M-TH: Membership etc
How do you get information on the list such as the membership of the list etc? What is the address for this Warm regards George Pennefather Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ Be free to subscribe to our Communist Think-Tank mailing community by simply placing subscribe in the body of the message at the following address: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: British Elections
Apathy wins the day Derek Brown looks at how the low turnout affects the results Friday May 5, 2000 The winners are crowing over their triumph, and the losers are scornfully dismissing any suggestion of defeat. It was ever thus in electoral politics where the outcome, however cut and dried, tends to lie in the eye of the beholder. To Labour, the loss of more than 500 council seats is "containable". For the Tories, the loss of the Romsey byelection to the Liberal Democrats is less important than Labour's loss of its deposit. But the bombast and special pleading cannot conceal the most significant figure to emerge from Thursday's welter of polling: two thirds of the electorate couldn't be bothered to take part. Even in the London mayoral election, the most publicised contest in recent political history, the turnout was a dismal 35%. Elsewhere in England, it averaged rather less. In one district, electors were so indifferent that only 14% cast their votes. The abysmal turnout badly undermines the efforts of psephologists to extrapolate the likely outcome of the next general election. The council results are also skewed by the fact that Labour was defending a swathe of seats captured in 1996, when Conservative fortunes were at their lowest ebb. In that context, the Labour loss of 546 seats and the Tory gain of 542 merely returns the two big parties to a more natural balance in their respective heartlands. As a pointer to national voting intentions, the swing is no more significant than the LibDem's ostensible triumph in capturing 28% of the popular vote - just two percentage points behind Labour. In a deeper sense, though, the turnout must be deeply disappointing to all the parties, and especially to the government. Since 1997 it has made great play of its intention to revive popular participation in politics, through devolution and other constitutional reforms. For the latest elections, the normally rigid polling conventions were relaxed, and local authorities were allowed to experiment with new procedures. They included electronic counting - which went embarrassingly wrong in the London mayoral poll - mobile polling booths, weekend and week-long voting. None of the innovations had much of an impact. English voters, it seems, neither approve nor disapprove of their local councils. Londoners are not convinced that it matters whose bottom is on the new mayoral chair. For all the huffing and puffing of the political leaders, elections are still decided not so much by the popular will, as by the lack of it. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000 Warm regards George Pennefather Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ Be free to subscribe to our Communist Think-Tank mailing community by simply placing subscribe in the body of the message at the following address: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Colombia
Saturday, May 6, 2000 Dogs of war are loose in Colombia While guerrillas and government representatives talk peace, Colombia is being destroyed by savage warfare and a US "aid" package may tip the scales into chaos. Ana Carrigan reports from Bogotá "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world; The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned . . " The words of W.B. Yeats might seem like an odd introduction to a report from this distant Latin-American city high in the Andes mountains but his prophetic vision of the descent of the 20th century into darkness has haunted me ever since I arrived here a month ago, and I can find no better way to convey the mood of despair which has seeped into this isolated, deeply troubled city. Bogotá has always been a dangerous, lawless place. But since I was last here four months ago, the powerful FARC guerrillas, those same people with whose leaders the government of Andrés Pastrana has been holding peace talks, have been closing in on the city and the residents are feeling besieged. A new and insidious fearfulness, mingled with resignation, pervades the atmosphere. Sightings of FARC roadblocks within 10 minutes of the city outskirts are not unusual. Ever since the guerrillas initiated random mass kidnappings on the roads, people no longer dare take a spin out of town at the weekend. Family Sunday lunch in the country house or roadside café is a thing of the past. The country houses on the beautiful savannah stretching north from the city are empty. Between 800 and 900 people a week are leaving for the US. They are the lucky ones: doctors, architects and engineers who already had valid visas. Those who apply for a visa at the US embassy now must wait for a year to get an appointment. Until recently, for most of the upperand middle-class residents, the people who essentially run the country, the insurgency war was something they watched on their televisions at night. It was a virtual, sittingroom war occurring in some other country, some far-off tropical jungle on the other side of the Andes. As long as the carnage affected only cam- pesinos and villagers, it did not connect to their lives. Year after year, the war remained invisible and the root causes were ignored. Today it is the peace process which is seen to exist in the virtual world, insulated from a violent, deeply confusing reality. What goes on in the conversations and the lunches between the FARC commanders and the VIPs the government brings to meet them in a model village in the jungle which has been spruced up and painted in bright fashion colours bears no relation to the mayhem in the rest of Colombia. When, in the early 1990s, the FARC built a powerful peasant army on the proceeds of the drug crops grown by peasants it controls, and this guerrilla army started to overrun army bases, taking soldiers and police hostages, the shocking scenes on the nightly news triggered the realisation that the Colombian army might not quite cut the mustard. But that worry remained someone else's problem. No middle-class son or daughter enlisted to fight in this messy, undeclared war among peasants. Now the guerrillas' new strategy has changed things radically. The intimidating presence of the barbarian at the gate has brought the rural war to the city, and the intensification by the guerrillas of their indiscriminate kidnapping and extortion campaigns has projected the civilians on to the brutal front lines of a war in which terrorism, directed at the civilian population, has become the chief strategic weapon. Like many modern cities, Bogotá is really two cities - a well-off northern enclave and a southern slum. Between the two, downtown Bogotá is a no-man's land. Decayed, overcrowded, chaotic. On a clear, moonlit night, from the slopes of the northern mountains where the people with money live in pleasant, fortress-like apartment blocks, protected by private security, you can see clear across this city of eight million people to where a myriad naked light-bulbs shimmer in the teeming slums. Of course, the guerrillas have always been in that city, organising, recruiting, controlling crime, dispensing "revolutionary justice," making alliances and building a clandestine urban militia. Today, the shadowy presence of that militia is what frightens people in the north the most. If the stories about the maid who was discovered bringing suitcases of weapons into the apartment, or about the ransomed kidnap victim who came face to face
Re: M-TH: Membership etc
G'day George, There is a way to do this, but I'm not sure whether everyone has access to it (I really don't grasp the technology's workings, I'm afraid). I don't think this list has discussed a policy on disclosing the e-identities of subscribers. For my part, I am happy for such disclosure to happen, but maybe that's an issue for Thaxists to discuss first. My reservation is based on the tendency of most Thaxists to remain in lurk mode. This may, I suppose, be for a good reason (although a few more contributors would greatly be appreciated). If Thaxists don't wish to make their feelings known on-list, please drop me a line off-list. Or if the information has always been publicly available, it'd be good to know that, too. Moderators should know that sorta stuff, I s'pose ... Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Membership etc
G'day George, There is a way to do this, but I'm not sure whether everyone has access to it (I really don't grasp the technology's workings, I'm afraid). I don't think this list has discussed a policy on disclosing the e-identities of subscribers. For my part, I am happy for such disclosure to happen, but maybe that's an issue for Thaxists to discuss first. My reservation is based on the tendency of most Thaxists to remain in lurk mode. This may, I suppose, be for a good reason (although a few more contributors would greatly be appreciated). If Thaxists don't wish to make their feelings known on-list, please drop me a line off-list. Or if the information has always been publicly available, it'd be good to know that, too. Moderators should know that sorta stuff, I s'pose ... Cheers, Rob. This possibility was removed after discussions about not making things too easy for cyberspooks. What replaced it was the occasional moderator's report about the numbers subscribed and a breakdown of their nationalities. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Fwd: [marxist] Do we really want an alternative to bourgeois ideology ?
Hi everyone, Well I am pleased that my post drew three excellent responses. I hope it is ok if I deal with all three at the same time. == I. Reply to Danielle Ni Dhighe == Ben Seattle (3.May.2000): --- the marxist (or communist) ideology: The complete bankruptcy of communist theory in offering a vision of the future. Danielle Ni Dhighe (5.May.2000): --- What bankruptcy would that be? I certainly can't agree that statement. I think we can offer a positive yet realistic vision of the future, unlike much of anarchism which is uptopian. You think we can offer activists a more realistic vision of the future than the anarchists? My opinion is that you are dreaming. The anarchists' vision of the future is hopelessly vague and useless. And so is ours. Ben Seattle (3.May.2000): --- The dictatorship of the proletariat is considered synonomous with a police state. Danielle Ni Dhighe (5.May.2000): --- Then we should explain what it really means. Exactly. But in order to explain it to others--it is necessary that we understand it ourselves. And we don't. We don't talk about it because we don't understand it. And we can never understand it unless we begin to talk about it. == II. Reply to Eric Odell == Ben Seattle (3.May.2000): --- There is a reason that the anarchist ideology (for all its weaknesses) appeals more to many or most youth than the marxist (or communist) ideology: The complete bankruptcy of communist theory in offering a vision of the future. Eric Odell (4.May.2000): --- I think there's a major kernel of truth here, but I think "complete bankruptcy" is somewhat of an overstatement. When we lack the ability to build a solid consensus on the most fundamental principles--that is complete bankruptcy. Will groups of workers have the right to build organizations that are independent of the workers' state? Will such independent groups have the political right to denounce (and mobilize mass opinion against) what they see as the incompetence, hypocrisy and corruption associated with the leaders or policies of the workers' state? If we can't answer this question--then we have _nothing_. We have no vision of the future that can inspire the masses. If we cannot answer this question in a decisive way--then our movement is not deserving of the respect of workers. We can't and it is not. It is not that I enjoy being the one to burst anyone's bubble--but we must deal with the truth. I have seen very little that deals with this question from any group (or individuals) considering themselves to be marxists. What I have seen are the exceptions that prove the rule: (1) Paul Hampton (of www.workersliberty.org ) and José G. Perez (a contributor to this list) discussed proletarian democracy in relation to Cuba. My own views are closer to Paul's than José's. I forwarded here, on April 23, an exchange of theirs from March that took place on the Che-List. I added an introduction in which I asked participants of this list to contribute to building a discussion of what proletarian demoracy would look like in a modern country like the US. Unfortunately this question failed to capture anyone's imagination. (The post can be seen at: www.egroups.com/message/theorist/17 ) (2) The Party of the Proletarian Dictatorship (PPD) ( http://proletarism.org/m1str.shtml ) in Russia deals with this question. I think they are deserving of more attention than they are getting. (3) I have written a fair amount on this question considering that I am working essentially alone. Some of my theoretical posts can be seen at: www.egroups.com/messages/theorist (March 2000 -- current) www.Leninism.org/critical.asp (July 1998 -- May 1999) (4) The FRSO document you refer to (below) represents, in my view, a definite positive contribution. Their view (and mine also) is that the dictatorship of the working class in modern conditions and in a country like the US will require the interplay of more than a single political party. But this document was written in 1991. Have the views in it been developed at all? Has there been any discussion of it that is posted on the web? And even this document, which is far advanced compared to most, fails to give an answer to the decisive question I pose above: WILL WORKERS BE ALLOWED TO FORM INDEPENDENT ORGANIZATIONS? And even a correct answer (ie: "yes") to this question leaves unanswered the companion question: How then will the workers' state prevent the former bourgeoisie from successfully organizing for the return of their former paradise? I have
Re: M-TH: CPGB archives
At 07:29 06/05/00 -0700, you wrote: - Original Message - From: Barry Buitekant [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 10:43 PM Subject: Re: M-TH: CPGB archives Michael The CPGB archives are held in the National Museum of Labour History. Address is 103 Princess Street, Manchester M1 6DD. Two odd things ie I cannot find a website for them. Regards Barry There is not a CPGB website, because the CPGB legally transformed itself into Democratic Left. (Because of the size of the assets this was tested in the courts and found to be consitutionally valid.) A new organisation has taken on the name of CPGB but is criticised by its enemies as Trotskyist. Although no doubt it claims it is morally and ideologically the descendant of the founding spirit of the CPGB there is no organisational continuous line of descent. Democratic left at a conference at the end of last year committed itself to transform into the "New Times Network". The politics are not explicitly marxist. They are explicitly pluralist. The organisation has lost core size and very possibly viability, but has spread in influence in the 90's. It helped to shape the politics of New Labour, as did Marxism Today, the defunct journal of the Eurocommunists. The General Secretary of the Trades Union Council, John Monks, has attended a number of meetings sponsored by Democratic Left, together with other organisations (joint sponsorship was part of DL's style.) The person who is the formost Labour spokesperson on the new Greater London Assembly, the black journalist Trevor Philips, who is likely to become chair of the Assembly, has also attended a number of functions organised by Democratic Left. DL has no democratic centralist structure. Members are not obliged to follow the decisions of the central body. Marxists are not excluded as such, but are expected to subscribe to pluralist politics. As I do. The post of general secretary has been replaced I think by a co-ordinator. The new person who is taking over from Nina Temple, starts work this month. The URL for Democratic Left UK is http://www.democratic-left.org.uk/ This page states that the New Times page was last updated in Febraury 2000. I hope this information is transparently clear. I am glad to hear the archives of the CPGB are in Manchester. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Membership etc
At 13:59 07/05/00 +0200, you wrote: This possibility was removed after discussions about not making things too easy for cyberspooks. What replaced it was the occasional moderator's report about the numbers subscribed and a breakdown of their nationalities. Cheers, Hugh This possibility was removed about 3 years ago, just before the list was moved from Spoons, because spammers were able to get the list of names automatically and bombard subscribers. It may still be necessary. Possibly though the moderator could get the list and post it as an ordinary e-mail message to the list. It is a pity because it reduces the collective spirit of a list. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Occasional Moderator's Report
G'day Thaxists, Thaxis has 103 edresses s*bscribed to it. Ya can't tell much about nation of origin from edresses these days, as many s*bscribe through US-registered edresses from all over the world. That said, I spy Australians, Brazilians, Russians, Bulgarians, Britishers, Kiwis, Turks, Finns, Kiwis, Canadians, Swedes, Argentinians, Irish, Danes, Germans, French, Italians and USAers. I don't know just now which countries are denoted by 'il' and 'sg', but a warm thaxalotl g'day to you, too. Now, if only we could harness a bit more of that multicultural potential on-list, eh, comrades? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Jiang walks tightrope between left and right (fwd)
Date: Sat, 06 May 2000 12:36:46 -1000 From: Stephen E Philion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Jiang walks tightrope between left and right (fwd) Saturday, May 6, 2000 Jiang walks tightrope between left and right WILLY WO-LAP LAM Communist Party ideologues have temporarily wound down their campaign against rightists, or "bourgeois-liberal" intellectuals who advocate faster political reform. The main reason is that the hard left has exploited the anti-rightist crusade to revive slogans running counter to Beijing's economic reforms. In the past month, the head of the leftist faction, Deng Liqun, has spoken out against exploitation of workers and farmers by a "new capitalist class". Addressing several internal seminars organised by leftist think-tanks, Mr Deng urged cadres and citizens to be "prepared for a new class struggle". Mr Deng claimed that in many factories and places of work run by private and foreign entrepreneurs, relationships between workers and the new bosses were "nothing more than that between exploiters and exploited". A party source in Beijing said the leadership of President Jiang Zemin had always tried to strike a balance between left and right. Mr Jiang had criticised liberal intellectuals who urged political reforms such as multiparty politics and general elections, he said. But the source said the President was also unhappy with leftist agendas such as the suppression of private and foreign capital. This was because the party leadership had given the non-state sector a bigger role. Mr Jiang also feared a rise in the leftists' influence would drive away foreign businessmen at a time when the country was about to accede to the World Trade Organisation. "Usually, leftists redouble their efforts when they see that their enemies, the rightists, are under siege," said the source. "The authorities, however, have countered the Maoists' offensive by asking official media not to report their activities." Meanwhile, the party Central Committee's publicity department and other ideological units are promoting patriotism and the "Three Emphases" campaign on toeing the Jiang Zemin line. For example, on the anniversary of the May Fourth movement, leaders, including Vice-President Hu Jintao, stressed the need to instil patriotic values in the young and to develop national strength. However, with a view to getting China's permanent Normal Trading Relations status passed in the US congress, officials have been at pains to draw the line between patriotic education and anti-American feelings. The official media has largely refrained from playing up emotions in connection with the anniversary of the Nato bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Meanwhile, the Three Emphases campaign, "study the Marxist canon, be righteous, and be politically correct", is being conducted at county level while a variant push is being waged in rich coastal provinces such as Jiangsu and Guangdong. Its theme is "remember your origin after becoming rich; and seek further progress in the midst of prosperity". These campaigns underscore the imperative of toeing the "line of the centre" and remaining in unison with the Jiang leadership. Beijing has banned books about the Zhong Gong, a quasi-religious, qi gong group similar to the Falun Gong. The Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said yesterday mainland bookstores had been ordered to destroy copies of nine books published by Zhong Gong. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Fwd:China's recession adds pressure for workers' rights
-- Date: Sun, 07 May 2000 09:44:21 -1000 From: Stephen E Philion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: China's recession adds pressure for workers' rights The Telegraph (UK) Sunday May 7, 2000 China's recession adds pressure for workers' rights By Damien Mcelroy in Beijing CHINA returns to work today after an unprecedented week-long national holiday ordered by a Communist leadership alarmed at escalating violent protests and strikes among a discontented workforce. The decision to extend the "Labour Day" holiday to a week for 300 million urban workers seems to have been taken shortly before May 1st and had a whiff of panic about it. Analysts see it as a barely disguised attempt to defuse an increasingly explosive atmosphere among a workforce facing Western-style job insecurities combined with falling wages. Fed up with not being paid by their bankrupt employers and fearful of being laid off, many workers are taking to the streets to challenge the leadership for a better deal. Above all, Beijing is terrified of a workers' rights movement emerging from the spread of isolated protests, and of China spawning the kind of Polish-style free trade union that helped topple communism in eastern Europe in the Eighties. Unrest has been particularly prevalent in the provinces north-east of Beijing which have been hardest hit by the decline of old industries amid economic restructuring. Once in the vanguard of Mao Tse-dung dash for development, the region is now a basket case of outdated factories and exhausted mines. In cities such as Shenyang, tens of thousands of laid-off factory workers wander the streets for want of something to do. They are easily prompted into reciting a litany of grievances. A recent flare-up involving redundant miners in Yangjiazhanzi, 250 miles north-east of Beijing, was typical of the type of incident now taking place regularly in China. Cars were smashed, shops looted and fuel stores set alight as the town was embroiled in a three-day battle between 20,000 miners and soldiers following the announcement that the largest local employer, a molybdenum mine, was to close. Workers were further enraged at the management's decision to offer only a few hundred pounds in severance pay for a lifetime's work. One man and his wife, who had worked a combined 70 years at the mine, were given £350 to compensate them for lost earnings, pension and health care. At one stage, demonstrators raided the mine's explosives store to hold the troops at bay. The growing mood of unrest has come about despite the tight lid kept on labour disputes by the Communist Party. Independent trade unions are banned, and any sign of a co-ordination of protests in different areas prompts a harsh response. Labour activists are frequently detained in laogai labour camps to undergo "re-education". However, worker discontent has been escalating across China, according to new figures. The number of officially recorded strikes soared to more than 120,000 in 1999 - a 14-fold increase in five years. The new statistics are all the more remarkable as they will have been "massaged" by officials in an attempt to gloss over rising tensions. They illustrate the frustrations among a workforce that was nurtured on promises of jobs for life but is now confronted with the collapse of uneconomic and outdated heavy industry. Many employers are failing to pay salaries and entitlements to their workers on a regular basis - causing great hardship. Those laid off are often forced to sell household items from makeshift street stalls to earn the money they need to live. One old soldier, who was demobbed from the People's Liberation Army in the late Fifties to work in a factory, said hardship was rising, even for those who were still being paid. He said: "Pensions and salaries aren't going up, but rents and electricity prices are," he said. "If you paid for enough electricity to heat your home, you couldn't eat. So people have to steal the electricity." There is an almost uniform bitterness among ordinary Chinese against officials and company managers who have been able to enrich themselves from their positions. Yet despite rising resentment, corruption is still on the increase. One Hong Kong academic estimates that the party-appointed management of state-run factories skim more than £8 billion into their own bank accounts - - usually overseas - every year. In a move eerily reminiscent of the dying days of the Soviet bloc a decade ago, the Chinese Communist Party is now trying to distract people's attention from the inequalities that are feeding their deep-seated grievances. Last week the propaganda machine was busy issuing reports of crowded airports and bustling streets in an attempt to obscure the real reason for the extended break. Newspapers reported a stampede to the shops, claiming growing consumer confidence that the economy was improving. But a quick visit to one of Beijing's biggest department stores revealed
M-TH: Re: UK Far Left Blows Its Chance in London
At 11:17 06/05/00 -0400, you wrote: See attached article Given the proportional election system of the new London Assembly, this should have been a chance for left socialists to elect a few assembly members as a beachhead against the centrism of New Labour. The Greens managed to elect three out of the twenty-five assembly members, but vicious infighting and sectarian proliferation of candidates assurred that none of the far left socialist parties got anywhere. It looks like Scargill, the SWP (IS), Communist Parties and other groups have strongly established their absolute electoral irrelevance in Britain. If they could not win in an election where Ken Livingstone was romping to victory with two thumbs firmly in the eyes of the Tories and Blair's Labour, is there any reason why anyone will take them seriously after this? Any UK folks with other thoughts? Nathan Newman - Factions blow their chance By Ben Leapman Extraordinary infighting among five competing socialist factions looks set to ensure that none achieves success in the London elections. Far Left groups have squandered a unique chance of electoral success on the coat-tails of Ken Livingstone. With the rebel MP streets ahead of Frank Dobson in the polls, there is a huge appetite among Labour-leaning Londoners to cast "safe" anti-Government protest votes. The 25-member Assembly, to be elected alongside the Mayor on Thursday, appears ripe for fringe candidates to shine. It has few real powers for extremists to abuse. The list voting system means parties need only five per cent support across London to win a seat. Yet extraordinary infighting among five competing socialist factions looks set to ensure that none reaches that threshold. The combined votes of the far-Left parties may well reach five per cent, but individually it is almost certain that none of them will. The row could come straight from Monty Python's Life of Brian, in which the People's Front of Judea accuse the Judean People's Front of being "splitters". Surely. Greens got three seats in the London Assembly through proportional representation, and the Liberal Democrats (who in some respects are left of New Labour) got four. There is no radical left wing representative to back up Livingstone. Scargill, who actively favoured proportional representation for this purpose (unlike Tony Benn), insisted on heading his Socialist Labour Party. Their leaflet emphasised "London Underground must be kept in public ownership. Both the private finance initiative (PFI, or PPP) *and* New-York-City type bonds mean "privatisation" of the Tube by one means or another. Bonds were Livingstone's answer. Livingstone clearly asked the London Socialist Alliance to keep at arms length so he could win as an independent. However it did not pitch itself as providing a broader lead, but like most left groups concentrated on trying to prove it was purer than the rest. By contrast Trevor Philips, the black journalist, who has been close to Democratic left, has emerged as one of the most influential members of the Labour group on the Assembly and likely to become its first chairperson. Livingstone too has embraced the new pluralist politics. He has gone to each of the parties *including the Conservatives* and invited them to have a representative in his cabinet. The Conservative asked if that included executive office. He replied that that could be negotiated. London could soon have an assembly, like Northern Ireland, that embraces all shades of opinion. On balance this provides a more transparent arena for the left to argue out what really is, and is not, democratic. Yes quite right to deride the sectarian dogmatic left. They do considerable damage in preventing a rational application of a marxist approach. But it is early years yet in learning how this system works. I would predict that a radical left candidate capable of crossing the 5% hurdle in four years time, will need to combine a radical green as well as a socialist stance. But the theory behind this practice must also be seriously discussed. I hope the organisation will be marxist-influenced. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
