Re: [Marxism] Australian Socialist Alliance wins first local gov't seat
Alan writes: Aside from Nick Origlass and co, wasn't Ian Jamieson on a council in Tasmania for a while? When he was in the DSP? Well, I should rephrase that to formally standing as a socialist party candidate as I had forgotten these others because of my narrow mindset. Rather than get into a tag team match splitting hairs over this and that will that rephrasing satisfy you? Now you could argue that Jamo was a party candidate because he was indeed a member of the DSP -- but the DSP had no structures in NW Tasmania since the late eighties(?) and his election was not run as a party election campaign. It's like, say, you winning a ward in Toowoomba as a local person not as a socialist party member. This isn't about promoting Bernie Sanders type campaigns -- in the way that Origlass elections in Leichardt were.. And as it followed, that the electoral success In North West Tasmania did not lead to re-establishing a party branch of the DSP. Whereas in the case of the SA win in Fremantle, where the SA has a branch: (1) The success is for a party that is denounced for being in idle mode and with supposedly no electoral prospects worth getting excited about. For example, as the GLW report says,Of the six new councillors elected there is one ALP member, two Greens, two independents and one Socialist Alliance. However under WA electoral law local government candidates can not formally run for political parties and Wainwright was the only candidate to declare his political affiliations in his campaign material. (2) The success is for a party in an area which has strong progressive traditions -- like Origlass' Leichhardt. (3) The success is for a party to the left of the Labor Party (like Stephen Jolly's 2004 result) which has won despite the electoral weight normally carried by the Greens.. This shows in the fact that, as I understand it, the Greens weren't running against Sam directly. However, in an instance of the Melbourne results we began to out poll the Greens . Another feature of the SA's work generally in Perth is the attempt to broaden its campaigns out by developing a strong partnership approach with the left of the Greens and with the considered support of a couple of far left groups who aren't in the SA. But if you relate this win to the Melbourne results then we can say that in some areas of local government , at least-- where people are more experimental in their voting patterns --, there is a trend to the socialist left's advantage so long as it is tied to local grass roots presence. (As is the case with Sam Wainwright). This is the problem that the Socialist Party faces with Jolly , I think: that you have to tick a number of 'local presence' boxes across the urban neighbourhoods before you will be elected to represent them. After that, as in the case of the Greens in some capitals, brand identification kicks in. In the case of Jolly in 2004 -- you also gotta be blessed with a good preference flow -- not just your primary vote. And I guess any party has to have a lucky break -- in the Greens case, NDP break through aside, the more liberal Hare Clark system of voting in Tasmania was their electoral break through just as no upper parliament house in Queensland is still their burden But with the 7th Socialist Alliance national conference coming up in January next which coincides with, what is surely to be, the merging of the DSP into the Alliance, then a I think this win is a great opener to the lead up. We also ran a very good campaign in Freo from which we can learn because we are getting better at doing this. dave riley YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Internationale in Irish
That links to some excellemt stuff, leading to other excellent Gaelic renderings of óró s é do bheatha 'bhaile - of which I would love to have a translation of the words into English, knowing no Gaelic, but surely for the Irish version of the original anthem the link should really be to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf2GVBjvlGA or else from the unveiling of the Spanish Civil War memorial unveiling, Saturday 13 October 2007, Writers' Square, Béal Feirste at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRPmSKaARt8NR=1 Paddy http://apling.freeservers.com - Original Message - From: sobuadha...@hushmail.com To: e.c.apl...@btinternet.com Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 4:19 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Internationale in Irish Matt, Thanks for posting that version of the Internationale. But then again, everything sounds better in Gaeilge and here's proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxRj-ejoJaMfeature=related YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/e.c.apling%40btinternet.com YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
Dennis Brasky writes: If the Israeli Jews are offered self determination after the coming socialist revolution, what form will that take? Won't it be a Jewish state in Palestine - where the Palestinians would want their state? But the Jews already have such a state, so why do they need a revolution? This would do nothing to break away the Jewish working class from Zionism. On the contrary, it is an unprincipled concession to it, one that the Palestinians could never support. Any leftists advocating it would earn for themselves distrust. = It's not possible to conceive of a socialist revolution in Palestine/Israel which would not involve the participation of the Jewish masses, and if such were to come to pass, the question of a Jewish state, especially in terms of what it has come to represent, would be moot. It's very unlikely that Hebrew-speaking revolutionaries, having shed their blood with Arabic-speaking Palestinians against the Zionists and the Zionist idea, would be asking, if anything, for more than the new state's support for the preservation of their language and culture. Crucially, however, your stance avoids the question of how to respond to the actual political situation as it exists today. The only discernible movement is in the direction of two rigidly segregated states, with the subordinated Palestinian entity hardly warranting being called such. Fatah and the rest of the world with few exceptions accept the continuation of an Israeli state de jure and Hamas and it's allies are reluctantly compelled to do so de facto. In this context, it's almost utopian to even envisage a federation of two Palestinian and Israeli states as a transitional measure, much less a socialist revolution which dissolves these boundries, but at least the former is something which leftish forces in each society have contemplated as more realizable at the outside, and a possible basis for united action. You invoked Lenin, but neglected to mention or are perhaps unaware that the Bolshevik notion of self-determination allowed for such voluntary federations, perceived as an interim measure accompanying progress towards socialism at the economic level, so it it would not be unprincipled for someone such as yourself to support such a temporary political arrangement in the Middle East as consistent with that tradition. On the other hand, it seems clear that if there is any program at the present time which most Arabic-speaking Palestinians, let alone the overwhelming majority of Hebrew-speakers, could never support, it is placing a revolutionary socialist agenda ahead of their national aspirations, and that any leftists advocating it would earn for themselves distrust from both sides. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
Someday I will produce a post without typos etc. I don't know when, but the odds say sooner or later, I will. - Original Message - From: S. Artesian sartes...@earthlink.net To: David Schanoes sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 10:16 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
I would be wary of such a solution though Louis. France in 1940 is a good example of how fast a terribly oppressive people can transformed into an oppressed group in a flash. Demographically it's also a different game than in Algeria and South Africa and I think it does matter--- in terms of how hard it will be to eradicate Zionism as opposed to those other apartheid states-- that Israel was created on the basis of “exclusion colonization”, relying mostly on Jewish labor, as opposed to regular “exploitation colonization. One state-solution theorists admit that their triumph would lead to a mass exodus of a large percentage of the current population of Israel. This has serious economic, as well as moral implications. I'm tempted to agree, but I see it as sort of a cop out. On paper it's obviously the ideal solution Zionism was a historical crime littered with an inherent racist ethos. But is there any doubt that this solution cannot be solved without the worldwide return of emancipatory politics as opposed to the current paradigm? On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: Marv Gandall wrote: It's not possible to conceive of a socialist revolution in Palestine/Israel which would not involve the participation of the Jewish masses, and if such were to come to pass, the question of a Jewish state, especially in terms of what it has come to represent, would be moot. It's very unlikely that Hebrew-speaking revolutionaries, having shed their blood with Arabic-speaking Palestinians against the Zionists and the Zionist idea, would be asking, if anything, for more than the new state's support for the preservation of their language and culture. But the conflict is not about language and culture. It is about power, land, wealth, etc. And, furthermore, what is so amazing about the Zionist project is its inability to think outside the box. South Africa abandoned apartheid but did nothing to attack the power, land, and wealth of the white minority. A more clever Zionist leadership would abandon the racial basis of the state and put the ineffable Abbas in charge of the government. Nothing would change, however. But since the presence of religious zealots in the veins of Israeli society prevents this, the inevitable outcome will be like Algeria no matter how long it takes. The demographics favor this. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
Bhaskar Sunkara wrote: I would be wary of such a solution though Louis. France in 1940 is a good example of how fast a terribly oppressive people can transformed into an oppressed group in a flash. Demographically it's also a different game than in Algeria and South Africa and I think it does matter--- in terms of how hard it will be to eradicate Zionism as opposed to those other apartheid states-- that Israel was created on the basis of “exclusion colonization”, relying mostly on Jewish labor, as opposed to regular “exploitation colonization. Bhaskar (and everybody else), please remember to clip extraneous text. I am not sure what you are trying to say about France. The class distinctions remained the same. The Vichy government was made up of the same people who would seek to retain Algeria. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
Artesian writes: Dennis is quite write to point out that there is no such thing as self-determination for the Afrikaners in South Africa, for the Israelis in the Middle East, just as the French in Algeria were not entitled to, nor struggling for self-determination. So you are both saying that, following the dissolution of the Zionist state, you would not support cultural rights for the Hebrew-speaking minority and even a limited measure of political autonomy as an interim measure PROVIDED these were agreed to by the Arabic-speaking majority in the post-Zionist state? If the the Afrikaners in South Africa and French in Algeria accepted the legitimacy of ANC and FLN rule, and the latter were willing to accede to minority demands for some (negotiated) measure of cultural and political autonomy as an interim means of fostering unity and in the economic interest, you would oppose these concessions on principle and condemn the governments for agreeing to these demands? YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
You're right, of course. Abbas would be much more malleable than a Mandela or even a Mbeki. But such a move would involve the Zionists abandoning Zionism, ie. a Jewish state. The Afrikanner ruling class rejected the notion of a seperate Afrikaner state because they didn't want to be cut off from the South African market which they dominated. The issue of an interim voluntary federation of anti-Zionist Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking Palestinians as a way station to the declared goal of a unitary state is a much different question entirely. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect l...@panix.com To: Marv Gandall marvgand...@videotron.ca Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 10:08 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors Marv Gandall wrote: It's not possible to conceive of a socialist revolution in Palestine/Israel which would not involve the participation of the Jewish masses, and if such were to come to pass, the question of a Jewish state, especially in terms of what it has come to represent, would be moot. It's very unlikely that Hebrew-speaking revolutionaries, having shed their blood with Arabic-speaking Palestinians against the Zionists and the Zionist idea, would be asking, if anything, for more than the new state's support for the preservation of their language and culture. But the conflict is not about language and culture. It is about power, land, wealth, etc. And, furthermore, what is so amazing about the Zionist project is its inability to think outside the box. South Africa abandoned apartheid but did nothing to attack the power, land, and wealth of the white minority. A more clever Zionist leadership would abandon the racial basis of the state and put the ineffable Abbas in charge of the government. Nothing would change, however. But since the presence of religious zealots in the veins of Israeli society prevents this, the inevitable outcome will be like Algeria no matter how long it takes. The demographics favor this. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/marvgandall%40videotron.ca YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
i put Marv on moderation for a couple days until he gets clipping text straight. Les YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
bhaskar.sunk...@gmail.com wrote: One state-solution theorists admit that their triumph would lead to a mass exodus of a large percentage of the current population of Israel. I read lots of one-state literature and that's news to me. Emotionally, I am for every single Russian immigrant from the 1970s on -- starting with that pig Avigdor Lieberman -- going back to where they came from. And the same for every single US-born Jew. As for those born in Europe before Hitler, and those from North Africa and the Middle East, that's more complicated. But politically, my position is that every single one of them could stay, and Palestine (river to sea) would have the resources for them and every single Palestinian refugee around the world -- IF AND ONLY IF all of the capitalists among the above were expropriated. And in order to sustain the fledgling socialist state if Egypt and/or one or two other big Arab states joined them. As for the liberal worries about those mean Arabs suppressing the Hebrew culture -- fuck that. It was a totally artificial creation, and they should all be forced to learn Arabic, and the Jews-only schools dismantled. Andy YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Internationale in Irish
Dúirt Paddy Apling: That links to some excellemt stuff, leading to other excellent Gaelic renderings of ?r? s ? do bheatha 'bhaile - of which I would love to have a translation of the words into English In that case, take a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Or%C3%B3_S%C3%A9_do_Bheatha_%27Bhaile#English_translation MATT. --- 'In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.' Proclamation of Independence, 1916. 'The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.' Karl Marx, 1852. a.marx...@gmail.com YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 6:09 AM, Bhaskar Sunkara bhaskar.sunk...@gmail.comwrote: The project to found Israel as a settler state was and still is ?a crime?, said comrade Conrad. But that crime has resulted in the coming into being of an Israeli Jewish, or Hebrew, nation and a working class solution must recognise this reality. While comrade Conrad could envisage the necessity of expelling recent Israeli settlers from the West Bank as part of an agreed democratic settlement, it was out of the question to talk about uprooting the Israeli Jewish people as a whole. The Israeli Jewish nation, like any other, has the right to self-determination, so long as it is not exercised at the expense of the oppression of other peoples. In my opinion, comrade Conrad spends a little too long worrying about the existence and future of the 'Jewish nation', 'Hebrew nation', etc and too little time worrying about the only nation in that region under existential threat and that is the Palestinian nation. Just a small point. MATT. --- 'In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.' Proclamation of Independence, 1916. 'The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.' Karl Marx, 1852. a.marx...@gmail.com YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Marv Gandall marvgand...@videotron.cawrote: So you are both saying that, following the dissolution of the Zionist state, you would not support cultural rights for the Hebrew-speaking minority and even a limited measure of political autonomy as an interim measure PROVIDED these were agreed to by the Arabic-speaking majority in the post-Zionist state? SELF determination means that the oppressed nationality would determine its future without the permission and approval of anyone including revolutionaries from the oppressor nation. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
As we used to say back in the day, when somebody laid out the reality of the situation in a few incisive sentences: There it is. Thanks go to Andy. - Original Message - From: Andrew Pollack acpolla...@gmail.com To: David Schanoes sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 10:51 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] on clipping quoted text
I don't think people really object to the rule. I don't, and I think I forget to clip as often as anyone else. I think we tend to get lazy, excited, emphatic, agitated and then we forget. Maybe an offlist warning would suffice. Can't be any more cumbersome than putting people on moderation and checking their posts, no? - Original Message - From: Les Schaffer schaf...@optonline.net To: David Schanoes sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 11:37 AM Subject: [Marxism] on clipping quoted text i've come to a conclusion, after some ten plus years on this list. people do not clip text not because they don't remember the rule but because they do not like the rule. i base this conclusion on the fact that most here are over 21 years of age and are cognizant of what a rule is and why there are rules. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] An interesting take on Robert Burns
NYR, Volume 56, Number 17 · November 5, 2009 'The Master Poet of Democracy' By John Carey The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography by Robert Crawford Princeton University Press, 466 pp., $35.00 Robert Burns is different from the other great European poets both in achievement and in reputation. If you ask a group of academic friends to list the great poets of the last two or three hundred years, it is quite likely that his name will not come up at all. Should you draw attention to his omission, you may well meet with some resistance: Burns? Oh yes, of course. But... What that But implies is that Burns is not so much a poet as a writer of popular songs, some of them embarrassingly sentimental, and all of them lacking the stringency and intricacy of serious poetry. Besides, your friends may urge, he is less a poet than a Scottish national icon, even, perhaps, a Scottish tribal god. He is hallowed, as some other gods are, in an annual midwinter ceremony on his birthday, January 25, with the equivalent of the Roman Saturnalia, when haggis is consumed, Scotch whisky drunk, and bagpipes piped, in an orgy of assertive nationalism that has nothing remotely to do with literature. It is precisely academic disdain of this sort that Robert Crawford's searching and sensitive biography sets out to combat. Crawford is an academic himself, a professor at the University of St. Andrews, as well as a poet, and perhaps that is why disparagement of Burns by academics worries him so much. It is not, one imagines, a circumstance that the poet's millions of admirers across the globe lose any sleep over. For Crawford, however, Burns's gradual disappearance from the research culture of modern academia is a serious concern, and this biography seeks to show why his poetry is worth literary examination, as well as how it is illuminated by his life. NYR Holiday Subscription Special Burns was born in Alloway, then a riverside hamlet just inland from Ayr, in 1759, the eldest of what would eventually be seven children. His parents were from very different social strata, and both had a lasting effect on his development. His mother, Agnes, was the daughter of a tenant farmer, and had received almost no education. She could read a little, but not write. However, she had a retentive memory for folk songs, and Burns always remembered her in his childhood singing to him lullabies, love songs, and ballads, all in the Scots tongue. Thanks to her, his imagination was fed by oral culture and folk wisdom and, as importantly, his ear was trained. Burns did not just make songs, Crawford comments, songs made Burns. It was his mother's gift. The great literary project of his later life was the creation of an anthology of Scots popular poetry and song, and some of his most famous poems, such as O my luve's like a red, red rose and John Anderson, my jo', reuse and reshape verse from the popular tradition. His father, Willam Burnes (as he always spelled it), was a man of intelligence, education, and some social standing. He had come to Ayrshire from the north, from the port of Stonehaven near Aberdeen. According to family tradition William's father, Burns's paternal grandfather, was a prosperous, able man who had married into the Keith family and worked as a gardener for the Jacobite Earl Marischal Keith at Inverugie Castle. The Jacobites were opponents of the 1707 political union between Scotland and England, and supporters of the House of Stuart. Their cause met with disaster thirteen years before Burns's birth at the Battle of Culloden, when the army of the Hanoverian English King George II, led by the Duke of Cumberland (Butcher Cumberland), massacred Charles Edward Stuart's army of French mercenaries and Highland Scots. Bonnie Prince Charlie fled the field, leaving his men to die, and sailed over the sea to Skye, and from there to France, never to return. As a child Burns seems to have imbibed from his father a sense that his family's ruin and poverty were somehow bound up with the defeat at Culloden. Loyalty to the Jacobites and hatred of the Hanoverians became permanent aspects of his poetic imagination. In 1787, on a visit to Stirling, he scratched some verses on an inn window bemoaning the injur'd STEWART-line and calling the Hanoverian royals an idiot race. On the same occasion he wrote a poetic lament for a Highlander ruined by Culloden. His boyhood heroes were rebels and revolutionaries, notably the Carthaginian general Hannibal, who fought against Roman power, and William Wallace, who battled for Scottish independence from the English in the thirteenth century and was executed by Edward I. One of Burns's most stirring patriotic songs invokes Wallace as a national figurehead: Scots, wha hae wi' [who have with] Wallace bled. This sympathy for the oppressed and support for revolution also inspired Burns's poetic response to the events of his own day. He was, Crawford observes, the
Re: [Marxism] on clipping quoted text
Les Schaffer wrote: i used to do offlist, with hugs and kisses even didn't seem to help. Look, being moderated does not mean losing posting privileges. I only suspend posting privileges when somebody has gotten out of hand. All that happens in moderation is that Les checks the post before it is released to the list. In fact the H-Humanities listservs (admittedly, a totally pompous, sterile and officious site) moderates every single post. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] An interesting take on Robert Burns
I knew very little of Rabbie Burns until I went to the UK, where labor historians introduced me to his work. In Scotland, he is rightly treated as a national treasure. The language peculiarities are both his charm and an obstacle to appreciation. For us, I suppose, A Man's a Man for All That. Is there for honest Poverty That hings his head, an' a' that; The coward slave-we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, an' a' that. Our toils obscure an' a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The Man's the gowd for a' that. And... . . . let us pray that come it may, (As come it will for a' that,) That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth, Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. For a' that, an' a' that, It's coming yet for a' that, That Man to Man, the world o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that. I'd take issue with the article's misrepresentation of both the Jacobites and Burns assessment of them. The name's the dead giveaway...Jacobites were supporters of James and the Stuart dynasty when it was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It represented a reassertment of the divine right of kings against a constitutionally mediated parliamentary monarchy. Jacobite attempts to restore a more serious monarchy failed in several abortive risings prior to the Forty-Five in 1745 when Bonnie Prince Charlie--a real piece of work in that he was a living, breathing argument against monarchy if ever there was one--landed in Scotland and offered himself to restore himself to power in Scotland. If you have your calculators, you can see that this was over fifty-five years after the Stuarts had been booted out Charlie landed in Scotland because he understaoos that some of the clans had their own reasons for assisting him, but his goal was to restore the Stuart dynasty to the throne in England. In other words, there were many English Jacobites and most Scots had little desire to aid the Jacobite rising. Notwitstanding the viciousness of the Hanoverian slaughter at Colloden and after--or the human toll of the Highland Clearances, it'd be hard to see the Jacobites as offering anything particularly positive. Perhaps due to his time in places like Edinburgh, Burns clearly appreciated the romance but developed a strong for the schemes, as indicated in his rewriting of an older song about the rising Ye Jacobites by name, give an ear, give an ear, Ye Jacobites by name, give an ear, Ye Jacobites by name, Your fautes I will proclaim, Your doctrines I maun blame, you shall hear. What is Right, and What is Wrang, by the law, by the law? What is Right and what is Wrang by the law? What is Right, and what is Wrang? A short sword, and a lang, A weak arm and a strang, for to draw. What makes heroic strife, famed afar, famed afar? What makes heroic strife famed afar? What makes heroic strife? To whet th' assassin's knife, Or hunt a Parent's life, wi' bluidy war? Then let your schemes alone, in the state, in the state, Then let your schemes alone in the state. Then let your schemes alone, Adore the rising sun, And leave a man undone, to his fate. ML YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
On Oct 18, 2009, at 3:43 PM, Dennis Brasky wrote:
Self determination means the oppressed nation BY AND FOR ITSELF
makes decisions concerning its status without feeling the need to
get approval...
And exactly how do 'Marxist Wilsonians think such a granfalloon as a
nation is supposed to make decisions (let alone be feeling
something)? By majority vote in a referendum (by all nationals
anywhere in the world? by nationals within some defined {by who?}
territory? by majority of those nationals? by majority of those
nationals actually voting? by simple or qualified majority?)? By
the voice of a single universally recognized national leader (like the
Dalai Lama)? By seizure of power by or negotiated payoff to a
military junta (like the FLN leadership)? By vote of the United
Nations (like the Javan {alias Indonesian} rulers selfdetermining
themselves in West Papua)? By an assembly of merchants, land
speculators, and slaveholders (like the American Continental
Congress)? By informal democratic popular assemblies formed in the
course of a revolutionary upsurge (1917 Russia)?
No: nations, oppressed or not, make no decisions. Decisions are made
by people, individually or collectively, stupidly or reasonably,
arbitrarily or deliberatively, democratically or autocratically. But
not by hypostatized nations.
Shane Mage
This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures.
Herakleitos of Ephesos
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Re: [Marxism] An interesting take on Robert Burns
You should read some of his obscene verse also. One I vaguely remembver, celebrates the fact that what unites king peasant is that they both fou fou fou. Carrol YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Swans Release: October 19, 2009
Swans Commentary http://www.swans.com/ October 19, 2009 FUNDRAISING TIME: Dear readers, we need to raise $2,500 between now and the end of the year. Without this amount of money (in addition to what we have already received), we won't be able to maintain Swans with the quality and dependability you have grown used to over the years. We must pay for our costs, at the very least. You read Swans and you appreciate our commentaries and the fact that we are an ad-free zone. We do too, but we are shouldering the financial costs. We can't do it ad vitam aeternam. If you wish to continue enjoying Swans, please help us raise $2,500. Ask yourselves the value of our work, and whether you can find a better edited, more trenchant, and thoughtful Web publication that keeps sanity and sound thoughts as first priorities. Without your help, we shan't be able to continue to bring to you and the larger community this cogent bi-weekly collection. Donate now! -- http://www.swans.com/about/donate.html @ @ @ @ @ Note from the Editors: Faced with the staggering dullness of the daily circus played out on the big screen TV, we find it appropriate to begin with some *real* political culture, first with Louis Proyect's superb review of Michael Yates's latest book that examines the tensions between his working- class roots, blue-collar sensibilities, and academic career, and next with Peter Byrne's spirited introduction to storyteller Aleksandar Hemon, a Sarajevan native who immigrated to Chicago and became a renowned writer, drawing often from the political conflicts that besieged his childhood. Fittingly, Charles Marowitz reviews Michael Moore's latest documentary, a blunt indictment of capitalism that according to Marowitz should goad the soporific public into action, and in this vein, Michael Barker once again shows how the conservation movement has been co-opted by powerful capitalists such as Laurance Rockefeller. While Femi Akomolafe, our voice from Africa, presents with his unique style a nasty side of American culture that wants its president's head, Gilles d'Aymery contrasts power, profits, and the ecosystem we are destroying to preserve our NASCAR way of life. Turning the channel to college football, Harvey Whitney demonstrates the length to which universities go to prostitute themselves in misleading game-day advertisements. And a conversation between Jeffery Klaehn and Garry Potter on the balance of individual and structural power is apropos to activist Martin Murie's continued fight for single payer health care and an end to endless war. In the French Corner Graham Lea reviews, in English, the cultural meaning of French *patrimoine* and its profound differences with American Manichaean and Messianic nationalism. Writing in French, Simone Alié-Daram reviews the psychological trauma of Lasthenie de Ferjol syndrome; Marie Rennard, the editor-in-chief of le Coin Français, examines four centuries of Parisian transportation history; Marie-Laetitia Gambié offers a tale combining psychology and surprising medicine; and we publish a famous poem by Barbey d'Aurevilly. We end with *Beginning,* a multilingual poem by Guido Monte, along with your letters, fan and otherwise. As always, please form your OWN opinion, and let your friends (and foes) know about Swans. It's your voice that makes ours grow. # # # # # http://www.swans.com/library/art15/lproy56.html Michael Yates's In and Out of the Working Class - Book Review by Louis Proyect http://www.swans.com/library/art15/pbyrne111.html Talespinning Sarajevo-Chicago - Book Review by Peter Byrne http://www.swans.com/library/art15/cmarow149.html Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story - Film Review by Charles Marowitz http://www.swans.com/library/art15/barker33.html Laurance Rockefeller And Capitalist Conservation - Michael Barker http://www.swans.com/library/art15/femia21.html Understanding Amerikkka - Femi Akomolafe http://www.swans.com/library/art15/ga274.html Contrast - Gilles d'Aymery http://www.swans.com/library/art15/hewhit02.html Weakness, Ineptitude, And Folly: Scientistic Sensationalism and Corporatized Clichés of University Game Day Television Ads - Harvey E. Whitney, Jr. http://www.swans.com/library/art15/klaehn05.html Dimensions Of Power - Jeffery Klaehn and Garry Potter http://www.swans.com/library/art15/murie81.html Health Care Is A Human Right; Warfare Is A Human Wrong - Martin Murie http://www.swans.com/library/art15/glea08.html Le Patrimoine: French Symbolism, and the Triumph of Patriotism over Nationalism - Graham Lea http://www.swans.com/library/art15/salie06.html Histoire d'une pathologie : Le syndrome de Lasthénie de Ferjol - Simone Alié-Daram (FR) http://www.swans.com/library/art15/marier39.html
[Marxism] Glenn Beck goes after real socialists
Fox News Network October 7, 2009 Wednesday BECK: Boy, that sounds positively un-American. Yesterday, we had two stories that seemed like no big deal if you didn't know what was behind them. The first story was about the government getting into Internet regulation. Remember, protect you from the shady Internet blogger trying to scam you into buying the perfect pancake maker. Oh, the government is here just trying to help you. Remember that? Also, the other story was the FTC - not the FCC, but the FTC - they are just getting together for a little lunch, you know, a conference in December, the 1st and 2nd in December. They just want to talk about how they can help journalists do their job. Oh, I would like to have a little speech there, too. They want to know, should there be extra funding for journalists? Should there be tax credits for certain news organizations? Rupert, gravy train is about to come, I'm sure. Should the government be more involved? OK. Remember those two stories here. Now, let me introduce you now to a friend of Mark Lloyd's. In fact, he is also a friend of Van Jones. He founded a little group called Free Press. They are looking for anything but free press. Let me tell you a little bit about the founder, Robert McChesney. He is the former editor of Monthly Review, which he himself has described as one of the most important Marxist publications in the world, let alone the United States. He is a backer of Hugo Chavez, the crackdown on the media, and even suggested that owners of a TV station that was critical of Chavez should be arrested for treason. My, that sounds like Mark Lloyd. I wonder if they know each other. He has said, quote, about the U.S. Any serious effort to reform the media system would have to be necessarily part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself. Also, there is no real answer, but to remove, brick by brick, the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles. Well, why not? We're all socialists now. We need to do whatever we can to limit capitalist propaganda, regulate it, minimize it, and perhaps even eliminate it. Quote The fight against hyper-commercialism becomes especially pronounced in the area of digital communications. Wow, that wouldn't be the Internet, would it? Here is yet another far-left radical who hates capitalism. Now, let me tell you a little bit more about Free Press. Free Press worked with Obama during his to help develop his tech policies. Whoa! What were some of those quotes we just had? And he was there helping develop the tech policies of this White House? Free Press has three confirmed meetings now with Obama's FCC to work on new Internet regulations - Hi, we're from the government, and we're just here to help. The FCC chairman, not to be confused with the diversity czar - this is the chairman of the FCC, Julius Genachowski - chose Free Press spokeswoman, Jen Howard, to be his press secretary. Yes. The Marxist group, the most important Marxist group, possibly in the world, but definitely in America - that person was taken to be his spokesperson? Free Press also co-authored The Structural Imbalance of Talk Radio. They do know Mark Lloyd, because that's the book that Mark Lloyd - and in that book they argued for the government to remedy the problem of conservative voices on talk radio by, among other things, forcing commercial owners who fail to abide by their rules to pay a fee that would subsidize public broadcasting. I said at the beginning, freedom of speech is the most important right, because if I can't meet you with tonight and, in the same breath, let me say this, if Keith Olbermann cannot meet with you every night, if we're not allowed to say things that other people find offensive, if we're not allowed to talk to each other and express opinions, well, then anyone could get away with just about anything, don't you think? Will the press, the actual free press, at least today at - what time is it? Yes, still free today - will they even bother to question a group with a radical Marxist founder based in Marxism? Will they even question that group that wants to drastically change their own industry? You know what? Maybe they'll become interested if McChesney calls a Republican a naughty name. I'm not sure. But let me just say this to members of the press that are ignoring this or thinking, Well, it's no big deal. If you embrace these people, or if you sit down and work with these people, you might as well just go out and purchase your own blindfold and cigarette for the firing squad, because I don't see the difference here. More on Free Press, next. BECK: There is an assault on free speech in this country that nobody really sees coming and nobody is looking into all of the connections. And some of these stories are hidden. They seem harmless. If you want to follow this and more on Free Press and the other
Re: [Marxism] An interesting take on Robert Burns
Yes, indeed. Burns was essentially a rock star. It drove his more respectable patrons to distraction. The man becomes the toast of Edinburgh, but take your eyes off him for a minute and he's out drinking with the disreputable and making poems to barmaids. Those interested is a taste of this side of Burns, can immediately check out the Merry Muses of Caledonia, a collection available for free at http://www.robertburns.org.uk/merrymuses.htm ML YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Swans Release: October 19, 2009
Many of us use checks and stamps about as often now as I get something notarized... A lot of movement fund-raising is done through PayPal. Might I suggest that this might bring in a whole new group that's not contributed. ML YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
Artesian writes: [...] If, however, you're referring to the the type of deal struck by de Klerk, Botha with Mandela, then preserving cultural identity of the minority is a non-issue at best, a joke at worst, as the economic and social power of the minority has been preserved. === The outcome of those negotiations was the dismantling of the legal and political system of apartheid, including the unbanning of the ANC, which was effectively an agreement to replace white rule with a black majority government. It was a concession forced on the apartheid regime by powerful domestic and international pressures. Because it was a deal resulting from a military stalemate rather than the ANC dictating terms in the aftermath of a successful armed struggle, it necessarily required reciprocal assurances by the Congress that Afrikaner assets would not be seized nor regime officials prosecuted for their crimes. Otherwise, there have been no deal. In this context, I consider that the extension of political and other democratic rights to the black masses was an historic advance, even though the ANC, like most other national liberation movements, subsequently fell well short of the expectations of it's active supporters. I'd be surprised if you really viewed the fall of apartheid as a non-issue at best, a joke at worst. You didn't oppose the enfranchisement of the black majority and the legalization of the ANC because these represented less than a socialist revolution which would have economically and politically expropriated the white ruling class, did you? You wouldn't now reverse that deal if you could, would you? YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Glenn Beck goes after real socialists
I hope Beck keeps this up. Can't hurt MR sales!! Thanks for posting this, Louis. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Bill Moyers on the Financial Bailout as Soft Coup
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/143209/bill_moyers:_was_the_financial_bailout_just_a_slick,_friendly_takeover_of_the_federal_government?page=entire YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Iran blames west for deadly suicide bombing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/18/iran-suicide-bomb-revenge-vow Iran blames west for deadly suicide bombing Iran vows revenge after blast kills six Revolutionary Guards commanders and 37 others in Sistan-Baluchistan province * Robert Tait * guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 October 2009 19.35 BST Iran's Revolutionary Guards today vowed to take revenge after blaming Britain and the US for a suicide bombing that killed six of its commanders and 37 others in one of the country's most unstable provinces. The attack, which killed the deputy commander of the guard's ground forces, General Noor Ali Shooshtari, and Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh, the provincial commander for Sistan-Baluchistan, inflicted Iran's worst military casualties in years and raised questions of intelligence and security failures in a region long blighted by a violent Sunni insurgency. A Sunni group, Jundallah (soldiers of God), claimed responsibility and said it was a response to the constant crime of the regime in Baluchistan. It named the bomber as Abdol Vahed Mohammadi Saravani. Iranian media said the attacker had detonated a bomb belt as Revolutionary Guard commanders arrived for a meeting with tribal elders in a sports hall in Pishin, near Iran's frontier with Pakistan. It was the latest in a series of gatherings meant to foster unity in Sistan-Baluchistan, Iran's poorest province, after a spate of attacks. Those caught in the explosion had to be taken to hospitals more than 150 miles away because Pishin lacked proper medical facilities. Some are understood to have died en route. The Revolutionary Guards condemned the bombing as the work of terrorists supported by the great Satan America and its ally Britain, and promised to respond. Not in the distant future we will take revenge … and Baluchis will clear this region from terrorists and criminals, read a statement released to the semi-official Fars news agency. The statement echoed another call for revenge by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former guard. The criminals will soon get the response for their anti-human crimes, the official news agency IRNA quoted him as saying. State television cited an informed source as saying that Britain was to blame by organising, supplying equipment and employing professional terrorists. A US state department spokesman, Ian Kelly, dismissed allegations of American involvement as completely false, adding: We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives. Over the last five years it has become a standard Iranian position that the US-British alliance is a source of unrest in Sistan-Baluchistan and other provinces. Officials point to the presence of Nato forces in neighbouring Afghanistan as a launchpad for Anglo-American interference. While Iran has blamed Britain and the US for previous attacks on its territory, the latest allegation came as negotiations were due to resume in Vienna over its nuclear programme, which western governments fear may be designed to build an atomic bomb. Iranian officials have previously linked Jundallah with al-Qaida, although other sources have suggested the group may have connections with the Pakistani Taliban. In Tehran, the Iranian foreign minister summoned the Pakistani charge d'affaires to complain. The attack appeared to be a direct challenge to the Revolutionary Guards, who took over direct responsibility for Sistan-Baluchistan's security last April. The guards have taken an increasingly prominent role in Iranian affairs in recent times under the auspices of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Jundallah has taken up arms on behalf of Sistan-Baluchistan's Sunni Baluch population, which it says suffers discrimination at the hands of Iran's Shia rulers. Commanded by Abdolmalek Rigi, the group claims to have killed more than 400 Iranian troops during its insurgency. It claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 25 people at a Shia mosque in Zahedan, Sistan-Baluchistan's provincial capital, last May. The authorities responded by hanging 13 group members they said had been involved. Sistan-Baluchistan lies on a major drug transit route from Afghanistan. Nearly 4,000 Iranian security officers are believed to have been killed in clashes with smugglers since 1979. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] General Strike Comics: A Million Ghosts Rising
The People's Pugilist, Carl Sandburg... www.GeneralStrikeComics.com http://www.generalstrikecomics.com/ keep well, christopher YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Capitalism as an Infectious Disease
Joseph Schumpeter once wrote, the budget is the skeleton of the state stripped of all misleading ideologies. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1954. The Economic Crisis of the Tax State. International Economic Papers, 4; reprinted in Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1991. The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, ed. Richard Swedberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press): pp. 99-140. Yesterday's post dealt with the way that budget choices create pressures that shape pension funds' choices, something like the way that people in desperate states make decisions that they would not make under ordinary circumstances. However, the skeleton ranges across the body of socitey. For example, ordinary people often must depend their pensions fall victim to a similar logic. In fact, one of the many objectives of the privatization of Social Security was to make workers identify with the objectives of capitalism. Andy Stern of SEIU suggests how that kind of thinking even infects the supposedly progressive union movement. Here is the exchange from Business Week: Q: Has the recession led you to rethink the way you operate your union? What is the SEIU doing to prepare for a recovery? A: Well, it's made us appreciate that we have to be better partners with our state governments and employers in terms of efficiency. It makes us appreciate that our pension funds are tied to the success of the economy. And it makes us very much want to come together with other Americans and employers and people in the nongovernmental part of our country and say we need to create a 21st-century American economic plan so Team USA can compete and win. Bartiromo, Maria. 2009. Union Leader Andy Stern on the Future of Big Labor. Business Week (28 September). http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_39/b4148000246591.htm -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marxism Digest, Vol 72, Issue 43
Hate to appear like a weirdo on this point but there is the phenomenon of quantum back action. Indeed the forming of interference patterns even when electrons are fired one at a time through one of two open slits, an action that ought to produce no such interfence(diffraction), ends up with diffractive properties. An article (way above my head) is at http://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/rhett.html - Original Message - From: marxism-requ...@lists.econ.utah.edu To: John A Imani johnaim...@earthlink.net Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 7:35 AM Subject: Marxism Digest, Vol 72, Issue 43 Send Marxism mailing list submissions to marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to marxism-requ...@lists.econ.utah.edu You can reach the person managing the list at marxism-ow...@lists.econ.utah.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of Marxism digest... No virus found in this incoming message Checked by PC Tools AntiVirus (6.0.0.19 - 10.004.069). http://www.pctools.com/free-antivirus/ Today's Topics: 1. MASSIF [rough draft of an original poem] (Max Clark) 2. Re: Is Goldstone the tipping point for Israel? (Gary MacLennan) 3. A Serious Man; The Informant! (Louis Proyect) 4. Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (jayroth6) 5. Re: Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (Greg McDonald) 6. Re: Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (Mark Lause) 7. Re: Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (Jeff) 8. Re: Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (Shane Mage) 9. Re: Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (Mark Lause) 10. Re: Internationale in Irish (sobuadha...@hushmail.com) 11. Re: self determination for oppressors (Dennis Brasky) 12. Re: self determination for oppressors (Shane Mage) 13. Pension Fund Fraud: The Wall Street Journal vs. Unions (michael perelman) 14. Social protests expected in Peru for next week (Juan Fajardo) 15. Australian Socialist Alliance wins first local gov't seat (Ratbag Media) 16. Re: Australian Socialist Alliance wins first local gov't seat (Alan Bradley) 17. Re: Australian Socialist Alliance wins first local gov't seat (Ratbag Media) 18. Re: Internationale in Irish (Paddy Apling) 19. Re: self determination for oppressors (Marv Gandall) 20. Re: self determination for oppressors (Louis Proyect) 21. Re: self determination for oppressors (S. Artesian) 22. Re: self determination for oppressors (S. Artesian) 23. Re: self determination for oppressors (Marv Gandall) 24. Re: self determination for oppressors (Bhaskar Sunkara) 25. Re: self determination for oppressors (Louis Proyect) 26. Re: self determination for oppressors (Marv Gandall) ___ Marxism mailing list Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Extract Slumdog: Hollywood's Counter-Revolutionary Road
Sunday, October 18, 2009 Slumdogs, Extracts, and Fascism At The Movies by Caleb T. Maupin The right-wing preaches that Hollywood, California is Leftist/Marxist occupied territory. It is true that there have been a great deal of films with a leftist bent in recent times, not including Michael Moore's documentary film Capitalism: A Love Story. It is indeed true that the recent film Surrogates has an anti-capitalist and consumerist message, as do other great films like V for Vendetta and Revolutionary Road. However, recently Hollywood has released two films of a racist, sexist, and survival of the fittest nature that preach anything but a leftist message. These films, though poorly put together, have been raised as great art by the ruling class and treated as such, one of them winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards of 2009. Slumdog Millionaire Speaks for Billionaires The film Slumdog Millionaire is a right-wing, pro-capitalist rant. While it imagines that it is The Grapes of Wrath or Schindler's List, it is simply a right-wing propaganda piece with epic content and a Horatio Alger plot. The film portrays a young, impoverished boy in modern India. When Muslims attack his family, the government sits by and lets it occur. He travels throughout India in poverty, and is taken advantage of by a man who tries to blind him. The man attempts this in order to take advantage of those who would give him charity with their compassion because of his condition. The Message: Compassion rewards cruelty and the weak. Of course, through his free will and intuition the main character triumphs and wins on India's version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, but he is tortured by the Indian government, because they refuse to recognize he is capable of success. He is punished brutally for succeeding, by the supposedly lesser human beings who run the state. John Galt would probably wet his pants with happiness at this crude, hateful, right-wing film. The main character's brother turns to crime, and ends up dead, of course. He could have got by honestly and become a millionaire like his brother, but he broke the social contract and became a criminal. So, of course, he deserves to die because of personal choices. Two particular sections in this film portray the disgusting atmosphere as blatantly as possible. In one section of the film, the boy is being beaten. A tourist couple from the U.S. stops the man from beating him. The innocent John Galt child cries out: This is what the real India is all about. The U.S. couple looks down on him with smiles, and hands him a wad of U.S. federal reserve currency, and tell him: This is what the real America is all about. They rub him on the head, as any good compassionate imperialist carrying their white man's burden would. The Message: The white western civilization of the U.S. is an honest, free market society, in comparison to India, a nation depicted in the film as filled barbaric brown skinned people who do not have free market ideas. In the second sequence the main character looks out from a construction site at a city and speaks of how great it is becoming now that western capitalists have come. The Message: Western Capitalism and Domination is saving India from its ways. Slumdog Millionaire foams with racism and colonialism to its core. It tells us that India is a pre-capitalist hell-hole, that is gradually being saved by the free market and Imperialism. The film glorifies western capitalism and depicts the brown-skinned people of South-East Asia as barbaric and ignorant, in need of the guidance and domination of western Capitalists. The film portrays compassion, sympathy, and such as a character flaw, and champions ruthlessness and the rule of law. Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Ludwig Von Mises could not have written a better propaganda film. The worst part of this, is that some on the left are confused, and somehow think the film is an exposure of the poverty created by capitalism. They don't seem to notice that the thrust of the film is the lie that capitalism destroys poverty and saves indigenous people from their supposed inherent idiocy and socialistic tendencies that justify imperialism. Another film could show the same horrific conditions, yet champion the Naxalite Rebels of the countryside or the worker's movements of the industrial centers. These movements do have a chance of stopping these atrocities, and are motivated by a desire for liberation, not capitalist greed. But this is not the message the film portrays. This film is a product of the Revolutionary Right-Wing that proclaims that the world must go backwards toward good capitalism. The admiration of western civilization, the demonizing of the indigenous peoples, and the Neitschzian ubermenchen theme make this film the kind of magnum opus to expect from Leni Riefenstahl or D.W. Griffith. Extract of Exploitation Unlike Slumdog, this fascist piece
Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors
I wish I could say it's been a while since I've read such a heartfelt, soul-stirring, homage to reformism as Marvin's, but unfortunately I hear it all too frequently. First, a correction to what Marvin writes: I'd be surprised if you really viewed the fall of apartheid as a non-issue at best, a joke at worst. Marvin has a bit of trouble with what people actually write, and he tends to get things a bit twisted. I never wrote that the fall of apartheid is a non-issue or a joke. What I wrote was that if Marvin was referring to the deal between Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish workers in occupied Palestine as a compromise along the lines of the deal in South Africa, then preserving cultural identity of the minority is a...joke. Preserving the cultural identity of theAfrikaners in South Africa is a non-issue or a joke, because the deal that was cut was a deal to preserve the economic, class power of the minority, not the right to speak Afrikaner. No such deal can create the democratic, secular Palestine Marvin desires, because those deals preserve and extend the economic power and privilege of the minority through the process of accommodation. No, I don't consider the end of apartheid a joke-- never said any such thing-- but the sort of Mandela-de Klerk deal does not bring democracy, or secularism, or socialism. Regarding the history of the ANC and the struggle in South Africa, Marvin would do well to look at the COST of the deal to the struggle in South Africa-- what was lost in terms of the prospects for revolution. Does anyone think the Afrikaners made this deal out of the goodness of their hearts; a sudden burst of Christian morality? The deal was made for economic reasons-- greater access to the world markets; eliminate the considerable financial burdens of running an apartheid state; and most importantly pre-empting the possibility of actual revolution and expropriation of property by a movement who's real strength was in the organizations of the miners and workers. And that cost is being paid right now in the deteriorating conditions for those living in the townships. - Original Message - From: Marv Gandall marvgand...@videotron.ca To: David Schanoes sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 8:40 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] self determination for oppressors YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
