor 
of universal suffrage; it is absurd to say that Engels distinguished between 
concrete democratic rights, which were important, and universal suffrage, 
which was supposedly mainly a trap. If one wanted to condense and simplify  
Engels' argument, it would be that universal suffrage can be a trap and an 
empty facade *if* there aren't other democratic rights,  but is extremely 
important when there are these other rights. This is exactly opposite to how 
Luko Willms understands him.

Also, one will see that Engels was not afraid to champion the overthrow of 
bureaucratic-absolutist rule in favor of a democratic government, even in the 
situation that this government was bound to be a bourgeois government. That 
is relevant to various of the democratic movements today. 

In the 1860s, the Bismarckian system of government could only have been 
overthrown if the bourgeois strata had supported this. The working class was 
faced with what its attitude to this should be. Engels calls the general 
democratic movement "the bourgeois movement", to indicate the distinction 
from the socialist movement and because democracy in Germany at that time 
would put the bourgeoisie into power, but he knew full well that not only 
capitalists were in that movement.

The concrete circumstances facing the masses has changed since the 1860s. The 
class situation is more complicated. But the general principles put forward 
by Engels - of the distinction between the democratic and socialist movement, 
of the need for the proletariat to participate in the democratic struggle, 
and the need of the proletariat to have its own independent standpoint during 
this struggle - remain valid.

Now for the quotes:

Engels writes, as if to repudiate Luko Willms in advance, "...the bourgeoisie 
and workers can only exercise real, organised, political power through 
parliamentary representation; and such parliamentary representation is 
valueless unless it has a voice and a share  in making decisions, in other 
words, unless it holds the 'purse-strings'. That however is precisely what 
Bismarck on his own admission is trying to prevent. We ask: is it in the 
interests of the workers that this parliament should be robbed of all power, 
this parliament which they themselves hope to enter by winning universal 
direct suffrage and in which they hope one day to form the majority? Is it in 
their interests to set all the wheels of agitation in motion in order to 
enter an assembly whose words ultimately carry no weight? Surely not."

So much for Engels' supposed denigration of the value of universal suffrage 
and parliamentary representation. 

 Luko Willms cites the following passage, but doesn't consider that Engels 
isn't referring to a French republic, but to the repressive Second Empire of 
Louis Bonaparte 

Re: [Marxism] Submission re: Syria

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Andrew Stewart wrote:
> There's a story I really like about a rabbi (it was told by Alan
> Dershowitz, but that is besides the point):
> 

 It seems to me that you don't have a serious attitude to the theoretical 
issues involved. So-and-so said this, and so-and-so said that, but as you 
have explained, you really don't care about most of it.  The amusing thing is 
that the result was that nevertheless your article on Syria was  better than 
most of those in that publication, and would raise theoretical issues to 
others reading it. But it seems to me that to really escape the 
Stalinist/Trotskyist framework, it would take serious consideration of the 
theoretical issues underlying the debate on anti-imperialism. It takes work, 
and not just feelings, however justified some of them might be. And the 
anti-revisionist trend I am from has been preoccupied with dealing with what 
the experience of the world movement shows, and how theory has to develop to 
deal with it. 

In any case, to each their own, as far as how to deal with theory. Best 
wishes.

-- Joseph Green
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Re: [Marxism] Submission re: Syria

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Andrew Stewart wrote:
 > I greatly appreciate the kind words and insightful comments. However, just 
>to push back respectfully and stimulate discussion, two points:
> 
I appreciate your response, Andrew, and I agree its useful to look further  
into these theoretical matters. 

> A) The Stalin national question is laid out first in the 1914 book OF 
>MARXISM AND THE NATIONAL QUESTION, which Lenin wholeheartedly embraced, and 
>it was in that book that the two stage theory is outlined. 

The distinction between different types of revolution was being made by 
Marxists long before Stalin was born, to say nothing of his book of 1914. The 
distinction between bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolutions is a basic 
point of Marxism. The Trotskyist version of "permanent revolution" holds that 
Marxism is outdated on this point. 

In an "An Outline of Leninist anti-imperialism" I discuss Lenin's 
presentation of what the Trotskyists call "two-stage revolution." It's also  
In "Leninism and the Arab Spring" (www.communistvoice.org/46cLeninism.html), 
I discuss the continuing relevance of this distinction to the analysis of the 
Arab Spring. 

The world isn't simply either/or: Stalinism or Trotskyism. There is life 
outside the spheres of Trotskyism and Stalinism.  But to see an alternative 
analysis, one needs to take the time to examine it.

>Trots of the more grouchy variation, in my experience, are prone to 
>emphasize that they think Stalin plagiarized the work from others and that 
>Lenin impacted how it was written in a major way.

So it seems that they are obsessed with spin control rather than serious 
analysis. We need to look into more important issues. We need to examine the 
Marxist theory of the different types of revolution, the Marxist version of 
"two-stage revolution" and of the tactics of the working class in such 
revolutions; we need to evaluate whether it holds today, and whether both 
Stalinist and Trotskyist theory departs from it. 

> 
 > 2) The emir was used as an example but not a solitary one, he was invoked 
> to justify Soviet backing of Chiang Kai Shek in China and other bourgeois
> anti-imperial national liberation fighters.

There are many examples, and each of them involves specific issues of the 
local economic and political situation. Each requires its own particular 
analysis. 

 But sometimes it is useful to go deeper in a couple of examples in depth. 
Clarity doesn't necessarily come from a large number of examples, if each one 
is covered superficially.

So let's stay on Afghanistan and Ethiopia for awhile. For example, how would 
the theory of "permanent  revolution" apply to the issues of the Emir of 
Afghanistan in 1920s  and Haile Selassie in the 1930s? There was no 
possibility at all of a socialist revolution or the establishment of a 
workers' regime in Afghanistan or Ethiopia at that time: for one thing, 
neither country had many workers. In this situation, would the Trotskyists 
agree with Stalin's analysis of the Emir of Afghanistan, giving him similar 
revolutionary features to those Trotsky dreamed that Selassie might have? Or 
would they disagree? And if so, on what basis?

It might seem at first that Trotskyism couldn't say anything about 
Afghanistan or Ethiopia in those years.  But Trotsky saw the necessity of 
saying something about Ethiopia, so he appealed to a mechanical rule which 
ignored the internal situation in Ethiopia. According to this mechanical 
rule, similar to that put forward by Stalin about Afghanistan, all that 
mattered was that Italy was imperialist and attacking a weaker country. With 
regard to the situation in the mid-1930s, this rule correctly called for 
resistance to the Italian colonial war on Ethiopia, but was impotent in 
dealing with the internal situation in Ethiopia. That means, it was impotent 
in giving advice about how to actually fight imperialism. And applied to 
Afghanistan, this rule would back Stalin's stand in the "Foundations of 
Leninism".

Today we see that the "non-class anti-imperialists" who denigrate the  
struggle against Assad also apply a mechanical rule. They could appeal to 
either Stalin or Trotsky for support for this monstrous stand. And this time 
the mechanical rule is even more wrong than in the past, since it justifies 
support for the Assad dictatorship.

Some "non-class anti-imperialists" have applied this mechanical rule to the 
Taliban. After all, there is still no immediate possibility of socialist 
revolution in Afghanistan. So the mechanical rule would make the Taliban into 
an alleged anti-imperialist force. This monstrous conclusion  was debated 
with a certain openness in 

Re: [Marxism] Submission re: Syria

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Andrew Stewart wrote:
> 
> Per the recent controversy re: Syria, I composed this piece to provide a
> brief ideological background, I think it goes very deeply into an Old Left
> fight between Trotsky and Lenin. Special thanks to Louis Proyect and other
> voices on this list that aided in this effort, I could not have done it
> without your vital aid.
> 
> http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/10/what-spain-in-1936-teaches-us-about-syria-in-2015/
> 

The theoretical issue raised by Andrew Stewart is of a great deal of 
interest. Stalin and Trotsky present themselves as polar opposites, but in 
reality both separated anti-imperialism from the class struggle and from 
Leninist anti-imperialism.  

Stewart points to Stalin's famous passage in "The Foundations of Leninism" 
concerning the Emir of Afghanistan and "the revolutionary character of a 
national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression". I analyzed 
this passage in detail in my article "Anti-imperialism and the class 
struggle" from June 2002 (www.communistvoice.org/29cEmir.html). At the time 
Stalin was writing, the then-Emir of Afghanistan was not a bloodstained 
dictator like Bashar al-Assad, but a reformer, who sought both to introduce 
domestic reforms in Afghanistan and to preserve Afghan independence against 
British imperialism. It was correct for the the Soviet Union to develop 
relations with the Emir's government; this did not betray the popular 
movement in Afghanistan. However, Stalin went overboard in painting the Emir 
as a revolutionary. Stalin's theorizing was a problem even then, and it later 
has been used as a theoretical basis for such monstrous crimes as supporting 
the Taliban as "anti-imperialist". Indeed, the article I linked to discusses 
Stalin's stand with reference to the debate on that time against those who 
regarded the Taliban as anti-imperialist.

The same article also deals with Trotsky's stand with respect to Emperor 
Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Just as it was correct for the Soviet Union at 
that time to support the Emir of Afghanistan against British imperialism, it 
was correct for Trotsky to back the Ethiopian government against Italian 
invasion in the 1930s. But just as Stalin went overboard in painting the Emir 
as a revolution, Trotsky went overboard in painting Haile Selassie as a 
revolutionary. He dreamed that Selassie would perform revolutionary deeds 
that would "mean a mighty blow not only at Italian imperialism but at 
imperialism as a whole, and would lend a powerful impulsion to the rebellious 
forces of the opressed peoples". In reality, Selassie fled Ethiopia right 
after Trotsky dreamed that he might be a new Cromwell or Robespierre (those 
were strange models for a socialist to put forward in the 20th century, but 
that's Trotsky for you), and the Ethiopian people were left to fight the 
occupiers by themselves. When Selassie returned to Ethiopia, he did his best 
to continue absolutist rule.

Thus both Stalin and Trotsky, despite apparently opposite theories, were 
overboard in painting various figures as revolutionaries. And both Stalin's 
theorizing on the Emir of Afghanistan, and Trotsky's theorizing on Haile 
Selassie, were used by some groups to defend the Taliban's struggle. These 
groups regard themselves as great anti-imperialists, but they are non-class 
anti-imperialists, who are dragging the good name of anti-imperialism through 
the mud.

Leninist anti-imperialism is quite different from either Trotsky's version of 
permanent revolution or Stalin's version of multi-stage revolution. I wrote 
about Lenin's views in "An outline of Leninist anti-imperialism" 
(www.communistvoice.org/29cOutline.html). It is Leninist theory, and neither 
Trotskyism nor Stalinism, that provides a theoretical basis for a true 
anti-imperialist stand with regard to the current world. And such a stand 
shows the need to back the mass struggle against the vicious Ba'ath 
dictatorship, which has suppressed political life in Syria for about half a 
century.

-- Joseph Green
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Putin shows his realism in Syria - Al Jazeera English

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Louis Proyect wrote: 
> I think that Anatol Lieven is terminally cynical but he does have a 
> point here--namely that American spooks see the wisdom of what Russia is 
> doing. However, it is dubious that the "moderate" (whatever that means) 
> opposition is not a serious military force. Otherwise why would Russia 
> be carrying out a "shock and awe" operation against it:

Indeed, an opposition that has held out so long against so many different 
forces is like the man who wasn't there, and wasn't there again today,  but 
they wish, they really wish, he would go away.

Meanwhile Lieven's standpoint on Syria reflects his longstanding attitude 
towards world politics.

Anatol Lieven is a serious author of various works, but a supporter of 
free-market capitalism whose standpoint is that everything would be fine if 
the big imperialist powers (not what he calls them) just played together 
nicely. To achieve this, he wishes that Russia were allowed its role as one 
of the big powers. His cavalier attitude to the Syrian struggle against 
dictatorship is similar to the attitude he put forward earlier towards the 
Chechens: as small peoples,  they're irrelevant. So now he praises the bloody 
Russian policy in Syria, and regards it as the realistic policy for world 
imperialism. 

Back in 2000, I reviewed  his 1998 book "Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian 
Power".   I pointed out that "From the title of the book,one might assume 
that Lieven didn't just oppose the Russian war on Chechnya, but was gloating 
with malicious glee as the last rites were being read for the Russian 
nation." Indeed, some people took the book that way. But I pointed out that 
his standpoint was actually quite different: his criticisms of the then 
Russian fiasco in Chechnya and of the Russian state were intended to help 
strengthen what he called Russia's "present very weak and qualified 
'imperial' identity." He might "honour the courage and tenacity of the 
Chechen people", but he basically found their fate irrelevant. With respect 
to policy, I wrote that his concern "was with Western policy towards Russia; 
he doesn't want the Western powers to create a backlash in Russia by refusing 
it entry to the big power club. Thus there is nothing at all [in his book] 
about Russia's failure to recognize the right to self-determination having 
created the bloodbath in Chechnya; and even less than nothing about what 
stand the workers of Russia should have towards the policies of their 
exploiters. Lieven's concern is simply to regulate the relations among the 
big powers, and Chechnya was not a big power. He opposes those unregenerate 
Cold Warriors who want to continue the struggle against Russia into the 
present, but his standpoint is simply that Russian imperialism is as 
legitimate as Western imperialism. As for the Russian bourgeoisie (not his 
term, of course), which he repeatedly denounces as 'compradors', he simply 
wants them to become patriotic."
(http://www.communistvoice.org/24cChechnyaLieven.html)

It is a sad commentary on how far the advocates of non-class anti-imperialism 
have fallen that, in the name of anti-imperialism,  their standpoint isn't 
much different from Lieven's. It is a policy of imperialism in the name of 
anti-imperialism.

-- Joseph Green
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[Marxism] Pope Francis vs both climate change denialism and cap and trade

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Pope Francis denounces both climate deniers and carbon credits
by Pete Brown, Detroit Workers' Voice

On Sept. 24 Pope Francis will visit Washington, D.C. and address the
U.S. Congress. A mass rally on the National Mall is planned for that
same day in support of environmental goals, and organizers of the rally
are hoping the pope will recognize and possibly address them. The pope's
visit became a reason for a "green" rally after mid-June when Pope
Francis issued an encyclical (a major statement) on environmental issues
titled "On Care for Our Common Home." There he plainly stated, "humans
are contributing to unprecedented destruction of ecosystems." After that
a number of environmental organizations joined together to express
support for the pope's encyclical and planned a demonstration on the
occasion of his visit. These groups include Moral Action on Climate
Network, Earth Day Network, the League of Conservation Voters, and
Sierra Club. But many establishment environmentalist organizations like
these also support carbon pricing schemes like the ones Francis
denounces in his encyclical.

In his statement Pope Francis chided world leaders for not coming to
agreement on effective measures to combat global warming, and he
criticized climate change "deniers." He says warming "... has
repercussions on the poorest areas of the world, especially Africa,
where a rise in temperature, together with drought, has proved
absolutely devastating for farming." And further, "...recent World Summits
on the environment have not lived up to expectations because, due to
lack of political will, they were unable to reach truly meaningful and
effective global agreements on the environment." This sums up the
failure of the Kyoto Protocol, which relied on market methods to reduce
carbon emissions and was a big flop. Kyoto set up a system of
cap-and-trade where supposedly the countries that signed would cap their
carbon emissions and trade carbon credits in order to gradually reduce
their output of CO2 into the atmosphere. The pope correctly notes this
was a failure in section 171 of his encyclical:

"The strategy of buying and selling 'carbon credits' can lead to a new
form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of
polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide a quick and easy
solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but
in no way does it allow for the radical change which present
circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits
maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors."

Many establishment environmentalist organizations and media ("New York
Times", CNN, MSNBC, etc.) have tried to gloss over this statement of the
pope's and the failure of Kyoto. Liberal politicians of the Democratic
Party take it as gospel that we must have carbon pricing schemes in
order to control CO2 emissions. They try to force environmental reform
ideas into the straitjacket of market fundamentalism, and this includes
their proposals for a carbon tax. But the carbon tax, like other
market-oriented schemes, is based on the idea that the market will solve
any problems that arise; the only thing that needs to be adjusted, they
say, is for the government to impose a tax on carbon to raise its price.
After that the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith will take care of carbon
emissions and global warming. They say this policy would hasten the
transition to renewable energy, but the only thing for sure it would do
is anger many people and turn them against environmentalism. Francis'
encyclical does not talk explicitly about the carbon tax, but his
denunciation of market methods goes against the logic of the carbon tax:

"The principle of the maximization of profits, frequently isolated from
other considerations, reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of
the economy. As long as production is increased, little concern is given
to whether it is at the cost of future resources or the health of the
environment; ... ." (Section 195 of the encyclical.)

Although the church has never accepted socialism and has backed
capitalism in practice, it has also never accepted the capitalist market
as the end-all solution to life's problems. Francis continues this when
he says, "... by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human
development and social inclusion." But he also speaks out more topically
and forcefully about the failures of market fundamentalism, for example:
"Our care for the environment is intimately connected to our care for
each other. ... We are not faced with two separate crises, one
environmental and the other social, but rather one 

Re: [Marxism] Lars Lih and Lenin’s April Theses | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentent Marxist

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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I'm sorry, Luko, to have taken so long to reply, but other business 
intervened. 

Recall that we are discussing Trotsky's letter which says that the working 
class must choose between two dictators with regard to how to the Italian 
invasion of Ethiopia.

Lüko Willms wrote:

 You correctly call this text a _letter,_ and it begins with Dear
  comrade, so obviously a letter to someone of his cothinkers on Great
  Britain. The new principle of choosing between two dictators was not
 his, Trotsky's, but of the ILP conference or rather of John Alston Maxton,
 Baron Maxton, of Blackwaterfoot in Ayrshire and Arran
  who imposed this distorted view on the ILP party conference,
.. by an ultimatum.

In my comments on Trotsky's views, I quoted Trotsky's words,not Maxton's. 
Trotsky could have supported Ethiopoia against Maxton without endorsing the 
idea of choosing between two dictators. Instead he made a point of 
endorsing this principle. 

It is dishonest from your part then to project this view on Trotsky, 
whereas Trotsky is sharply arguing against this view.

Not only were these Trotsky's words, but they have been cited repeatedly in 
the Trotskyist movement. It's one of the keystones behind the support of 
various Trotskyist groups for certain reactionary regimes during wars, such 
as Saddam Hussein's regime, or the Taliban. But you ignore all that, as if 
you lived on another planet. What an utter evasion.

The fact is that you don't want to look at the serious issues raised by the 
criticism of Trotsky, so you pretend that any criticism is dishonest. The 
Stalinists use a similar method, accusing critics of being thugs, or CIA 
agents.

 The issue in this letter is not so much Italy's war to conquer Ethiopia, 
t the politics of the ILP and of revolutionary communists.

You're just evading, evading, evading the issue. 

 About the Italian war Trotsky wrote a letter to the International  
Secretariat, which is published in the Writings 1935-36 on page 41
  July 17, 1935   To the International Secretariat
Of course, we are
  for the defeat of Italy and the victory of Ethiopia, However, we
 want to stress the point that this fight is
  directed not against fascism, but against imperialism. When war is
  involved, for us it is not a question of who is better, the Negus 
  or Mussolini;  rather, it is a question of the relationship of
  classes and the fight of an underdeveloped nation for independence
  against imperialism....

At first sight, the 1935 letter might appear to contradict Trotsky's 1936 
letter. In 1935, Trotsky says it is not a question of who is better, 
Mussolini or the Negus. But in the 1936  letter, he says that the proletariat 
must choose between dictators, and dreams of the victory of the Negus. So 
it looks like Trotsky is talking out of both sides of his mouth.

However, even though I am a critic of Trotskyism, I think that these two 
letters are consistent. Trotsky's argument is that, with respect to war, he 
doesn't care about the internal nature of the conflicting regimes. That's why 
it isn't a matter of who is better. That's why he stresses that this fight 
is directed not against *fascism*, but against *imperialism*.  (Trotsky's 
emphasis) For him, it doesn't matter whether the regimes are democratic or 
fascist or dictatorial.

In the 1936 letter, he develops this idea more dramatically than in the 1935 
letter: yes, he says, the working class must choose between dictators.  But 
it's the same idea: it doesn't matter who's better, it doesn't matter whether 
they are both dictators, it doesn't matter what their relationship is to the 
class struggle,  just choose one of the two dictators for other reasons.

Trotisky claims in 1935 to be considering the relationship of classes 
involved, but this is empty verbiage. He says nothing about the  class and 
national situation in Ethiopia and, in fact, is giving a rationale for not 
considering the relationship of classes.That's why he doesn't care about the 
oppression of the subject peoples in Ethiopia; he doesn't consider whether 
this hinders the resistance to Italian occupation; and he doesn't care about 
Selassie's absolutism at all. There is no criticism, no critical support, 
no support for the masses who want reform, no consideration of what is needed 
for the African peoples to unite in struggle -- just dreams about how great 
Selassie might be.

So a careful reading of these letters shows that they are consistent. For the 
period of war, anti-absolutism and the opression of subject peoples was 
irrelevant to Trotsky.   And outside the war, he didn't care 

Re: [Marxism] Lars Lih and Lenin’s April Theses | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentent Marxist

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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DW, I'm sorry to have taken so long to reply. Other business intervened. But 
the subject is important, so I have come back to it.ti.

DW wrote:
 
 If there were a workers movement or a peasant movement of
 some kind in Ethiopia I have no doubt he would of commented on it.

That could well be why he was silent. I have thought something similar. But 
just because we may know *why* Trotsky ignored the internal situation in 
Ethiopia, doesn't mean that Trotsky was *right* to do so.

There were few workers in the Ethiopian Empire, and there wasn't a 
revolutionary peasant movement. But that doesn't mean that Ethiopia was a 
blank slate, free of classes, conflicts, and politics. There were important 
class and political developments in Ethiopia, as in black Africa in general. 
I will list some of them later on. But first, some points on method.

Trotsky didn't have to praise Haile Selassie to the skies. He didn't have to 
imagine that a revolutionary dictator would inspire the anti-imperialist 
movement. He could simply have supported Ethiopia against the Italian 
invasion and backed whatever resistance took place. 

But that's not what he did. Instead, he wanted to make a point about what 
anti-imperialism meant and what solidarity for Ethiopia meant. To do this, he 
compared Selassie to Cromwell and Robespierre (which he meant as praise),  
and he imagined that the dictator Selassie might galvanize the 
anti-imperialist movement. And at that point, one can no longer excuse 
ignoring the internal situation in Ethiopia.

Trotsky was setting  forward a path for anti-imperialism. As a result, it 
would be important for any serious progressive person to consider whether he 
was right in the light of how the war developed, and about Selassie's 
prospective role in the anti-imperialist movement.

Indeed, it should have been especially important for *Trotskyists* to 
consider  the experience of the war.  Yet the Trotskyist movement has shown 
little if any interest in what happened. It didn't compare Trotsky's thought 
experiment with the real world. That's clear even on this internet list.  

While ignoring what happened in Ethiopia, the Trotskyist movement took his 
statement as an important guide.  This has led some of them to put an 
anti-imperialist gloss on a number of other vicious dictators. Some even have 
gone so far as to support the Taliban. In 2002, I wrote an article about a 
debate among British Trotskyists on this issue, The socialist debate on the 
Taliban. See part one, where I reproduced material from Bob Pitt and Ian 
Donovan

http://www.communistvoice.org/28cTaliban.html

and part two, where I went into the issue of Trotsky's stand on Selasie, 
Stalin's on the Emir of Afghanistan, etc.

http://www.communistvoice.org/29cEmir.html

 Trotsky's statement, akin to his hypothetical Democratic Imperialism (UK)
 vs Fascist Brazil is a similar thought experiment as well akin to the the
 real-world situation w/the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.

Yes, it's a similar thought experiment, but it's not akin to the real-world 
situation. In fact, he had to make a thought experiment about *Brazil*, 
precisely because experience had disproved his thought experiment about 
*Ethiopia*.  It was 1938 when he wrote about Brazil. At that time, everyone 
knew that Selassie had fled Ethiopia (he didn't return until 1941), and 
Trotsky would have looked ridiculous if he had repeated his ideas about 
Selassie. But instead of reconsidering his theory in the light of experience, 
he shoved experience under the rug and changed the subject to what his 
imagination said about Brazil.

The fact is that, on this and other questions, Trotsky asserted a number of 
false things with absolute confidence.  And he wouldn't go back and correct 
himself.  

You are not arguing
 so much here with Trotsky as it then entire Comintern from it's Second
 Congress onward.

No offense, but that's bull. I've written on Lenin's stand on 
anti-imperialism many times, and on the difference between Leninist 
anti-imperialism and non-class anti-imperialism. If you want to pursue this 
subject seriously, start another thread on it, and I'll discuss it with you. 
But for the moment, I'm going to dwell on the real-world situation with 
Ethiopia. It's a serious issue.

 
 We have an interesting discussion on Permanent Revolution (PR) on Louis'
 blog. I'd suggest Joeseph you take a looksee there.

I would be interested to see this discussion, although I don't have time to 
take part in it. Also,  I have to admit the limits of my computer knowledge. 
Where can I find the blog? I thought that, being on the Marxism list, I was 
seeing Proyect's 

Re: [Marxism] Lars Lih and Lenin’s April Theses | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentent Marxist

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Lars Lih's and Proyect's views on this question center in large part on their 
evaluation of the Trotskyist version of permanent revolution. This is not 
just a historical argument about the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. It 
concerns the tactics for movements in general. In brief, permanent 
revolution is the claim that the former Marxist distinction between 
bourgeois-democratic and socialist movements is outdated and obsolete. This 
theory is widespread because it dovetails with the naive view that any 
struggle can proceed to full liberation if only the people are militant 
enough and there are no betrayals. 

But the reality is different. Today we see democratic movements around the 
world which have no possibility of immediately bringing workers' rule or 
socialist revolution. Yet even if these movements are successful, they will 
not bring bourgeois-democratic social revolutions of the old type, because 
the extensive development of capitalism in the last century has generally 
eliminated the social basis for this. As a result, the democratic struggle, 
while essential if the working people are to be able to raise their voice and 
organize, will generally lead to disappointing results even when it overthrow 
the old tyranny. Yet any realistic appraisal shows that the socialist 
revolution isn't imminent either. The working masses are far too disorganized 
for this. The are faced with going through a series of  struggles against 
oppression in which they will have to organize themselves as an independent 
class force.

The theory of permanent revolution can't deal with this. It has resulted in 
euphoric declarations that workers' rule is near whenever a people rise up, 
and then a long period of depression when one sees what actually happens in 
the struggle. This is what has been seen in the reaction of many groups to 
the Arab Spring or other democratic movements around the world. It is one of 
the theoretical reasons for the devastating error of the Revolutionary 
Socialists group in Egypt, who didn't see what was really happening with the 
military overthrow of Morsi in Egypt until it was too late.

In the midst of the revolutionary fervor of the struggle against various 
tyrannies, it is important that the most conscious section of activists have 
a sober picture of what is going on. Contrary to what the advocates of 
permanent revolution say, opposing their impatience doesn't mean upholding 
Stalinist theories and bowing down to the bourgeoisie. It is necessary to 
have a sober assessment of the ongoing movement in order to be able to uphold 
the specific class interests of the working masses against the bourgeoisie. 
When one recognizes that, even if the old tyranny is overthrown and even if 
socialist phrases are thrown around,  the overall movement is not going to 
lead to socialism, one can understand the need for the working masses to form 
an independent section of the movement. The workers must fight against the 
local tyrannies and push the overall movement as far as possible, but also 
seek opportunities to build up their own section of the movement, a section 
with socialist interests separate from the simply democratic framework of the 
movement as a whole. 

This critique of the theory of permanent revolution is quite different from 
that of the Stalinists. Most activists are familiar with Stalinist hostility 
to Trotskyism, but in fact Stalinism and Trotskyism are twin sides of the 
same coin. If we examine Trotskyism and Stalinism in the light of the 
experience of the many revolutionary movements since the death of Lenin, it 
turns out that Trotskyism and Stalinism have a lot in common. I have worked 
with other comrades on developing a critique of Trotskyism from an 
anti-Stalinist standpoint.

In part one of an extensive survey of Trotskyist theories, I dealt with the 
theoretical basis of permanent revolution. I wrote:

 'Permanent revolution' was Trotsky's first major distinctive theory of his 
own, and it would become the banner of the Trotskyist movement. Indeed, this 
term is sometimes used in a general sense as a synonym for Trotskyism in 
general. But strictly speaking, it refers to Trotsky's view that the former 
Marxist distinction between bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolution is 
outdated and obsolete. Instead, Trotsky held that revolution in any 
country--no matter on what issues it breaks out, what the local alignment of 
classes was, and what the economic level of development is--would either be 
utterly defeated, or directly go on to a proletarian dictatorship and 
socialist measures. The only type of revolution possible in the current era 

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Why I’ve Changed My Mind About Grexit

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Just to be clear, in this interesting article posted by Proyect, Daniel 
Munevar says that he used to oppose Grexit, and now has changed his mind. He 
states:

Look, I´ve always been against Grexit - like Varoufakis. But now, as a 
result of the bailout agreement, Greece is [in] a situation where the costs 
of staying in the euro have gone up so much that it´s possible to establish 
that there is a trade-off between going out - and facing all of the 
short-term costs of leaving the euro - versus staying in a circumstance where 
you are forced to renounce your sovereignty without getting any economic 
relief in exchange. I think that Tsipras has made up his mind on this issue 
and has concluded that the best thing for Greece is to stay in the euro, 
regardless of the costs. And it´s a respectable decision. But once you start 
assessing the economic logic and everything that has happened, you can´t but 
conclude that Greece has no future in the euro.

So this deal simply postpones the inevitable.

So it is looking more and more likely that Greece will be forced out of the 
Euro. Even Munevar seems to say that this is inevitable. If so, all that 
Tsipras will have achieved by betraying the Syriza program, kissing the ass 
of the Troika, and purging the left is to ensure that Grexit takes place 
under the most catastrophic conditions with the least possibility of success 
and the most pain for the masses.

Bear in mind that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble wasn't proposing 
Grexit in the abstract, but suggesting austerity plus pushing Greece out of 
the Euro vs. austerity and keeping Greece in the Euro. 

-- Joseph Green

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Re: [Marxism] Overwhelming Greek opposition to Grexit?

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Louiis Proyect wrote:
 The Washington Post article that I referred to recently indicated that 
 the polling was done by the University of Macedonia Research Institute 
 that identified respondents through multi-stage stratified sampling. 
 What evidence is there that this group is controlled by the oligarchy? 
 Do you think they falsified the 5 percent support for a Grexit? 

Maybe you need new glasses. The poll did NOT say there was 5% support for 
Grexit. It said 5% expectations of Grexit, and about one-third of Syriza 
supporters favored Grexit. 

The Washington Post article on the poll stated:

Although the majority of government voters does not want Grexit, the move to 

leave the euro zone would still be endorsed by about one-third of the 
government´s electorate. Moreover, the bank holiday and capital controls have 

already materialized some of the costs associated with Grexit.

If the Tsipras government additionally manages to convince voters that 
Grexit is mainly the euro zone´s fault, the government may be able to survive 

such a development. Incidentally, the sizable support for euro exit in the 
government´s camp might also provide a rationale for the argument that Grexit 

was Tsipras´s preferred outcome from the start.

The 5% figure was about expectations of what the likely outcome would be, not 

about what people wanted:

Only 5 percent believed that a no vote would mean Greece would exit the euro 

zone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/07/09/what-were-the-gr
eeks-thinking-heres-a-poll-taken-just-before-the-referendum/

The question of mass support is more than a question of polling; it is also a 

question of what the masses are prepared to work for and sacrifice for, and 
what is the state of their mass organizations. It is a question of what their 

mood will be in the future, too; how they will react to future developments. 
But as long as we are are talking about polls, let's cite them properly.


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[Marxism] The lessons of World War II

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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On the struggle against fascism in World War II

In the US, Victory in Europe Day is commemorated on May 8. Russia celebrates 
Victory Day on May 9. Either way, it is a commemoration of the defeat of one 
of the most vicious powers that ever arose in world history, Nazi Germany.

The fascist Axis powers of World War II were a threat to everyone living on 
the earth. Their defeat was crucial. And the victory over the Axis powers  
gave a tremendous impetus to progressive struggles around the world. Among 
other things, this victory accelerated the national liberation movement in 
Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. And yet, this same national liberation 
movement fought against some of the victorious governments of World War II. 
It fought against British, French, and US imperialism in many bloody and 
protracted confrontations that sometimes won and sometimes lost.

There is a tremendous gulf between the people who heroically fought fascism, 
and the imperialist motives of the governments. Many more examples could be 
given. The Western imperialist Allies not only tried to maintain colonialism, 
but they betrayed the left-wing resistance movements that had sprung up in 
Europe against the fascists

And the same thing happened on the Eastern Front in Europe. The Soviet Union 
was one of the Allied powers. The sacrifice of the Soviet peoples against 
fascism will never be forgotten. They bore the brunt of assault by the bulk 
of the Nazi armies. Millions upon millions of Soviet working people died in 
this struggle, and they helped save the world. But the Stalinist government 
stained the anti-fascist banner.

There was the Katyn massacre of over 20,000 Poles in 1940 by the Soviet 
government; this was a major crime and an embarrassment to the anti-fascist 
cause. During the war, there was also the mass deportation in 1944 of all 
Chechens from Chechnya, of all Crimean Tatars from Crimea, and of a number of 
other small nationalities from their lands. No Chechens were left in 
Chechnya, or Tatars in Crimea, and return didn't start until well after 
Stalin died. Back in World War II, Red Army soldiers of these nationalities, 
soldiers who had fought fascism, might return home only to find their 
families gone, and they themselves would be deported. There was also the 
extensive rape of women by the Soviet army during the occupation of its 
sector of Germany, and to some extent elsewhere in Europe.

Many more examples could be given. The Soviet government had betrayed the 
Russian revolution and Marxism long before World War II;  it had become the 
government of a new  bourgeoisie; and this could be seen in the way it acted 
during the war.

The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, but today the Russian government is 
saying that it bears the banner of anti-fascism and deserves to have a sphere 
of influence that includes any country that was in the old Soviet Union.  It 
has been shouting about this louder and louder as its intervenes in Ukraine. 
It says that anti-fascism is peculiarly Russian, and that its neighbors such 
as the Ukrainians are fascists. What a lie! The Ukrainian people fought 
against the fascists as did the Russian people. There are good and bad class 
trends in all countries: anti-fascism isn't a  matter of being Russian. The 
Putin government in Russia talks about being anti-fascist: but after annexing 
Crimea, it began oppressing the Crimean Tatars again (those who were able to 
return to Crimea).  It denigrates the right to self-determination to Ukraine, 
although that was supposedly guaranteed in the Soviet Constitution. It makes 
a mockery of the democratic rights of the Russian people. And Putin makes 
deals with fascist forces across Europe, such as with Le Pen's infamous 
National Front in France.

Let's remember the sacrifice made by millions upon millions of people in the 
struggle against fascism in World War II, a struggle that not only took place 
in Europe but in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.  But let's also remember that 
both the Western capitalist governments and the Soviet state-capitalist 
government carried out their own imperialist plans under cover of this war. 
If we are going to carry forward the anti-fascist banner today, it would help 
to be clear about what happened in the past. We need a class perspective on 
why World War II occurred, on what happened in this war, and on what the 
different class forces did.  We need to remember: the working people fought 
fascism, and they fought it for the sake of freedom,  but the Allied 
governments fought the Axis with different goals from that of the working 
people.

We must keep the legacy of anti-fascist 

Re: [Marxism] Ukraine reality today

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Louis Proyect wrote: 
 
 On 4/6/15 2:19 PM, Roger Annis via Marxism wrote:
  Joseph neglects to mention that another of the first acts of the Rada
  following the governmental overthrow was to abolish the language law
  of 2012 which granted limited language rights on a localized basiss
  where there was determined to be sufficient local language speakers
  other than Ukrainian.
 
 Roger, this is really outrageous. You are repeating the RT.com talking 
 points without even bothering to acknowledge that some of us have been 
 putting them under microscope long before you became a subscriber



Yes indeed, Roger's method is so blatant that it's breathtaking. He just 
repeats RT talking points, as you say, and denies, denies, denies anything 
else. Ukrainian famine? Support for the deportation of the Tatars on 
NewColdWar.org? Oppression of workers and peasants under Stalin? Whatever. So 
 it's not surprising that he treats my article in the same way. He says I 
never mentioned what happened to the language law.  What does it matter that 
I actually did talk about the language law:

Left to itself, the complicated relations between Maidan, the new 
government, and Antimaidan would have resulted in some sort of accommodation. 
That is how things often have been since independence. And in the first days 
after the fall of Yanukovych, a move in this direction began. At first, in a 
spasm of bourgeois nationalism, the Rada irritated the Russian ethnic 
population by voting to repeal a language law from 2012, but the government 
immediately reconsidered, and then-Acting President Alexandr Turchynov vetoed 
the repeal. The government at first considered pushing aside those oligarchs 
based in east Ukraine who had backed the Party of Regions, but in a few days 
-- realizing the weakness of its support in that part of the country -- it 
reversed itself and sought deals with them. That's not a very glorious 
accommodation, and it reinforced the character of the new government as 
another government of the oligarchs. But at the same time, it was a 
concession to Antimaidan. (15)

(http://www.communistvoice.org/49cUkraine.html)

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Re: [Marxism] Reply to comments on Ukraine language and nation

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Basilevsky's book I don't know. But I took a look at NewCold
War.org. A prelude to pleading the Crimea case, Part two, March 1, 2015
by Pavel referred to the return of Crimean Tatars to Crimea, beginning
in the 1960s, as deporting released Nazi collaborators to the peninsula
in an attempt to speed up its re-population program. 

This article refers earlier to the deportation of Tatars from Crimea, but
without condemning it: Pavel only regrets the result of thinning the labor
forcef! Indeed the deportation of the Tatars doesn't even deserve a whole
sentence, just a clause. Here is what he says: The mild climate of Crimea
gave it natural agricultural advantages but with the Tatar population
deported under Stalin rule, the required workforce was not available on
the peninsula itself.

Indeed, since the Tatars are described simpy as Nazi collaborators, Pavel
presumably backed the mass deportaton as a good thing. He's just a little
shy to say that too openly: the blush of shame which shows that he knows
that he is apologizing for oppression.  And there is no horrified
refutation of him at NewColdWar.org. No, this is the miserable fascist
standpoint which comes through on this website. 

Roger Annis writes:

 His accuser says there was no drought in Ukraine in 1932-33, as
 Alexander allegedly claims, but I don't know. I do know that the famine
 of those years struck vast areas of the Soviet Union and is attributable
 to the reckless policy of forced collectivisation applied by the
 leadership
of the country.

So Roger doesn't seem to be sure whether there was famine in Ukraine. He
doesn't want to deny it, but he won't directly come out and affirm it
either. He knows there was famine elsewhere in the Soviet Union, due to a
reckless policy of forced collectivization, but was it also in Ukraine?
Incredible. Maybe Ukrainians should ignore this question themselves until
Roger decides, and maybe they should also ignore the mass deportations of
peasants in vast areas elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile he
characterizes the famine elsewhere in the Soviet Union and the policy of
forced collectivization as just a question of recklessness, without
assigning any class significance to it. He doesn't see that the course of
this famine and the policy of forced collectization, which included mass
deportations, was a manifestation of class oppression by the Stalinist
bourgeoisie.

Of course, he may be arguing that, whether the famine occurred in Ukraine
or not, the famine wasn't national oppression, because it occurred
elsewhere in the Soviet Union too. But why is class oppression acceptable?


But in a way, it's all consistent. You see, if it's all right to deport
Tatars and other small nationalities, if this isn't such a big deal, then
it would be gross discrimination not to also accept the deportation of 
large numbers of other people as well. 

It can also be noted that the local branch of the CPSU, a party that had
become a party of the oppressive ruling bourgeoisie, reorganized as the
Communist Party of Ukraine, and made a point of denouncing the
independence of Ukraine. I wrote in an article on Ukraine, referring to
what I could tell of the CPU's policy:

The CP of Ukraine is nostalgic for the old system, doesn't recognize any
of the crimes of Stalinism, and won't discuss the great purges or the
famines or the mass deportations of entire nationalities. It also is still
a capitalist party, as was the CPSU, but now includes private businessmen
as well as those connected to state enterprises. Many of the parties
descended from the CPSU in other former republics of the Soviet Union
embraced local nationalism, but the CPU's 1995 program opposed the
existence of Ukraine as an independent country. The CPU supported Russian
nationalism instead, and looked to reuniting the countries that had
separated after the collapse of the USSR. The Donbas and Crimean sections
of the party seemed to be the most fervent Russian nationalist sections of
the CPU. But in general, one of the ways this nationalism might be
expressed was through talk of the unity of the Eastern Slavs, the
traditions of whose civilization it holds to be expressed by the part of
Ukrainian Orthodox Church that is loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate (as
opposed to the Kyiv Patriarchate). So here are communists who back the
Orthodox Church, so long as it is the supposed true Russian church. (See
Andrew Wilson, Reinventing the Ukrainian Left: Assessing Adaptability and
Change, 1991-2000, in The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 80, #1,
Jan., 2002, pp. 29, 35, 52.)

()ttp://www.communistvoice.org/49cUkraine.html)

So it's not that no one, perish the 

[Marxism] Naomi Klein on Big Green and fracking

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Raghu, replying to me, wrote:
 I call bullshit. Who exactly from the liberal/social democratic
 establishment is supporting corn ethanol, fracking, or clean coal? Not even
 Al Gore as far as I know, and most certainly not the likes of Naomi Klein.
 -raghu.

My point was that there are bourgeois environmentalists who support fracking. 
I didn't say Naomi Klein supported fracking, but instead promoted her 
exposure of the activities of Big Green. According to her, one of those 
activities was that some of Big Green supports natural gas and fracking, thus 
harming the anti-fracking movements in various communities. She herself 
opposes fracking, and does it seriously, so she also exposes the groups who 
support it. That's what a serious opponent of fracking should do.

In her own words, on some of Big Green supporting natural gas:

The big, corporate-affiliated green groups don't deny the reality of climate 
change, of course--many work hard to raise the alarm. And yet several of 
these groups have consistently, and aggressively, pushed responses to climate 
change that are the least burdensome, and often directly beneficial, to the 
largest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet--even when the policies come at 
 the direct expense of communities fighting to keep fossil fuels in the 
ground

And many of these same groups have championed one of the main fossil 
fuels--natural gas--as a supposed solution to climate change, despite 
mounting evidence that in the coming decades, the methane it releases, 
particularly through the fracking process, has the potential to help lock us 
into catastrophic levels of warming (as explained in chapter four). In some 
cases, large foundations have colaborated to explicitly direct the U.S. green 
movement toward these policies. (pp. 198-9)

Then again, in a section of the book labelled Fracking and the Burning 
Bridge, Naomi Klein talks about certain progressive groups supporting 
fracking:

The gas industry itself came up with the pitch that it could be a 'bridge' 
to a clean energy future back in the early 1980s. The in 1988, with climate 
change awareness breaking into the mainstream, the American Gas Association 
became to explicitly frame its product as a resonse to the 'greenhouse 
effect.'

In 1992, a coalition of progressive groups--including the Natural Resources 
Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, Environmental Action, and Public 
Citizen--officially embraced the idea, presenting a 'Sustainable Energy 
Blueprint' to the incoming administration of Bill Clinton that included a 
significant role for natural gas. The NRDC was a particularly strong 
advocate, going on to call natural gas 'the bridge to greater reliance on 
cleaner and renewable forms of energy.'  (p. 2130

I don't know whether these groups, called progressive groups by Klein, 
should be called liberal or liberal/social democratic or whatever. But what 
we need to be concerned with is whether bourgeois environmentalism has 
promoted, and still promotes, bad things.

One of the great virtues of Klein's book is that she points this problem out.
 
One of my points is that there isn't unity in the environmental movement. In 
writing replies to Marv Gandall on this, I was dealing with what goes on in 
the movement as a whole, and the significance of Bloomberg being taken up in 
the movement (which was the point of the thread I was writing in), while Marv 
Gandall would talk about certain unnamed groups with a liberal/social 
democratic leadership with what he regarded as a sound program. I cut 
corners in replying to him, instead of expressing things in a longer and more 
explanatory way, so he thought I was saying that he himself supported 
fracking. *My apologies* -- my meaning, which was  not expressed clearly 
enough -- was instead that to overlook the differences in the movement would 
mean that we would have to simply be supporters of what was being done, 
things which we opposed, things which harmed the environment. The difference 
over fracking is an example of a concrete, real difference in the movement, 
which cannot be written off as mere abstract boilerplate denunciation. 
 
And by the way, Michael Bloomberg backs fracking. And Klein pointed that out.

Klein on Michael Bloomberg supporting fracking:

The EDF [Environmental Defense Fund-JG] has also received a $6 million grant 
from the foundation of New York's billionaire ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg (who 
is strongly pro-fracking), specifically to develop and secure regulations 
intended to make fracking safe--once again, not to impartially assess whether 
such an outcome is even possible. ... The EDF has done more than help the 

Re: [Marxism] [Pen-l] NYRB review of Naomi Klein

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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 Despite your faint praise for Naomi Klein, all of what
 you harshly attribute to me below could be attributed
 to her as well.

Even if this were true, it would be irrelevant: it would simply indicate that 
I had misjudged her book. The real point was whether there are practical 
differences between bourgeois environmentalism and a radical environmental 
program. 

  I´ve nowhere said
 - and, to my knowledge, neither has she - that
 oeour practical task is to campaign in favor of corn
 ethanol, or unplanned growth of biofuel ingeneral,
 or fracking, or the carbon tax, or cap and trade,
 or Michael Bloomberg, etc.

You wrote of the fundamentally sound program of the bourgeois 
environmentalists, and of the supposed lack of any but an abstract 
alternative. Then you are offended when I refer to their program concretely.  
And you seemed to have forgotten what you wrote about Bloomberg just a few 
messages back.

However, we seem to have come to an impasse with this discussion. So I will 
try to continue on the issue of bourgeois vs. working class environmentalism 
in another way. In particular, I think that it is important for the militant 
environmental movement to have a clear and public assessment of the key 
figures and institutions of bourgeois environmentalism, such as Al Gore and 
the IPCC. As a contribution to a discussion on this, I will post in a 
separate thread an assessment of the recent IPCC Synthesis Report.


 
 On Nov 27, 2014, at 1:32 AM, Joseph Green jgr...@communistvoice.org wrote:
 
  Marv Gandall wrote:
  
  On a practical level - about the need for mass pressure and the 
  environmentally
  safe regulation of the economy - we agree. On a theoretical level - that
  it is only the working masses which have a class interest in avoiding
  natural catastrophes, we don´t - but it is more important to agree on
  practical than on theoretical questions.
  
  
  You reformulate things in a way that obliterates the difference between the 
  working class and bourgeois viewpoints. Bourgeois environmentalism 
  recognizes 
  various dangers, and the best of its representatives have campaigned about 
  these dangers. But its proposals lead to ruin. And there are already fights 
  inside the environmental movement over a number of the bourgeois proposals, 
  such as cap and trade, natural gas as a transition fuel (which basically 
  means fracking), etc. In order to obscure the difference between the 
  different views among environmentalists, you ignore the concrete examples I 
  have given of what bourgeois environmentalism has advocated in practice. 
  You 
  ignore that the policies that the bourgeois environmentalists advocate have 
  led to one fiasco after another, such as the corn ethanol fiasco, the 
  acceleration of destruction of rain forests, the promotion of natural gas 
  as 
  a transition fuel, the failure of Kyoto, the renewed promotion of nuclear 
  power, etc.
  
  You then say that we both are agreed on the practical issues. No, we are 
  not 
  in agreement. I don't agree that our practical task is to campaign in favor 
  of corn ethanol, or unplanned growth of biofuel in general, or fracking, or 
  the carbon tax, or cap and trade, or Michael Bloomberg, etc.  The 
  environmental demonstrations are a good thing, despite their present 
  ambiguity, but we need to take steps to improve the mass pressure for 
  serious 
  environmentalism, and this includes criticism of the past fiascos in the 
  name 
  of environmentalism and building up an environmental trend distinct from 
  bourgeois environmentalism.
  
  You defend the growing wing of the bourgeoisie that will supposedly take 
  proper environmental steps based on its financial self-interest; you defend 
  its representative Bloomberg; and you prettify market pressures. Basically, 
  you have the same position on practical steps as Al Gore and Michael 
  Bloomberg. One of the ways you defend them is by avoiding any concrete 
  consideration of the fiascos of bourgeois environmental, of the failure of 
  Kyoto,  and of the exposures of (bourgeois) green gone wrong, and then 
  complaining that I'm not concrete.
  
  One of the key issues is whether it is possible to achieve the needed 
  reforms 
  in cooperation with Bloomberg and the corporations, or whether one needs 
  to 
  oppose the corporations and market fundamentalism. It concerns whether 
  one 
  demands, not just regulations and planning, but the end to the 
  privatization 
  of the government. Without a change in the way government agencies are 
  now 
  run, regulation and planning would be jokes. It concerns whether there is 
  a 
  demand 

[Marxism] The IPCC and climate denialism

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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The issue has arisen on another thread of whether it is a problem that the 
militant environmental movement hasn't decisively separated from bourgeois 
environmentalism and Big Green, or whether there is simply a common 
fundamentally sound program which unites us all practically. Well, the 
corrupting effect of corporate money on the movement is discussed in Naomi 
Klein's book. But there is an issue even with respect to the most careful 
bourgeois institutions.

In particular, Naomi Klein refers to the UN's IPCC as the premier scientific 
body advising governments on the climate threat (p. 73) And so it is. Thus 
what is says has a great deal of influence, and not just on governments. Even 
if we don't acknowledge that influence, it will still be there. So it's best 
to assess the IPCC directly. In my view, the IPCC has fought against open 
climate denialism, but supported another form of climate denialism, the more 
subtle form of defending futile and dangerous market methods, even after 
their failure has become apparent. Below is my assessment of its latest 
report.


==
The two faces of the newest UN warning
about the ongoing climate disaste
==
(Excerpts from an article in the Nov. 8 item on the 
Detroit Workers' Voice mailing list--for the full
item see http://communistvoice.org/DWV-141108.html)


A new UN report on the danger of global warming was released a few days ago. 
Titled Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report, it gives the results of the 
fifth assessment since 1988 by the IPCC, the UN's chief agency on the looming 
climate disaster. .

This report underlines the fact that climate change has already begun, and it 
talks of the need for measures to adapt to the changed climate. 
Moreover, the report cautions that most plans presently being considered 
would begin by allowing too much greenhouse gas emissions into the 
atmosphere, so that they would depend on eventually using CDR (carbon dioxide 
removal) technology to go over to net negative carbon emissions. (The report 
doesn't, however, point out the questionable nature of CDR plans.) It says 
that if additional actions on cutting green house emission aren't well 
underway by 2030, it will be extremely difficult to reach the needed goals 
for 2050.

**What is the IPCC?**

A report is no better than its source. So what exactly is the IPCC? It is the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is an international body set 
up to assess the danger of global warming and report on what to do about it; 
it mobilizes scientists to make reports but is run by the various member 
governments  As well, most of the scientists themselves, however 
dedicated, honest, and conscientious about their professional work, have a 
establishment point of work about economic and social matters.

The result is that there are two faces to the IPCC's work. On the one hand, 
it has carried out a major service in providing solid, irrefutable evidence 
of the reality and danger of global warming. It has produced careful and 
detailed scientific documentation. It tends to be very conservative in its 
scientific conclusions, only accepting the most definitely proven results. So 
if anything, the reality may be far worse than IPCC forecasts.

But it's different when it comes to ideas about what is to be done. As an 
intergovernmental body, it is a representative of the capitalist exploiting 
classes around the world. The rich and privileged of this world, the ruling 
classes, don't base their ideas on scientific and technological realities, 
but on their drive to privatize the world and make more money. So no matter 
how dire the danger painted by the IPCC's scientific work, its suggestions 
for change are based on market methods. It doesn't matter that these methods 
failed under the Kyoto Protocol; the IPCC will keep promoting them so long as 
the world bourgeoisie calls for them. This has nothing to do with science, 
and everything to do with protecting the huge profits flowing into the large 
corporations around the world.

**How easy is it to cut carbon emissions?**

As a result, the statements of the IPCC and its representatives have a 
schizophrenic nature. On one hand, the IPCC tries to convince the world that 
taking measures to cut carbon emissions is compatible with market 
fundamentalism and will hardly affect future capitalist activity. On the 
other hand, last month one of the vice-chairs of the IPCC, Prof. Jim Skea, 
denounced as inadequate the current plans of the European Union for a cut in 
carbon emissions of 40% by 2030; he said that this would likely result in 

Re: [Marxism] [Pen-l] NYRB review of Naomi Klein

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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Marv Gandall wrote:

 On a practical level - about the need for mass pressure and the 
 environmentally
  safe regulation of the economy - we agree. On a theoretical level - that
  it is only the working masses which have a class interest in avoiding
 natural catastrophes, we don´t - but it is more important to agree on
 practical than on theoretical questions.
 

 You reformulate things in a way that obliterates the difference between the 
working class and bourgeois viewpoints. Bourgeois environmentalism recognizes 
various dangers, and the best of its representatives have campaigned about 
these dangers. But its proposals lead to ruin. And there are already fights 
inside the environmental movement over a number of the bourgeois proposals, 
such as cap and trade, natural gas as a transition fuel (which basically 
means fracking), etc. In order to obscure the difference between the 
different views among environmentalists, you ignore the concrete examples I 
have given of what bourgeois environmentalism has advocated in practice. You 
ignore that the policies that the bourgeois environmentalists advocate have 
led to one fiasco after another, such as the corn ethanol fiasco, the 
acceleration of destruction of rain forests, the promotion of natural gas as 
a transition fuel, the failure of Kyoto, the renewed promotion of nuclear 
power, etc.

You then say that we both are agreed on the practical issues. No, we are not 
in agreement. I don't agree that our practical task is to campaign in favor 
of corn ethanol, or unplanned growth of biofuel in general, or fracking, or 
the carbon tax, or cap and trade, or Michael Bloomberg, etc.  The 
environmental demonstrations are a good thing, despite their present 
ambiguity, but we need to take steps to improve the mass pressure for serious 
environmentalism, and this includes criticism of the past fiascos in the name 
of environmentalism and building up an environmental trend distinct from 
bourgeois environmentalism.

You defend the growing wing of the bourgeoisie that will supposedly take 
proper environmental steps based on its financial self-interest; you defend 
its representative Bloomberg; and you prettify market pressures. Basically, 
you have the same position on practical steps as Al Gore and Michael 
Bloomberg. One of the ways you defend them is by avoiding any concrete 
consideration of the fiascos of bourgeois environmental, of the failure of 
Kyoto,  and of the exposures of (bourgeois) green gone wrong, and then 
complaining that I'm not concrete.

  One of the key issues is whether it is possible to achieve the needed 
  reforms 
  in cooperation with Bloomberg and the corporations, or whether one needs to 
  oppose the corporations and market fundamentalism. It concerns whether one 
  demands, not just regulations and planning, but the end to the 
  privatization 
  of the government. Without a change in the way government agencies are now 
  run, regulation and planning would be jokes. It concerns whether there is a 
  demand that planning take into account mass livelihood as a goal alongside 
  environmental goals, or imagines that green jobs in itself will solve the 
  social issues. It concerns whether planning is done financially, or 
  material 
  planning is involved. And so on. 
 
 This sounds like the kind of abstract left boilerplate ...

You complain about abstract boilerplate, while avoiding any concrete 
discussion of the different policies put forward by bourgeois 
environmentalism, of their result, and of the criticism of this policy. But 
let's see.

Is opposition to the privatization of the public schools just abstract left 
boilerplate? Is opposition to the privatization of water just abstract left 
boilerplate'?  And if not, then why is opposition to the privatization of the 
government (including environmental regulation and enforcement), such as the 
contracting out of regulation of industry to the very industries being 
regulated, a mere abstraction? Why is opposition to fracking a mere 
abstraction? Why is having plans formulated in physical terms rather than 
financial a mere abstration? Why is demanding planning for mass livelihood a 
mere abstraction? Why is agitation against the crimes of corporations a mere 
abstraction? Etc.

 I´ve been accustomed to hearing when leftists who want to separate
  decisively from the liberal/social democratic leadership of a trade
  union, environmental, civil rights, or other mass-based organization are
  unable to identify a clear and coherent demand or set of demands to
  counterpose to fundamentally sound programs.

And so you seem to have concluded that it is wrong to 

Re: [Marxism] [Pen-l] NYRB review of Naomi Klein

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Marv Gandall wrote:

 Sorry, I donTMt think it can be completely ruled out, except by dogmatists,
 that oeif solar and other alternative energy prices continue to fall in
 line with advanced technology and more widespread adoption, and become
 more cost-effective and safer than environmentally destructive forms of
 energy, thereTMs no reason to suppose todayTMs capitalists would not do what
 previous generations of capitalists have done and move to superior forms
 of energy. Which, as I noted, is not to say such a development is
 inevitable or even likely.

Some capitalists already produce corn ethanol or palm oil as biofuels. Far 
from denying this, I have pointed it out repeatedly in this discussion and in 
articles. And this is an example of capitalists moving to a fuel which is not 
directly a fossil fuel. Yet it ended up having a destructive effect. 

I have also discussed Kyoto and why it failed, and Kyoto is an example of 
bourgeois enviornmentalism.

Capitalist firms may be required to produce in environmentally-safe ways. 
This will involve a constant conflict between the logic of market forces and 
the regulations imposed on them. If things are left to market forces, then 
progress will be too slow to prevent disaster, and will be constantly 
interrupted by fiascos such as the repeated fiascos with biofuels.

Capitalist economies have changed from one form of energy to another. But the 
changes in the past have never brought in the type overall environmental 
planning that is now needed to avoid environmental catastrophe. And to 
describe the change from one form of energy to another as a change to a 
superior form, begs the question of what type of superiority one is 
referring to. 

 My comment had nothing to do with the demands being raised by the
 mainstream environmental organizations,

We were discussing whether the presence of former Mayor Bloombeg in climate 
marches was a matter of concern. In this regard, you said 

 that not all capitalists outside
 the coal, gas and oil industries are wedded to fossil fuels and
 unconcerned about their disruptive and potentially catastrophic effects.
 Bloomberg is a prominent spokesperson of this growing wing of the
 bourgeoisie. 

So the issue is what we can expect from Bloomberg and this growing wing of 
the bourgeoisie that is concerned about the potentially catastrophic 
effects of fossil fuels. What I have advocated is that various bourgeois 
environmentalists, such as Al Gore, have done a service in raising the 
dangers ahead, but have advocated measures that lead to ruin. This is true 
even of the UN's IPCC. It is necessary therefore that the militant wing of 
the environmental movement take up opposition to the bourgeois program, such 
as market methods, and promote a better environmental program.

You raise that it's possible that the capitalists may implement a superior 
form of energy. But if this possibility is to become a reality, they need to  
forced to do this via regulations, regulations based on overall environmental 
planning. And only the working masses have the class interest to provide this 
pressure against them.

 although I did earlier pose the
 question on this thread, which remains as yet unanswered:
 
 Concretely, is there much difference in the demands favoured by the
 established environmental organizations and the left-wing of the
 environmental moon vement?

This is an important question. It seems to me that the militant wing of the 
environmental movement has undertaken many important actions. And we see, as 
pointed out in Klein's book, that if it weren't for the militant wing of the 
movement, the establishment environmentalists would give up on outright 
opposition to anti-fracking, as shown in Klein's book. Part of the militant 
section has denounced some of the market measures. And so on.

But the problem is that the militant wing has not separated decisively from 
bourgeois environmentalism. This is seen in that even that section of the 
movement which says it opposes market measures, doesn't realize that the 
carbon tax is a market measure. It is also seen in the reluctance to put 
forward the need for overall planning.

The environmentalist and naturalist Timothy Flannery, in his book The 
Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on 
Earth, realized that comprehensive environmental planning would lead to a 
great deal of overall economic planning. He remarked that this planning would 
lead from one field of the economy to another.  He was scared of this, and 
called it a carbon dictatorship.  But this meant that he was unwilling to 
see that market fundamentalism 

Re: [Marxism] [Pen-l] NYRB review of Naomi Klein

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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  On 11/22/14 9:31 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
  
  The fact that former Mayor Bloomberg could join the climate march ought to
  generate some caution.
  
  [Louis Proyect wrote] I agree with Carrol. We need a communistic climate 
  change movement led 
  by fighting detachments of an aroused proletariat.
 
[Marvin Gandall wrote]
 Not to mention, on a more serious note, that not all capitalists
 outside the coal, gas and oil industries are wedded to fossil fuels and
 unconcerned about their disruptive and potentially catastrophic effects.
  Bloomberg is a prominent spokesperson of this growing wing of the
 bourgeoisie. If solar and other alternative energy prices continue to fall
 in line with advanced technology and more widespread adoption and become
 more cost-effective and safer than environmentally destructive forms of
 energy, there's no reason to suppose today's capitalists would not do what
 previous generations of capitalists have done and move to superior forms of
 energy. It's not an inevitable development,  but neither can it be ruled
 out.

Carrol Cox's opposition to the environmental movement is completely wrong, 
would doom the left to impotence, and would increase the danger of 
environmental collapse. But it's also wrong to be complacent about the 
bourgeois wing of the environmental movement. Yes, even today a section of 
the bourgeoisie is concerned about the environment, and more will be in the 
future. But establishment environmentalism has put forward futile marketplace 
solutions. Indeed, it's measures aren't simply weak or inadequate, but some 
of them have made things worse. 

* There's the corn ethanol fiasco. This is an example of a section of the 
bourgeoisie realizing it can make a profit from certain measures, and it has 
been a fiasco. 

* There was the promotion of biofuel from palm oil. This  has helped 
accelerate the devastation of the rain forests.

* There is cap and trade, which was a fiasco in Europe under Kyoto.

* There is the carbon offset program, which isn't simply weak or ineffective, 
but has done environmental harm in various ways.

* There is the promotion of nuclear power by various bourgeois 
environmentalists.

* There is even the promotion of geo-engineering, which promises disasters of 
its own. Why let global warming destroy the planet, when the bourgeoisie can 
do it directly with geo-engineering? 

* And so on...

One of the positive points of Naomi Klein's book was the chapter on Big 
Green, the large bourgeois environmental organizations. These organizations 
even have financial deals with the fossil fuel companies. The more I see the 
issue of bourgeois environmentalism avoided in this discussion, the more I 
appreciate that Naomi Klein devotes some attention to it and is angry about 
it.

Another useful exposure of bourgeois environmentalism is in the book Green 
gone wrong: Dispatches from the front lines of eco-capitalism by Heather 
Rogers. She shows, for example, concretely how various fair trade plans, 
supposed to be ecologically friendly, don't help either the small peasant 
producer or the environment. 

Neither Klein nor Rogers have a clear plan on how to build an effective 
section of the environmental movement consciously independent of Big Green. 
But their books help show why this is needed. The left must not simply 
participate in the environmental movement, but build up a working-class 
section of the movement, which doesn't simply cheer the bourgeois 
environmentalists on, but has a separate program for what measures need to be 
taken in order to effectively fight the environmental crisis. 

So far, even the more radical and militant section of the environmental 
movement, a section which has carried out many excellent actions, generally 
won't directly take on Big Green and has connections with the bourgeois 
environmentalists through Al Gore or various foundations, etc. Even the 
section that criticizes market measures in general, generally supports the 
carbon tax as supposedly something else. This amounts, in practice, to a 
tacit alliance with the market fundamentalism of the bourgeois 
environmentalists. Such environmentalists as Timothy Flannery (who was a 
Green Party activist at one time, but I don't know what has become of him) 
worry about  planning being a carbon dictatorship (Flannery's term). The 
major emphasis on setting the carbon price is an attempt to avoid the 
carbon dictatorship through a price mechanism; it is a tacit alliance (and 
sometimes an open and direct alliance) with bourgeois environmentalism; and 
it means evading the need to fight neo-liberalism. (The one correct thing 
about Shane Mage's 

Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein

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Naomi Klein is not a theorist, but a talented writer who reflects the views 
of a certain section of the movement. Her talk of challenging capitalism  
reflects the mood and language of a section of the movement that wants to do 
something militant and challenge various reactionary policies, rather than 
being a description of an alternative to the capitalist system itself.

I wrote the following brief review of her book for the Detroit Workers' Voice 
emailing list: 


***
October 8, 2014
RE: Naomi Klein on capitalism vs. the climate

About This changes everything
---

Naomi Klein's new book, This changes everything: capitalism vs. the 
climate, deals with the climate disaster that is already beginning. It is a 
vigorously written book, and its best sections discuss issues glossed over in 
tamer presentations, such as the faults of the Big Green, the looming threat 
of geo-engineering, and the failures of market solutions. Among the issues 
taken up in the book:

* the environmental crisis isn't just another cause, but will increasingly be 
connected with the whole range of economic and political problems facing us. 
It will involve not just some minor tinkering with some items in government 
budgets, but major social, economic, and political changes. It will require 
the end of market fundamentalism and unregulated capitalism, a turn towards 
regulation and planning, a reorientation of agriculture, changes in the 
social and economic position of the masses, and different relations between 
the developed and developing countries;

* the environmental cause must be connected to the struggle for welfare of 
the masses, such as the provision of jobs;

* it denounces market solutions such as carbon trading, carbon offsets, and 
carbon markets, and points to their insufficiency or even harmfulness. But, 
unfortunately, Klein prettifies the carbon tax, and does not recognize it as 
a market measure, no better than the rest of them;

* it castigates Big Green (the major bourgeois environmental groups) for 
its connections to corporations including oil companies like BP, Chevron, and 
Shell Oil. Big Green includes, among others, the Sierra  Club, the Nature 
Conservancy, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife 
Federation, and the World Resources Institute. One of the book's chapters is 
entitled The Disastrous Merger of Big Business and Big Green.  This is a 
merger that has even been institutionalized in coalitions such as the United 
States Climate Action Partnership. Klein writes that The big, 
corporate-affiliated green groups don't deny the reality of climate change, 
of course--many work hard to raise the alarm. And yet several of these groups 
have consistently, and aggressively, pushed responses to climate change that 
are the least burdensome, and often directly beneficial, to the largest 
greenhouse gas emitters on the planet--even when the policies come at the 
direct expense of communities fighting to keep fossil fuels in the ground. 
... The 'market-based' climate solutions favored by so many large foundations 
and adopted by many greens have provided an invaluable service to the fossil 
fuel sector as a whole. (pp. 198, 199)

* it exposes the nature of the frightening geo-engineering solutions that are 
being proposed: space mirrors; spaying seawater into the sky; alternatively, 
spraying sulfate aerosols into the sky; fertilizing the ocean with iron; 
covering deserts with vast white sheets; etc.

* it surveys the struggle and views of the more militant section of the 
environmentalists. One chapter, for example, is Blockadia: The New  Climate 
Warriors. Indeed Klein's book represents something of the consensus view of 
many climate warriors, thus reflecting both the strengths and weaknesses of 
their views.

Some of the book's weaknesses are that it evades such major questions as the 
attitude the movement should take to the Democratic Party or to the trade 
union bureaucrats; it doesn't really put forward a new plan for how to build 
an effective movement separate from Big Green; while talking of challenging 
capitalism, it dwells far too much on capitalism's bad philosophical ideas 
rather than on what the alternative is; and it sometimes overlooks the 
capitalist class, such as when it attributes Obama's betrayal of his 
environmental promises to his ideological ideas, rather than to his being the 
political leader of the bourgeoisie. Klein also seems to think that better 
moral appeals will build the movement. And if she denounces the bourgeois 
revulsion 

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Ukraine: Resisting nationalist polarization and Russian invasion | New Politics

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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This is an extremely interesting article. But the headline of the article 
states it deals with resisting nationalist polarization and russian 
invasion. Yet the article states: For reasons outlined in the interview, 
the party has not taken a position on the national question and the war. How 
can one resist the Russian invasion without having a position on it? 
 
 
http://newpol.org/content/ukraine-resisting-nationalist-polarization-and-russi
an-invasion
 


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Re: [Marxism] Stockman On Dominoes , WMDs And Putin’s “Aggression”: Imperial Washingt on Is Intoxicated By Another Big L

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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 On Jul 30, 2014, at 1:53 PM, Jeff via Marxism wrote:
 
  Oh how extremely interesting: Shane has identified another
  businessman/politician on the right fringe of establishment politics
 
 [Shane Mage] Where do you find the US defined as the warfare state within 
 
 establishment politics, fringe or not?
 
  who comes to the defense of Putin...

Stockman identifies his stand on Ukraine with that of the rightist Pat 
Buchanan, and his basic idea is that whatever happens in Ukraine has nothing 
to do with our national security (i.e. the interests of US imperialism), 
while whatever happens in Ukraine is a matter of Putin's legitimate 
geo-political business. (See My thoughts On Pat Buchanan´s Brilliant And 
Incisive Take On Washington´s Ukrainian Fiasco by David Stockman at
http://www.theburningplatform.com/tag/david-stockman/)

 
 Where do you see Stockman referring to Putin as anything other than  
 the head of a gangster state  comparable to his enemies' ?
 

Maybe (I am not familiar with all of Stockman's writings),  but he regards 
that such gangsters and gangster states have legitimate geo-political 
interests. 

There are differences among the US imperialists and their ideologues over the 
stand on foreign policy. The enthusiasm on the part of certain would-be 
anti-imperialists over the stands of Stockman and other imperialist 
ideologues who differ with current US policy over what best protects US 
imperialist interests is indeed revealing. It shows the hollowness of such 
supposed anti-imperialism. It shows that such supposed anti-imperialism has 
no progressive content and nothing to do with the interest of the working 
class. 

Stockman and similar ideologues have no concern for the Ukrainian people: let 
their fate be decided by the rivalary of the imperialist states and by which 
sphere of influence they are in. He asks why should Americans care? His 
argument is that it isn't our sphere of influence, but theirs.

That is not anti-imperialism, but diehard cynical imperialism and realistic 
politics. That is not internationalism, but American bourgeois nationalism. 

True anti-imperialism starts with the interests of the working people of the 
world: it doesn't orient itself on the basis of the legitimate geo-political 
interests of rival gangster states.

-- Joseph Green


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Re: [Marxism] Putin's leftist friends

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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T wrote:

 That is no excuse for tolerating an infestation of vermin who side with the 
 U.S. Empire against the Russian Empire, or those who side with the Russian 
 Empire against the U.S. Empire.

And yet you praise the secessionist cause,  led by people who make no bones 
about siding with one empire against the other;  who imposed themselves by 
force against the wishes of the majority of the population in Eastern 
Ukraine; and who have contempt for elected officials.



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Re: [Marxism] Oxymoron alerty! (was Re: NATO over Libya vs. IDF over Gaza)

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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 Unfortunately, this list for most users is useful only because of the 
 occasionally linked articles with a few words of comment. 
 
 Hundred of thousands of words aren't so useful. 
 
 Clay Claiborne, Louis Proyect, Sergii Kutnii and others have posted a lot of 
material about the facts about what is going on in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, 
etc., and refuting the incredible stream of lies from the revisionist world. 
I don't agree with all of CC or LP's analysis, but I think the material they 
have posted  is extremely valuable, and I hope they continue to post more. 
Not everyone has the time to go through all the ins and outs of every claim, 
or the connections to find the statements from the more serious sources. 

For myself, I don't find it especially useful when people repeat a few 
words of condemnation of the masses who have risen against backward forces 
which the revisionists embrace. One can find that anywhere, from RT to 
Workers World to certain bourgeois liberals. Well, those words are useful 
here, but only insofar as they inspire others to refute them.

Since the crisis in Ukraine began, I have looked for sources on what's going 
on. I have read much material from various sources. The material from various 
Ukrainian trends which are independent of the revisionists has been quite 
valuable, although these trends have had a hard time developing an adequate 
political stand. (For example, the material from the Autonomous Workers Union 
is quite significant, and one sees the dedicated efforts of activists to move 
Ukraine forward, but their anarchist stand blocks them from figuring out what 
to do in a complicated situation since as that of Maidan and anti-Maidan.)

It is said by some that there are many divisions among Ukrainians, and even 
among Ukrainian workers, coal miners, etc. It's true that there are 
divisions. But the history since independence shows that a certain slow, 
zigzag progress takes place. And without Russian interference, the present 
complicated political situation would not have given rise to armed conflict. 
Independence in 1991 did not bring utopia to Ukraine, and Ukraine has 
suffered immensely from the economic miseries of modern capitalism. But there 
has been slow political progress among the Ukrainian masses; the situation is 
still freer in Ukraine than in Russia; and the political progress is 
important for preparing the masses for something better. The overthrow of 
Yanukovych was a typical Ukrainian political event, a bit of progress and a 
lot of complication. (That's actually how things move forward everywhere, 
insofar as they do sometimes move forward, in the present situation in which 
the workers movement and the left are disorganized and in crisis everywhere.) 
 But it took Russian government interference to turn this into mass 
bloodshed, and it takes revisionist blindness to fail to see the important of 
the masses having risen up against Yanukovych, and having risen up despite 
the lack of a mass political force that could represent their interests. And 
it takes revisionist blindness to judge things solely from the standpoint of 
the rivalry of the EU or Eurasian Union capitalists.

It's no secret that the Russian government and Russian chauvinists don't 
accept the right to self-determination of Ukraine and other former regions of 
the USSR. It's not secret that Putin acted punitively, even while Yanukovych 
was still president, out of fear that Ukraine wouldn't take part in 
Eurasianism. The Russian government and the revisionists are ready to fight 
to the last  Ukrainian (whether Russian ethnic Ukrainian or not) to force 
Ukraine to do what they want. This is a crime against both the people of 
Russia as well as those of Ukraine, and those who close their eyes to what's 
going on are harming the interests of the Russian working class (in Russia) 
as well as those of Ukrainian working people (including Russophones and 
Russian ethnic Ukrainians).

-- Joseph Green
 
 
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---
Joseph Green
m...@communistvoice.org




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