Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] YouTube - Chaka Khan's Night in Tunisia
In a message dated 1/20/2011 2:12:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31450@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: YouTube - Chaka Khan's Night in Tunisia _http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3818706/10453353_ (http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3818706/10453353) Reply Unbelievable. I wanted to marry Chaka but she did not know I existed. I love her man and her body . . . of work with Rufus. I get sick to the stomach thinking about Rufus featuring Chaka. I can think of about 20 of her songs. After Steve Wonder got them on the big charts with Tell Me Something Good I was all in. Then she got better. Her rendition of African rhythm and European harmonic structure is American music, which fortunately is no longer just called black music. This is good stuff. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] YouTube - Chaka Khan's Night in Tunisia
In a message dated 1/20/2011 2:45:58 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, waistli...@aol.com writes: In a message dated 1/20/2011 2:12:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31450@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: YouTube - Chaka Khan's Night in Tunisia _http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3818706/10453353_ (http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3818706/10453353) Reply Unbelievable. I wanted to marry Chaka but she did not know I existed. I love her man and her body . . . of work with Rufus. I get sick to the stomach thinking about Rufus featuring Chaka. I can think of about 20 of her songs. After Steve Wonder got them on the big charts with Tell Me Something Good I was all in. Then she got better. Her rendition of African rhythm and European harmonic structure is American music, which fortunately is no longer just called black music. This is good stuff. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The end of the imperialist epoch
In a message dated 1/18/2011 10:04:36 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31450@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Hear , hear, . . . . CB Thanks CB. The intent was a general summary agreeable of the broadest Marxist framework and divergent views of Lenin's meaning of imperialism. The past decade of discussion of neo-liberalism as a regime is akin to saying neo-imperialism. Does today's Latin America represent colonies or neo-colonies of American imperialism? Or political states occupying a certain position within the new financial and military architecture? Colonialism was a specific economic-social-political relation rather than just big states, little states or no state, oppressing peoples and oppressed peoples, etc. A couple of days ago was the 50 anniversary of the assassination of Lumumba and occasion to rethink the question of transition to the neo-colonial state and its subsequent development. The legacy of colonialism is alive and well in the Congo and throughout much of the former colonial world. Yet, this is not ones father's imperialism. II. The investment banker and scholar Henry C.K. Liu, who is more communist than 90% of American Marxists, called today's imperialism neo-imperialism in the context of a decade of writings focused on the new form of finance capital. Liu deploys concepts such as capital as a notional value meaning an imaginary value or lacking the surplus value dimensions that characterized the financial-industrial capital of which Lenin wrote. Liu calls speculative capital speculative finance, buttressed by a new non-banking financial architecture and operating as a notional value in a monetary system of fiat money or rather currency. His premise is that financial architecture is by definition different from economy that is production of products, although the interactive of both must be examined in the concrete. Thus he speaks of monetary policy - not as a thing in itself, but as a distinct political form of rule over the economy. I think. One would have to ask him exactly what he means but his meaning seems crystal clear to me - a decade later, thousands of hours of reading later and shifting through his all of his writings. Liu is a communist with money. I mean communist in the sense of the movement that erupted with the dissolution of primitive communism. Liu calls for a system of sovereign birth credits - entitlement or economic communism in the here and now, allowing the individual a lifetime of socially necessary means of life. Being born with an entitlement as the social contract, means a mode of distribution not requiring a previous or prior contribution of labor as the means for consumption. It is left to society to reorganize itself to meet all it reproduction needs. A freaking banker is more progressive than many of the communists and Marxists. All of this is part of describing the new world we face and practical solutions. Neo-imperialism or neo-finance capital, might be the term we are seeking. Sovereign birth credits or birth rights as the mode of production and specific architecture of economic communism is something to think about. Go figure. Waistline. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The end of the imperialist epoch
Historically, only capitalist countries which have intervened militarily to establish settler colonies or to set up puppet regimes to facilitate the exploitation of these territories by their own corporations and have been characterized as imperialist by Marxists and others. In a message dated 1/14/2011 9:10:59 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, __shmage@pipeline.com_ (mailto:_shm...@pipeline.com) _ writes: Are you saying that China today is not capitalist? That Han settlement in Tibet is not massively sponsored by the Chinese regime? That the Tibet Autonomous Region does not have a puppet government? That Chinese corporations are not heavily present in Tibet? (and were not even talking about Sinkiang!) Comment Obviously the modern Chinese state is not a SETTLER STATE or seeking to secure or maintain a colony established by settlers. Treating imperialism in this era of political domination of speculative finance as a general imperialism defeats the mean of this tread: the end of the imperialist epoch. Qualifying and quantifying the meaning of imperial-colonialism is part of asking the question end of the imperialist epoch. Lenin's Hobson unraveling of modern imperialism of his era was useful because a real imperialism was examined in its economic and political features. Lenin spoke of monopolies, finance capital (financial-industrial capital); hundreds of millions of slaves of a direct colonial system and the fight amongst direct colonizers for a re-division of an already divided world. This fight for spheres of influence was based in the national productive logic of huge multinational state structures. The history of colonialism - at least in general Marxist terms, has meant more than imperial outreach or a lack of rights of those beings colonized. Imperialism of the epoch we are leaving has meant an end to the direct colonial system; the end of neo colonialism and the imperial colonization based on financial-industrial capital. The post WW II period and into the 1980's saw the rise and fall of the colony and neo colonialism as these political forms of rule expressed financial-industrial capital. Vietnam Liberation and unification in 1976 is a world book mark on an epoch that began with our revolution of 1776. This does not mean no one of earth is oppressed and exploited through world bourgeois production relations. Rather, a specific form of imperialism -colonialism, has been superseded. America inaugurated an epochal wave of colonial revolutions that would span two hundred years. We settled our national liberation struggle against the British Empire - with a Slave Oligarchy intact seeking its distinct anti-colonial interest imperialist interest, and then settled the war against the slave system. American finance capital emerged from the Civil War facing a world with colonial states as direct appendage of imperialist state structures preventing its free flow of finance capital beyond Latin America. The First World Imperialist War shook imperialism - the direct colonial system, to its foundations, with the Soviets breaching the political and economic bourgeois imperialist chain. The political basis for imperialist war in the past century, rather than the economic impetus for war under capitalism, (anarchy of production with war production being a profit center) was the fight for colonies or spheres of influence based on colonial possessions. The fight between imperialist states was not over one huge state colonizing another but over the colonies represented by these massive states. This form of imperialism is very much part of the question end of the imperialist epoch. The Second World Imperialist War sounded the death knell of direct colonialism. The defeat of German fascism was the last gasp of a form of finance capital politically dominated by industrial capital seeking to recreate the direct colonial system. For the German state direct colonialism meant revitalization of economic and social life - the thousand year rule, or in lay person terms French wine, Polish hams and Slavic slave women. American finance capital - emerging 50 years before Lenin's Imperialism, sought to recreate the political world leading the charge to wipe direct colonialism from the face the earth. American financial imperialism sought to defeat its enemies and identified them as direct colonizers of the world. It's slogan was national independence and self determination of nations up to and including the formation of separate states. This battering ram against the direct colonial system explains why Uncle Ho armies entered Hanoi at the close of WW II with CIA in tow playing the Star Spangled Banner. Then of course came the policy change and the Cold War. This era of financial-industrial capital -
[Marxism-Thaxis] Lougher: politics of insanity. if words have no meaning what is government?
There is a general rule about the way society treats criminals: place responsibility for antisocial acts on the individual, thus absolving society from blame. The mismatch between society's attitude toward heroes and criminals rests in society's claim of credit on heroes and rejection of responsibility for criminals. A criminal is one who has betrayed societal values by violating a prescribed code of conduct, who is deranged but not legally insane, a deviant, an anomaly, a manifestation of social disease, a virus against the system, a unit malfunction and a personal malfeasance. Adolf Hitler was labeled a madman to protect German culture and fascism, notwithstanding the curious fact that Hitler rose to power in Germany in a discernible sociocultural context. Even organized warfare must be conducted within the limits of regulated behavior. War crimes and crimes against humanity are not tolerated. Yet market fundamentalism argues for wholesale deregulation to allow economic crimes against humanity. Charles Ponzi was deemed an unprincipled conman to insulate unregulated capitalism itself from being revealed as a systemic Ponzi scheme. Capitalism's bad apples: It's the barrel that's rotten; By Henry C K Liu. This article appeared in AToL on August 1, 2002. _http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/DH01Dj01.html_ (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/DH01Dj01.html) Comment The politics of insanity: quickie notes. Twenty people were shot, and six of them died, in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 8, during the attempted assassination of the Democratic Congresswoman. The shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, was captured on the spot and reported to be a psychiatrically disabled person with a recent history of fascination with right-wing rhetoric and abstract thinking posing such questions as: if words have no meaning what is government? The answer is simple: an executive committee for the ruling class. This in turn raises the question of the role of the state as an organization of violence. In politics the answer to a political question is by definition partisan, involving class outlook and ideology. Lougher's question is political. He is no lone gunman expressing an aberration in American society, but an individual that choose a division of labor casting him as assassin of a political representative rather than unarmed Mexican immigrants, seeking economic relief in America. Lougher was very political with his ideas and ideology being shaped in a discernible sociocultural context. Whether Lougher is diagnosed as being a psychiatrically disabled person, - whatever that means according to whom, has not prevented pundits and layperson from contextualizing his actions against a backdrop of economic and political crisis. And political and ideological outlook. Everyone speaks of Lougher in the context of Arizona, meaning Arizona expresses and represents something discernable in the national body politic rather than geographic location. Arizona is Senator John McCain and his presidential bid under the banner of Country (White people) First, and focal point of the fascist anti-immigration movement. Every politically aware person in America understands this. What is not understood is the class sociology of a Lougher and the role he cast in political history. Arizona is in the forefront of the fascist anti-immigration movement. The anti-immigration movement is at the center stage of a political environment shaped by the impact of qualitatively new means of production; the transformation of the state; the militarization of the economy and society; the rapid and accelerating implementation of the legal means to suppress individual dissent and seize control of the government; and the changing character of the social struggle. Where in the past the religious right sought to organize and propagandize in a period when globalization had still not widely affected American society, the anti-immigration movement propagandizes an American people devastated by the effects of advanced globalization, increasingly marginalized economically and politically, and bewildered by the world in which they now live. The medium of anti-immigration has become the means by which a section of the American people is being organized and mobilized as a social base to support the further transformation of the government and society necessary to facilitate the penetration of today's form of global capital in the world's societies, and to prepare for and contain its inevitable effects. Lougher was not immune to real time politics and ideological assault by fascists upon the national body politic. If words have no meaning what is government? strikes me as a constitutionalist argument, harkening back to the passionate pleas of the Slave Oligarchy demanding their constitutionally protect
[Marxism-Thaxis] Bill Fletcher, Jr. Responding to the 'Letter to the Left Establishment'
Letter to the Left Establishment Bill Fletcher, Tom Hayden and The Letter === 1. Responding to the 'Letter to the Left Establishment' regarding Obama By Bill Fletcher, Jr. A so-called Letter to the Left Establishment critical of the Obama administration has been circulating for a few days. The letter is a bit odd because if you do not read it carefully, it appears that the people named in the first paragraph, including yours truly, are actually asking people to sign on. In reality the Letter is a criticism of several individuals who offered varying degrees of support to the candidacy of President Obama in 2008. On the grounds of confusion alone the Letter should be withdrawn and the signatories should request that their names be removed. But what is odder to me is that the Letter has all sorts of implications. The Letter calls upon those named in the first paragraph to criticize the policies of the Obama administration, as if we have not. It implies that we have been silent about major decisions of the Obama administration that have been wrong. It recites a list of decisions, approaches, etc., by the Obama administration as if any of this is new to those of us identified in the first paragraph. None of this is new. And the authors of the Letter should know that. In fact, if they happened to have been in a cave for the last couple of years and did not keep up with the news, they could have Googled the names of most of the people listed in the first paragraph and found that we have been generally outspoken in our criticisms as well as involved in organizing to put pressure on the administration. For these reasons i have been trying to figure out what the intent of the Letter actually is. I am not going to speak for anyone else. In 2008 i reluctantly came to the conclusion that a position of critical support of Obama was the correct stand. Reluctantly because i had a number of concerns about Obama, most of which have been realized. Nevertheless i was impressed by the congealing of forces that i believed had the potential to do something progressive in the political realm irrespective of the actions of Obama-the-individual. I actually still believe that this is possible and not too late. In 2008, i and several others mentioned in the Letter also suggested that if there was no pressure from the Left and progressives on Obama, assuming he was elected, that we would find ourselves in deep trouble. In fact, people used to joke with me immediately before and immediately after the November 2008 election because i would be asked how much of a honeymoon period Obama should receive and my answer was always the same: 24 hours. I insisted, as did many of my colleagues, that we could not, in effect, give Obama any honeymoon period and that pressure had to start from the beginning. We were correct. The Letter reads as if those named in the first paragraph have been sitting on their hands or standing at the gates refusing to permit the masses to pass through and challenge Obama. I am not sure whether the authors are standing in some parallel universe, but in this one i see no evidence of that at all. There are differences, some over tactics while others over strategy, among those named in the first paragraph, but precisely for that reason it is odd that the names would all be thrown together as if someone were actually trying to stir up confusion and promote disinformation. I don't know, but i have actually seen a film much like this before. So, assuming that there is loving intent from the authors--and i am certainly not critical of the signatories--then i would say, i agree with many of the criticisms they have offered of the Obama administration; i have offered many of those criticisms already; i have been active, as have most of my colleagues, in trying to engage liberal and progressive social forces in the need to both combat the political Right as well as put the pressure on the Democrats; and, guess what? I will continue to, and i am assuming that my colleagues will as well. Oh, and while i am at it, one thing that the authors of the Letter did not address was the question of the African American electorate. I don't know about you, but how we handle the question of this administration is particularly dicey when the African American electorate feels, overwhelmingly, that Obama is under an intense racist assault from the political Right (which is, as you know, quite correct). This basic question of the African American electorate and huge portions of the Latino electorate means that our electoral tactics in the coming two years will have to be handled very carefully, even while we put the pressure on this administration and struggle against its defense of warmed over neo-liberalism. It might have been a good idea, and this is only a
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Fate of a Cold War Vestige
On Dec 13, 2010, at 2:07 PM, c b wrote: ...It is something of a law of history that sooner or later all empires must collapse. ^ CB: See _Dialectics of Nature_ by Frederick Engels. _Everything_ has a beginning , middle and end. A mobius strip has none of those aspects. Nothing lasts forever. The universe lasts forever. Shane Mage Reply Nothing lasts forever by definition. Precisely because nothing is temporal to the human senses and exists outside a definite point in human understanding. That is why it is called nothing. Nothing is a concept of the unknown. No one knows and can know how long the universe, as we understand it . . . lasts. Maybe the universe collapses upon itself and become a new manifestation of something. One thing is certain: nothing lasts forever, however one understand nothing. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] James Petras - The Democratic Party Debacle and the Dem...
In a message dated 12/6/2010 12:58:32 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Lack of a Soviet Union contributes to this. The SU was more of the Center-Left's backbone than most of the left realized. Reply So very true. Petras time frame is 30 years and much has changed in 30 years. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Stoop down, baby
In a message dated 12/1/2010 10:02:07 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuYdZMoqD7U_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuYdZMoqD7U) Comment This is my understanding of the proletarian REVOLUTION. WL. Stoop down, baby Let your daddy see Stoop down, baby Let your daddy see You've got something down there, baby Worryin' the hell out of me ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Stoop down, baby
In a message dated 12/1/2010 12:46:59 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, __rdum...@autodidactproject.org_ (mailto:_rdum...@autodidactproject.org) _ (_mailto:rdum...@autodidactproject.org_ (mailto:rdum...@autodidactproject.org) )writes: This is the funniest thing I remember you writing. I'm trying to figure out though which one is the proletariat. I would hate to associate the capitalist class with All That Ass. Comment Somewhere, I have a copy of Merry Christmas Baby by Ollie, former lead singer of the Temptations. One of the greats is on the guitar but I forget their name at the moment. The real proletariat is the one stooping down. OK. Me. . . . man, I have always enjoyed looking up to see bottom. I guess this is beneath the underclass. My cash flow was cool but my mind has always been in poverty and on the bottom brother. Hey . . . I hit 10.5 on the glossary and yes, it is a propaganda tract. I am not an original thinker or writer. Merry Christmas Baby. I always loved the way baby can be non gender and/or gender depending on the specific context and tonal quality of the voice. Victory to the proletariat on the bottom, top, and beneath the underclass. :-) Wl. PS. Ralph has his thang set when you respond to his writing it goes to him as an individual instead of the list. To me that is fucked up. Change your thang brother. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] At The Christmas Ball - the classic
The classic _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcuvlIgSj0Yfeature=related_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcuvlIgSj0Yfeature=related) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] At The Christmas Ball - the classic
This is the real shit. _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stj-zPVW_Hk_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stj-zPVW_Hk) “Everything for Christmas.” And “Love comes with Christmas” _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exmE_FyVFKAfeature=related_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exmE_FyVFKAfeature=related) Then there is the Whispers. Don't do this. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Charles Brown: Merry Christmas Baby Please Come Home F...
Lou Rawls Merry Christmas Baby with the historical big band sound is classic. _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtw3lXjhujk_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtw3lXjhujk) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
In a message dated 11/28/2010 2:27:18 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _jann...@gmail.com_ (mailto:jann...@gmail.com) writes: What you haven't done is make any coherent argument that would convince me that the substance has changed that much during the past 130 years. Of course there are those who have made the quantitative argument but you didn't do that either here. CJ Reply Substance of what? Finance capital remains fianance capital but it is not the financial industrial capital of the time of Lenin. Here's something from 2002. WL. The dangers of derivatives By Henry C K Liu Recession in advanced economies, induced by the oil shock of 1973, pushed transnational banks to find borrowers in developing economies to accommodate petro-dollar recycling. That marked the beginning of finance globalization which, among other trends, replaced foreign aid with foreign loans to developing countries. In the beginning, the petro-dollar recycling was merely to compensate the developing nations for the sudden rise in oil prices. Later, the surplus oil money not absorbed by Western markets was pushed on beguiled Third World governments as petro-dollar loans for development, leading the developing world into a bottomless abyss of foreign debt. Not only was the anticipated growth in the developing world not realized by foreign-debt-driven exports, debt repayment became increasingly punitive on the domestic economies as lender nations adopted anti-inflationary measures by the end of the 1970s. Negotiations between borrowing countries and major international bank creditors were intermediated by International Monetary Fund (IMF) endorsement of structural adjustment (austerity) programs in borrowing countries that spelled reduced government social spending, currency devaluation and export promotion policies that distorted and reversed domestic development. Domestic austerity became the ticket to new foreign loans for servicing old foreign loans, and the servicing of the new loans in turn required more domestic austerity, driving Third World economies toward a downward spiral of accelerating contraction and deeper foreign indebtedness. But the oppressive pressure from the IMF in the 1980s was not anywhere near as severe as that after the financial crises of the 1990s. The financial crises faced by newly industrialized economies (NIEs) in the 1990s were significantly different from the foreign debt crises in the developing countries in the previous decade. Different forms of foreign funds flowed to different recipients in developing countries during the two periods. More importantly, derivatives emerged as an integral part of funds flow in the 1990s. Derivatives played an unprecedented key role in the Asian financial crisis of 1997, alongside the growth of fund flows to Asian NIEs, as part of financial globalization in unregulated global foreign exchange, capital and debt markets. Derivatives facilitate the growth in private fund flows by unbundling the risks associated with financial vehicles, such as bank loans, stocks, bonds and direct physical investment, and reallocating the risks more efficiently by expanding the distribution and the level of aggregate risk. They also facilitate efforts by many financial entities to raise their risk-to-capital ratios to dodge regulatory safeguards, manipulate accounting rules and evade taxation. Foreign exchange forwards and swaps are used to hedge against floating exchange rates as well as to speculate on fixed exchange rate vulnerability, while total return swaps (TRS) are used to capture carry trade profit from interest rate differential between pegged currencies. Structured notes, also known as hybrid instruments, which are the combination of a credit market instrument, such as a bond or note, with a derivative such as an option or futures-like contract, are used to circumvent accounting rules and prudential regulations in order to offer investors higher, though riskier, returns. Viewed at the macroeconomic level, derivatives first make the economy more susceptible to financial crisis and then quicken and deepen the downturn once the crisis begins. Since investors can only be seduced to higher risk by raising the return on higher risk, the quest for high return raises the aggregate risk in the financial system. But investors always demand a profit above their risk exposure which will leave some residual risk unfunded in the financial system. It is in fact a socialization of unfunded risk with a privatization of the incremental commensurate returns. (_http://www.atimes.com/global-econ/DE23Dj01.html_ (http://www.atimes.com/global-econ/DE23Dj01.html) ) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
In a message dated 11/26/2010 8:20:46 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _pegdobb...@gmail.com_ (mailto:pegdobb...@gmail.com) writes: So am I to hope my children are less bamboozled by SW than we by SV? My son tells me Netflix is useful to him and has higher earnings(that's SV, right?) than USS Comrade My intent was not to ignore your question. I am a regular user of Netflix, with specific grips about which movies are regulated to mail and not available for instant play. Their mix of models seems to run behind our technology capacity and the needs of consumers. My comments were meant to be on the level of changes - qualitative, in the meaning of system - finance capital today, rather than during the time of Lenin. Posing this thread as Did Lenin predict implies no fundamental changes in the actual functioning of finance capital. Finance capital once referred to banking capital and earlier merchant capital, in my opinion. I offer as proof of qualitative changes in the functioning of finance capital the rise of a new post 1973 rise - to be exact, of NON BANKING financial architecture. The quality that has changed is the substance of modern finance capital that is outside of and evolves based on detachment from production of surplus value. In my opinion a form of wealth can change qualitatively before the production relations of a society leap forward. The form of wealth of bourgeois society has changed. Wealth as a property of the ruling class has not changed. This happened as the leap - transition, from feudalism to capitalism. The primary form of private property as the feudal relation was land as opposed to ownership of tools or means of production. What began the breakdown of feudalism was the transition in the form of wealth from land - as primary, to gold or movable property. Wealth today is a very super symbolic abstract thing not riveted to gold or any tangible. This is the change. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Marx on the proletariat as ruling class
What did Marx write on the prospect of political and economic transition between capitalist and communist society? Quote The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word 'people' with the word 'state'. Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. (End quote) Taken from Section IV., Critique of the Gotha Program, here presented is Marx definitive statement on the revolutionary dictatorship of the pro letariat. II. Marx does in fact investigate the economic content of transition Between capitalist and communist society . . . a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. He does this is section 1, subtitle: 3. The emancipation of labor demands the promotion of the instruments of labor to the common property of society and the co-operative regulation of the total labor, with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labor. In this section Marx unravels the meaning of economic - not political, transition to communist society based on the state of development of productive forces and the value relations as both existed at the time of this writing. One should read this section for themselves. Critique was written April or early May, 1875 and has in mind the state of development of means of production at the front curve of industrial capital development as opposed to the back of the curve in the colonies and less developed countries, still struggle under political feudalism. III. If one agree with Marx formulation of the political content of the period of transition between capitalist and communist society, which in plain American English is called the organization of the proletariat as ruling class, discourse tend to fall on the issue of the economic content of this transition, which is determined - in my opinion, by the degree of development of means of production and decay of the value relation. Revolution in the means of production and the rise of a technology regime evolving in antagonism with the OLD mode of exchange (DIVISION OF LABOR) - based on commodity equivalents, define the economic content of our current period of transition. The political form of the state remains as Marx stated: a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. What has changed qualitatively, is the durability of the commodity form itself. Waistline ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
In a message dated 11/22/2010 11:29:38 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _jann...@gmail.com_ (mailto:jann...@gmail.com) writes: However, I will point out that a lot of the same things were said about the main players in 1907-8--that they were mysterious, behind-the-scenes people only acting out of self-interest, that what they did was out of control, that because of technological innovation in finance and banking, too much was being done in very little time and it was out of control. Reply Well, what we face as financial crisis is not a banking crisis but a crisis of the new non-banking financial system. These are not the banks of the era of Lenin. If, how and why the financial crisis of today - breaking out in 2007, is qualitatively different from the banking crisis of 1929 or crisis during the era of Lenin's Imperialism seems to be a question. Since we are speaking of finance capital, the issue to my mind is what within finance capital (a quality within and unto itself) has changed? The answer for me is capital as a notional value or capital wealth detached from value; more specifically the production of surplus value. Or, what is the same, world wide capital wealth dominated by institutional architecture outside of and existing in antagonism with the world wide production of value. The new non-banking financial architecture is a new emergent quality within finance capital. In Mr. Liu's writing this new phenomenon- quality, is called notional value meaning an imaginary value relation. Global Post-Crisis Economic Outlook by Henry C.K. Liu, appeared in Asian Times April 14, 2010. Part 2 is Two Different Banking Crises - 1929 and 2007. The series is located here: _http://www.henryckliu.com/page221.html_ (http://www.henryckliu.com/page221.html) Liu's Pathology of Debt, part one and two outlines what is specific and different in our era of finance capital from that of the era of Lenin. _http://www.henryckliu.com/page145.html_ (http://www.henryckliu.com/page145.html) II. The 1929 banking crisis that launched the Great Depression was caused by stressed banks whose highly leveraged retail borrowers were unable to meet margin calls on their stock market losses, resulting in bank runs from panicky depositors who were not protected by government insurance on their deposits. In the 1920s, there were very few traders beside professional technical types. The typical retail investors were long-term investors, trading only infrequently, albeit buying on high margin. They bought mostly to hold based on expectations that prices would rise endlessly. . . . . . By contrast, the two decades of the 1990s and 2000s were decades of the day trader and big time institutional traders. New powerful traders in major investment banking houses overwhelmed old-fashion investment bankers and gained control of these institutions with their high profit performance. They turned the financial industry from a funding service to the economy into a frenzy independent trading machine. (End quote) Global Post-Crisis Economic Outlook. III. The issue of quality can be confusing - in my mind, unless one describe their meaning. Finance capital is part of a totality - quality. The totality is the social relations of bourgeois mode of commodity production or bourgeois private property. Finance capital is a symbolic expression of the wealth created by human labor based on bourgeois property or wage labor. Lenin's Imperialism the last stage of capitalism, was referenced as the benchmark. Marx historical tendency of capital accumulation became supporting actor. Marx outlined cyclical crisis of capital and financial crisis, but something has changed qualitatively . . . in my opinion, within the quality isolated by Lenin as finance-industrial capital. By finance capital Lenin referred to financial-industrial capital indicating the domination of banks as institutions over industrial capital. This is the specific make-up of finance capital for Lenin. In short speak this process is referred to as banks transitioning from being middle men for industrial production (investors), to owners and dominator-investors of industry. The new quality of finance capital - not bourgeois social relations of production, is its detachment from production of surplus value. The banking system of the era of Lenin is qualitatively different from the new financial architecture of today. The new quality is called the system of non-banking financial institutions. These institutions are not banks. That is the different quality within finance capital. Banks of the era of Lenin embody the value relation monetarized. The new non-banking financial institutions are valueless. These financial products do not embody value, only a notion or value as wealth. IV. Later in the same article Mr. Liu writes: The 2007
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
In a message dated 11/22/2010 9:10:31 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: Yes, the word predict is a bit crude, but the direction of capitalism as imperialism = finance capitalism and more and more concentration of wealth (monopoly) fulfills the trends that Lenin made famous. ( Lenin made Hilferding's ideas famous). And the concentration of wealth is in the finance capital sector. On the other hand , Lenin's observation that wealth is increasingly concentrated or monopolization is in a sense a deduction or echo of Marx's observation here; centralization is monopolization: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm s well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 11:24 PM, CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote: Certainly, the possibility of reducing the cost of production and increasing profits by introducing technical improvements operates in the direction of change. But the tendency to stagnation and decay, which is characteristic of monopoly, continues to operate, and in some branches of industry, in some countries, for certain periods of time, it gains the upper hand imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries, amounting, as we have seen, to 100,000-50,000 million francs in securities. Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by ?clipping coupons?, who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness. T And if you read Dickens' last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, you get a narrative that depicts very much the same things. I know people are going to disagree with you and me on this one, but I have to say, you are right to re-iterate Lenin's points here, here and now. It's a tautological argument to say that this time it's different somehow deep down simply because things have changed, or the structures have changed, or the relations have changed. We of all people know history doesn't simply repeat itself. But what some wiseacres need to do is show how in essence, in substance the banking and financial disasters of the 19th and 20th centuries are categorically different not simply because it is this time around and things have changed. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
I agree that concentration and centralization of productive forces grow out of the inherent logic of industrial - electro-mechanical, reproduction. In the Soviet Union concentration and centralization of productive forces created expanding public wealth without centralization and monopolization of a financial regime - oligarchy. When this same internal dynamic of industrial reproduction is based on bourgeois property its shape is centralization and concentration of capital - banking, industrial and finally emergence of a financial oligarchy dominating industry. What is also being reproduced, concentrated and centralized is at all times social relations of production; bourgeois property casting increasing masses proletariat on an expanding scale, as was the case during the time of Marx and Lenin. This historic process, which was not completed during the time of Marx and Lenin is complete, with all areas of the world firmly within the new financial architecture with few exceptions. Much literature is available on why and how the new financial regime is different from the financial regime of the era of Lenin. This of course does not imply the social relations casting the laborers as wage laborers have changed qualitatively. It has not. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
Comment The property aspect of production relations (social relations of production with the property relations within) have NOT changed or what is the same, the wage labor form remains the wage labor form. Bourgeois private property remains bourgeois although this form of wealth is increasingly detached from commodity production and distribution. Lenin's Imperialism is not a story about qualitatively changed property relations within the mode of production, in my opinion. As I understand the book, what is written about is the domination of banking capital over industrial capital and the rise of a financial oligarchy. Lenin did not and could not predict or foresee our state of development of productive forces. His vision was limited to industrial machinery and configuration and a form of capital characteristic of his era. Qualitative changes in the means of production exist, as compared with the era of Marx and Lenin. A mode of production does not change all at one time. First comes a qualitatively different technology and its application to production and then society is compelled to reorganize itself around a new social organization of labor. This happens as change waves, deepening its social consequences in society. As these change waves deepen, society is thrown into greater crisis and strains to leap to a new social organization of labor and sublate the old social relations, including the old property signature. There is a wealth of material available on line outlining the technology advance of the last 60 years. Different opinion exists concerning the significance, degree and depth of our rising new technology regime, as it reproduces itself on an expanding scale. WL ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] shadow banking system
(The Federal Reserve chart is available at _www.ny.frb.org/research/staff_reports/sr458.pdf_ (http://www.ny.frb.org/research/staff_reports/sr458.pdf) ) Road map that opens up shadow banking By Gillian Tett Financial Times November 18 2010 This week, a senior banker friend gave me a poster that had been created by downloading a chart recently produced by economists at the New York Federal Reserve. It was shocking stuff. Entitled The Shadow Banking System, the graphic depicts how money goes round the modern world, particularly (but not exclusively) in the US. At the top lies a smart section labelled the “Traditional Banking System”, in which a simple flow of boxes explains how investors’ funds are deposited with traditional commercial banks, which then transform this into long and short-term loans, and equity. So far, so comprehensible. But most of the poster is dominated by two sections called the “cash” and “synthetic” shadow banking systems, or those “ financial intermediaries that conduct maturity, credit and liquid transformation without access to central bank liquidity or public sector credit guarantees”, as the associated NY Fed working paper says. These flows are so extraordinarily complex that hundreds of boxes create a diagram comparable to the circuit board of a high-tech gadget. Even as poster size, it is difficult to decode. But it should be mandatory reading for bankers, regulators, politicians and investors today. Indeed, they might do well to hang similar posters next to their desks, for at least three reasons. For one thing, this circuit board is a reminder of how clueless most investors, regulators and rating agencies were before 2007 about finance. After all, during the credit boom, there was plenty of research being conducted into the financial world; but I never saw anything remotely comparable to this road map. That was a striking, terrible omission. The Fed now estimates that in early 2008 shadow banking was $20,000bn in size, dwarfing the $11,000bn traditional banking system. And though this shadow system has now shrunk to a “mere” $16,000bn, this remains bigger than traditional banking, at some $13,000bn. Little wonder, then, that so few people immediately appreciated the significance of the seizing up of shadow banking in 2007. But secondly, this poster is also a reminder that many things about the modern financial system remain mysterious – even today. On the edges of the circuit board, the NY Fed economists list all the government programmes that have supported the system since 2007 (and, in effect, replaced shadow banks when they suffered runs). This “shadow, shadow bank system” – as it might be called – looks complex and baffling too. And in practical terms, the sheer breadth and complexity of that box makes it hard to know what will happen if – or when – government aid disappears. Then, there is the current regulatory debate. So far this year, the Financial Stability Board and other international bodies have focused most of their reform attention on issues such as bank capital, and systems of oversight for large, systemically important banks. Next year, though, Mario Draghi, head of the FSB, wants to start discussing the shadow banking world. Many national regulators are keen to do this too as they recognise the danger of looking at regulation just in terms of institutions. After all, the crisis has shown how risky it is to have $16,000bn worth of maturity transformation without any backstop, or clear rules. This week, for example, Adair Turner, head of the Financial Services Authority, the UK regulator, promised more scrutiny. Earlier this year Paul Tucker, deputy UK central bank governor, suggested that it was time to see which parts of the system were benign – or not. The US government is now considering whether to extend the regulatory umbrella to large, non-bank institutions such as Citadel or GE Capital. But whether this desire for a debate turns into sensible reform remains unclear. For getting politicians to focus on the issue may not be easy in 2011. There is already considerable regulatory fatigue. There are also other, more urgent distractions, such as the sovereign debt crises. And shadow banking issues rarely seem “sexy” in political terms, unless they involve hedge funds (which pose less systemic threat than, say, the vast $3,000bn-odd money market fund sector.) So for my money, the best thing the NY Fed could do right now is print thousands of copies of that poster – and dispatch it across the world. I suspect it would be far more persuasive about the need for debate than any number of pious G20 speeches. After all, a key reason why that circuit board became so complex was that bankers were trying to arbitrage the last two sets of Basel rules. If shadow banking continues to be ignored (ie politicians focus just
[Marxism-Thaxis] Homeless - 8,000 live in the Fl. woods
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0V2MdklcAEfeature=related_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0V2MdklcAEfeature=related) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Homeless in America: the real stuff
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZpRcbgMGEgfeature=related_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZpRcbgMGEgfeature=related) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
CB: I think Marx's position is that it is inherent to the logic of the capitalist mode of production, wage-labor/capital property relations, regardless of the technological regime. The computerization of production doesn't change this tendency to concentration of wealth. It accelerates it, with all the computer trading. Comment I agree. I apparently missed an input. Whoever wrote that technology changes the tendency and fact of concentration of production, monopolization; concentration and monopolization of wealth has it all wrong. If anything technology advance accelerate concentration and monopoly within the capitalist mode of commodity production due to bourgeois competition. This competition is also expressed as competition between workers for wages. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
Marx and Engels predicted cyclical crisis of capital, but never predicted when its outbreak would take place after their death. Neither did Lenin. Lenin's been dead for a while and did not predict the financial crisis - of 2008, as it jumped from big financial houses and accelerated crisis in the economy. Nor did Lenin predict the scale and scope of the 2008 credit crisis. Nor did Lenin predict the emergence of a new world wide non-banking financial architecture. Nor did he predict the political domination of financial speculation over the world total social capital or for that matter could see the financial-industrial capital of his era, giving way to a new form of financial domination, in a world no longer characterized as the direct colonial relationship. Feudalism, the direct colonial relation and the ascendency of Fordism characterized the world Lenin lived in. This is not the world we live in today. The financial crisis of today plays itself out in a new environment. The financial houses of today are not the banks of the era of Lenin. On this issue I trend to generally side with Michael Hudson and Henry C.K. Liu description of the new non-banking financial regime. What I specifically agree with is their description of the new post 1970's world wide financial architecture. The post industrial revolution in the means of production, is what is different today from the era of Lenin. What is qualitatively different is a new revolution in means of production compelling society to leap to a new social organization of human labor, based on post industrial means of production. Computers and advanced robotics are to electro-mechanics means of production what the steam engine was to horse power and the water wheel or manufacture. Computerized automation of industrial production has fundamentally challenged capitalism. The process of development has been uneven; cause and effect not immediately revealed; and even now when the transformation of society is evident everywhere, many serious observers of society dismiss the seminal importance of computerized production and advanced robotics. The form of the working class changes with qualitative changes in the tools, instruments and energy source deployed in the process of production. What is NOT new is the property form of the workers called proletariat. The working class, employed and unemployed retains its wage labor form of existence as proletariat, with products retaining their commodity form, even as these commodities are pushed towards zero labor. Zero labor implies below what is required for the workers to reproduce themselves as a class and a world of permanent intractable overcapacity, rather than just cyclical crisis. I agree with Mr. Liu's unraveling of the impact of revolution in the means of production and the emergence of permanent overcapacity as a new environment of crisis of overproduction. What has changed is the underlying technology regime in society, as these mew means of production evolve in antagonism with the old technology regime and the classes corresponding to it. . WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism] Union destroyed at Delta
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == full: _http://www.wtop.com/?sid=2029589nid=111_ (http://www.wtop.com/?sid=2029589nid=111) November 18, 2010 - 4:07pm stories from the motley foolTop 10 New Buys Of The Money Masters General Motors IPO: How Much Cash For This Clunker? Don't Get Blindsided By These Chinese Companies The Washington Redskins: Stupid Is As Stupid Does Sirius XM's Fab Move By JOSHUA FREED AP Airlines Writer MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Unions lost their second big vote at Delta Air Lines on Thursday, with fleet service workers rejecting the union that had represented the same group at Northwest Airlines. The voting by 13,104 baggage handlers and other fleet service workers ended with 52.5 percent of them voting for no union, according the National Mediation Board, the federal agency that runs airline union elections. Delta is mostly non-union except its pilots. But labor got a foot in the door when Delta absorbed heavily unionized Northwest in 2008. The election that ended Thursday was to see whether the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers would represent the combined workers, or none of them. Roughly 5,000 of those Delta workers had come from Northwest. The IAM is also aiming to represent some 16,500 customer service workers such as gate agents and ticket-sellers. Voting for that group, which includes roughly 5,000 from Northwest, ends Dec. 7. Voting for about 700 stock and stores clerks ends Monday. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA narrowly lost its bid to represent about 20,000 Delta workers earlier this month. The AFA has claimed that Delta interfered in the voting, which Delta denied. Union spokeswoman Corey Caldwell said the union expects to file its allegations with the mediation board next week. Delta said it would make pay and work rules the same for workers who came from Delta and their colleagues who came from Northwest once it knows whether the IAM will challenge the election. IAM spokesman Joseph Tiberi said the union is investigating allegations from Delta workers of illegal election interference, but didn't say whether it would file to challenge the outcome. Delta had mounted an extensive campaign that unions said was aimed at encouraging votes against representation. The airline said that Thursday's result means that votes covering some 40,000 workers have rejected union representation. Also on Thursday, the pilot union at Delta elected Detroit-based 767 captain Tim O'Malley as chairman of its Master Executive Council. O'Malley has worked for Delta since 1990, and was a F-4 pilot in the Air Force. O'Malley and other new officers for the Delta branch of the Air Line Pilots Association begin their new roles Jan. 1. O'Malley replaces outgoing chairman Lee Moak, who was elected ALPA president last month. Shares of Atlanta-based Delta rose 46 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $13.67 in afternoon trading, with most of the gain coming before the vote result was announced. (Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) By JOSHUA FREED AP Airlines Writer MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Unions lost their second big vote at Delta Air Lines on Thursday, with fleet service workers rejecting the union that had represented the same group at Northwest Airlines. The voting by 13,104 baggage handlers and other fleet service workers ended with 52.5 percent of them voting for no union, according the National Mediation Board, the federal agency that runs airline union elections. Delta is mostly non-union except its pilots. But labor got a foot in the door when Delta absorbed heavily unionized Northwest in 2008. The election that ended Thursday was to see whether the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers would represent the combined workers, or none of them. Roughly 5,000 of those Delta workers had come from Northwest. The IAM is also aiming to represent some 16,500 customer service workers such as gate agents and ticket-sellers. Voting for that group, which includes roughly 5,000 from Northwest, ends Dec. 7. Voting for about 700 stock and stores clerks ends Monday. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA narrowly lost its bid to represent about 20,000 Delta workers earlier this month. The AFA has claimed that Delta interfered in the voting, which Delta denied. Union spokeswoman Corey Caldwell said the union expects to file its allegations with the mediation board next week. Delta said it would make pay and work rules the same for workers who came from Delta and their colleagues who came from Northwest once it knows whether the IAM will
[Marxism] Delta union defeat
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == full: _http://www.themilitant.com/2010/7444/744402.html_ (http://www.themilitant.com/2010/7444/744402.html) Airline workers campaign for unionization at Delta (front page) BY FRANK FORRESTAL MINNEAPOLIS—In the first of four votes at Delta Airlines, the fight for a union among flight attendants narrowly lost. The vote was 9,216 for and 9,544 against. More than 93 percent of flight attendants from the combined workforces of Delta and Northwest Airlines voted in the election that ended November 3. A day after the union loss at Delta, some 3,000 fleet and passenger service workers at Piedmont Airlines voted by a 2 to 1 margin to join the Communication Workers of America (CWA). The union won the election in spite of “Piedmont and parent company US Airways using every anti-union trick in the book,” said a statement from the CWA following the vote. The next three votes at Delta will determine if workers are to be represented by the International Association of Machinists (IAM). About 14,000 fleet service (baggage and cargo) workers will be voting through November 18. Approximately 600 stock clerk and supply attendants are voting through November 22, and another 16,500 passenger service (ticket and reservation) agents are voting through December 7. The IAM has been holding rallies at several hubs to counter the company’s antiunion campaign and to get out the union vote. With the defeat of the organizing drive by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), union members are stepping up their work. In a phone interview, Marty Knaeble, a baggage handler at Delta Airlines from the Detroit area, said, “Since the flight attendants’ vote was so close, we need to make every effort to get workers to cast their vote for the union. The stakes are huge. We need the union to protect our livelihoods and jobs.” Totaling more than 50,000 workers, the Delta union elections are the largest to take place in more than five decades in the United States. The second biggest carrier in the country, Delta Airlines has been the least organized of the major airlines. In 2008 Delta’s largely nonunionized workforce merged with Northwest’s unionized workforce. Before the merger Delta had 33,915 nonunion workers compared to 16,723 union workers at Northwest. This was the third time the flight attendants’ union has lost an election at Delta. However, unlike the previous votes this one was extremely close. It follows years of cuts and rule changes by the airlines that have deeply affected workers’ lives. The election was the first in the airline industry where a union is recognized if a majority of the votes cast are in favor. In the past, workers in the airlines and on the railroads who didn’t vote were counted as “no” votes. Delta and other airlines lobbied heavily against the ruling by the federal government’s National Mediation Board that went into effect in July, reversing the 70-year-old practice guiding union elections in those industries. Workers at airlines and railroads now vote under the same rules as workers at other companies. Under the old rules, the union victory at Piedmont would have been declared a defeat because 1,200 workers who didn’t vote would have automatically been counted as voting against the union. 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-Thaxis] Moral dilemma
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 11:27 AM, _waistli...@aol.com_ (mailto:waistli...@aol.com) wrote: If it was me making the million dollar shot, I would say, lets go to Vegas and get married. Or Ohio. Without a prenuptual agreement ? Comment Yep. A million dollars not what it use to be. Fed taxes on lottery money is about 30% so a million almost instantly becomes $700,000. If there is a 3% state tax . . . $670,000. The various anti-taxes currents amongst a section of the proletariat have a point. A house, furniture, car and a couple of trips to the theater and then the families . . . and hey. . .. $500,000, maybe $450,000. Both of us probably have some kind of debt. If it is a student loan the feds are hitting the money before you get it. It is best to do Vegas or the vacation of your choice real quick, because the money is going to go quicker. Once married divide the $450,000 between each other and try to stay together the first 90 days. At that point we both have say $250,000 or $225,000. If both of us have shitty jobs, we are subject to have no job 36 months from now. A million dollars today will not save one from the proletarian bounce between economic layers. Makes one want to stay on the farm. Wait, I forget. The farm was lost a long time ago. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Moral dilemma
In a message dated 11/19/2010 9:23:39 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Truly ! It is the American working class that has had legitimate gripes about taxes for a long time. The tax revolt of the 70's , California Howard Whathisname and all, hijacked proletarian legitimate tax complaints. Reaganite propaganda misdirected this sentiment among middle incomed workers against low incomed workers, the poor, as anti-Welfare politics. Reply Got that right brother. One cannot find even Marxists talking about welfare, and the immediate need to defend and expand it, outside our geographic area. Really. If one looks through the various socialist, communists and Marxist online press and articles welfare is hardly mentioned and it should be up front along with unlimited unemployment compensation - at least until the economy recovers, which is not going to happen. The restoration of profitability for most corporations will not translate into employment, and this is qualitatively different. The social consequences of revolution in the means of production is talking its toil in the context of a cyclical crisis of capital. Or rather, this cyclical crisis of overproduction is talking its toil in the context of a qualitatively new revolution in the means of production shoving ever widening layers of wage labors out of the market . . . absolutely. Detroit was at the front of the curve and now the social consequences are being felt in all areas of the country. Reagan success was based in painting welfare as a black thing; the ole welfare queen. The unemployment today and housing crisis is so widespread it cannot be painted a black issue. This is favorable to us. The historic color factor is unraveling as the social position of the white workers is destabilized and unraveled in layers. At least we can begin the beginning fight for a class point of view. This narrative is left to you and I, as the enrichment of American history. Yea, you would probably handle a million bucks a lot better than I. I've been pretty stupid with money, women and drink. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] 2011 Contract talks
Link to article Bob King and 2011 _http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AG5XO20101117_ (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AG5XO20101117) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Bob King and 2011 contract talks
Link to article Bob King and 2011 _http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AG5XO20101117_ (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AG5XO20101117) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Moral dilemma
If it was me making the million dollar shot, I would say, lets go to Vegas and get married. Or Ohio. After all, if she invited me on a date, it means their is an interest. WL. In a message dated 11/18/2010 9:29:38 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: When a guy buys tickets for a basketball game and invites his girl to attend, isn't it fair that he gets at least 50% of a million dollar cash prize if his girl drains the free shot from half court? It was his dough that made that shit happen, right? LikeUnlike · Comment * * * o Would you give the girl half the money if she bought you the tickets, you made the shot? This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism] Insurgent Anthropologies: Conquest Abroad and Repression at Home, by C
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yep. A door step where death never comes Spread across time and my time never done, And I'm never done Walk tall why ever run, When they moveth I ever come. ... the mad fire burn. Mos Def 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-Thaxis] critique of the ideology of the Tea Party needed
full: _http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v20ed5art5.html_ (http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v20ed5art5.html) Small Government, Big State: Southern Program Points the Way It is conceivable that fascism could proceed as a movement to defend democracy and a return to the principles of the Constitution, a refrain that is being heard more and more stridently from the South, particularly in the calls for secession and states’ rights, and from the organizers of the Tea Party movement. The calls for small government, less taxation, deregulation, and an anti-union environment characterize the form of rule of the Southern states even as it is paired with accelerating the process of privatization and outright corporate welfare. Like any movement, the Tea Party movement is a mixture of various forces still in motion, with myriad groupings and individuals contending for leadership. There are the entrenched establishment who fund and play a role in organizing, such as, Dick Armey (Freedom Works), Ralph Reed (formerly of the Christian Coalition), Ron Paul and his son Rand (libertarians), Newt Gingrich, and Phil Gingrey, both from Georgia. There are the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs, all of whom compose the ideological shock troops to advance their objectives. And there are a myriad of other organizations, such as, the The Oath Keepers with their roots in the military and prepared to take up arms, the Fair Tax Nation that calls for replacing all taxes with a national sales tax, and anti-immigration nativists who demand that the undocumented be hunted down and deported in the name of national security. They elevate the Constitution to the level of a sacred religious text, with particular emphasis upon the 10th amendment, which supposedly provides for the supremacy of states rights. This was also the basis of the Southern defense of slavery and the framework for the secession and formation of the Confederacy. Today it is utilized to resist federal government stimulus funds, as well as to oppose the establishment of national health insurance. The State is being reshaped to serve the interests of the ruling class in the defense of private property. This is not simply a set of policy choices. In a time in which the mode of production itself is shifting to accommodate the decline of value brought on by laborless production, the State is moving to direct control by the corporations, and privatization and the shrinking of the public sector is a necessary consequence of this process. It is experienced by the masses as the destruction of society itself as we know it. The focus of the American revolution now underway is centered squarely upon the question of the role of government. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] We must dream!
In a message dated 11/8/2010 1:01:24 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _rdum...@autodidactproject.org_ (mailto:rdum...@autodidactproject.org) writes: The other question in all this is, except for enhancing historical consciousness, what relevance any interpretation of Lenin has for today, and esp. in a radically different type of society such as the USA. I used to say something comparable to we must dream, but now I see only a pipe dream. Comment I second CB yep and the irony of JF forwarded article on the Prince. Funny, I always read Lenin's What Is To Be Done as part of an evolving scenario aimed at combining a political group and explaining how to stay organized and take power under appropriate conditions. And why one cannot allow a political group, under conditions of active revolution to reduce its activity to a support committee of popular demands. Seems to me that's just what happened. I did read the article. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party
In a message dated 11/8/2010 8:20:54 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Tea Party Election Results Diluted in Highly Populated States By Tom Moroney and Terrence Dopp - Nov 5, 2010 Tea Party supporters boasted of their 28 victories in U.S. House races. What the election results also made clear was that their appeal stopped at the border of the most densely-populated states and metropolitan areas. Republican _Carl Paladino_ Comment As I understand the results, the blue dog democrats took the big hit losing 23 or their 54 official caucus members, or 48% of the Democrat party House loses. Michigan governor race was another Democratic Party loss. Rick Snyder (R-MI) 1,879,499 Votes 58% Virg Bernero (D-MI) 1,278,566 Votes 40% And the beat goes on. WL ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism] Who cares who wins the elections (art and idiots)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The fact of the matter is that our proletariat supports bourgeois property relations in the here and now. Nothing we write or say can change this because change is a mass process of experience and interpreting that experience. So, that's a yes on the support of bourgeois parties and their candidates, huh? Comment The Green party is a bourgeois party. I voted 90% in today’s election for their candidates. I stated this in no uncertain terms. Why on earth would you conclude I support the Democratic or Republican Party establishment? Let me guess; I am misreading what is written above. When Nader ran for president in 2000 his political organization and those attached to it constituted a “bourgeois party,” in the main. Now the various communist ideological groups that supported Nader could preserve their “ independence” based on their separate organization. I supported Nader in 2000. I supported the Freedom Now Party years ago, a bourgeois political party. We ran a communist candidate in the Democratic Party primary because it was impossible to get on the ballot, until the state laws outlawing third party’s was over turned. Yes, we were accused by some of our own comrades of supporting a bourgeois political party. I presented what you wrote and the reader is left to their interpretation. All this talk about “enemy” opens the door for bad things, and you know this. What of the comrades in small towns? In Detroit we have lots of latitude but all of America is not like Detroit. What qualifies you to write propositions as if you have some special insight into everywhere in America? Class enemy! Get a grip for Christ sake. A principled stand against engaging and working in the Democratic party or the Republican party for that matter, anywhere and at all times in every part of America, is a principled Marxist stand as I understand what you wrote. Why is that? Because you said so? Here is what you wrote: “I did, however, mean to get a reaction with My words and it seems they did but in the most unforeseen way from the a most unforeseen person. Amazing that you would call a principled stand against supporting the class enemy, especially when the choices are clear, sectarian. It only proves my point about how low some of us have sunk. My record of activism and non-sectarian politics speaks for itself, but you will never see me tacti cally retreat my principles for the sake of practicality. Pardon, maybe this is a principled stand. What principle is it might the feeble minded ask? The feeble mind inability to understand the class enemy is what you wrote about. Here is what you wrote: To be accurate, I said, Your words Have at least one Enemy. I use that formulation to convey (a) that cajoling revolutionists to support bourgeois liberals out of practicality are the words of the class enemy and (b) that the individual who says this may simply be misguided, but it is not clear, so, rather than the individual, his words are my enemy. I know this might be a hard distinction for the feeble-minded, so, just know that had I meant to say someone is my enemy, I would say it plainly (and just to be unequivocally clear, I did not). No one is against passion and zeal, but what is up with all this back biting and personal insults and class enemy talk, applied to a writer on this list? Everyone makes mistakes and go over the top from time to time. Your words are meant to hurt and insult. You move from words . . . enemy to the class enemy to the feeble minded. Pardon my feeble mind. Grow up dude. WL. 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] Who cares who wins the elections
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Marxists have an obligation to tell the people what they know in a language the people can relate to. Question: I don't know who started this thread, but do you care about the elections on Tuesday? Comment Mark language is pretty clear. He tells the truth. On every issue he says, Let's do something, right now to make a difference. Do you care about the elections on Tuesday? is the wrong question because old school Marxists man up and answer in one voice, of course not. This means, no, I do not care about political bums. Or it means, I don't care about the elections. Bourgeois elections In American national politics is the election of political bums. Do I care? I care about my kids, heir children, my Friday night poker partners, and the girl I trying to get a date with and things like that. I don't care about a lot of political bums. Glenn . . . sections of the list is at another level. I have another response to the American style, but had early Sunday Morning company - before Church, and will send something in about two hours. No, I am not going to Church today, but set aside Church time for another project. On Sunday's between like . . . 6:00 am and 3:00 pm, I am in Church or at the altar of change. WL. 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] American style
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == a Dump Obama movement afoot: replace Obama in the primaries with a true progressive. What's your take on this effort, as a Marxist? glenn Reply Progressive? Richard Nixon himself (a man I loved to hate), was progressive concerning a huge part of Civil Rights. But was he progressive? Nixon's administration was the architect of official black capitalism and using government as an insurgent instrument to desegregate institutions. This reform of the system was a precondition for its expansion. Nixon's administration coined affirmative action, demanding quotas as proof of desegregation policy. Who and how many as proof of policy was the watchword. Today, the reactionary right has spent 30 years attacking this system of affirmative action, quotas and so-called big government. Who and what is progressive in national politics ought to be weighed against an on going living process, with differences between national, local and governor sized elections. Brother, we're subject to be under martial law by October 2012. II. Progressive Opposing expansion of police power, seeking to strip from the executive branch and intelligence, built up mandates of authority since Nixon, is progressive in November 2010. Avoiding jail in America is progressive, every since Paris Hilton and Martha Stewart. When jailing blonds becomes a public ritual, the state - executive authority, is fighting women and anyone can be jailed for something or another. Who's next? Betty Crocker? After Betty goes Aunt Jemina. Then, somebody who looks like Maria - Mexican immigrant housekeepers. We wake up one morning and everyone's children are born in jail, with biological tag implants and a prison record. Obama increases police and executive power, which makes him a cop's cop. Cop systems use government to hire people to spy on other people, jail them and beat them up. Americans do not put on their job applications, I want to beat people up, jail them and spy on my mother. Lots of people within the executive branch is progressive, opposing expansion of police power but needed a job. Working for a progressive presidential contender inside and outside the two party system seems to be the question. Using ones tiny organization resources to shape national party primary candidates, is a waste of my time, money, patients and good humor as a suggestion. If a third party candidate is the issue, then communists and socialist recruit within this process. III. I do not advocate communists work within the Democratic Party to shape its primary Presidential election in 2012 . . . or back in 2008, 04, 1998, going back to Jesse Jackson first run for President. When big Jesse ran for president, this was the first modern - post desegregation, breach in national politics. Before big Jesse Presidential run I advocate nothing other than Freedom Now as the cutting edge of the fight for emancipation of the proletariat. On the local level, working within the two party systems is a different attitude. Specifically, we ran a local communist candidate within the Democratic primary due to election laws outlawing third party candidates. This meant we went overboard and put the hammer and sickle - literally, on all our campaign literature and posters. As things turned out, going overboard was the right thing to do. Detroit in the 1970's was on political fire. During the next election cycle a combination of forces were able to overturn this state law. This condition meant the Communist Labor Party and the Socialist Workers Party could run candidates on their party platforms. What happened is this: campaign handbills focused on the issue of the election and policy 100% favorable to the workers. We spoke of George Edwards being in the pocket of the banks in this kind of literature. In the paper - communist press, we spoke of the banks and high finance, and the system of capitalist exploitation. IV. Communists are going to recruit people in the Democratic Party, because communists are involved in electoral work. My opinion is this; outside of ones organization support for a Third Party effort, it makes no sense to abandon this work. It is enough for ones newspapers and pamphlets to implement boycott working within the democratic party by omission, rather than polemic. The proletariat already boycotts elections and the electoral process. Thus, communist literature doesn't spend much time focused on elections. The proletariat in permanent intractable boycott doesn't want you giving them a handbill or petition having to do with political bums, and a bunch of thieves, liars, swindlers and murderers
Re: [Marxism] American style
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I'm now reading Nelson Peery's Entering An epoch of Social Revolution, and I see that he has the right focus. Pleased to meet you on Marxmail, courtesy of Louis Proyect. glenn Reply I been kicking around the list for about ten years, mellowing out a bit. The list has become a surprising resource for me, thanks in part to the steam of articles provided by Lou. Perry's Epoch of Social Revolution sparked a massive debate within the communist/socialist ideological currents. Initially, we were dubbed techno-communist, revisionist and deniers of workers revolution to speak of a new form of the proletariat birthed in correspondence to a new technology regime. Much of the initial debate has subsided, with most folks - not all, accepting our society is passing through a new - post industrial, revolution in the means of production and not merely a communications revolution. As life would have it, the bulk of our little group was concentrated in the Midwest - Detroit and Chicago, and the Southwest, Cali and Texas, embodying a different experience with American life than the experience on the east coast. The impact of the new technology regime has been a lived experience from longshoremen to autoworkers. My extended family contains three living generations of folks working in the auto industry and as union activists. The factory my dad walked into - Ford Rouge Local 600 and the industry my generation children work in today is profoundly different. Dad, an electrician and tinkerer, entered the industry in the 1950's. We entered in the early 70's (older brother in 1968 retiring in 2008 after 40 years with 30 years as a union rep and 10 years as an International representative) and our kids entering in the late 90's and a couple of years ago. Today plants are akin to walking onto a Star Trek science fiction set. The difference is between walking to the local drug store to test the vacuum tubes of early stereo record players and I-pods. The new technology literally destroys the value relation, and with it the basis of capitalism as exchange of commodity equivalents based on private ownership of means of production. At an early stage of the industrial revolution, the industrial advance grew the modern industrial working class in absolute terms and tore up the world of manual labor and manufacturing. The world of the industrial machine, industrial time concepts and industrial society in general, is being torn up in front of us. By 2030, when my newest grandchild will turn 21 and probably become 4th generation manager in auto, his generation will not dispute the deep social consequences that are stages/phases of application of a new revolutionary technology regime. His generation will wonder what we were arguing about in 1998. Mindboggling change is to put it mildly. WL. 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] Who cares who wins the elections
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Re: [Marxism] Who cares who wins the elections _http://www.detroitgreens.org/_ (http://www.detroitgreens.org/) I like the Detroit Greens having interacted with them and been part of one of their forums on health care, giving perhaps the most crappy presentation in the history of the world. (Hey, it was during the time of the Detroit Social Forum and I was exhausted with swollen feet. I did get out hundreds of communist papers, sold pamphlets and on a couple of occasions called for overthrowing the existing order, after everyone got a good nights sleep and decent breakfast. .All I remember is responding to a question about a national black doctors associations, opposing a single payer government paid for health care system. What is your opinion and what should be our approach to such people? My answer was cryptic quoting the noted founded of Negro History Month - Carter G. Woodson, when asked what was his attitude toward the black intelligentsia. Why support, protect or advocate for institutions the reproduce your enemy. The bad part was that the forum was recorded. The good part was all the other panelists. Their candidates are listed above. WL. 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] American style
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yes, Rally Comrades has great material. Who writes those articles? They do make sense! I tried to subscribe just now, but the page gets broken, so I'll try again tomorrow, after I read the new essay you recommended, and I'll probably get back to you tomorrow. Reply Rally has an editorial board and an interesting process. For instance am article from Detroit about Detroit would start with an individual but include lengthy decision with comrades and go through several drafts. The intention is to describe some kind of logic and real motion amongst people in real time. The article is submitted to the editorial board for review. What is being reviewed is the class logic and dynamics of capital's breakdown from the standpoint of revolution in the means of production. A Detroit article would not simply talk about Detroit but areas of Michigan or the Rustbelt. Comments are made - written, and the article comes back to Detroit for rewrite and/or clarification. The purpose is striving to involve collectives rather than one individual. If the article is the product of one individual, the question is what is its purpose, no matter how good or accurate it may be. Individuals can submit articles and from time to time such article appear under the writer's name. I would never submit an article under my name for several reasons including first the wisdom of a collective and the material need - living process, to hold intact a league of revolutionaries. The LRNA is not a Leninist sect seeking to achieve cohesiveness based on some notion of democratic centralism. Cohesiveness is rooted in the American style and history. Plus, articles under your name are yours forever and no one wants to edit an individual. More often than not you are going to be wrong and violate a general theory premise of Marx. Then some comrade is going to ask, Why didn't you ask someone or get your article reviewed by other 'eyes' - I's? The only answer is always because I thought I was smarter than everyone else. I use Rally as a location beacon. No matter what part of America I move to, I can locate myself within a larger spontaneous motion of the American working class. WL. 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] American-style
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I will vote Tuesday and probably pass out some of John Conyers Jr. (14th Congressional District) literature, although I reside in the 13th. Support for Conyers rest on his HR 676. 90% o my vote will go to the Michigan Green’s. For Governor I will vote for Virg Bernero, a Democrat due to his stand on several issues affecting unions and the proletariat. I have an interest in the Governor of Wayne State University, Regent of University of Michigan, Trustee of Michigan State University, Governor and Lieutenant Governor and will vote against proposal 10-1 and 10-2. The first proposal seeks to convene a Constitutional Convention to revision the State Constitution. The second seeks to prohibit felons from holding government jobs, which means excluding a class of people from lifetime government employment. I am undecided on the Judiciary, but a few of the judges are not that bad, given the nature of their jobs. The group I work with, League of Revolutionaries for a New America supports and endorses no one in the election, which was the case in the past presidential election. The voter turnout in Detroit might be 20% this time around. Then again, I voted in the August primary. WL. 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] American-style
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I looked at the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. What a great perspective!, and I mean that sincerely. The essays are very clear and profound in my humble opinion. Of course I don't agree with all the major claims, but I do agree with most of them, and I'm still reading. Glenn Reply I assume you have read material from Rally Comrades. It is really a good paper with an intense Marxist lens. I have read no paper on the socialist or communist ideological left that even comes close to the details and insights of each article. As a general rule I read every thread on this list and about two hours of internet reading everyday before attending all kinds of meetings and conducting a regular class on America and the Marxist approach. Currently we are studying - reading out loud with discussion, the Future is Up to Us by Nelson Peery. Excellent book. Given the moment, allow me to suggest reading the March 2010 article The Politics of Bipartisanship: Clearing the Way for the New Economy. _http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v20ed2art1.html_ (http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v20ed2art1.html) This is in light of the upcoming midterm election and Lou's article, Bill Fletcher channels Gus Hall. Here is a picture of yours truly taken at the Detroit Social Forum, featured in the People Tribune. _http://www.peoplestribune.org/PT.2010.07/PT.2010.07.10.shtml_ (http://www.peoplestribune.org/PT.2010.07/PT.2010.07.10.shtml) The League is not the kind of sectarian organization that spends its time instructing everyone on earth - (from inside Empire America), on what to do. Nor is it a so-called Leninist type organization. Its focus is the American style, rather than imaginary internationalism, more often than not just plain American chauvinism. In all earnest I have read most of the revolutionary papers for 42 years and nothing really impresses me easy. I'm impressed by the paper and people associated with this group. They make sense. WL. 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] American-style
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I'm not so naïve to think that simply telling folks the Truth is enough to change society, but I do think that Marx's economic determinism acknowledges the transcending role of consciousness, and where else should we expect this transcendence to come from if not from the working class or liberal class that constitutes Capitalism? In other works, it's true, as you say that the serfs did not overthrow Feudalism. The new emerging Capitalist class did that, but I don't see a new class emerging to overthrow Capitalism without the leadership of (working class) intellectuals. What do you think? glenn Reply I agree. Marx economic determinism - (how revolution in means of production and corresponding political relations compel society to leaps to a new mode of production), define an environment where conscious activity works. Marx general law of social revolution does not tell us what to do in the here and now. My rule of thumb is theory knows and doctrine does. Consciousness is a big word. Conscious awareness as activity, is bounded by means of production, - the determinant. We dream the unrealizable and possess the power of abstraction and this ability is always tempered by real things in life. We need to know where we are at on the scale of progressive accumulation of means of production and theory helps solve this need to know. Then there is the issue of class consciousness, two very big words. Class consciousness is not strike consciousness, or more pathetically fighting the bosses, which is becoming apparent in the events in France. Class consciousness is awareness that one must take the commanding heights of state power to reorganize society to meet the needs of proletarians as a class. In my opinion this is what class for itself means. The proletariat needs its think tanks, proletarian and bourgeois/petty bourgeois intellectuals. We - proletarians, need intellectual life like a hog needs slop. I. The American mind - an abstraction, and American history behavior is the American style. America was founded by ideological groups and this requires a writer to state what words mean, because different ideological groups imparted different meaning to the same word. Revolution meant something different to diverse groups in the 1770's. This remains the case today. Overthrowing capital in favor of some form of socialism or overthrowing the bourgeois property relations requires political insurrection or securing the commanding heights of political power. What causes political insurrection? Political insurrection grows out of a political crisis. A thousand and one things can precipitate a political crisis, including the landing of UFO's, a meteor hitting the earth, a tsunami, earth quake or everyone getting up on the wrong side of bed on the same day. An insurrectionary movement in an environment of revolution in the means of production is a distinct thing. By revolution is meant something different than political insurrection, palace of military coup. Revolution comes about as the result of qualitative changes in the means of production. Political insurrection does not require a qualitative change in the means of production as a precondition. For revolution an antagonism must develops between the new emerging economic relations (technology regime) and the old, static political relations defining the old society. It is called antagonism as a description of the logic of new means of production destroying and sublating an entire old technology regime and its political superstructure. The growth of the new technology regime is predicated upon destruction of the old technology regime and its property relations. Under advanced economic communism, which can be defined today as 12th generation advanced robotics and we are at the third generation, revolution in the means of production no longer advance based on class antagonism, or the external collision of propertied classes. Revolution in our means of production, and then our living bourgeoisie in its political form is overthrowing the capital relation - (a historically evolved social relations of production based on wage labor form), in real time. This is because the bourgeoisie is conscious of itself as a class and consciously experience every incremental advance in productive forces. In America we suffer but the capitalist face death in the market - go out of business. The politically dominant section of capital long ago sensed and understood it's disconnecting with commodity production or the commodity form. Revolution in the means of production destroys the old unity of the old mode of
Re: [Marxism] American-style
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The anti-intellectualism practiced within the Left is still a problem as far as I can see? 21st Century American computer-technology makes possible a new revolutionary agency? What's your view about how to build, or even begin to build, a collective revolutionary left? What do you think of using electoral politics as a tool for getting our message out? glenn Reply Until we learn how to speak in terms that match the way the American peoples think things out in real time, we are in trouble. How people think things out in real time express the moment. This is the essence of the American style. Yes, the electoral arena is an indispensible area of work. This may not entail voting for a democrat or republican candidate in a local race; running ones own independent candidate or third party efforts. Much depends on local and state third party laws, primary laws as who can vote for whom, forces available for petition campaigns, etc. The real action is the voters and the degree to which socialist literature can reach them. Voter registration remains a valid area of work the broad left can take part in. Living in Florida a couple of years gave me a new appreciation for voter registration and efforts to stay on the voting roll after Bush 2000. If in a given area social forces are ripe for an independent working class candidate, go for it. If one is able to run a socialist or Vote Communist Campaign so be it. I do have some experience with successfully getting on the state ballot from the 1970's. Back in the day the Michigan Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Communist Labor Party (CLP) successfully won ballot status during the same election. If memory serves me correct, each candidate required 20,000 signatures. This meant actually engaging the voting section of the proletariat. Since both parties name include socialist and communist this activity was a beautiful thing. There was the 1996 formation of the US Labor Party, which might in the immediate future need summing up to avoid some of the pitfalls of sustaining a party of labor. One thing is certain; from nothing comes nothing and a new Labor party is going to be built from fragments of the old organized labor - trade union, movement and fragments of the Democratic and Republican Party, and all smaller parties across the breath and depth of America. American is a huge country and one policy seems to me a mistake. Electing better politicians is important and mean those expressing the striving and needs of the working class, from the lens and standpoint of its most destitute sector. I have zero national grand strategy, only a generalized line of march, along the probable path our proletariat is increasingly pushed to travel as a way to socially necessary means of life. For instance, boycott all elections without an alternative to Dems or Repubs everyone in America means do not do electoral work since there is no rational reason to take part in voter registration in most places in America. Here is some of the problem: every time a major corporation publicly announces it is hiring, 10 - 30 thousand people show up. It is not yet clear to the American people that capital cannot employ all those willing to work. Electoral work for revolutionaries means taking this fact of our lives to voting America and asks them how do we solve this problem? By revolutionaries I do not mean socialist and communists, some who are revolutionary and reactionary. By revolutionary is meant those fighting a practical struggle to make government, state and the system favorable to the proletariat. There, I've said it again . . . proletariat. II. A section of the proletariat and its intellectual counterpart begins to think things out independent of the bourgeoisie; to the degree the living proletariat connection with bourgeois property in the process of production is broken. The proletariat is revolutionary in its decay as a class bonded to old social relations of production. The industrial proletariat of our past was not revolutionary in relationship to industrial capital or financial industrial capital and its institutional relations in the superstructure. This old proletariat was revolutionary in relations to manufacture, feudalism and the first stage of the industrial revolution. The failure of social revolution of the proletariat in the advanced countries was not a subjective weakness of revolutionaries - our parents and their parents, but an objectivem-mmaterial, impossibility. No class can overthrow the social relations of which it constitutes. Some deeply believe failure of revolution in America and England was due to
Re: [Marxism] The current Class Struggle in France
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The government itself is also taking up a hardline position in the class war. . . . After drastically increasing police powers, deporting gypsies, imposing severe restrictions on the right to strike (the so-called minimal service laws), they are now using state of emergency decrees to force strikers back to work. . . . This has very serious implications. The pension reform revolt (which everybody knows is about the redistribution of wealth and not only the retirement age) is an important moment in France and Europe. Comment Wow. The social struggle transitions and moves from government to the state, to the degree the state is compelled to intervene. Then sections of the proletariat begin to leap outside the bound of struggle against employers or government to open conflict with the state. This in turn polarizes the state. Jim F. asked of this specific dynamic several days ago. The struggle of the proletariat in a bourgeois republic is by definition a struggle for a more equitable share of the social product (redistribution of wealth) and for greater political liberty, even in its unconscious spontaneous mode. We have our work cut out for us: win the vanguard of the proletariat to the cause of communism; however this cause is articulated in the national theater. WL. 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] American-style
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Defining the politics and class sociology of progressive is a recurring subject of this list. Is industrialism progressive on the scale of history? During the period of the direct colonial system, one section of Marxism defined resistance to direct colonial structures and combat against the imperial storm troopers as progressive. During WW II progressive had a specific meaning. In the movie Casablanca, bar owner Rick is cast as a progressive democrat in relationship to German fascism and its military representatives. Is Rick progressive in fact? My opinion is Rick is progressive as an anti-fascist/anti-communist democrat of the era of the war against the fascist axis. When legal segregation was under dismantling, a complex intersection of classes (social forces) pushed forth desegregating American society. Desegregation generated its political polarity, as those for and against desegregation. Those opposing desegregation were reactionary. Communists and socialists operated within the general desegregation - progressive, political polarity. It gets more complicated in real time. Progressive ought to be anchored in real time. Obama is not progressive. Nor is he reactionary. Rather, I place Obama on the revolutionary right, increasingly fascist but not reactionary. Obama is on the revolutionary right meaning he is fighting for a revolutionary overhaul of the system based on a revolutionary new technology regime and a new form of private property detached from surplus value production. Obama politics of bipartisanship is not an impulse to return to the past, the meaning of reactionary, but an attempt to shape the evolutionary leap to a new mode of production with a new form of private property. This approach implies a reactionary and revolutionary component of the left, however one defines the left. Left for the past 100 years has meant the left bench of the bourgeoisie. Communists identified themselves with and within the broad left wing during a period of evolutionary leap from agrarian relations to industrial relations, or the period of destruction of political feudalism. This period of history is long gone. It seems to me the reactionary left demands a return to the past, or restoration of the buying and selling of labor ability, based on the social relations of capital of an era gone. At its worse the reactionary Left calls for restoration of the old Roosevelt Coalition, or a new New Deal, believing this program rather than WW II brought the American economy out of crisis. This feature of the left under conditions of an evolutionary leap to a new mode of production is not clear to all at this moment. Demanding the return of our jobs is neither progressive nor clever, but apparently something we have to grapple with. Many working class folks hold to magical thinking believing we can return to the post WW II period of class fluidity and higher wages. It gets more complicated because the distressed segments of the proletariat have no choice but to demand government aid. Is seeking government aid progressive? Large corporations have no choice but to seek government bailout facing market failure. General Motors and Chrysler are examples of non-financial companies going belly up. Real class struggle is a messy business, with complex overlapping demands by all classes and class fragments, compelled to attack the system as it exists. I don't seek to avoid this issue, but defining and clarifying what is progressive outside an actual context is virtually impossible. As a curve of history, the rising bourgeoisie manifest and express a new revolutionary agency - is progressive, in the form of new means of production, a new form of wealth (private property), as these new forms of social intercourse evolved in antagonism with the old dying feudal social order. Here, progressive implies conveyor of new revolutionary social relations of production. My current premise is that we are not facing just the business cycle. What Marxists call crisis of overproduction. We face the business cycle crisis during a leap - transition, to a new mode of production predicated on a new technology regime or advanced robotics, or new means of production. Hence, a section of the ruling class as capital and a section of the working class as proletariat have been effectively ejected from the old capital social relation founded on the buying and selling of labor ability. Thus, the old political system - superstructure, is being attacked and torn up by the dominant ruling clique of capital, and must come under assault by the proletariat excluded from production, along with all
Re: [Marxism] Sartre and the French strike
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == So, the question that I have is the current striked lead to a full-scale uprising, what the armed forces in France do? Jim Farmelant Comment This question loomed large in my mind because in/as our own experience (America) of social upheaval it is the uprising, or riot that alters the social consciousness of the masses, and provides the soil for the seeds of class consciousness. The emphasis is on masses rather than narrow layers of the proletariat. By class consciousness IS NOT meant a heightened awareness of bosses and the employing class, but rather an awareness of the need for political authority and a transition in state power. This is not to say these things happened over night. Then again what is being spoken of is the degree to which large forces of the state intervene into the social conflict, polarize for and against the social process altering it and transitioning aspects of the conflict from demand to resistance and a determined battle against and over the political authority of the state. In our history I have in mind the March 7, 1932 Hunger March and its brutal suppression. The Hunger March of the unemployed councils reignited the push for unionization three years before Roosevelt signing into law the Wagner Act July 5, 1935. Wagner alter the environment of the dynamic for industrial unionism channeling the struggle into state sanctioned political corridors. In our last great era of social upheaval Montgomery Alabama December 4, 1955 is bookmarked as beginning of a new social process but the uprising continuum was Birmingham 1963, Watts 1965, Detroit 1967, Newark and so on. WL. 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] James Petras on The Ecuadorian Coup
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The absence of a socialist alternative, the fragmentation of the social movements, the embrace of identity politics, have severely weakened an effective organized alternative when and if the center-left regimes go into crises. For the moment most critical intellectuals cling to the center-left in hopes of a left turn, of a political rectification, rather than taking the difficult but necessary road of rebuilding an independent class based socialist movement. Comment Petras article struck me as profoundly enlightening if the above is read as applying to America, rather than Ecuador. The obligatory ideological demand for an independent class based . . . . movement, means absolutely nothing. More, the demand to rebuild (rebuilding an independent class based socialist movement) something that has never existed is astonishing. What is a socialist alternative? The concept of an independent class based socialist movement is actually a theoretical construct with roots in the 1930's. Having no desire to deconstruct this historical pleading for the impossible, Petras assembles the essential pieces of the puzzle called the center-left government of Obama or rather Latina America's former colonies and former neo-colonies of imperialism. This of course means the former colonies and former neo-colonies of imperialism, are not semi-colonial states. The semi-colonial state belongs to another period of history when the direct colonial system was being dismantled from the left, right and communist trend. One can note Chavez move to have individuals constituting the armed forces of the state declare themselves on the side of the social revolution, with elements of the reactionary right protesting demanding the state remain neutral. This struck me as a practical policy of winning the men in uniform to the cause of communism or demanding their benevolent neutrality. The communist approach of the dominant sector of the Marxist movement is the clarion call to win the vanguard of the proletariat to the cause of communism. By dominant sector of the Marxist movement is meant Lenin and his model. This approach stands in contradistinction to the demand for an independent class movement of the proletariat. An independent class movement of the proletariat does in fact have a meaning today, but the champions of an independent class based socialist movement have failed to disclose its meaning in plain terms. The proletariat movement becomes independent of capital in real life to the degree it evolves outside an active connection with the production of commodities. When a mass of proletarians demand food and a roof over their heads and are detached from production or evolving as a growing mass of non-producing consumers, their demands are immediately and objectively a fight for economic communism and political power. Such a fight is not a socialist project or socialist alternative but a spontaneous impulse for state power. As this mass generates and realizes its own internal self compulsion it runs directly into the state. We have entered such an era of history world wide. Independence of the proletariat is fought out and realized as a daily pursuit to win the vanguard of the proletariat to the cause of communism, no matter what stage of the social movement or its peculiar features. WL. 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] A coup against Obama
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == You would have to see some sizable numbers of extreme right wing fanatics, with leaders of national standing, convinced that Obama was not only the most radical president in American history and that he was personally committed to destroying both capitalism and Christianity. These nut jobs would then have to make sizable inroads into elements of the military and police with agitation and then pledges from cops and soldiers not to obey the orders of the president in crises. On top of all that, this same proto-fascist movement would have to find support from a major political party as well as stockpile a sizable number of weapons and begin training paramilitary units. No offense to anyone on this list, but this is not Argentina. This is (North) America and I simply can not envision troops on the streets after a contested election or in the event of a national security crises compounded by a botched administration response. Comment There is no split in our imperial bourgeoisie, only sectarian politics and opportunism of getting re-elected. I see no material reason for a coup against Obama and his administration - at this time. Maybe things will shift for 2012, but that is like a decade away for me, with events running at a maddening pace. Obama is creating a new political form for capital under the title bipartisanship. Obama is leader of the Revolutionary Right but so is Leroy - Newton Leroy Newt Gingrich. What separates them are the political institutions through which they have come to power. Both are attacking the system and constitution from different directions. Leroy is a historic Southern Redeemer. Obama is not. Leroy says Restore (Redeem) America. Obama says Yes we Can, but No I won't, unless you make me. This in turn means defeat my political opponents. Neither can advance the cause of their class detached from their different political - not economic, base. Hence, their sectarian politics. II. Some liken Bush W. ascendency to President as an American form of the palace coup with rumors of him lining up support of key sections of the military. As I understand matters the Hayes-Tilden Agreement set the parameters for the extra-legal political secession in America. The Hayes Tilden agreement did not create fascism in the American South but set the stage for the ascension to power by the most reactionary, chauvinistic and imperialist elements of finance capital. Rather than placing troops on the streets, Hayes-Tilden removed federal troops from the South. The illegal and extra legal overthrow of the democratic government of the South, ending the Reconstruction era, ushered in the world's first Redeemer - fascist, government or fascist state form. History, or rather European history, and the curve of development of the Marxist movement, colored our vision with a concept of fascism in its military or German form. The world's first fascist states in the core South did not and could not assume a military form because the armies of Southern reaction had been defeated on the battlefield. For the success of the fascist Redeemer movement federal troops stabilizing Reconstruction had to be removed from the South. Reaction in the form of the Klan stepped forth as the hangman of democracy, or as it is often called, government on horseback. American fascism as a historical current, assumes an illegal and extra legal form as distinct from the German military form. III. By all standards and reckoning, the American peoples are armed to the teeth. Corporations have built up private police force as national police force functions are in fact privatized into personal armies, and more than less autonomous military units. The post-industrial prison complex is state machinery deployed as a murderous fascist fishers net. The concentration of power in the executive branch and the President as head of government and head of state is not a good sign. The Revolutionary Right, rather than a section of capital seeks a fascist solution to stabilize its new form of private property; symbolic wealth detached from surplus-value. One aspect of the fascist movement is expressed in the anti-immigration movement, which is armed, conducts and carries out illegal and extra legal violence. The state of Arizona seeks to legalize illegal and extra legal violence in defiance to citizen's rights. Extra legal morphs into illegal when you are caught in the act and a social movement pushes for your punishment and achieves this goal. One need not be locked into a European conception of fascism as corporatism or the corporate state or cling to a model of fascism as a
Re: [Marxism] CONAIE and PACHAKUTIK did not oppose the attempted coup in Ecuador
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Would we come out under the banner of Return Obama to Office Defend Obama's Right to the Presidency? Or would we come out under our own banner, with opposition to the coup and opposition to the conditions that created the coup, the conditions that Obama himself has strengthened . . . . . Reply It depends on who we happen to be. If we are 100 people communicating by internet, then we can have no banner, only slogans of the individual. If we are a handful of revolutionaries with a micro membership, possessing our banner is sectarianism made manifest and a call to remain sectarian. We have no banner other than that hoisted by the masses at this point in time. Victory of the workers in their current struggle is our platform and motto for building up revolutionary forces. It depends on the nature and character of the police riot and degree of polarization throughout the military and intelligence community within our multinational state system. America ain't Ecuador and a really big country. Specifically, If Obama was jailed in say Alabama or better yet Georgia by a rogue police grouping and a section of the GBI - Georgia Bureau of Investigation, America and all its national political institutions would polarize rapidly along the historic North - South axis, and within this polarization various classes and strata would react based on legal concepts of constitutional authority and masses drawn into motion. I would immediately side with a general political polarity demanding the Presidents release and return to office under the conditions above. We forget that us operate within political polarities. Every action by us should be bound up with masses in motion. Without question I would have consulted with comrades in my tiny micro-membership association to ascertain to what degree we severe our own direct contact with each other and assume a more mobile organizational form operating based on our general line of march and motto. By rogue police is meant extra legal police activity. Police riots with potential to evolve into a military/palace coup are to be confronted based on real time activity of the masses, and as a general rule suppressed by the masses. Under conditions of today, the Obama scenario presented above means an attempted coup from the reactionary right (not the far right, which is a dangerous concept) as opposed to the revolutionary right. The former is driven by the politics and ideology of a return to yester-year or the ritual culture of slavery and its oppressive ideological aftermath. Revolutionary right is the political grouping (capitalists) seeking to preserve private property in a new form while completing the leap to a new mode of production. Just as a section of the old feudal order became capital, and a section of the slave oligarchy became the land lord planter class merging with finance capital, a section of capital is compelled to leap and destroy the basis of the wage form of labor and its stabilizing social contract. An attempted coup from the revolutionary right would be extremely complex, indicating a polarization within society and the state sufficient for revolutionaries to consider transferring political power to the masses or political insurrection with sections of the military and intelligence apparatus on our side and in tow. Actually, an attempted coup by the revolutionary right would signal the utter collapse of Obama's politics of bipartisanship: collapse of efforts to reshape and create a new party of private property roughly equivalent to the Republican Party of Lincoln. I do agree that what is taking place throughout the world today and most certainly in our hemisphere is not national-colonial revolutions and its corresponding class intersection, as these classes fought to overturn the direct colonial system. One cannot fight for the independent activity of the proletariat by raising an independent banner. WL. 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] revolt of small nations and the direct colonial system: antagonism (a reply)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Connolly knew, because he actually knew Irish history [and I might add here, Leonardo knows because he too actually knows the history of Argentina] that the struggle would condense itself, focus itself, determine itself along class lines... and all the IDEOLOGY of self-determination that Lenin was advocating separate and apart from the actual relationship of the working class to the mode of accumulation was, in the end, pettifogging, yeah, I said it, pettifogging, BECAUSE the backwardness, the underdevelopment, the oppression were expressions of capitalist accumulation. Now I know I've just broken another of the ten commandments of Marxmail, and actually called into question the genius, the all-knowing all seeing eye of Lenin, but Lenin's revolts of small nations is a regressive formulation as such revolts only occur when driven by the working class, and are always precipitated by the international antagonism between the means and relations of production. Reply Who in fact were the colonial peoples fighting during the era of the direct colonial system when Lenin advanced the slogan self determination of nations? Later, Lenin withdrew this slogan but that isnot the issue. The colonial masses fought the evolving proletariat of the imperial center, and their peasant masses constituting the armies of imperial colonization. During the rising epoch of the bourgeoisie the primary classes of the imperial center enter into alignment constituting the imperial storm troopers (army). Such is why the colonials spoke of oppressing peoples and oppressing states, and not just exploiting classes. The issue for the colonies was the oppressing nations and oppressing people and their foreign armies. Here is the enemy. . . . . all the IDEOLOGY of self-determination that Lenin was advocating separate and apart from the actual relationship of the working class to the mode of accumulation was, in the end, pettifogging, yeah, I said it, pettifogging, BECAUSE the backwardness, the underdevelopment, the oppression were expressions of capitalist accumulation. The relationship of the working class - proletariat, to the mode of capital accumulation is that of a slave, wage slave, and the imperial proletariat functions as the Sambo proletariat during the era of direct colonialism. Sambo was the slave who murdered the other slave for refusing wipe a female slave mastered wanted to discipline. The female slave is analogous to the colonials. There is much to be written about the actual relationship of the working class to the mode of accumulation but the issue of the colonies under the direct colonial system is pretty straight forth. The revolt of small nations and not so small ones such as China was precipitated by having a colonial army stationed in their country murdering, raping, exploiting and engaging in an orgy of plunder and countless humiliations. You may call this capital accumulation, but colonial plunder predates capital by perhaps 5,000 years. The antagonism - (international antagonism expressing means and relations of production,) is not the wage labor form or the capital-wage labor contradiction, (which is how I read the above, perhaps incorrectly). International antagonism needs definition. Capitalist production relations evolve in antagonism - (not contradiction), or external collision, with the production relations of a dying social order. The dying social order is feudalism, or all the pre-capitalist social forms, ritual culture, social ranking and privileges of the old social order. The external collision between a rising new mode of production and an old one, or what is the same, collision between qualitatively different means and relations (production relations) is the meaning of antagonism for me. The point is not seeking agreement on concepts and terms but to make ones writing understandable. I used the concept antagonism to denote external collision between qualities, or between a new contradiction and an old contradiction defining the words social system. For instance, bourgeoisie and proletariat constitute the driving contradiction of bourgeois production. This contradiction is the living heart of capitalist production relations, or defines capital as a quality. Bourgeoisie and proletariat do not enter into contradiction with the feudal social-order, but rather, are birthed in antagonism with the feudal system. Antagonism is a form of developmental resolution, requiring the destruction of an old contradiction - quality, defining an old mode of production. Contradiction refers to the unity and strife within a quality, rather than between two
[Marxism] The speech that Rich Trumka should have given on Oct. 2nd
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist October 8, 2010 The speech that Rich Trumka should have given on Oct. 2nd Filed under: trade unions, workers - louisproyect @ 6:30 pm Comment If Trumka gave such a speech - which is impossible given the history and real political motion within the trade union movement, it would be a political signal from the revolutionary right having formally consolidated its new fascist labor front. Trade unions have a role to play in forming a Labor Party but this is not 1996 and the time for formula. I would and do support with all my heart and soul the UAW's efforts at beginning to build for an independent party of labor based on the political conception of pushing the union to become a social movement. The operative words are beginning to build because we are not going to skip any phase of us doing the building. We do the damn building which allows us to build the apparatus to imbue the workers with class consciousness. This stage ain't about a damn job, but socially necessary means of life. The Labor Party thing has a serious flaw in light of transition to a new mode of production and an over abundance of labor. I will forego the perpetual fight against the skippers of stages and phases in favor of the here and now or this specific moment. In Detroit and the Midwest region, the political/ideological struggle is over a concept called the union as a social movement. This concept is rooted in pure Americano and is a historical conception rooted in our actual working class movement when the early union had auxiliary organizations such as unemployed committees, women's committee's and racial equality committee's which were neighborhood organizations of real people. This is the last material reality and conception of American unions as a social movement and it should be noted, you first read and heard this on the Marxism list. Now in real time the Democrats are going to take a spanking in the midterm elections because all parties in power lose significantly in midterm elections for the last 75 years, except on two occasions, which I have in front of me but don't want to load this thread down with. The reactionary right is attacking the Republican party harder than the Democrats. Yea check out John Paul - pardon that the old Pope, I mean Ron Paul son and his run for office? The Marxism list needs color. We need a thread that is highlighted in white, red and blue to indicate the topic is on electoral politics. Trumka cannot give Lou's imaginary speech, which is propaganda against business as usual because it defies the law of quality of a thing. That is Trumka would have to become who he is not. The quality - thing, is the Afl and its specific function as a social prop for capital. On the other hand, this thing about the union becoming a social movement is interesting. Equally interesting is good propaganda and agitation for change. The speech that Rich Trumka should have given is agitation for change. Everyone wants change which is why the proletariat goes to Walmart and McDonalds. A little change in the pocket bets no change. WL. 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] The Mendacity of Hope
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == But the fact is that James Madison and the American founders were very big on the idea of checking power. It's remarkable that, in this day and age, that very crucial aspect of their thought is simply neglected across the respectable political spectrum. ML Comment Madison was the man and father of the Bill of Rights, which I understand to mean the Bill of Rights of Citizens, counterpoised to serfs, slaves and colonial subjects, willing to assert their rights as citizens. All of us in our past 10 generations have experienced at least two of these categories if not all three. I understand Madison to have written about a third of the Federalist Papers - which I have still to read, but from what I do understand and believe, the Bill of Rights in America express what Marx called the struggle of the bourgeois and proletariat takes place in the democratic Republic. We - revolutionaries, can champion the Bill of Rights as a specialty group cause established for that purpose from a collectivist lens of public property. In our representative form of government where the President is head of government and head of state, concentrating political authority in the executive branch is at the expense of the legislative and judicial branch. This means an added impulse to the police state or as it is called, political fascism. Not being funny or anything, your self sacrifice and years of training, study and writings on these matters is a benefit to all. Ever think about a pamphlet from a Marxist lens? I would raise money for such, featuring Madison and the meaning of political democracy. Ain't nobody in this country a damn serf or slave. We free proletarian citizens. I commit to an initial donation toward such a pamphlet $300 in the here and now. I would love something under the heading: Third American Revolution. This is of course your call, and the donation stands period. WL. 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] The Party Line against Correa
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == section III. Whether one backs a “populist candidate” for office in their theater of class combat is a very different issue from defining “the populist movement” as a “national revolutionary movement.” The tactics and strategy deployed to quilt a “police riot” – (which tend to be armed demonstrations expressing, manifesting and unleashing an impulse for a coup), is decided on the ground and must involve the masses and formation of “the mass uprising,” to suppress a section of the state. National revolutionary movement? In Latin America in the 21st century? Which side are you one? The side of the mass uprising at whatever stages it exists. Within sides, one always proceed thinking “where do we draw the line” within sides. WL. section I. The “national bourgeoisie” and “the national movement” are terms coined during an era long gone. If one spoke of “industrial capital” and “ industrial capitalists” to describe capital today rather than “productive capital,” “speculative finance,” or something to that affect, most Marxists would recognize the speaker as being stuck in the past. Henry Ford Sr., one of our last great industrial capitalist par excellent, possessed a legendary hate of banks as financial institutions dominating “ industry.” Henry’s problem was that he could not put his vast fortune under his mattress. Henry founded his own bank as the old Manufacturers Bank and Trust and by doing so confirmed the reality of financial-industrial capital. In his own mind, Henry remained an ardent “industrial capitalist” to his last breath, only sensing changes in the environment shifted him from “ industrial capitalist” to “finance-industrial capitalist.” Just because one acquires wealth/capital tied to the operation of “ productive capital,” rather than the daily operation of the new financial architecture does not make them an industrial capitalist in the 21st century. One would be hard pressed to produce to a jury of inquiry an industrial capitalist in the 21 century. Harder still, is producing a “national revolutionary movement” for inspection. The “national bourgeoisie” is a concept bounded by a specific environment, historical time frame and material social relations within a system of direct colonies. In this environment is a complex of struggles against “real existing” political, ideological and lingering feudal material relations, within a world of direct colonies of imperialism. “National bourgeoisie” is a concept more dynamic than “a/the bourgeois grouping within a distinct state system angry with and opposing the new financial architecture dominated by the historic capitalist class in/of the United States of North America.” One might want to reread Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism 1965, by Kwame Nkrumah 1965 The mechanisms of neo-colonialism. _http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/neo-colonialism/ch01.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/neo-colonialism/ch01.htm) section II. Popular forces in Latin American have learnt the lessons of the old imperialism and discovered how to win elections when Empire America is backing virtually all the horses in a race. These forces are “popular” meaning “ intersection of strivings by all classes” seeking to escape or soften the harsh measures of world speculative-finance, and defeat ones domestic political structures shaped by the legacy of the old imperialism. This “popular” movement is not a “national revolutionary movement against imperialism,” if for no other reason than the old imperialism – of the era of Lenin, is a relic only available for viewing in the historical museum. This “popular movement” is “popular” meaning in America what has been called “populism” for over one hundred years. The social strife in Latin America is not “national movements” unless one defines “national revolutionary movement” as being pissed off with the “mechanics” of the new world of speculative finance and ones location within this financial architecture. Heck, a huge sector of the Chinese government is livid over its location in the world of speculative finance, the partial collapse of its export sector and having to accept paper in exchange for commodities – real wealth, exported to America. American history might be instructive in examining the inner logic of the populist movement. Americans has rallied “against the banks” since Thomas Jefferson and his passionate cries against “central bank” monetary policy as a regime. The post Civil War period witnessed the formation of two new political trends: populism and fascism. The latter is the end result of the former. This “all
[Marxism] Police riots, theory and doctrine of combat in the real world
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Comment Defining the “point Marxist should act” – by American Marxists, is something I am not prepared to do, no matter what I might think. Those who insist on telling others what to do . . SA, are barking up the wrong tree . . . again. This is because the weakness of the proletarian movement in the former colonies and dependent countries is an expression of the weakness of the proletariat at front curve of the industrial revolution. Whatever the point can be told on the basis of our own proletarian movement. A police riot is not a theoretical question. A theoretical proposition cannot be converted into a living doctrine of combat at ones leisure. You do not state such directly, but fold the issue into one of support of a government, because “others” choose to “side” with a state, by siding with a particular government. Why instruct revolutionaries in Ecuador what government they should support or not support? Because you say so? A police riot is serious. I have some direct and indirect experience in Detroit and New Orleans. In Detroit the experience was direct with the police holding an armed demonstration against the Coleman Young regime if memory serves me correct. I believe the issue dealt with residency laws for city workers, within a context of what is called “white flight” rather than “following the flow of capital,” out of the industrial centers to the outlying areas. In New Orleans it was the police riots of the early 1980’s as viewed from Atlanta. A mass uprising is the immediate counter point. American Marxists telling revolutionaries whether or not to support or not support a representative of their government during a police riot is a losing proposition. Supporting a representative of government does not mean support for “the government” in any country on earth. The voting sector of the world proletariat – (perhaps 3 - 5% of the world proletariat masses at best), divides individual politicians from the totality of the political system, which has a life of its own. This is not a mistaken conception in my opinion but one urgently needed a class framework and lens. The political point about Ecuador as this passing moment is suppression of the police riot based on the social forces at hand. Then, everyone in every theater of struggle gets up the next day, wash their faces, put on their clothes and continue our line of march. For the moment, the incipient “ military-palace coup” has been halted. Reaction is testing its social forces. Next the reaction – not counter revolution, grows stronger to face the incipient mass uprising. As a side note: the uprising is not a general strike but the equivalent of what is called in our country “a riot” with a directed focus. In this case the focus was the police. Who does not hate the police in this day and age? The police hate themselves for Christ sake. Actually, in a perfect world, Marxists in America would send – through an official document representing organizations, their opinion of what is taking place in Ecuador, to an organization(s) in Ecuador, so as not to inflame resentment and anger from 600 years of New World colonization. That is the point. And no, Marxists in an imperial center cannot speak to Marxists “everywhere ” detached from history. Won’t happen . . . ever. Not even under world communism. Why? The pain. And yes, Comrade Nestor and J., tend to fall on the side of their individual conception of the meaning of “the national factor” and “national movement.” Lenin’s post WWI rearticulating of the national question as it intersects with the question of colonies is lifted from the archives by some and teleported 90 years later into the world of 2010. Under this scenario I would be joining the “Black is Back” group. What is taking place in Ecuador, Brazil and Venezuela is not a “national movement” – as national movement was defined because the proletarian revolution in every theater can only express itself based on the history of inequality of classes and peoples . . . nations. We may not agree on many things, but calling what is happening in the world today and Latin America (Latina America or South America) a national revolutionary movement under conditions of Empire demands one present evidence. Any weakness in the former colonies is always a weakness of the proletarian movement in the imperial centers. This is so because the configuration of the social movement in the former colonies is an expression of me having my imperial boot on your neck. The problem is that someone else other than me controls my bodily movement, including my feet. Yea, I agree.
Re: [Marxism] European Social Democracy and Unions
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The union can no longer claim to negotiate anything with the class enemy which is desperately trying to increase the surplus rate. Union bureaucracy still acts as a brake on hot-headed members but no longer receives any recognition for their services. … Many think Unions would have nothing to lose if they called for a prolonged, daily reconductible GS even if it were acted upon by only a small minority of workers (starting with only 500 000 strikers just like in May 68 ?). Therefore ruling out the possibility of a prolonged General Strike is premature. In any European country. Comment The comrade that replied one may as well call for Soviets hit the nail on the head. The responses to this thread - to Dan, ruled out no form of struggle, including a general strike. Most certainly no one rule out or suggested any duration. To propose programs and slogans for the workers outside an actual conflict and the demands segments of the proletarian masses raise spontaneously is the meaning of sectarianism. The sum total of the above is the age old anarcho-syndicalist project and militant trade unionism. Romantic notions of workers combating bosses; militant workers ridding themselves of union hacks and prolonged general strikes ought not substitute for unraveling the path of the proletarian revolution in individual theaters. Every premise of the logic of this argument has been argued for one hundred years. Unions are not class organizations. Treating trade union as if they are class organizations with bad leaders called the union bureaucracy is actually a political ideology. The reason unions negotiate with their institutional employer is because that is their function. Trade Unions come into existence as social props of the system of bourgeois commodity production, no matter how militant or passive they become. Trade union cannot break with capital or rather unions become independent of capital through their members being fired and laid off. It is not as if any of us could negotiate a qualitatively better contract due to our class consciousness. Unions by definition collude and collide with their specific institutional capital as their purpose for existence. Unions are equality organizations of various segments of the proletariat rather than class organizations. Unions are equality organizations, although the equality category has incorrectly been limited to nationality struggles for over one hundred years. What else is an organization that fights for equality of wages and conditions of labor for its members only and excludes the bulk of the proletariat, rather than championing the demands of the lower segment of an entire class? Mistaking an equality formation for a class organization is not really a mistake but a point of view. This point of view is anarcho-syndicalist, pure and simple. This is not to say anyone argues against strike action. Nor am I suggesting an understanding of the working class of France or suggesting a line of march for the communist contingent of any country other than where I live. WL. 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] European Social Democracy and Unions
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == As a rule I speak of America and the American experience as the foundation of contributions to this list. America did not birth a social democratic movement. However, the historically advanced capitalist countries have more in common with each other than the historically less developed countries. Equality organization means an association that fights to establish a uniform line of conduct, say wage uniformity and uniform treatment of its members. Yes, much of the improved conditions pioneered and won by unionized labor in the advanced capitalist countries were spread throughout the economy as by-product of the union struggle. How is this different from improved conditions won by any equality organization? The various organizations of the working class birthed under capital evolve as means to reform the system. This process considered as a whole, drives the system through all its boundaries of development. Trade union are organizations designed to reform the system and preserve the unity of bourgeois social relations of production. There is nothing revolutionary or particularly progressive about unions, unless one considers the battle for wages to be revolutionary. The trade union movement is an identity movement if this concept is accepted to have a meaning. Its identity is based upon employment in a trade, rather than craft. Trade unions arise out of labor (guild associations), but long ago ceased to remotely resembling class organizations. This class aspect may have manifested itself - a little, during the time of Marx, but that was a long time ago. The Soviet form was historic because it transcended the bounds of trade unionism. These councils were class organizations. By class organization is not meant an organization founded by members of a class. By class organization IS meant an organization that fights for the needs of a class, based on geography and labor category, e.g. soldiers, as opposed to craft and trade. Trade unions basically fight for equality of wages and conditions of labor for its members and are more than less appendages - social props, of the bourgeois order. Boss, pay me more money. Boss, why I have to work in oil? Boss, I need more break time. Boss, I need an eight hour day. Asking and demanding improvement in ones conditions of servitude - slavery, is not the meaning of class struggle. Communists of course work in trade unions but that is beside the point. We do what is in front of us because we are at all times the most practical revolutionaries. I've done trade union work on the factory floor, as a union rep and retired worker for 39 years. The only thing revolutionary about trade union and factory work is the amount of recruits to the cause of communism one gets; communist literature distribution and raising money for the communist press. In the curve of capital development trade unions fought for a greater share of the social product and for greater political liberty for its members. How is this logic different from the logic of any other equality organization, or as it is called in America, civil rights groups? That is to say, the same fight takes place; a greater share of the social product and expanded political liberty. The difference between a civil rights equality organization and trade unions as equality organizations is the former generally has to fight the latter on behalf of its members. In the case of women equality groups, they tend to have to fight both of the above on behalf of their members. Trade unions focus on their segment of the population as does any other civil rights group. After industrial capital established its political hegemony in society - a hundred or so years ago, trade unions were locked into a developmental path, as social props of the bourgeois order. This is due to their connection to capital as the laboring process of its members. The purpose of a union is to fight for its members; negotiate conditions of labor, strike if necessary and go back to work. I do not view wage struggles as class struggle or the class struggle. Wage struggles are inherent to the unity and strife that is the social bond of capital. Class struggle emerges when proletarian masses leap outside the bound of the employer-employee relations and begin to articulate demands - strivings, of a class rather than a trade. This is only just beginning to begin in America and is visible in say the struggle for national health care and the growing anger over bailing out financial institutions rather than the masses. The battle over immigration is not class struggle but an equality movement. Yes, this struggle is
Re: [Marxism] European Social Democracy and Unions
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Any feasible roadmap from the present to a social formation with the ability and willingness to implement such a programme would be appreciated. In the meantime, any success in strike action is to be celebrated, IMO. --David.\ Comment European social democracy evolved out of the constrains of the feudal order. This history includes the formation of workers or Labor Party's. Europe evolved a peculiar form of the social contract with a material/ideological sense of noble obligation that translated into a right of proletarians - as proletariat, having a legal voice in the political sphere and the Bismarck state. America has no such history as its founding, with attempts to form workers party during various junctures of our history. American capitalism birthed populism as a rough equivalent to European social democracy, minus a legal or common law status demanding proletarian representation on the basis of being proletarian. What is called the welfare state as America was the Roosevelt reform of the system that allowed American to enter and emerge from the Second World Imperialist War. We have no road map or historical precedent for social struggle based on class antagonism. Our Civil War is the closes thing to class antagonism and this was a sharp political struggle within the same class rather than external collision between a dying social system and rising new classes. There has been class contradictions but nothing like Europe's emergence from economic and political feudalism and the form of class engagement called social democracy. Things are getting ugly in America at a breath taking pace. No road maps only a line of march. A line of march is a map but it is a map that is continuously being drawn as one travel a new terrain. Context is everything. II. The financial meltdown reveals the current moment to be one of a cyclical crisis of overproduction, supplemented by permanent and intractable overcapacity in one industry after another, within an ongoing economic revolution and the first stages of the world proletariats fight for program within an emerging social struggle. By economic revolution is meant the revolutionary productive forces within the two general components of economy: production and distribution. The only program sections of the proletariat in motion possess is resists and fight back. The daily leaders of the proletariat in motion still believe there will be recovery one way or another and a return to some sense of normalcy. This is not going to happen. The most dispossessed section of the proletariat has no independent organizational forms. The trade unions dominate the labor movement because they are organized. The trade union movement or a section of it, must cross the threshold of the employer-employee relations, if possible, and/or the dispossessed proletarian majority of earth has to be pushed to cross the threshold into political formation. Or some combination of both. The fighting leaders can and must develop the understanding that achieving political power is necessary to reorganize society in the interest of the masses, rather than corporate profits. Here is the task of Marxists/communist insurgents, whatever your market segment. I am of the school of thought that says slow organized motion beats no organized motion. Activity that allows for a forum of communist ideas, spreading a vision of socialism or a collective society of associated producers; and our communist literature, count me in . . .period. This means passing out papers, pamphlets and trying to start classes and discussion circles. At this point I am not big on programs, only partial demands of various sectors of the class. I have zero transition program. The only transition program viable for me is one focused on increasing literature distribution and funding literature production. Pick your favorite papers. Mine are the People's Tribune and Rally Comrades! Donate money to the cause of communism. Yes, be involved in any and every spark of resistance, but not without communist literature. We have to recruit the next generation of Marxists one way or another, in what ever market segment one operates in. What is needed is the organization of revolutionaries (not one organization) concentrating our fire along a line of march that is the section of the proletariat in motion and the voice of the most poverty stricken. Today it is mobilization for a march in Washington. Tomorrow it will be something different. The beat goes on. WL Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set
[Marxism] based on the robot; singularity
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Robotic nation has already arrived. Check out these video’s at . _http://singularityhub.com/2010/02/11/no-humans-just-robots-amazing-videos-o f-the-modern-factory/_ (http://singularityhub.com/2010/02/11/no-humans-just-robots-amazing-videos-of-the-modern-factory/) “Modern manufacturing isn’t based on human labor, it’s based on the robot. Still, most people cannot grasp the breadth of automation in factories. We still picture plants full of human workers toiling to make our cars and furniture, just as we imagine our meat comes from animals in a barn. The truth is much more awe-inspiring, perhaps even frightening. The factories of today have some human workers, but huge portions of assembly lines are 100% mechanized. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics expects automotive jobs to decline 18% by 2018 despite expected increases in production. Robots eliminate the need for more workers. Before you lament the loss of jobs, take a moment and watch how robots earn their role every day in the workplace. Incredible! You probably know that most cars are made with less than 24 hours worth of human labor. The rest is all done by automation. Machines building machines. It sounds simple, but you have to watch it to really understand what it means.” 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] God, materialism and the Bible; The 'poof' conception
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == But in those six days, POOF! he created some dude named Adam and THEN did major surgery, extracted a rib, and made Eve so we'd all be around now. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions believe that, or as close to as makes no difference. How many list members believe the bit about God, Adam and Eve? I suspect less than one percent. Comment There is no Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 or THE STORY OF CREATION or what is the same, the narrative of creation and emergence. Marx materialism means treating historical literature in the era/epoch in which it was written. Engels wrote somewhere that materialism must change its form with every epoch making discovery. What if Six days of creation simply means six cycles, and is a very ancient materialist conception of what today we call evolutionary change? Surely you are not arguing against a cycles creation narrative. What if the seventh day of rest means creation as we know it comes to an end and evolves on its own basis? This is posed against the idea and narrative that God was lazy and tired. Man could not have appeared on the first day or cycle in the earth's formation or before water and separation, then algae and plant life. The creatures of/in the sea as a species, predates the arrival of man/women. Our species had to come on the sixth day or cycle outlined and all research I have run across seems to confirm this. Genesis 1 strikes me as an ancient materialist conception of Organic matter in motion. I always found this passage from the creation narrative fascinating: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. Divide water from water means to my mind sea water from fresh drinking water. Such a separation had to take place as precondition for a species living off fresh water. Every time visiting Niagara Falls, I am in awe. Then again, purple mountains . . . .fuvk me all the way up. It's like wow. The earth really does belong to God, the most high, however you understand the meaning of that which calls creation into existence. How one understands the rib story in Genesis 2 depends on study and a materialist or non-materialist framework. What is certain is that Adam and Eve of Genesis 2 do not appear in Genesis 1. The Man and women of Genesis 1 come forth as a biological unity on the Sixth Day being created - emerge, simultaneously. Man is not created first and woman second in Genesis 1. The whole thing about the rib appears much later, Genesis 2. You seem to collapse historical boundaries, and might want to reread the actual narrative. As I understand it, the name Adam (Genesis 2) is related to soil or earth and later the word clay to imply the shaping of things. Adam as name can be roughly translated of the soil or of the earth or earthling or male earthling. Eve would become mother as name or female of the earth. Genesis 2 has a great opening line defying the ability of Hollywood's best screen writers: [1] Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. [2] And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. Finished. Rested. The great cycle of creation is set in place. This is an ancient materialist conception. American Indian lore calls this the first coming. Eddie Harris called it Silver cycles. Pharaoh Sanders spoke of the creator has a master plan. Horace Silver called it Song for My Father. Miles in typical fashion blew it as So What. Finished. Rested. Genesis 2 describes the relationship of the man/women unity to that which had been created. In this creation story a man is formed from the soil residing in a garden. For the moment, in the garden, rules are set and dude can eat anything except that from a certain tree. The dude in Genesis 2 goes on to become a tiller of the earth in Genesis 3, with all its implications for instrument and tool development. Genesis 2 is a different creation story. Man and women in Genesis 1 are not driven to become tillers, and apparently live in metabolic unity with the earth. They gather. That is to say the conception called the hunter-gatherer society is backwards. We gather first as fundamental and later, much later, become gatherers and hunters. There is much cryptic symbolic imagery in Genesis 2, and mention of Gold. Yea . . . . Gold. In some translations God states, the gold is mine, and gives Adam dominion - not subjugation and exploitation, of the earth and the things in it. These are not stories of poof but concise narrative of process. Genesis 3 is the story
Re: [Marxism] Lenin on imperialist and oppressed nations
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I still cling, stubbornly and with a rash one-sideness of mind, to Lenin´s assertion: the world is split between a small gang of imperialist nations, and a host of semicolonial countries. Comment The matter of oppressed nations and the semi-colonial state overlap but are different questions. Semi-colonial is a concept of the state rather than nation. Semi-colonial nation is not a concept definimg degree of development of nation, advanced national groups, nationality/ethnic factor, or color factor. Semi-colonial country is a concept of a geographic area - country, with a transitional form of state. Semi-colony, as distinct from direct colony, commercial (financial) colony and the protectorate, speaks of a transitional - momentary, form in/of the previously colonial state in motion; breaking out of the direct colonial relation. Democratic forces temporarily control segments of the state. These democratic/national revolutionary forces can be communist, pro-communist or as it was pro-Soviet or anti-communist and anti-Soviet. These forces are democratic in relations to completing bourgeois democratic tasks meaning clearing the lumber of feudal inheritance and national/revolutionary in the context of the era in which Lenin writes: the era of the beginning collapse of the direct colonial system. (see Lenin's quote from Imperialism below). Semi-colony or semi-colonial state is a historically specific thing in a context; first, the world wide closed - direct, colonial system as the concrete form of imperialism. In this world society is completing the leap - transition, from agrarian-feudal society to industrial dominated society. Communists, where possible, compete to shape the state as guardian of public property rather than bourgeois property. Under the period of the Comintern - using Lenin's thesis as a bookmark, the strategy was to deny imperialism its political, economic and military reserves represented in the colonies, by supporting national democratic revolutions, and ultimately bringing them into the orbit of Soviet power. Hence, workers and oppressed peoples unite. Declaring for Soviet power was not a precondition of communist support of the national revolutionary (democratic) movement. (J writes this as: proletarian revolution in the European imperialist countries IS NOT POSSIBLE until imperialist super-profits are stopped up.) Secondly, the status of semi-colonial state, in the era of breakdown and destruction of the direct colonial system, is temporary, momentary and transitory. The petty bourgeois forces want to pause and erect a bourgeois national state under their hegemony. After confirmation of the October Revolution the national democratic revolutions faced a choice: either leap forward and enter the political orbit of Sovietism or leap forward as financial colony of imperialism. World war II closed out the period of the direct colonial system. Post WW II political realignment brought forth the neo-colonial state, or the Third World states superseding the colonial state or direct colonial system. The neo-colonial state conformed to the post WW II era of finance-imperial capital. Actually, finance-imperial capital sought to destroy and did destroy the direct colonial relationship, which was a political/military form of an earlier economic relation, generally referred to as the export of commodities, distinct from the export of capital. Decolonization or the epoch of national liberation closed with the 1976 unification of Vietnam. This epoch spans from 1776 - 1976, roughly. The entire historical process was not even and absolute. Each stage contained its own expression of the semi-colonial transitional state form. Post WW II old Southern Yemen, old Tanzania, old Zambia, old Guinea Bissau, Ghana and Allende's period of Chile, expressed shapes of the semi-colonial state thing under conditions different from the era of the Comintern. What countries of Latina America or rather South America, are passing through a national democratic revolution? Argentina? I think not. Argentina is no semi-colony unless one defines semi-colony as Argentina. Puerto Rico strikes me as one of those last remaining direct colonies, as it the black belt South, but not a semi-colonial state. The state system in these areas are not in political transition, except in the evolutionary sense within the American state system. There are no national democratic revolutions in South America or the world today, in the main. Nada. There is fight and resistance to Empire and the new finance capital in every theater of the proletarian revolution. Perhaps, I have
Re: [Marxism] What If? hold, when to fold. (The wheel turn, bureaucracy)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On the 'role' of Trotsky. It seems only people with a political axe to grind would down play Trotsky's role during any of this period. The capitalist press...a review of the foreign workers press (the CP of America's own press during this period, for example) shows the actual truth in this regard, not to mention Stalin's *own* words at Trotsky's role. D. Comment II. (two) Leon Trotsky role in both revolutions was revolutionary to the highest degree. His military leadership was brilliant without question. Within this leadership role history has recorded his passionate hate of privilege and fearlessness attacking the issues of his day. This exists no evidence to the contrary I have come across. DW is accurate (in my mind) mentioning Stalin himself does not question Trotsky role. My reading of Stalin's criticism of Trotsky is a charge of Trotsky painting himself bigger than Lenin in his writings. Further, Stalin charges Trotsky does not mention he worked under direction of the party. Such is the big criticism of Trotsky by Stalin himself concerning the two Russian Revolutions and the period of civil war. Pro Soviet or pro Moscow I have had enough of being asked to justify the execution of a Bukharin, because I was pro-Soviet (Moscow) and seek to explain to our workers how the Soviets built a medical system not run based on bourgeois property or private ownership of the means of production deployed to build the hospital and all the instruments, tools and wherewithal within the hospital. You know the drill, Comrade Waistline support murdering political opponents and does not understand the Soviet legal system was broke because he refuses to condemn the execution of Bukharin. One should read Bukharin testimony for themselves. Let me answer this question directly again, with historical insight (I was not born until September 28, 1952). Inn hindsight, Bukharin life should have been spared because of the brilliance of his testimony, outlining the meaning of political revolt, insurrection, the palace coup vs. the military coup, and the functioning of the bureaucracy. He should have been jailed based on his own testimony. Here is how brilliant Bukharin testimony is: the prosecutor cannot adequately explain the charge against Bukharin, to Bukharin's satisfaction and repeatedly asks Bukharin to stick to the point, which he does, but on a level outside the political conception of the prosecutors understanding of processes. Bukharin is charged with plotting insurrection against the Soviet government and B insists this is stupid because a palace coup, with the military in tow, is not the Leninist meaning of insurrection. Read the testimony for yourself and learn. I fold the political hand called Stalin versus Trotsky, because it is a losing hand for all players. The continuous revival of Stalin on this list comes from ideological currents hostile to Stalin and the Stalin regime. Here is the real source of Stalinism. Hey, Paddy, Cox, Furr and a couple others - myself, respond. I. (one) Had Lenin lived - say to 1938, aspects of Soviet history would unfold different due to his personality and insight into process logic. The inner meaning of the bureau system - bureaucracy, and the role of the individual was part of the what if scenario. Also, how specific words are used in discussion was a pivotal point. For instance, the word bureaucracy. The cult of the personality or the cult of the great leader, as an institution was examined. My opinion is the cult of the great leader is the specific ideology of the bureaucracy, and most certainly the state as state, as this bureau system slices through every facet of Soviet life and justified its daily existence. The other approach seems to be the cult of the great leader is the product of personal politics, wrong ideology of political factions and the striving of the individual who is the object of adulation. An individual can nurture a cult following but the the cult of the great leader requires a Hollywood for manufacture and reproduction. The Soviet bureau system, not just the party, was the Hollywood. III. The bureau system or bureaucracy is not an abstract discussion for me. The bureaucracy cannot be over thrown and is pliable. Our understanding of this holds us back. In fact we face bureaucracy as the trade unions attempt to swing their membership in motion. In a period of transition specific objective and subjective factors combine to open the bureau system to assault and reconstruction. You can purge people - fire them, as a modality or kick the legs of bureaucracy out from under itself
[Marxism] Lenin Said
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Comment Lester came first and Ditko’s “Green Lantern” and “Spiderman” were off the chain, although I was a Kirby man. Final verdict. John Coletrane. According to Lenin, Volume 2,348 page 12. WL. 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] Lenin on imperialist and oppressed nations
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 9/15/2010 7:57 PM, _waistli...@aol.com_ (mailto:waistli...@aol.com) quoted Nestor: I still cling, stubbornly and with a rash one-sideness of mind, to Lenin´s assertion: the world is split between a small gang of imperialist nations, and a host of semicolonial countries. To which _waistli...@aol.com_ (mailto:waistli...@aol.com) replied: Lenin never stated this. *** Waistline's assertion is false. What Nestor relates is exactly what Lenin said, and NOT in some offhand comment, but after extensive discussions in the commission on the national and colonial question at the Second Congress of the Comintern. Comment But you produce nothing from Lenin to confirm a division of the world between imperialist nations and a host of semi colonial countries. Semi-colonial has a political meaning. What you produce is material supporting a division of the world between oppressed nations and a very small number of oppressor nations that are enormously rich and strong in the military sense . . . your quote. You seek to interpret Lenin's meaning of semi-colonial state rather than what he said, and then call me false, when I simply produced what Lenin wrote without interpretation. An oppressor nation and oppressed nation is not a concept of a semi-colonial state. Except to you. I gave reference for Lenin's exact definition of semi-colonial state as being in his Imperialism. I grow tired of quoting Lenin but will do so again if necessary. The semi-colony is a historically specific state striving during the time of Lenin's writings. At no point in any of Lenin writings does he divide the world into imperialist nations and a host of semi-colonial countries. The words semi-colony refers to the political motion of the state in a formerly direct colony. At least tell us what a semi-colonial state is in Lenin's context. Semi-colony or semi-colonial state is the issue and not simply oppressor and oppressed nation. Comrade, a nation is not a state. II. Here is what you quote and you can simply state where semi-colony enters the equation. What is the most important, the fundamental idea of our Theses? It is the difference between the oppressed and the oppressor nations. We emphasise this difference - in contrast to the Second International and bourgeois democracy. It is especially important for the proletariat and the Communist International during the epoch of imperialism to establish concrete economic facts and to approach all colonial and national questions not from the abstract but from the concrete point of view. Imperialism is characterised by the fact that the whole world is now divided into a large number of oppressed nations and a very small number of oppressor nations that are enormously rich and strong in the military sense This idea of the difference between nations, their division into the oppressed and the oppressors runs through all the Theses, not only the first ones that I signed and which have already been printed, but also through Comrade Roy's Theses. These were written predominantly from the point of view of India and the other great Asian peoples who are oppressed by Britain, and are thus particularly important for us. WL. 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] MLK photographer Fed
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == As a photographer at the centre of the civil rights movement he had unparalleled access to Martin Luther King and other leading figures, documenting their struggle for equality. But Ernest Withers has now been exposed as an FBI informant, feeding the organisation considered by many black activists to be its enemy with information for years. Withers died in 2007 aged Read more: _http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1312215/Ernest-Withers-Martin-Luther-King-photographer-exposed-FBI-informant.html#ixzz0zmX qgRRR_ (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1312215/Ernest-Withers-Martin-Luther-King-photographer-exposed-FBI-informant.html#ixzz0zmXqgRR R) ** Who ever thought this nigga that we set down at our table and fed, Would turn on the streets and roll with the feds. These niggaz by Z-ro _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcjJV957UrI_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcjJV957UrI) 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] Autumn of the Driveler
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == It is my understanding that Cuban “national Labour Code legislation of 1984, and supplementary laws, comprehensively guarantee both workers’ individual rights and collective rights. Legislation also guarantees workers the right to belong to a trade union as well as conferring the state with the responsibility for finding work for everyone over the age of 17, including people with disabilities, who is able and willing to enter employment. Since the nineties the voice of the trade unions has become an increasingly important component of the economic and political life of the country. The Labour Code is now being reformed to take into account the new economic circumstances that have raised the unions’ profile and the unions are at the heart of the consultation process in the redrafting of this fundamental legislation. Of the approximately 4 million people who are economically active in Cuba, 98% belong to a trade union. In addition there are 250,000 pensioners who are union members. The position of women, who make up 43% of trade unionists in Cuba was one of the subjects discussed at the XIX Congress of the CTC (3) which took place in September 2006. Women account for 58.9% and 53.6% of officials at regional and local levels respectively and the importance of ensuring equal opportunities for women, as well as the need to increase the provision of nursery places (Círculos Infantiles) for the young children of working mothers were highlighted as priorities in this area of the discussion at Congress. (1) _http://www.cuba-solidarity.org/faqdocs/Cuba-the-trade-unions.pdf_ (http://www.cuba-solidarity.org/faqdocs/Cuba-the-trade-unions.pdf) You, Mr. dan writes: “In the context of Cuba, trade unions are banned, the working class obeys directives and the down-trodden have no say in the economic policies of Raul. ” Please explain the meaning of “Cuba, trade unions are banned.” I am not a “Cuba watcher.” Have I missed the dramatic event of trade unions being banned? Was it not the “Trade Union Federation” that announced the “redeployment” of 500,000 state workers? Immature Marxism Everyone gets a chance to learn more on this list. I have learnt many things from the list. What dan wrote: “it is my understanding that the material relations of production determine men's consciousness that draws me to Marx's materialism. And thus the analysis of the relations of production within Cuba which bring me to the conclusion that you're the idealist, . . .” On a scale of 1 – 5 with “1” being excellent, you score 6. Off the scale. Here is what was quoted: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” Marx address “existence” of our specie and plainly states existence determines consciousness. Material relations of production is a much narrower field than existence. Consciousness arises before “material relations of production,” and corresponding division of labor and consciousness and ritual behavior rooted in the “production relations.” Therefore material relations of production, or what is the same, “production relations” of a given era/epoch impacts, shapes and determines specific forms of consciousness of that era. Consciousness is a “big word.” III. Where I grew up, no Marxist or communist is somehow required to support any policy or specific actions of any state . . .period. You claim the Cuban government is nationalist. Fine. What about the state and the form of property ownership of “socially necessary means of life” in Cuba? Do capitalist own the energy infrastructure, as inadequate as it is? What industries are owned by capitalist? Mr. Dan you screamed so much about sugar in Cuba, one would not know nickel is her chief export and its price is off 50% from last year. The point is that you write against the general sentiment of the list and need to show where trade unions have been banned in Cuba. WL. 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] China (was Re: Cuba si ! Yanquee no !)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == China is still NOT an imperialist country (and I don´t know if it will ever become one). I still cling, stubbornly and with a rash one-sideness of mind, to Lenin´s assertion: the world is split between a small gang of imperialist nations, and a host of semicolonial countries. Comment Lenin never stated this. Further he uses the term semi-colony in a specific context. The context is the closed or direct colonial system, as it existed in the pre and post WWI period. Imperialism initially expanded based on colonial blocks or direct colonies connected to the imperialist state. Direct colony means occupied by the imperialist military to suppress all opposition. One can of course just show where Lenin divide the world between imperialist nations and semi-colonies rather than imperialist states and colonies; oppressor nations with their oppressing peoples and oppressed nations/peoples. Perhaps your copy of Lenin reads different from mine. My copy reads as follows. First, what is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations. Unlike the Second International and bourgeois democracy, we emphasise this distinction. In this age of imperialism, it is particularly important for the proletariat and the Communist International to establish the concrete economic facts and to proceed from concrete realities, not from abstract postulates, in all colonial and national problems. The characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole world, as we now see, being divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor nations, the latter possessing colossal wealth and powerful armed forces. The vast majority of the world's population, over a thousand million, perhaps even 1,250 million people, if we take the total population of the world as 1,750 million, in other words, about 70 per cent of the world's population, belong to the oppressed nations, which are either in a state of direct colonial dependence or are semi-colonies, as, for example, Persia, Turkey and China, or else, conquered by some big imperialist power, have become greatly dependent on that power by virtue of peace treaties. WL. 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] revolution in the west the bureau system, more . . .
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Correction: Abstract knowing is not enough because without an organization and social forces one cannot maneuver or prove their knowing. Corrected text: Abstract knowing is not enough. Without an organization and social forces one cannot maneuver or prove - manifest, the correctness of their knowing More opinions IV. Bureaucracy - the society bureau system, is the glue that holds society together, because means of production are deployed and activated on this basis. It is the guts - nuts and bolts, of the system. The bureau system becomes enemy of the people and enemy of the revolution in degree to which it delivers services to itself. Bureaucracy is a socially necessary function of a society at a certain stage in growth of the division of labor. Bureaucracy is not the result of private property but the division of labor. Private property and a host of subjective factors gives bureaucracy its class - human face. The bureau system is channel for privilege information, delivery of services, short cuts through the societal system, favoritism, a source of checks and balances and good ole fashion red tape. Bureaucracy is administration and administration is inconceivable outside a bureau system. The bureau system founded on the electro-mechanical laboring process, (the industrial revolution) saps the wealth of society as feed for conducting middle man operations, yet it is indispensable to any society governed by electro-mechanical labor process. The fewer the better is the revolutionary approach from the left, right, fascist or communist. The bureau system is socially necessary as an artifact of any industrial society. No one suggests destruction of the bureaucracy everywhere except immature anarchists. The bureau system constitutes itself as an intermediate materially-privileged bureaucratic social layer, to the degree its redundant functions are revealed to be delivery of services to itself. A party bureaucracy is an attribute of every society on earth. The ideology of this layer of society should not exist because it lives off the wealth of the workers is not well thought out. Some define the Soviet bureaucracy - a huge layer of Soviet society, as an intermediate materially-privileged bureaucratic social layer, based on its location from the production of material goods, distribution and services. I do not. The danger in Soviet society was much larger than the party bureaucracy or whatever political faction held power. Soviet bureaucracy is a huge concept of a huge society machine. The bureaucracy in real time and real life is an industrial artifact and we will defeat it on the basis of transition away from industrial society. Everyone faces the bureau system to one degree or another. In America the most common hated bureau system enemy is the IRS - Internal Revenue Service. Here's a bureaucracy that is an intermediate materially-privileged bureaucratic social layer of the bourgeois property, filled with thousands of people whose job is to keep their hand in your pocket. This general category called the bureaucracy or Soviet or Stalinist bureaucracy looms as an ideological fiction in the sense that one ought to say what they mean and informs others of what they speak so we all make intelligent decisions and estimates. After all we can speak in clear market terms understandable to the American mind. The world has evened up in such a way that everyone in every theater is going to understand our narrative if we are clear. Ones market, or rather environment of class struggle is always in flux changing and the nature of routine, based on past practice serve as a brake on the revolutionary process. This applies to capitalists and communists alike. When capitalist are defeat by way of bureaucratic practices they die in the market and are quickly forgotten. During periods of transition from one quantitative boundary to the next bureaucracy stifles the adoption of more efficient delivery system and new ideas. During the evolutionary leap from one technology regime to the next, bureaucracy, as it is based on and rooted in the old political, ideological, economic, social and administrative period, emerges as the immediate enemy of the revolutionary transition. The Soviet party bureaucracy, as it merged with state, government and bureau systems administered services of all kind and imposed layers of redundant administrative systems of surveillance. By surveillance IS NOT meant primarily policing/state agencies/KGB type stuff, but what is called checking up on the systematic fulfillment of task systems interwoven into everything. This
[Marxism] New Communist Movement vs Trotskyism, without the rivers of blood
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == A question that has never been answered to my satisfaction is why the growth of what is collectively referred to as the New Communist Movement (NCM) during the 1970's surpassed that of all the Trotskyist groups combined. I don't find the stock answers, the Trotskyist are all oppossed to anti colonial movements, or people joined the New Communist Movement groups because they were Stalinists, all that useful. Comment Rivers of blood. I am not sure if this question can be answered satisfactory for the individual. When one abstracts the ideological or political bent of individual groups it seems various “political groups” rise and fall based on changes in their market if you will. Communist groups formed in one period of history or a specific phase of the social movement generally acquire the salient feature of their period of formation. When the social struggle shifts due to changes in the economy, or catastrophic political events – world imperialist wars, these groups as a general rule cannot shift based on the new features of the social struggle. A political vacuum is created and new ideological groups are formed attempting to articulate the moment more accurately. Capitalist corporations go out of business when they miss their market or when the market shifts. So does communist groups. The CPUSA faced this challenge in the post WW II era. The salient feature of the social struggle shifted from industrial unionism to completion of the Second American Revolution in the form of the African American Freedom Movement. Not withstanding government attacks, the CPUSA was formed based in the struggle for industrial union, with it’s core fighting membership located in heavy industry. When the social struggle shifted the CPUSA could not. Some approach this issue from its subjective dimensions or the ideological and political pronouncement of groups and their “position” on “world revolution,” Stalin, Trotsky, the Woman factor, or any other issue. Leaving ones “position” out the equation for a moment, there was simply no way for the CPUSA to order all its members to leave their jobs and relocate within the “Negro People’s Movement.” A new generation of militants emerged outside the organization and ideological frameworks of the CPUSA. Without question lots of “subjective aspects” are involved like the impact of the Wagner Act on the mind of the American proletariat, the dismantling of the CPUSA apparatus in the South; the shift in policy orientation towards the Negro Peoples Movement at precisely the movement of outbreak of this struggle; the Khrushchev revelations, betrayals of colonial revolutions by the dominant faction in the Soviet state, and completion of the national revolutionary phase of world history, neo-colonialism, etc. There was the internal struggle of the CPUSA around the issue of the trade unions, positions on the Negro Question, defense of the Soviet State, and/or support for whoever was in power in the Soviets, etc. The change process can be view from any aspect of its subjective dimensions. The equation for me is this: “why and under what conditions do communist groups ‘go out of business’.” Or the inverse, under what conditions does a new generation form new political associations? Somewhere a political vacuum must exist. Communist groups cannot make “turns” like a military column and generally “go out of business,” or are rendered irrelevant. The cause always appear as a certain “ideological and political weakness or “incorrectness” but this explanation is detached from change waves and quakes in real society. Without riveting an insight to something material or proceeding from ideology to explain ideology the result is ideological blood. Marx and Engels passed through a couple of boundaries in the evolution of the industrial/bourgeois system. At the front of this period the Communist League was formed and the Communist Manifesto written. Then the First International was formed and completed its tasks and went out of business. With the expansion of the capitalist system and the growth of mass parties of the proletariat the Second International was formed. The Third Communist International was formed based on a different boundary of development of the industrial system and wakening of the colonial masses as imperialism sought a new political division of the world. I would look at the various new communist groups formed during the 1970s, as they sought to express the salient features of this time frame. “ Revolution In The Air” seems to be the best summation of this period to date. II. The one thing I will say for sure, at least
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Maoism, Trotskyism and Conservatism, Homosexual
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I'm very partisan about my world view, my politics. But I am not flip about any of it. Ever. D Walter Reply Really? I hadn't noticed. :-) On another note: Perhaps we should turn a blind eye to the situation in Uganda as well in the name of national self determination. Oppression of gays in post capitalist societies helps to keep the working class divided and creates an easy target for counterrevolultionaries to exploit. Comment This Anti-Homosexuality Bill is insanity made manifest. As I understand matter the bill was withdrawn but only under condition of economic pressure from the imperial centers. Homo-sexuality remains a crime in Uganda punishable with imprisonment. Send them to an all men or female jail for engaging in same sex. Who but a lunatic and degenerate thinks in such terms? Honest to God we talked about Uganda last week and this whole dirty business of the former colonial state-fascists seeking to murder and even extrad ite their nationals engaging in same sex in another country. The context of our discussion was framed in a meeting several years ago where certain folks ended up in Uganda sitting in a meeting where the freaking minister of Defense decided to attend. The guy with all the guns. A comrade was asked a question about America, women, minorities and homosexuality and the first thing she thought about was can I make it to the airport. Pardon, but I think I attended the wrong meeting. Wasn't this panel about Pan Africanism or revolutionary something? You leave the meeting with sweating palms only to discover you can't get a cab to the fucking airport. WL. 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] Cuba, homosexuals, national revollutionary movements
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == This borders on religion, and in the case of those leftists, and homosexuals, who opposed the crimes of the Cuban regime against same-sex love, instead of criticizing the lack of humanity, and even the bigotry, of the official policy of harassment, persecution, and discriminination against homosexuals, it supported the official barbarism. Comment Official barbarism. Cuban policy towards homosexuals is classified as barbarism. Is this not over the top? The root historical problems of the national revolutionary movement of the past eras reside exclusively with the proletariat in the imperial center. Note the word root. Mistakes - real or perceived, in the former colonial theater are secondary to this root problem, which was the inability of the proletariat in the imperial center to emancipate itself much less the colonials. Actually, a decisive section of the proletariat in the imperial centers - not just leaders, supported colonial oppression and exploitation because the proletariat sensed its material well being was bound up with colonialism and real barbarism against the world's people. To the point: A capitalist China is better than, more lofty and desirable than a China ruled by the imperialist. Anyone that doubts this for a moment should consult the people of China, their government and state. A Cuba governed by Cubans, Argentina, Brazil, Vietnam - be it capitalist or socialist, is better than, more lofty and desirable than one rule by American imperialists. The same applies world wide in all instances of the former colonies. More interesting is why it was not possible for the proletariat in any of the historical imperial centers to overthrow the power of capital. Let me guess the reason for this inability according to Trotskyism - the Stalin polarity. Here's the clincher. Demanding that revolutionaries in another theater do precisely what the guys in the imperial center cannot do is the logic of a hypocrite. The historic support by revolutionaries in the imperial centers of the national revolutionary movements of the previous eras, flows from the common sense understanding that no one wants to be oppressed by us. WL. 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] Stalinism and Maoism, Trotskyism and Conservatism (was Re: Irwin S
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Which might be given greater weight if it weren't true that the majority of communist movement world wide and in the colonies for the past 70 years has been an absolute train wreck? In particular, the currents that descended from or identified with Stalin's leadership of the USSR from the mid-1920s forward did tremendous damage to the socialist cause by catastrophically botching the job of building socialism. So much so that all the countries they led have openly (USSR, Eastern Europe) or in all but name (China) gone capitalist. Comment A train wreck? Compared to what? Here's the problem: everything has a history, context and developmental path. A social movement and political current is not a train wreck because it is a train wreck, ok. The train wreck - carnage, is us tackling - running into, the bourgeois power. It's not like we ran into ourselves, as the salient feature of the past 100 years. The communist movement world wide and in the colonies during the past 70 (1940 - 2010) was infinitely stronger and more vibrant than the previous 70 years (1870 - 1940). That a communist movement could even take root in the colonies (1870 - 1940) is a miracle of history and testimony to the brilliance of Marx, Engels, Lenin and the Soviet power. One cannot compare a historical period with itself, but rather trace its evolution as a process. What you write is that the parities of the Comintern decayed outside history as a material expression of Stalin's individual leadership. The communist movement is a political expression of the living motion of the proletariat at a specific historical juncture . . . period. In America the living composition of our working class, as the class collided and colluded with capital, drove the system through its boundaries. Domestically, this boundary (1870 - 1940) was the period of transition to industrial unionism in a world of a mounting struggle to re-divide the bourgeois world. The world environment was transition from agriculture to industry, which brought the colonials to revolution. This period was one within a larger curve of history that opened as the result of our national colonial revolution - 1776. Ours was not just a bourgeois democratic revolution but also a war of national liberation. What was overthrown world wide was the direct colonial system. What did the American communists mess up, in the mid-1920's due to Stalin? We all have short comings, but I see no train wreck. Rather, there was unparalleled heroism. The Comintern was formed on the basis of a specific stage of imperialism characterized as the closed colonial system or the direct colony, as this system was being dismantled and shattered by a new form of financial imperialism. The Comintern collapsed pretty much on the same basis as the Second International and the First, although comrades' trend to view things based on ideology and personal qualities of the individual. During a period of transition from one boundary to another the social formation grouped together based on the old boundary decay as a law of life. This decay is expressed in the political realm as ideological struggle and debate, but it is not the ideological struggle that causes the collapse and decay. When dealing with the parties of the First and Second international Lenin places things in a material context or boundary of development of social and productive forces, rather than a failure of Marx and Engels or this leader and that. What damage did Stalin do to the American Communist movement from mid-1920's. The fact of the matter is that the American communist movement grew in leaps and bounds and reached its height during the period of the Stalin regime. The majority communists - organized as the CPUSA, did a pretty decent job given the imperial mindset of our proletariat and the character of our proletariat, which was not specifically American yet. In fact the Comintern October 1928 document reoriented the CPUSA for the better. But, who needs reality when one can rest in the womb of ideology. Let's assume that Stalin had nothing to do with the growth of the American communist movement, and this growth occurred despite Stalin and against his wishes. Now it just so happened that the Comintern forced the document on the Negro Question (1928) on the CPUSA, demanded the dismantling of the European language press in America, which set the basis for the growth of America communism. After all, our country speaks English and Spanish. I am aware that within Trotskyism there is some grief with Stalin demanding dismantling of the old European language press. Was the Comintern used to
Re: [Marxism] Irwin Silber died
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == A good thing about Silber is that the ease of his political trajectory from pro-Moscow to pro-Beijing and back again is helpful in discussions with folks who choose to believe that there is/was a fundamental difference between Stalinism and Maoism. Comment Exactly what is wrong or was wrong with a communist being pro Soviet or pro China during the era of the 1970's? By pro is meant in opposition to imperialist policy against the Soviets and the Chinese. This is after all what promeans. Who speak is such terms as the ease of his political trajectory from pro-Moscow to pro-Beijing and back again as if this means something on a Marxist list. Does this not sound like a backhanded advertisement for imperialist aggression? Hate the Chinese. Hate the Soviets because . . . . (one can filled in the reason). Why would one not be pro China? I am pro China right now today, which is not to say I support every policy of the ruling party, government or state or the local police department . Anyone that forgets for a moment we are in the most imperial of all imperial states needs their head examined. Mao's thought is fair game, but that is a totally different matter from being pro or anti China. Apparently, the writer is anti-China. Ideology is the stuff of the dead mind. I swear to God, all one has to do is consult the archives and compare the mountain of lies and distortion about China and the Soviet Union against what these champions of democracy and true defenders of Marxism have to say about our own criminal bourgeoisie, who remain the hangmen of revolution and the enemy of the people of earth. Who but stool pigeons for capital can speak as if being pro-Soviet - pro-Moscow (in the period under discussion) was bad? Who can speak as if being Pro China and the Chinese revolution is anything but good other than boot licking lackey's of the imperialist bourgeoisie? The difference between Stalinism and Maoism? What on earth are you talking about expect ideological madness and nonsense. This is not so say I have a particular love for what is called Maoism. Or the writings of Silber. I do remember the specific writings of Mr. Silber and his tour at the Guardian during this period of the so-called young communist movement which became the new communist movement. My criticism of this period and Silber is mild compared to my second wife who was an editor of the Guardian at the time of Silber and the new communist take over. She hated when they first showed up, but some felt it was a way to boost subscriptions and finance. WL. 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] Fidel Castro Says He Was Misinterpreted
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Perhaps from Cuba our entire political- ideological class looks like much of a muchness. Perhaps the same could be said for Iran; to Ahmadinejad, David Duke may not look as much unlike any other American politician as he does to us. Comment Bingo. We are all imperialists and bourgeois to much of the world outside the American state. Most certainly the most destitute of our proletariat would object to this characterization and does object, but the world outside America is not America. It's not like there is something Ahmadinejad, can say or not say to change state policy. If he says nothing it makes no difference. If he says the right thing or the wrong thing it makes no difference. All this penning away about what some small fry bourgeois political degenerate states one way or another is not going to determine state policy. A fundamental shift in state policy away from the Israel state, as it currently exists, would not surprise me. All Ahmadinejad has to do is survive policy shift and assault by some Marxist front men of the American imperialism being deployed to effect the policy shift within Iran as a prelude to American policy shift. You know these guys who demand democratic elections everywhere except in America. Not one single one of these guys has ever called for electoral reform in America that prevents people from voting. No permanent friends, just permanent interest is the official policy of state. Official policy becomes mired in the human passion and domestic political alignments however. The material - human, composition of the American State is rooted in the Southern or Bible belt and its ideology of Revelation and the chosen people. In respects to the Israeli state as domestic politics we are dealing with a deeply ingrained ideology of the chosen people - as opposed to the degenerate political concept of Jewish bankers, which merges with national and white chauvinism. Then the merchants of chauvinism and there expression within Marxism step in. You know the drill. God got chosen peoples and if it is not you your ass it out pal. I argued with my barber over this issue who sees something Godly in the state of Israel. After listening to his version of why the state of Israel house the chosen people, and why it was God's will to beat up millions of Arabs, I asked were there any other chosen people, say for instance white people. The barber apparently became angry and nicked me on the back of the neck with his clippers. I laughed and he hit my neck again with the clippers. I say, That second nick was kind of bad and I can feel a little patch of blood on my neck. He says, God works in mysterious ways. I say, So do your fucking clippers. We both laughed The state of Israel is a criminal bourgeois state that has no inherent right to exist. As it exists in real time, it could disappear tomorrow and I would not shed one single tear. Actually, I would drink a toast. No political state has a heaven ordained right to exist, be it the Israel state or the state of the United States of America, as both currently exist. We all have a way of sounding like imperialist to the world outside the American state, because we are the most imperial of all imperial states. We know what is best for the world and have an analysis to tell everyone of earth what to do and how to do it. Especially certain Marxists who tend to be of the chosen people or rather chosen people with the chosen Marxism. You know the crew. The ones will all the solutions to the colonial struggles of the past 150 years. The ones that if they ruled in the Soviet Union the world would be peaches, cream and world socialism. Such a world I would not want to live in, because it is predicated upon me being on the bottom with some fancy explanation about my misunderstanding of the national factor in history. Give me another 200 years of capital rule rather than the chosen people or rather chosen Marxists. WL. 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] Stalinism and Maoism, Trotskyism and Conservatism (was Re: Irwin Silbe
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == It useless to speak of anything concerning the Stalin polarity on a Trotskyite list. Most certainly world Troskyism has been discredited on the national-colonial factor from the standpoint of the majority of communist movement world wide and in the colonies for the past 70 years. In America the Trotskyites have always been the white people expressing the most privilege strata of the working class, utterly rejecting Lenin positions on the national colonial factor and common sense. The issue is not the policy of the Soviets in the 1930's concerning homosexuality, but the behavior of American communists. Why did you guys purge homosexuals from your parties and the majority did not? Fucking liar. Now, if one wants to discuss the world attitude concerning homosexuality in the 1930's fine. Then we have a material context. What was the attitude in American in 1930? After a decade, I have had enough of this nonsense about Stalinism when in fact the Trotskyites are the most intolerate sectarian trend that has every existed in the communist movement. You Trotskyites demand - as a minority world wide, that the majority kowtow to you. This is not going to happen. You guys are freaking insane. Back off and drop this thread. Unless you want to speak of specific from say 1955 America until today. I have written about this on this list before and I assure you that the majority communists - who have never been and will never be Trotskyites, are absolutely more democratic than you guys. You guys are freaking fanatics. Back off and drop this thread. Who gives a fuck what happened in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, other than economic logic. WL. 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] The Final Conflict: What Can Cause a System-Threatening Crisis of Capi
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The Final Conflict: What Can Cause a System-Threatening Crisis of Capitalism? by David M. Kotz is a decade or so behind the continuous unraveling of our new era of finance capital. I tried to date the article finding no reference other than a comment posted May of this year. This article was cause to remember some pretty tasteless but funny as hell jokes about folks of color showing up on time. In fact as youth most of us set our goal in life to show up late for our own funeral. We found solace in knowing the Red Man meant what he said when saying see you in the next moon. No 9 to 5 and the stifling indust-reality time frame. Better late than never is cool, because time has sped up even faster. Remember when 24/7 did not exist because no one did anything 24/7 except capitalist making and losing money. Everyone knows things are on time when everyone show up for the party. The Final Conflict? OK, I'm there. Don't you love titles like the Final Conflict and the Big Come Down. I figured if there is gonna be a 'Come Down' it might was well be big as possible. Since Obama it's the final conflict. Then, I read material from the list and said, this is alright. A couple of Communist Manifesto's - read out loud in a class, a little Engels there and Marx being the time keeper and we got a good song for the public. site. _http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/theory/final-conflict-systemthreatening-crisis-capitalism/_ (http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/theory/final-conflict-systemthreatening-crisis-capitalism/) I have in mind articles like The End of Value1 by Jim Davis at jd AT gocatgo DOT com; various articles by Michael Hudson, CKL and hundreds of articles submitted to the list during the past decade. Its interesting that the practical movement is leaping ahead everywhere, by acquiring one form of Marxism or another. Then, again the American melting pot has always been a slow simmering stew with different ingredients. WL. 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] Investment fund owner/economist booted out again.
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Investment fund owner/economist booted out again. WL Henry C.K. Liu (CKL) has been kicked out of more places housing economic and political thought than I was kicked out of bars as a young man. Actually, a couple of really wonderful people strongly suggested I never return to their home. Seems the same thing happened to Henry. Remember when Henry was licked off of Marxism - this list, amid objections from some of us. CKL did it this time with the Roosevelt group 2.0 or whatever the heck their name. An article got Henry kicked out and you have to read this article for yourself. The editors, apparently liking his article, demanded that he make a clear choice between brevity and making sense. In typical manner CKL replied that the choice on his part had already been made and then stated in no uncertain terms he did not see the value in dumbing down an article dealing with difficult concepts and lots of facts. It was inappropriate to write an article on finance, markets and economy more suitable to cocktail party gossip, he stated. I reread the initial article and the CKL was right . . . again; just as he was correct to state wages of Chinese workers could be doubled and everyone - all 1.3 billion people, be employed as a sound fiscal policy and engine of economic growth. A couple of years ago Henry advanced the blueprint for economic communism in the here and now based on our level of development of means of production and the technology revolution. Every citizen of earth is given a sovereign birth credit - at birth, for say $1 million dollars, although $500,000 is adequate. This credit - (NOT INSURANCE), provides one with the cost of a lifetime of socially necessary means of life. Since it is unacceptable to put an infant to work on earth, (and no infant should have to work as a condition to feed on mothers breast), your laboring life would not begin officially until you were 18 years old. The problem of the non-producing consumer, who becomes non-producing due to capitalist property can be solved. I liked this idea. Pay everyone at birth - first, and let God sort out the capitalists injured, ruined and consigned to the dustbin of history. II. Then of course CKL got the cold shoulder when he proposed forming a world wide labor cartel. Such a cartel would uphold higher wages - based in each countries history, combat employers avoiding health and safety issues and abolish the old system of wage slavery just brothering people the wrong way. The practical solution to sustained productivity growth, production and consumption is to deploy labor reproducing socially necessary means of life. Henry ended up in the outhouse and most ignored the article in favor of economy theories without any proof. But then again Henry was initially ignored when he coined the concept dollar hegemony in the era of domination of finance capital by speculators. Yes, he was vindicated and six years later his name ended up on Wikki as the guy coining dollar hegemony. CKL coined the concept notional value to describe a financial (market) system of wealth creation that is not based on surplus value appropriated from the working class. CKL asserts that what makes this valueless wealth possible is financial instruments and dates the political process that ushered in this new era in America May 1, 1975. At any rate CKL got booted out of another respectable bourgeois joint. WL. 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] Socialist Wants to Throw Unemployed Under the Bus?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Unemployment benefits and government assistance should be made permanent for the duration of ones unemployment and based on income. Stewart Alexander seems to cater to the old voting sector of the American political middle, although he clearly states he seeks to represent the entire working class. The majority of the working class still employed make about $14 an hour and less, and is female. This is the American working class. What does this majority need? The issue of unemployment benefits is being fought out in a new environment much different from the 1950s - 1980s. Unable or unwilling to grasp the new environment Mr. Alexander advocates the Obama administration ends the wars and returns the peace dividend to job creation. While ending the wars and dismantling the military industrial complex through conversion to peace production has been demanded by a section of the anti-war current for sixty years, Mr. Alexander seems to not understand the issue, even as a socialist. (Quote) Alexander says financing the war and the U.S. occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan is costing U.S. jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used to rebuild and repair our nation's infrastructure; The war and occupation is taking the U.S. economy into a full scale depression. Last week on Fox Business News with Neil Cavuto, Stewart Alexander noted that President Obama has failed on his election promise to end the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan; subsequently, financing the war has resulted in an increasing loss of U.S. jobs. Shortly after announcing he would run for president in 2012, Alexander introduced a national economic recovery program; he refers to the program as A Better Deal. Stewart Alexander is calling for unconventional measures to revive the U.S. economy and to create jobs; he is calling for all banks, financial and insurance institutions to be socially owned and operated by a democratically-controlled national banking authority which should include credit unions, mutual insurance cooperatives, and corporate state banks. While running as the Socialist Party's 2008 nominee for Vice President, Alexander proposed a plan that would include other North American countries to form a North American Banking Authority. _http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard/Article/U-S--Election-2012--Stewart-Alexander-Dismisses-Obama-s-Jo bless-Recovery/211999_ (http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard/Article/U-S--Election-2012--Stewart-Alexander-Dismisses-Obama-s-Jobless-Recovery/2 11999) II. Most writers on the economy tend to see the outbreak of this crisis as being rooted in the financial market rather than the massive American military machine. Oh, well. Democratically controlled banks? Socially owned insurance companies? A sizable section of politically active Americans on the left and right - most certainly the radical fringe, favor real time abolition of the banking industry along with the Federal Reserve. Much has changed in the thinking and national dialogue of America since the election of Obama. In my estimate the American peoples and working class insurgents are catching up with the past 20 year changes in the structure of economy at an accelerated pace. We ought to take into account our 225 years history of disdain for central bank monetary policy that accommodate the needs of commerce and industry. It's not like we can turn back the hands of time and go back to the gold standard, wild cat banks, political and economic policy appropriate to the era of Thomas Jefferson. Exactly, why does the proletariat in America need a bank? Why would we seek to make democratic the very institutions that have brought us grief? Brother, we are not dealing with banks. The Labor Department reported in June that 4.3 million Americans have been out of work for more than 52 weeks. Stated another way, Alexander comes off as a supply side economist seeking to pump money into financial institutions as the means for job creation. Actually, what banks or rather banking institutions is this guy talking about in the first place? We just went through pumping close to $9.7 trillion dollars into the banks which today are not banks. These huge non-banking financial institutions are more than less divorced from commodity production and surplus value extractions. Hey, the total market capitalization of American mortgages is about $10.5 trillion. For a paltry extra trillion all of the mortgages could have been paid off and the economy jump started based on continuous consumption of socially necessary means of life. But no, the bourgeois power says starve to death and
[Marxism] Those Levi-Strauss worker ads
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == What a lot of marketing crap. If they're so concerned about US workers why don't they make their jeans in the US anymore? Put their money where their mouth is and all. Comment The demand that a former employer return factories - production facilities, to the US is not well thought out. We should consider combining to tell the proletariat the truth of capitalist exploitation AND why a new expansion of the system is not possible. The problem with capitalism is capital as an ism. Protectionism offers no solution to the wage form of labor - servitude, and the depravity that goes along with it. How will relocating Levi production facilities back in the US solve anything? Such relocation - if possible, would only heighten the crisis to an unbearable degree. And ultimately lead to the collapse of the price form because a high tech production facility cannot forever demand and receive the same price for its products as that of a labor intensive facility. In fact the greater demand of capital in high tech facilities is part of the impulse for relocation into low tech areas of the world. Then the low tech areas become subject of the same dynamic to revolutionize production. Its dejavu all over again. The law of value asserts itself. That is, price is going to ultimately express the socially necessary labor that goes into a commodity. All the other factors affecting price apply with the same force. Deflation is the wave of the future. The labor intensive facility must inevitably go out of business or recast itself with similar technology means to remain a player in the world market. Levi is a player in the world market. WL. 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] Can Technology Bring on a World Wide Social Revolution?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == It is only those technologies that can be employed responsibly and for the benefit of all the living species, which can save the earth from the impending environmental catastrophe. To conclude, technologies have to be always looked at in proper social context. All this might sound familiar and repetitive to many comrades, but I would like to highlight the fact that we in the poorer nations look at technology more or less in the way described above. Vijaya Kumar Marla Comment The state of the United States of North America is the basic organ of violence in the hands of our imperialist bourgeoisie. Our state is the international hangmen of revolution and the enemy of the people of earth. The advanced capitalist countries have forever lived at the expense of and mired the majority of humanity in slavery, poverty, colonial genocide and wars of extermination. Some support this state of affairs. Revolutionaries do not. I agree . . . . There can be no worldwide social revolution, unless it involves this vast majority. Without question the World poor . . . will see their real emancipation as and when a revolution occurs. Real emancipation - a wonderful expression, or final emancipation is bounded by and expressed on the basis of the development or evolution of the division of labor. The signpost riveting and defining real emancipation as a material force is to be found in the material factors of production or what Marx describes as ending the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor. Political emancipation cannot transcend the boundary manifesting the division of labor in society. The Soviet workers won their political emancipation in 1917. Then the real struggle for emancipation began. The standpoint of the material power of productive forces is my preferred lens and preferred narrative. although I do love real time narrative of unfolding struggles. During the epoch of domination of bourgeois property, qualitative changes in the technology regime EMBED within means of production; embed within commodities; embed within services and distribution chains are by definition deployed to benefit capital reproduction, or the bourgeoisie as ruling class. Thus, I agree that means of production (with their embed technology) are deployed on the basis of reproduction of capital and serve to create an expanded value at the expense of the human and the life of the earth. Yes, the bourgeois power has widened the metabolic breach (environmental terrorism by the bourgeois power). II. The automobile industry in India and most certainly China and South Korea, is being built up based on a new technology regime, post 1970. The technology clusters embed in an automobile produced in 2010 is different from the technology clusters deployed in the automobile produced in Henry Ford's 1914 factory. In this way of looking at matters, the automobile is not a technology but a complex machine embed with a distinct technology. How automotive production and transportation systems are applied in India is important and worthy of a separate discussion, possibly under the heading world automotive production, and the fallacy of developing auto as the engine of industrial growth and development in the era of electronics. On the level of systems (distinct primary mode of production) new classes, new class fragments and new forms of classes are constituted (arise) based on (through) the introduction of qualitatively new productive equipment. That is, by the reorganization of the production of the means of life. One way or another, qualitatively new means of production express a more robust (efficient) form of deployed energy as measured on a continuum that begins with the individual human body/human energy and simple instruments. In America we are two generations removed from the sharecropper as a concrete expression of class and one generation removed from the industrial worker of the front curve of Fordism. What set the stage for the destruction of the sharecropper as a class and the small family farm was mechanization of agriculture and growth of industrial production. The sharecropper was emancipated by mechanization or rather mechanization of agriculture was the condition for the emancipation of the sharecropping class. The industrial form of the working class created on the basis of Fordism has been displaced by a new kind of worker living out their live activity in a regime of advanced robotics and computerized systems. This process of displacement is the essence of social revolution. III. Real Emancipation is bound up with development of means of
[Marxism] Special issue tripleC: Capitalist Crisis, Communication Culture
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Computing and the Current Crisis: The Significant Role of New Information Technologies in Our Socio-Economic Meltdown David Hakken pp 205-220 _http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/161/193_ (http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/161/193) Comment Actually, David Hakken article is a technical description of Professor Perlman video presentations on modern economics. 20 years - August 1990, ago this article would have been impossible for me to grasp, and probably could not have been written in the first place. The social consequence of the new non-banking world wide financial architecture - the rise of speculators to dominance over finance capital, has taken a full twenty years to be understood. This new financial architecture exists based on a new technology regime, which according to the article evolved post 1970. David Hakken describes the technical basis of this new non-banking world wide financial architecture as follows: Computing is heavily implicated in the emergence and trade of all these new commodities. Given their complexity, none of them, nor markets in them, could have existed without it. . . . . In short, to the extent that computing was essential to these commodities' creation, and that market failures in these new financial commodities were central to the crisis, computing caused the crisis. These computered financial instruments strongly afforded the elaboration of national markets for capital into a virtually global single market. Just as a desire for new commodities to trade in, so that more money could be made, drove computing development and implementation, so the development of international computing networks strongly incentivized creation of an unboundried market in capital. Indeed, the two go together; prospects for profitable trading in the new financial instruments were directly related to the extent to which the reach of the capital market could be scaled up. Some elements of Marxism describe the essence of the above as over production of the means of production as these means function as capital and are monetarized. That is capital seeking a maximum profit or an expanded value based on investment. Others understand this stage of finance capital as a particularly intense phase of monopoly. Neither explanation unravels the meaning and impact of a new technology regime and the emergence of capital as a notional (imaginary) value, rather than an expression of surplus value extraction. It is the rise of these now financial products (instruments) in an environment of the so-called scattering of the points of production or de-industrialization of America and revolution in the means of production (generally understood as intense falling rate of wages/profit) defining our moment of history. Various views on changes in the form of finance capital are expressed as body politics. Yesterday - August 28, a demonstration led by the Uaw, Jesse Jackson Sr. crew and the Democratic Party establishment had as its lead demand jobs with banners demanding fair trade. That is bring back my job boss, so I can work. Even if bringing back jobs to America was possible, the factories that would be built creating a mass of commodities would be so advanced and the wages so low that restoration of the great American industrial middle class on the basis of capital reproduction is impossible. II. In his own language Hakken describes capital as a notional value. 3.1. Asset Value Unknowability as the Core of the Current Crisis In at least three additional important ways, the computerization of financial instruments led to a situation where assets' values became ambiguous and increasingly unknowable. Leaving aside the issue of mark to market or the last selling price of a financial instrument or commodity, Hakken captures the essence of capital as a notional value: In short, a unique, perhaps the unique, characteristics of the current crisis is precisely these huge, persisting socio-economic spaces of unknowability. Given that a huge proportion of economic activity (Tett estimates some 80%) was financialized, this unknowability is lodged at the center of the reproduction of contemporary capitalist social formations. The consequences of the lack of fit between the particular forms of computer-mediation of financial assets, on the one hand, and the wide swathes of unknowability to which their use led, on the other, have been amplified by the substantial upping of the scale (e.g., the globalization of markets in capital) at which some aspects of social formations (but not all) are able to be reproduced, further
Re: [Marxism] Can Technology Bring on a World Wide Social Revolution?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The article by Kris Notaro sounded very promising, but was a thorough disappointment and so is the case with the debate on the subject. I wonder, why the issue got sidetracked from the beginning. Well, anyway, here is my response: Technology is very much a social product and is an increasingly important agent of social change. Technology is only a tool and can not by itself bring about a social revolution. What is important is how it is deployed and utilized - it is just a tool. Comment The article in question was very limited and seemed to lack a Marxist lens. I. Sorry you were disappointed with the discussion on the impact of a qualitatively new technology regime and/or cluster of embed technology In an existing configuration of means of production. Technology means - (in my use of the term), the technical-SCIENTIFIC features embed in tools, machines, energy source as these are deployed by human being. Generally modes of production are defined from two directions; property and configuration of means of production. Feudalism = landed property and a period of transition from handicraft to manufacture. Handicraft and manufacture are descriptions of technology regimes. Capitalism = bourgeois property and electro-mechanical or industrial. The lgreat technology revolution or revolution in the means of production (the underlying meaning of social revolution) of the era of Marx was the industrial revolution. It is pretty much conceded that the industrial revolution was a REVOLUTION IN TECHNOLOGY and social revolution, qualitatively changing society. On the scale of history, leaps from one mode of production to another and political revolutions up to insurrection, clear the path for the emergence to universality of a new technology regime. Political revolution is required to sweep the old political regime away because they have been constituted based on an old technology regime and is corresponding form of wealth - property. First, the qualitative change in the building books of the means of production, then the social consequence. This is not to say that changes in the form of wealth do not play a part by creating the condition for changes in the form of property. In retrospect it was a change in the form of wealth from land to gold that began the break up of feudalism because the primary form of wealth was landed property. However, it was the steam engine, or rather the technology regime expressed in the steam engine that ushered in the epoch of industrial-machine domination over agricultural relations. Again, we presuppose people in their material and subjective dimensions. It is the human being/mind in its material subjective attributes that revolutionize means of production. Actually, injecting a qualitatively new technology and new technology clusters into an existing system of production is the material factor driving - inspiring, fundamental, to social revolution, once we presuppose the existence of human beings before means of production arise. The injection of new clusters of technology into an existing system brings to an end, expansion of the system on the old basis. Now expansion of the system - intensive and extensive, takes place based on the new technology and more efficient forms of energy. Not all at one time but inexorably. II. The basis on which society leaps - begin transition, from one mode of production to another mode of production is predicated upon the emergence of qualitatively new means of production, rather than quantitative expansion of the existing system. Quantitative expansion of the same properties defining a stage of development of means of production cannot in itself produce a magical leap to a new qualitative of means of production, or rather a qualitatively different division of labor. The leap (transition) from one quality to another minimally requires an alteration - subtracting or adding something qualitatively different, to an existing structure of technology. The new quality of technology is added quantitatively. Marx words ring prophetic. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - (this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms) with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated up until then. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The theoretical enigma was defining At a certain stage of development, which could not be defined without unraveling the process of
[Marxism] Live audio Presentation from Detroit Social Forum
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == _http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/06/28/18652080.php?show_comments=1#18 652082_ (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/06/28/18652080.php?show_comments=1#18652082) Class struggle is not pure. In 1942 in the middle of the War, 39,000 white workers marched out of the huge Packard plant because black workers came into final assembly. The civil rights movement in Detroit was well underway decades before the call for black power was issued in 1966. Labor in Detroit explores class, labor and the trade union movement through the eyes and experience of “labor in the black.” This seminar/discussion panel will be organized and facilitated by long time labor activist General Baker Jr., and several other founding members of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Panelist include: Marsha Mickens of the Detroit Bakers Union and Waistline author of Detroit: A History of Struggle, a Vision of the Future, and others. Organizer Name: General Baker WL. 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] Relative surplus population
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == A great article on the determination of new layers of relative surplus population as members of the working class, _http://www.ceics.org.ar/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=149%3Athe-relative-overpopulation-the-leas t-known-aspect-of-the-marxist-conception-of-th e-working-classcatid=59%3AarticlesItemid=78_ (http://www.ceics.org.ar/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=149:the-relative-overpopulation-the-least-known-aspect-of-the-mar xist-conception-of-the-working-classcatid=59:articlesItemid=78) Comment I enjoyed this article's strict adherence to Marx theory premise and factual inquiry into the life of the working class. Youth and/or young workers entry and exist out of active worforce, as a lens to examine the surplus population was refreshing. The article adhered to Marx general law of capital accumulation, tying increase in the surplus population to increased misery - lowering wages, of the proletarian masses as a dynamic. Of interest was the author making short work of tackling the issue of the lumpen proletariat, which in my mind is a narrow sliver of modern society at best. At any rate I would not call sex workers - prostitutes, lumpen proletariats. I tend to view the category called lumpen proletariat as a historical phenomenon belonging to a passed historical era. For me, the fundamental attribute of the lumpen proletariat is neither criminality nor living on the edge of civic society, but rather its existence and evolution as the refuge of decaying feudal society. A decaying feudal society and emergent bourgeois society produces the phenomenon of lumpen proletariat. A decaying industrial capitalist society produces dispossessed proletarians, rather than lumpen proletarians. If this is true then the organization of the dispossessed proletariat, in all its dimensions is on the agenda. The growing mass of dispossessed workers in modern society tends to be unemployed, underemployed, work 2 and three bits of jobs but many are still employed in the process of losing everything. These are not new lumpens because they are unemployed, marginally employed or when they engage in criminal activity. II. A particular passage of Marx was used of interest to my particular lens. A development of productive forces which would diminish the absolute number of laborers, i.e., enable the entire nation to accomplish its total production in a shorter time span, would cause a revolution, because it would put the bulk of the population out of the running. This is another manifestation of the specific barrier of capitalist production, showing also that capitalist production is by no means an absolute form for the development of the productive forces and for the creation of wealth, but rather that at a certain point it comes into collision with this development. [36] Marx, Karl: Capital, vol.3, op.cit. p.372. The meaning of the bulk of the population out of the running is not having a chance to make it in the society one lives in. Now, roughly 60% of our working class makes $14 an hour and less, and I call that out of the running. Do the math. $560 a week and less for 40 hours. And this is before taxes. Things appear considerably worse when considering earth and over 6 billion people of whom most are out of the running. WL 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] Can Technology Bring on a World Wide Social Revolution? (Marx answer)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Question: Can Technology Bring on a World Wide Social Revolution? Answer: No. Manuel Karl Marx answer: Yes. Karl Marx explanation: 5). at a certain stage of their development, 6). the material productive forces of society 7). come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - (this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms) with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated up until then. 8). from forms of development of the productive forces 9). these relations turn into their fetters. 10). Then begins an epoch of social revolution. 11). the changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. 12). In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. (1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) II. Some comrades answer: Marxist Glossary: Twenty-first Century, Second decade (In the opening era of the Third American Revolution: Proletarian Revolution) Pre-edited imprint 10.5 Projected publication date: April 2011 Social revolution: (I) Social revolution comes about as a result of qualitative development of the means of production. An antagonism develops between the new emerging material relations connected to and interactive with the qualitatively new means of production and the old static social organization of labor, the old political superstructure and the old property forms expressed as the political relations within the superstructure. Marx words ring prophetic. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - (this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms) with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated up until then. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. Social revolution is a historical process. An existing history of means of production, how people are grouped around these means; how the products of an existing social organization of labor are distributed becomes displaced by a new organization of labor corresponding to new means of production. The general distinct stages of social revolution are: 1). A qualitative change in the material means of production. The material power of productive forces leaps forward as the result of injecting new clusters of technology into the existing organization of labor. Without this first phase of qualitative change social revolution cannot occur. Qualitative changes in the means of production forces a societal social consequence. 2). The expansion of productive forces based on the old technology, gives way to expansion based on the new emerging technology regime. A revolution in social relations begins, forcing its social consequence. 3). A political revolution (insurrection) is called forth wherein representatives of one of the contending new class or new form of classes seize power and society is reconstructed around the new means of production. 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] Detroit in the new era of class antagnonism: general theory props and specifics
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Our common history has been completion of the industrial revolution. Society cannot leap backwards to agrarian relations buttressed by an infrastructure founded on and expressing a division of labor flowing from handicraft, manufacture or heavy manufacture of two hundred years ago. A society can be momentarily dragged back to an outdated political form of property, but not for very long. Bourgeois property - wage labor as system of surplus value extraction, corresponds to and is suitable to an industrial economy. Wage labor is absolutely hostile to and evolves in antagonism with a post industrial economy founded on electro-computer processes. In front of our eyes a new form of wealth has arisen, dominating the world total capital and this wealth is not being generated based on surplus value extraction. This does not mean no one works in society. The non-banking financial system dominates finance capital. Capital as a notional (imaginary) value evolves in antagonism with wage labor. Wage labor evolved in contradiction with capital as the laboring process, wherein surplus value was appropriated by capitalist owners of the means of production. Our common experience has been shaped by the tensions - contradiction, between the needs and desires of the working class for a better life and the needs of the capitalist owners to make adjustments in the legal, social, and political system to retain power and develop the economy. In the first 70 years of the last century, that tension resulted in expanded civil rights, free public education and state university systems, a safe water supply, government-supported home ownership, union-won health care and the rest of the American dream. This form of class struggle drove the system through its various quantitative boundaries. No where at the front of the curve of industrial development was this form of class struggle sufficient to bring the system of bourgeois property to an end. Various theories sought to explain why the system of bourgeois property was not overthrown anywhere at the front curve of industrial development. What is indisputable was the vying of capitalist and forces for socialism for political authority in countries making the leap from agrarian-feudal relations to industrial relations of production. Everyone over sixty has lived half their lives under conditions where reform of the system was possible and did in fact take place. II. The transition from labor-based industry to labor-replacing electronic production, though, has transformed every aspect of society. This process does not take place all at one time. The old period of re-forming social, legal and political relationships that served to tie the working class into support of the capitalist system, ended 30 years ago. Most people still do not recognize the full import of this change. Marxists with feet in the old communist movement have been reluctant to shed the doctrines of the Third International. The capitalists, though, know that they are engaged in a political battle over power and control and are taking steps to change how society is run. They are implementing a strategy to replace bribery and democracy (as limited as they were) by more direct control and a state prepared to do what's necessary to preserve private property, capital as a notional value and maintain social stability in times of crisis. As workers are thrown out of the system, forced lower and lower, and dispossessed of what they had gained, their ties - connection, to capital are broken. The breach is material and political. Proletarians become more open to considering other possibilities, including a world that isn't controlled in the interest of just one percent of the population. Their own experience begins to show them that the path of reform is blocked. But what lies ahead? History has closed one road to a better life, but has opened another. Labor-replacing technology has created the conditions for a world of great abundance. It makes possible a cooperative society where everyone can benefit from the wealth produced. While there may be a thousand different ways of talking about this better world, it is clear that it can only be built if production is taken from private hands and organized to provide for the general welfare. III. The history of U.S. economic development is a constant story of giant giveaways: dollars, land, roads, resources, military contracts, risk insurance and more - public wealth put into private hands. As the economy grew during the past century, it brought incredible wealth to a small class of people and a comfortable standard of living to
[Marxism] Can Technology Bring on a World Wide Social Revolution? (Marx answer)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == In contrast, though, the current technology developed and has been shaped exclusively by the capitalists and their organizations. I don't think the fact that we use that technology for our own purposes (and I'm probably going to give myself a treat today and drive somewhere for lunch) means that the commodified technology we use is going to amount to any kind of social revolution. Does anybody really believe that? ML Comment Washington on October 2, if circumstances allow it. Most certainly will be part of sending 3 - 4 bus loads of people. Detroit August 28. We always presuppose people and action cause we make our own history one way or another. Reply I understand - perhaps incorrectly, commodified technology to mean the technology embedded in means of production and products created by these means of production, has acquired a commodity form i.e. commodified technology. I agree that products acquiring a commodity form do not lead to or cause social revolution, as Marx outlines his general law. The commodity form - in general, has a history but Marx does not use this form as an explanation for the opening of an epoch of social revolution. Everything in reality if interwoven together one way or another but Marx cut to the chase and presents a general equation. Networking and deploying the new technology will aid us in the political arena and have profound importance for the political aspects of our epoch of social revolution. The old social revolution - called the industrial revolution for short, or the epoch of bourgeois revolution or any other tag was from agriculture to industry. The new social revolution - whose name is not yet agreed upon, is further down the path of machine dominated society. Or maybe the New Proletarian Revolution might describe our post Sovietism era. I also agree that it is significant that the new technology, or rather clusters of the new technology regime embedded into means of production and commodities, are firmly in the hands of the bourgeoisie, giving specific shape to how this new technology is deployed as/in reproduction, surveillance, politics or the general department of the superstructure. Actually, I would not pose the question as Can Technology Bring on a World Wide Social Revolution? because technology is not a thing unto itself, but a defining attribute of a given state of development of means of production. Handicraft, manufacture and industrial denotes a specific kind of technology regime that existed and been sublated. Maybe the question would be something along the lines of does the emergence of a new technology regime and its application to means of production constitute the initial and most important impulse bringing on an epoch of social revolution? Then I would try to explain the meaning of social revolution as Marx present the equation in the material quoted. WL. 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] Trotsky's Jewish Question
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == What a horrible right wing, pro-Israeli state, anti-communist article. This article has nothing to do Mr. Trotsky political career and is outright reactionary. Over a decade I have seen individuals expelled from the list for less offensive material. WL 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] Moseley: The Watts Uprising, August 11, 1965
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Watts is 811 that dialed in the 911 and needs the 411. Mosley is no Baldwin. I developed a fresh appreciation for Baldwin after his “Evidence of Things Not Seen,” the story of the Atlanta child murders, or more accurately the story of domestic American violence articulated in the psychology of the legacy of the slave and the slave master. Yet, I find Mosley more enjoyable than Baldwin and loved his foray into science fiction. Mosley was 12; I was 13 when “Watts” altered the political landscape. Watts was a social consequence. Watts was the social explosion clarifying a – the, political continuum. This was no student protest. This was more than protest against a war that one could be drafted into against their will. Watts was an uprising against the state. Watts happened in a social and political context and its immediate political consequence was on the war against the people of Vietnam. This was a deep ideological and political “fuck you” thing. This strife was bound up with fight against the state as state. Watts harkened backed to 1776 in all its symbolic revolutionary dimensions. Watts reeked of the promise of 1865. Watts as a material act cemented the spontaneous fighting unity of the world colonials against bourgeois imperialism. As an American act Watts cemented the material unity of earth’s oppressed people at loggerhead with world imperialism. Watts was the leap – or rather, Watts was culminating of “the leap” – political transition, changing everything, by sublating one thing and establishing another “thing.” The “thing” in question is a form of political strife. Yes America has had profound political strife, but uprising against the domestic state means one has to go back to Bacon, John Brown, Civil War action and then . . . . . Watts. Watts. This shit sound like a light bulb and the light clarifying where everyone is in a dark room. I like Watts. Detroit 1967 would take matters – Watts and the light, further. Things tended to get ugly in Detroit, decades before blacks became a majority. Color does not change ones class disposition and where one draws the line after they have talked with the communist reds. Surrender is impossible. Every time one throws the towel in the bourgeoisie throws it back in your face. II Dr. King – Martin Luther King, knew that Watts was around the corner. He knew for the same reason everyone else knew. Non-violence as a strategic outlook is always the initial impulse of the proletarian movement as it passes from one quantitative boundary to another, with hereditary leaders always preparing for armed intervention and military reprisal. Watts rejected non-violence in the face of armed counterrevolutionaries and accelerated social strife so far outside the trade union struggle that a militant section of communists could serve their first theoretical defeat on the dominate form of the communist movement. This dominant form of the communist movement declared that the labor movement was defined as the trade union movement rather than all of those compelled to enter production based on the sell of their labor power to capital. This thinking was enough to make one vomit. The first break in the continuum was Birmingham 1963. Sure Robert William’s advocacy of armed struggle against reaction and his “Negroes With Guns” predate Birmingham, but this was not masses. Why Birmingham 1963? III. The Marxist currents can never be united on the basis of theory or ideology. We think different and feel different. We can be united based on unity of action. Watts was the turning point in American history for the group of communists I evolved from. Mosley is no Baldwin but he is real good. Very good. Mosley is not me and for that the better. Watts is big in American history. WL. 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-Thaxis] Ron Glotta's commentaries
In a message dated 8/9/2010 2:03:33 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: In that way, they represent an alternative to my book, The Road to Hell is Not Paved With Good Intentions. I invite the reader/listener to enter the dialogue and join the struggle to change the world. Yours in Struggle, Ronald D. Glotta Comment I have a copy of his book and read it a couple of times, as well as four CD's of commentaries. The first half of Ron's book read as a road map for those interested primarily in electoral politics. The last section examine the world of sports, the Piston's and the Williams sisters. Pretty good stuff. Ron is an expert - intellectually and practically on electoral politics being very much involved in the Vote Communist Campaign of 1974 and 1976, if memory serves correct. He was also involved in the James Johnson case and intense legal struggles which cast the legal profession and lawyers in Detroit as somewhat unique and on the cutting edge of the social movement for half a century. The history of the battles within the legal arena, lawyers in and around Detroit is yet to be written in a concise manner. Would make a fascinating read. You know Crockett, Young, Cockrel, Milton Henry, Detroit 67, New Bethel, desegregating the bench and a host of things you are more familiar with. This dimension of the proletarian movement remains neglected. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ron Glotta's commentaries
In a message dated 8/10/2010 8:57:52 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: In 1946, Crockett along with partners Ernest Goodman, Morton Eden, and Dean A. Robb, co-founded the corporation believed to be the first racially-integrated law firm in the U.S.,[citation needed] Goodman, Crockett, Eden, and Robb, in Detroit, Michigan. The firm, eventually called Goodman, Eden, Millender and Bedrosian, closed in 1998. Reply This is really good stuff. Part of what I call a new narrative, recasting the story of the heartbeat of our proletarian movement of the past century. Much activity was riveted to the gravity well of industrial unionism and located at Local 600. Describing how and why the African American Freedom Movement of the past century could only be expressed on the basis of the proletariat in places like Detroit would make interesting reading. For instance Rosa Parks first airplane ride was to Detroit to speak at Local 600 who paid for this trip in the late 1950s. If memory serves me correct. Did not Crockett and the fellows form the Fair employment and Practice Committee at Local 600? The communists, socialists, revolutionaries of all kinds never surrendered and rolled over, even during the height of the Cold War anti-communist campaign. The House Un American Acidity Committee met its grave diggers in Detroit. I guess your - pardon our, work is cut out. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] I. I. Rubin's Essays on Marx's Theory of Value
In a message dated 8/10/2010 10:34:53 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) : The capitalist economy represents a union of the material-technological process and its social forms, i.e. the totality of production relations among people. The concrete activities of people in the material-technical production process presuppose concrete production relations among them, and vice versa. Comment I would write this different. Part of the new narrative. The capitalist - bourgeois, mode of commodity production represents a union of material-technological building blocks and social forms. The unity of the material-technological building block and the social form arising from this, including the ownership rights or relationship of people to property in the process of production = production relations. The concrete activities of people using a given state of development of means of production and their relationship to property - ownership rights, is the production relations amongst them. The reason is to tilt the equation back to what is fundamental - after we presuppose human beings; the material power of productive forces and their continuous development and evolution. There is the theoretical problem. Does the bourgeois mode of commodity production reach its historical limit based on its internal components, i.e., the wage labor form OR as the result of the emergence of a qualitatively new technology regime? The former states that bourgeois production reaches its historical limited based in cyclical crisis of capital. The latter states that bourgeois production reaches its historical limitation based on entering antagonism with a qualitatively new technology. Or both . . . .:-) Is both movements taking place? WL ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Reform and social revolution: the new narrative - 1
Reform and social revolution: the new narrative Marxism contains a language, a set of words and terms accepted as short cuts. Problems arise with words and terms given different meaning. Reform, concession, social revolution, and reformism are such words. When these terms are detached from the materiality of the object being examined, the shortcut becomes the long way around. The dictionary states that reform is an improvement or amendment of what is wrong. Reform means to restructure. Restructuring changes existing relations between and within classes. These production relations express and correspond to material relations of the economy and ultimately find its center of gravity in the division of labor. Reform is alteration of a material relation within and between classes in connection with means of production. Reform and concession is not the same. Reforms are more durable and cannot be taken away based on political will alone. Something must change within the object, structure of society for reform of the system to unravel. Reforms do not change the property relations. Wrestling greater shares of the social product and expanded political liberties from the state or employer is the content of most social struggle. Concession is yielding to a demand based on political will. Concessions do not alter the structural relations within and between classes. Concessions can be taken away based on political will. The Republic Window and Door workers in Chicago (Local 1110) won a concession package compelling their employer to give them back pay. The settlement totals $1.75 million. It provides the workers with: oEight weeks of pay they are owed under the federal WARN Act, oTwo months of continued health coverage and, oPay for all accrued and unused vacation. Reform as shortcut means change in relations between and within classes, without changing the property relations. The impulse for reform of the system arises from the spontaneous quantitative development of the building blocks of economy: means of production. II. Society is the totality of the relations between classes and groups in a community. The creation and form of wealth depends on the state of development of the productive forces. The means of production develop as incremental quantitative inputs until a qualitative leap is underway. The unity and strife of primary classes defining (re)production is the flesh and blood compelling society to advance through the progressive accumulation of productive forces. As involuntary promoter of industry, the bourgeoisie and privileged ruling classes, economic and political layers in society evolve a stake in keeping the system the same because that is how their wealth, power, privilege and life experiences are realized. As the means of production evolve, a corresponding deepening change and contradictions widens with the static immobile property relations expressed as corporations, political organizations, entrenched self interest of groups of all kinds and their civic structures. As favorable condition emerges the social struggle riveted to primary classes ends with a quantitative leap in the social relations, which brings a reformed society more into correspondence with improved means of production. III. The impulse for reform arises from the spontaneous quantitative development of means of production. The impulse for social revolution arises from the spontaneous qualitative development of means of production. The former merges with the latter only under conditions of leap to a new technology regime, as was the case of the industrial revolution. Our generations have witnessed, lived and recorded the epochal movement of a mode of production and how it reformed itself until all the space - boundaries, in the industrial system was exhausted. At each juncture - (quantitative boundary of our developing industrial production relations), the subjective question of political revolution emerged as an issue for the most farsighted revolutionaries. Henry Ford and the system of Fordism expressed the continuation of the industrial revolution. Henry Ford's factory system accelerated restructuring of production relations and changes the in the form of the working class destroying the structural basis of craft/skilled labor of the historic artisan. Assembly line production restructured the industrial work process driving transition from craft to industrial trade unionism. This motion logic was genuine reform of the system. America assembly line auto production nail the coffin shut on the company town and laid the basis for suburbia; expanded the cement and housing industry and fifty years later resulted in our nationwide Interstate system. There are thousands of incremental changes to society brought about by the Henry ford system. The growth of the industrial union
[Marxism-Thaxis] Dialectic of Reform: reform defined under the industrial epoch
Marxism contains a language, a set of terms accepted as short cuts in describing society and movement. Problems arise with words and terms that mean different things to different folks and groups using this language. Reform and concession is a case in point. When reform - as a logic or society motion, is reduced to subjective dimensions detached from the object being reformed or reform of society structures confusion ensue. Reform - rather than reformism, is a material relation. Reformism is political and ideological. The dictionary states that reform is an improvement or amendment of what is wrong. Reform means to restructure. Restructuring changes something material; the social relations between and within in classes. Social relations express and correspond to material relations of the economy. Reform and concession is not the same. Wrestling greater shares of the social product and expanded political liberties from the state or employer is the content of most social struggle. Concessions do not change the material relations within and between classes. Concessions can be taken based on political will. Reforms are more than less permanent and cannot be taken away based on political will alone. Something must change within the structure of society for a reform of the system to become unraveled. Reforms do not change the property relations. Reform can be defined as change in relations between and within classes, without changing the property relations. The structure of society and the contradiction that is the unity of primary classes as the process of production is the environment - context. Society is the totality of the relations between classes and groups in a community. The creation of wealth depends on the state of development of the productive forces. The form of this wealth and mode of accumulation is the meaning of property relations. The means of production are always developing as incremental quantitative inputs until a qualitative leap is underway. As involuntary promoter of industry, the privileged ruling classes, economic and political layers in society have a stake in keeping the system the same because that is how their wealth, power, privilege and life experiences are realized. As the means of production evolve, a corresponding deepening change and contradictions widens with the static immobile property relations expressed as corporations, organizations and civic structures. As favorable condition emerges the social struggle ends with a quantitative leap in the social relations, which brings a reformed society more into correspondence with improved or new means of production. Our generations have witnessed, lived and recorded the epochal movement of a mode of production and how it reformed itself until all the space in the industrial system was exhausted. At each juncture - quantitative boundary of our developing production relations, the subjective question of revolution emerged as the cutting edge of reform. The impulse for reform arises from the spontaneous development of means of production. Henry Ford's factory system accelerated restructuring of production relations and changes the in the form of the working class destroying the structural basis of craft/skilled labor of the historic artisan. Assembly line production restructured the industrial work process driving transition from craft to industrial trade unionism. This motion logic was genuine reform of the system. Assembly line auto production nail the coffin shut on the company town and laid the basis for suburbia; expanded the cement and housing industry and fifty years later resulted in our nationwide Interstate system. There are thousands of incremental changes to society brought about by the Henry ford system. The growth of the industrial union movement was a subjective/political reform of the system, expressing a material reform as the system passed from one quantitative boundary of growth to another. Reform of the system is a big thing and in all cases gushes forth as based on continuous quantitative growth of a distinct quality defined as state of development of the means of production. As the proletarian masses and labor movement in its totality spontaneously fought to reform the system in their favor, communists fought the revolutionary struggle for reform during every leap between quantitative boundaries of the industrial system. The most recent memory of the reform movement is that of the African American freedom struggles. African Americans have always fought and struggled for freedom and equality. This critical subjective factor of fighting gives shape to the outcome of reform. Yet, we are confronted with a living dynamic screaming for unraveling. No matter how heroic their struggle and sacrifice, they could not gain any freedom as a mass so long as a certain part of the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] James Allen Papers
James Allen was one of the better Marxist propagandist and top notch theoretical on the colonial and national question. To this day I enjoy his contributions. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism] I wonder what people think
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The Glen Beck interview of Frank Llewellyn (Democratic Socialist of America) revealed for this writer the sharp difference between a communist project of reconstructing economic and political America and the democratic socialist project. An economic communist project seeks the immediate removal of socially necessary means of life from the free market economic. Free market economy cost to much. The working class cannot afford the commodities created by the free market system. Increasingly, capitalist corporations cannot afford the cost of the free market system. This means the individual will bore zero cost – directly or indirectly, for socially necessary means of life. There are several other categories outside socially necessary means of life that ought to be immediately taken out of the free-market economy such as corporate media, the post office, the military and prison complex, road building and general infrastructure maintenance. Socially necessary means of life begin with food, shelter, clothing, medical care, public education and transportation. Consumer consumption of energy – (our modern gas and electricity bills and water payments), would be abolished. Socially necessary means of life does not mean entitlement to a Mercedes Benz or grant the right of one citizen to confiscate the personal property of another. The communist project would make legal lobbying of the political establishment by corporate entities a crime. In my opinion the politics of America communism would radically shift and restructure America’s political institutions. For instance the Senate should not be more powerful than the House of Representatives or what would be popular organizes of citizens’ actions. Further, under American conditions I see not reason to invest the state - the organization of violence, as property owner. Mr. Llewellyn spent too much of his limited time espousing a silly notion of democracy, devoid of the actual political liberties of the individual. America is prison nation and everyone knows this. The criminalization of a huge section of our working class threatens to sink the entire country in a quagmire of fascism. A communist vision in simple terms says that “corporations have no inherent rights or a political voice to be respected by the working class.” The real world politics of capitalist democracy prevents citizen control and administration of socially necessary means of life. Democracy is above all the exercise by a citizen/class over the economy and political institutions combined with individual political liberties or what in our country has always been called “citizens rights.” Mr. Llewellyn confuses the trade unions with the labor movement. More than 90% of the real proletarian movement in America is outside the trade unions and this majority of America – being crushed by capital, needs an independent political voice not bounded by trade union politics no matter how noble or lofty. WL. 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] Earliest use of the word Stalnism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The Britannica article you included in your post, particularly the second half of it, is full of the usual anticommunist demonization of Stalin claptrap, utterly false stuff. Grover Furr I not sure exactly why, but I had placed the “early” use of the term Stalinists – as opposed to “Stalinism,” consistent with “others” in 1927 and specifically the “Program of the Opposition (POO),” by Leon Trotsky. In the context of a scholarly inquire into the term “Stalinism” I would look to Soviet party documents and local newspapers after the publication of “ Foundations of Leninism” and before the publication of the POO. That is to say if I had the skill level and inclination to undertake such an inquiry. There is a good chance that “Stalinist” and “Stalinism” did not originate with Trotsky himself but within the historic Bolshevik group, of which Trotsky was never a part. I understand the term “Stalinism” to convey the same complex of divergent political currents and propositions as the term Leninism or Trotskyism for that matter. All of these doctrinaire “ism’s” contain an inherent “ left,” “right” and “political middle.” By definition all “ism’s” become conduits for a complex of ideological and political striving of all social classes, layers of society and individual inclination. The difference between “Stalinist” and “Stalinism” is perhaps academic at this point, but I understand the former to denote a material political alignment that took shape within the Soviet party after the death of Lenin and after publication of “Foundations of Leninism.” I understand the former to denote a departure in general Marxism doctrine – not theory, of the 1920’ s, that states an industrial economy could be built in the Soviet Union without a capitalist mode of accumulation in that, which was fundamental to building an industrial society. That is to say expanded reproduction of the building blocks of the industrial infrastructure or heavy machine industry, housing, schools, medical facilities and public transportation did not take place based on the accumulation of capital in the hands of private individuals or institutions. Or as it is called by ideological Trotskyism, “ socialism in one country.” Thus, locating the origin of the term “Stalinism” has the potential to reveal the actual path of the political struggle that erupted with the death of Lenin. WL. 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] abstract labor (long)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Whatever. I am just making this up to show that production can be regulated in ways where the labor time committed to a product is not the primary factor. This would be a society in which socks do not have value although they still contain labor. Comment This matches my concept of why bourgeois production is a value producing system and why feudalism was not a value producing system. This is not to say there was no value production within the latter. It is to say that production of exchange value did not drive - was the inspiration, for re/production, or rather the mode of accumulation. ** There are other implications for the organization of the labor process: skilled tasks and unskilled tasks are separated from each other and performed by different workers, machines are designed in such a way that they can perform only one task but the operator does not need skills to operate them, etc. If society makes an abstraction, this has wide-ranging implications. Marx says somewhere that abstractions are always violent. If society reduces labor to the expenditure of human labor-power, this leads to the deskilling and intensification of actual labor processes. Hans. Comment Nice. Capital conceives and configures machinery and production systems - cooperation, based on its unique mode of accumulation. Mode of accumulation is wage labor. That is to say design express an extreme intensive shape (single task functions to extract from the individual the greatest amount of toil) at the expense of extensive design (the ability of machinery and system to carry out many task). The outline of Capital was extremely helpful. WL. 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
