Re: Economics and law
In a message dated 8/16/2004 5:39:53 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Stalin was not hated (by most people). He was worshipped (by most people). Being a brutal dictator does not necessarily mean that you are hated or seen as illegitimate by the people over whom you are dictating, especially if their historical experience tells them that power is absolute and arbitrary. Comment Joesph the Steel . . . Molotov . . . the Hammer. It is not like these guys did not know the names they adopted as they understood themselves in the historical currents and the revolution unfolding in Russia. Life is not a dream or ideological category. There were always workers in the shop more capable than myself in every sphere . . . better machine operators . . . assemblers . . . inspectors and smarter. Most of these really good guys and women steered clear of union politics and the politics of management because they did not want to be bothered with the intrigue and maneuvering inherent to bureaucracy. Politics is a dirty business and covering politics with ideology and Marxist concepts does not change the fact that privilege is involved because the bureaucracy is an agent of administration of something. People tend to support the "strong man" . . . and not because they are backwards . . . but because "strong" means the ability to get things done. Getting things done operates in a context and the content is a complex of industrial processes where the individual is atomized in the social process . . . intensely alienated as expressed in the personal vision of being a cog in an enormous machine. Those charged with administering various facets of this enormous machine that is society are expected to get things done in a way that does not chew up everyone . . . only ones neighbor. The Russian working class as a whole did not and today does not blame Stalin but rather . . . everyone under Stalin for not being selfless . . . and I understand this dynamic. Stalin was a man without personal wealth and the working class understood this simple truth. "If only Comrade Stalin knew what the bureaucracy was really doing . . . if only Comrade Stalin really knew what our local tyrants were doing . . . if only Comrade Stalin knew . . ." Real people are never . . . ever . . . as democratic as the intellectual stratum of society. The Soviet proletariat supported Stalin in muffling the intellectual stratum and it is not very different in America. This creates a certain danger . . . or rather is the environment of the social struggle. Nothing concerning the historical environment of the Stalin era frightens me on any level. I would trade Moscow 1936 for Mississippi or Georgia or Alabama 1936 in a heart beat. If only life was as simple as shouting democratic assertions. The intellectual stratum in the imperial centers tend to miss the ball and not understand the actual rules of the game . . . or rather see things from a position of privilege. Melvin P.
Re: Economics and law/bureaucratic order made real
In a message dated 8/15/2004 1:00:35 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The American system of vehicle production was very bureaucratic . . . but less than that of the Soviets and much more than that of the Japanese producers . . . in terms of democratic input of the workers . . . measured by their ability to halt production and correct a problem. Comment The domestic and historic American auto producers will never . . . ever . . . produce superior quality vehicles than their Japanese counter parts . . . for the very same reasons the Soviets could not produce vehicles superior to the American producers. On the one hand the industrial class in America was consolidated and evolved on a curve in front of its Japanese and Soviet counterpart the former produces better vehicles and the latter worse vehicles. Why does the Japanese produce better vehicles and the old Soviet vehicles ... as massed produced . . . not specialized .. . were of an inferior quality? One thread of thought says the Soviet system was inferior to the American system and the Soviet workers were lazy, stupid, culturally backwards and lacked freedom of _expression_ due to their bureaucracy. This is the exact argument advanced by a section of the intellectual stratum of Japan against their American counterparts. If memory serves me correct the book advancing this argument in Japan was "The Right To Say No" published in the 1980s. The reaction of the autoworkers union was to prohibit Japanese cars from being parked in the parking lot of the International Union and a wave of smashing Japanese vehicles in Detroit. Everything is involved in the equation and real human beings - the subjective aspects . . . are always the decisive factor within a given qualitative and quantitative boundary of the industrial system. However, this does not isolate the set of factors that are fundamental to the production process. The Soviets production of military planes means the technological capability existed . . . so the human potential was present. The history of Soviet industrial socialism contains an important key to understanding the components of industrial society because its system of production was constructed at a specific quantitative boundary. The Japanese producers . . . after the Second Imperial World War . . . constructed their industrial system at yet another . . . different . . . boundary of the industrial system. Nor can the issue be looked at as "Forced industrialization" because industrialization by definition is forced on society in every country on earth as the material results of the triumph of a new mode of production. Even in its mode of accumulation . . . the injection of the money economy into a natural economy requires incredibly destructive force at every stage of the industrial advance. Look at the Western hemisphere and see the truth of the quest for gold. Look at American history . . . clearing of the Western frontier and the advance of the manufacturing process. The difference in tempo of industrialization is another question all together. My understanding of industrialization - heavy industry, is that it grew out of the manufacturing process . . . and specifically heavy manufacturing as opposed to chair making. From the 14th century on industrialization rivets in history and grows out slavery and the slave trade . . . ship building . . . heavy manufacturing . . . which laid an important basis for what would become the steel industry . . . science . . . navigation . . . the armament industry, trade routes and the early impulse of the state to shattered local constrained markets. We forget this was the actual process of divorcing millions of producers from the land and their means of production and with rose color glasses speak of capital magically rolling out of the countryside and the conversion of the serf into modern proletarians. All industrialization is forced by definition. Soviet industrialization did not evolve from the slavery trade but occurred at another juncture of history and was infinitely more peaceful and humane than the earlier period of industrialization. The anti-Sovietism under the banner of anti-Stalinism has very little to do with Stalin and more to do with imperial privilege and falsification of world history in y opinion. The hundreds of millions of descendants of 14th through 19th century slaves are very clear that the edifice of industrial society was carved from their backs. To hell with Stalin . . . because he is not the issue. He becomes the focal point because American Marxists have been in denial of their history for 400 years and point an accusing finger at everyone else. Our inability to accurately describe Soviet industrial socialism and Soviet industrial democracy . . . seems to me to be based in difference about the meaning of the mode of production . . . on the level of theory. I use the concept "industrial mode of production" with the property
Re: Economics and law/bureaucratic order made real
The whole matter of workers control and democratic input in the actual production process or what I understand to be the collective intellectual and emotional passions of the working class . . . and giving this broad _expression_ . . . has driven me up the wall for twenty years of my working life. In respects to Soviet society this whole question of democratic input versus one man management has been described under the theory category of socialist relations of production . . . and has cause me more than a few headaches. In my way of thinking an autoworker in the Soviet Union and America in 1935 or 1975 . . . had more in common in their actual life activity than"not incommon." The reason of this is the commonality of actual tools, machines and physical organization of auto production on the basis of that, which is industrial. Important differences exists that in turn impact the actual production process. These difference have to do with the property relations and the drive for profits. Auto plants in America produce one thing and one thing only besides profit . . . automobiles or vehicles while Soviet plants had multifunction production. I do not want to stray to far from this question of workers democrary and control . . . but an industrial facility will manifest a variation in curve of intensive and extensive development based on whether it process . . . as a system . . . on primary product or many. If you produce many products then you instruments of production are developed to perform multifunctions or rather machines are created that can be repeatedly converted over to produce more than one thing. The more functions a machine or tool has to perform . . . the less efficient it is to bourgeois property. Shoddy products achieved legendary status in the Soviet Union and some of this had much to do with its political system . . . but my position is that this was not the fundamentality. This is my thinking based on involvement in the actual fight to close the gap between the Japanese automotive producers and the Americans. Why are the Japanese vehicles absolutely superior to the American counterparts in every category? I discovered another truth at the time Bob Eaton was the CEO for Chrysler and he personally sent my older brother to Japan to study the issue of production and we spent the better part of a year unraveling "why." The first implentation of the results were atrempted at Trenton Engine outside Detroit . . . whose evolution was based on a previous study of the Honda system. Mutherfuckers should have went to Toyota . . . but that is another struggle dealing with the bureaucratic order. I asked brother "why did you not do Germany . . . because Bob wanted you to go to Germany and look around?" We did not know that Bob Eaton had consolidated his Germany contacts while he was with "General Motors Europe" before his tourat ChryslerYes . . . Bob Eaton was consolidating his based amongst the workers in auto but we did not know this at the time of the unfolding of this history. You know the auto magnates are rats and this knowledge is what compels you from nothing to politically something. But your world view is fucked up because you cannot see the world in concrete terms as living labor and the immediate combat . . . because you do not have the data and the subjective response of the individual is some unpredictable shit . . . that you cannot predict "What the fuck is Bob talking about and are you going to Japan? " I do not know brother but he seems to want to know something and I will go to Japan befoe going to Germany." "Why in the fuck he wants you to go brother." "Besides having the largest stamping plant in north America under my political jurisdiction and me cussing that mutherfucker out because he do not drive a Chrysler car and has a chauffeur . . . which means he never encounter quality problems . . . your Big Brother is the4 baddest mutherfucker thjaqt you know." "OK Big Brother . . . I always knew I was number 2. Is Bob a 2 or one? This mutherfucker is not immune to operating within a certain family system or non family system?" "He do not seem like a 1 little brother." "That is why you not going to Germany?" "Not at all brother . . . if we lose . . . none of us have jobs and all that retirement shit is out of the window . . . and all the money is gone. Plus. . . I want to go to Japan and see what a mutherfucker is doing. Plus I am hitting the back street of Japan and not taking the fucking tour shit. The whote guys scared and I am not hanging out with their puck ass because they treat eveyone like shit. "Fuck them guys . . . ain't no one going to tell them shit in Japan." "OK Big Brother . . . say all the notes and documents." The evolution is deep . . . on every front. Remember when General Motors was called "Generous Motors" and "what is good for General Motors is good for the country?" Well, today General Motors ismanufacturing Snoop Dog
Re: Economics and law
In a message dated 8/15/2004 12:34:00 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Lenin expressly holds up Taylorism as an ideal for Soviet industry at a couple of points. I could find the references if you wanted. But I think the Bolshies were more impressed with German war planning planning, which was more familiar to them. Gramsci conceived of Fordism not only asa tool of analysis but as containing elements of a Communist society. jks Comment I like Lenin but he wrote that electrification of agriculture and Soviet Power equates communism and that is how things looked in 1920 . . . but we know different in 2004. All of us historically wrong. What was understood in 1920 was the actual material components of a mode of production called industrial production. Lenin's whole fight with the syndicalist or rather anacho syndicalist . . . can be read on line in the Lenin library. The communist called these fights around the specific extensive and intensive development of industry "right and left deviations" . . . while the capitalist called them winning and losing in the market. This fight occurred under the heading of "state capitalism" . . . a concept Lenin rejected but spoke to. An aspect of Taylorism . . . which was superseded in Japan . . . was another level of rationalization of production. . . and quality control based on statistical analysis of every product. If the world had evolved different . . . which it did not . . . we would be arguing the attributes of intensive versus extensive development of the material power of production. Hey the industrial system by definition is an economic terrain hostile to communism. Now the real question is that the quality of what you produce is largely determined by the quality of the machines you get from the producers of your heavy machinery which is only corrected and evolved in relationship to the feed back you get from the muckerfuckersmaking the final product. OK. Excello and Gidding and Lewis are important manufactures of heavy machinery for auto. They can only evolve the intensive manufacture of the equipment them provide you with based on the feedback loop you supply them. This is the cultural thing . . . which is also a property thing . . . but nothing makes sense until we put things into an agreeded upon context. For Lenin the man . . . real person and political leader . . . the system of Talyorism . . . which grew out of the Singer Sewing Machine assembly and manufacture process . . . and later adapted to the Ford system or Fordism . . . this was a giant step over what Russia possessed. I became convince of the importance of Giant Steps by John Coltrane. :-) This was after father and mother beat "My Favorite Things" into my head by Coltrane. Melvin P.
Re: economics, law and the old soviet economy/the big quote
In a message dated 8/14/2004 8:18:31 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: CB: When you say "abolish property" instead of "abolish private property" are you putting forth a different concept than the one that Marx , Engels and Marxists use ? Or just shorthand for what Marxists refer to as the abolition of _private_ property ? Reply Both . . . or rather Yes . . . because I am not a Marxist . . . just kidding. Although I am more communist - Red, than Marxist . . . from my understanding of the history of American Marxism as a political body as opposed to more than less academic discourse. Marxism is just one facet of communism anyway and never the largest sector at that. Ain't a socialist either . . . although some of my best friends . . . So the answer to the above is . . . Yes, or rather both. All of the above.:-) In fact I have the only valid concept of property according to Marx than has ever existed in history. Everyone else is wrong and I am right because . . . just playing. Private property is a form of property . . . Yes? What is to be abolished is not just the "private" or the form . . . but the property relations itself. By property or the property relation is meant all the things in our society through which one individual dominates another as well as class domination - the actual interactive interrelatedness of everyone to each other . . . Bourgeois property is only oneform of property and what ever ones understanding of property is . . . that is what's meant by abolish property . . . notjust the bourgeois kind. That is the direction of history as I understand all of what Marx and Engels have written. All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions. Thus, "property relations" is used to mean all forms of domination of the individual by another individual based in class rights and class antagnoism . . . until the bright red future of communism is achieved and property is wipe from the minds of men and women. We have entered the beginning of a new historical era where the property relations itself can be abolished by abolishing the last form of private property relations . . . bourgeois property . . . WITHOUT THE STATE BEING THE PROPERTY HOLDER. This might take 100 years or a thousand years . . . I don't know. In the former Soviet Union the state was the property holder by way of its specific system of the dictatorship of the proletariat. By way of the state power . . . money, certificates and "sovereign credit" was issued that allowed the working people to access the system of production and distribution. I call this a from of property relations. The bourgeois property relations was abolished in the Soviets industrial infrastructure and more than less in agriculture. Perhaps less than more in agriculture . . . depends on ones point of view concerning exchange and the price form. Properly speaking the industrial workers did not sell their labor power to themselves in exchange for means of consumption . . . but then again . . . yes they did . . . as a transition phase never completed . . . with the state mediating this PROPERTY RELATIONS and the exchange of commodities. If commodities . . . including labor . . . was exchanged in the Soviet Union and this was not a bourgeois property relations or the private property relation . . . then how can anyone say that the working class was property holder and yet . . . there was no property relation at the same time? Property is bigger than a historically specific form. Abolition of property means advancing well beyond Soviet society and what makes this possible is subjective man in the context of a radically new emerging system of production.I do not advocate a Soviet America. Soviets were forms of organization of the workers as property owner. Bourgeois private property is the final and most complete _expression_ of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms . . . yet, under industrial conditions society is not and was not at a technological stage where the mass of people are no compelled to work as the basis of individual consumption. What made Soviet socialism . . . real existing socialism was the legal system and ownership rights - property rights, that prevented anything other than means of consumption passing into the hands of individuals. That is to say . . . means of production could not pass into the hands of individuals. Those who dominate and or administer the things that dominate people and reproduce the compulsion for exchange based on labor are still within a property relation. Socialism means a change in the form of property . . . from bourgeois private property to what? . . . Proletarian property. Here is the contradiction . . . not antagonism. Without questionit was correct to exclude thebourgeoisie from owning property . . . and property is revealed to
Re: naming that system
In a message dated 8/14/2004 2:47:45 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The reason that Schachtman was dead wrong was that the Stalinist bureaucracy, which he fantasized as a historically new *ruling class*, had no ability (or desire) to inaugurate a new mode of production--its "historical mission," now completed, was to make prevalent and modern the capitalist mode of production within the Great Russian Empire. Comment One can actually inaugurate a new Mode of Production - in material life . . . on the basis of political fiat? I do not believe that industrial socialismwas a new Mode of Production of course an industrial society.Is not the basis of every mode of production in society . . . every form of society that has existed and can exist . . . a certain stage of development of the division of labor, human energy, machine and tool development and primary energy source -- with the property relations within? And is not the meaning of division of labor in society an _expression_ of all these things as primacy as opposed to the political form of societyand the legal _expression_? Naming the system begs the question what is the meaning of "system?" On the one hand no one disputes . . . with anycredibility that the industrial system of production prevailed under the majority of Stalin's tenure. No one disputes . . . with any credibility . . . that is was a certain kind of industrial system. Once one shifts the shape of the question . . . "naming the system" . . . and pose the matter more clearly . . . the answer becomes more than 50% apparent. The fundamental feature of the mode of production in the Soviet Union was industrial with the property relations within. What was restored in the Soviet Union was not an antiquated mode of production . . . which as a general rule is impossible to restore. . . but a specific property relations. Once a new mode of production arises and takes root and then stands on its economic legs it is generally . . . impossible . . . to "unnegate" the new qualitative defintion, that is the new mode of production. Its . . . like . . . . it is imposibble to deevolve society back to landed property relations (agricultural society) as the primary form of wealth and political feudalism because there no longer exist anything to go back to support this "negated" mode of production. That is to say the industrial mode of production and it's property relations grew out of the previous mode of production - sublated, and the previous mode of production is no longer waiting in the back ground for restoration . . . but is gone and no longer exist as a historical category. Melvin P.
Re: Economics and law
Mainly that was me writing off the cuff while trying to meet a deadline and working through a hangover. It would be better to say something like "the shape of Soviet society was determined first and foremost by the need to develop an agrarian country. It succeeded. The rest of the stuff is fluff." Comment Soviet housing pattern - communal apartments, and the need to provide living quarters in the context of this massive and rapid industrialization of the country - the shift from agriculture to industry . . . has a roughequivalent to aspects of the housing pattern in America. I believe it was in Detroit that the large government sponsored housing project called the Jefferson Projects . . . was created to meet the demand for housing under the Roosevelt administration. Eleanor Roosevelt officiated at the opening of this housing complex. The Jefferson Project contained 14 story high rises - 6 stories and 3 stories, and met the demands for housing of a population shifting on the basis of the mechanization of agricultural and servicing the boom bust cycles of the auto industry. There were several such housing projects in Detroit, although not as massive as the Jefferies Project. In fact Cabrina Green in Chicago is such a projects and one can find such communal quarters in perhaps every major city in America. In general housing pattern shapes itself on the basis of industrial centers and the working people providing the labor. A certain dispersal of industry and downsizing affects housing pattern under capitalism and socialism. The specific character of the housing pattern . . . meaning the pecking order . . . is another matter. The last "race riot" in Detroit during the Second Imperial World War era was actually ignited over housing . . . back in 1943 . . . if memory serves me correct. Dad took us out of the Jefferies Project in the early 1960s when his employment with the Ford Motor Company stabilized. Interestingly . . . this same Project is being looked at today as luxury apartments for the wealthy. I would pose the question as the housing pattern during the industrial era and the curve of its ascendency and decay . . . under capitalism and socialism. There is a growing and serious problem of homelessness in America but not a housing shortage as such with hundred of thousands on the waiting list for section 8 housing - welfare. Oh . . . paying for water in America is the height of American bourgeois criminality. When the bourgeois mentality learns to effectively bottle fresh air and offer it for sell to the masses . . . in an affordable manner our ass is out. Did not a movie star . . . Woody Harrelson . . . open a fresh air bar . . . yep . . . you could come in and buy fresh air . . . a few years ago? Melvin P.
Re: economics, law and the old soviet economy
1928 - At the same time we have around us a number of capitalist countries whose industrial technique is far more developed and up-to-date than that of our country. Look at the capitalist countries and you will see that their technology is not only advancing, but advancing by leaps and bounds, outstripping the old forms of industrial technique. And so we find that, on the one hand, we in our country have the most advanced system, the Soviet system, and the most advanced type of state power in the world, Soviet power, while, on the other hand, our industry, which should be the basis of socialism and of Soviet power, is extremely backward technically. Do you think that we can achieve the final victory of page 258 socialism in our country so long as this contradiction exists? What has to be done to end this contradiction? To end it, we must overtake and outstrip the advanced technology of the developed capitalist countries. We have overtaken and outstripped the advanced capitalist countries in the sense of establishing a new political system, the Soviet system. That is good. But it is not enough. In order to secure the final victory of socialism in our country, we must also overtake and outstrip these countries technically and economically. Either we do this, or we shall be forced to the wall. This applies not only to the building of socialism. It applies also to upholding the independence of our country in the circumstances of the capitalist encirclement. The independence of our country cannot be up held unless we have an adequate industrial basis for defence. And such an industrial basis cannot be created if our industry is not more highly developed technically. http://ptb.lashout.net/marx2mao/Stalin/ICRD28.html 1930 - It is a contradiction between capitalism as a whole and the country that is building socialism. This, however, does not prevent it from corroding and shaking the very foundations of capitalism. More than that, it lays bare all the contradictions of capitalism to the roots and gathers them into a single knot, transforming them into an issue of the life and death of the capitalist order itself. That is why, every time the contradictions of capitalism become acute, the bourgeoisie turns its gaze towards the U.S.S.R., wondering whether it would not be possible to solve this or that contradiction of capitalism, or all the contradictions together, at the expense of the U.S.S.R., of that Land of Soviets, that citadel of revolution which, by its very existence, page 263 is revolutionising the working class and the colonies, which is hindering the organisation of a new war, hindering a new redivision of the world, hindering the capitalists from lording it in its extensive home market which they need so much, especially now, in view of the economic crisis. Hence the tendency towards adventurist attacks on the U.S.S.R. and towards intervention, a tendency which will certainly grow owing to the development of the economic crisis. http://ptb.lashout.net/marx2mao/Stalin/SC30.html
Re: economics, law and the old soviet economy/the big quote
(M.Hoover wins the door prize . . . The Task of Economic Executives 1931.) 1931 - It is sometimes asked whether it is not possible to slow down the tempo somewhat, to put a check on the movement. No, comrades, it is not possible ! The tempo must not be reduced! On the contrary, we must increase it as much as is within our powers and possibilities. This is dictated to us by our obligations to the workers and peasants of the U.S.S.R. This is dictated to us by our obligations to the working class of the whole world. page 528 To slacken the tempo would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten. But we do not want to be beaten. No, we refuse to be beaten! One feature of the history of old Russia was the continual beatings she suffered because of her backwardness. She was beaten by the Mongol khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She was beaten by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry. She was beaten by the British and French capitalists. She was beaten by the Japanese barons. All beat her -- because of her backwardness, because of her military backwardness, cultural backwardness, political backwardness, industrial backwardness, agricultural backwardness. They beat her because it was profitable and could be done with impunity. You remember the words of the pre-revolutionary poet: "You are poor and abundant, mighty and impotent, Mother Russia."[93] Those gentlemen were quite familiar with the verses of the old poet. They beat her, saying: "You are abundant," so one can enrich oneself at your expense. They beat her, saying: "You are poor and impotent," so you can be beaten and plundered with impunity. Such is the law of the exploiters -- to beat the backward and the weak. It is the jungle law of capitalism. You are backward, you are weak -- therefore you are wrong; hence you can be beaten and enslaved. You are mighty -- therefore you are right; hence we must be wary of you. That is why we must no longer lag behind. In the past we had no fatherland, nor could we have had one. But now that we have overthrown capitalism and power is in our hands, in the hands of the people, we have a fatherland, and we will uphold its independence. Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence? If you do not want this, you must put an end to its backward- page 529 ness in the shortest possible time and develop a genuine Bolshevik tempo in building up its socialist economy. There is no other way. That is why Lenin said on the eve of the October Revolution-"Either perish, or overtake and outstrip the advanced capitalist countries." We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in 10 years. Either we do it, or we shall go under. http://ptb.lashout.net/marx2mao/Stalin/TEE31.html
Re: economics, law and the old soviet economy/the big quote
In the past we had no fatherland, nor could we have had one. But now that we have overthrown capitalism and power is in our hands, in the hands of the people, we have a fatherland, and we will uphold its independence. Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence? If you do not want this, you must put an end to its backward- page 529 ness in the shortest possible time and develop a genuine Bolshevik tempo in building up its socialist economy. There is no other way. That is why Lenin said on the eve of the October Revolution - "Either perish, or overtake and outstrip the advanced capitalist countries." We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in 10 years. Either we do it, or we shall go under. http://ptb.lashout.net/marx2mao/Stalin/TEE31.html end of quote. I would not call this a nationalist's utterance by any stretch of the imagination. Whether one agrees of not all of Stalin's major writings are worth knowing as source material. Industrialization of the Country and the Right Deviation - 1928 is brilliant. His 1930 speech at the 15th Party Congress stands the test of time. What is fundamental in all his speeches and major addresses is the need to industrialize because they were already Sovietized and industrialization was on the historical agenda for who ever won the political contest. Yes, they understood they were building the foundations of socialism and then socialist industry. "We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries." Something to think about . . . ain't it . . . especially when one wants to understand how a particular leader thought and envisioned the world. No one magically jumps to the communist future on the basis of industrial society. It is simply not possible. What is required is an additional revolution in the mode ofproduction that places the abolition of property on the immediate historical agenda. Not unlike the real revolution in production that abolished the sharecropper as a class . . . which today is understood as the material prelude that abolishes the agricultural worker as agricultural laboring class ... as a primary social force in history. Thousands of years of the transitions in the form of this class of agricultural workers is being abolished from human history. Collectivism was not the answer but a practical solution to a practical problem of scattered production in agriculture. Pardon my economic determinism. I choose to error on this side of the equation. We have arrived at the very beginning of this process that abolishes property . . . and not simply allows for a change in the form of property . . . based on the revolution in the technological regime. Consciousness . . . the masses slowly gaining an awareness of the moment . . . determines everything from here out. Let's see what happens under our impact in the next fifty years. Proletarians Unite! Melvin P.
Re: Stan Goff article
http://www.counterpunch.org/goff08132004.html This is a long, well-researched article that takes on John Kerry's environmentalist platform but goes much deeper into broader questions of oil depletion, global warming, etc. It cites Mark Jones extensively as well as Henry Liu. Highly recommended. Comment Any blow against Kerry and Company as the solution to the Bush Jr. administration has my unqualified support . . . period. I write very little on the Kerry controversy and what is called the "3rd Party Movement" . . . because I personally will write in Lenin's name on the ballot . . . if I decide to vote. The majority of Americans do not vote and because someone says that they should or how they should vote . . . does not move me in interesting places. Then . . . I might decide to vote for Nader. I voted for Gus Hall before and did not agree with his Marxism. Brother Goff begins his article with the following: "Imperialism is the political _expression_ of the accumulation of capital in its competitive struggle for what remains still open of the non-capitalist environment" -Rosa Luxemburg, "The accumulation of capital," 1913 In my opinion this is not true and was never true as a theoretical proposition and most certainly was not true in 1913 and . . . the truth was verified in the outbreak of the First Imperial World War . . . which was over a re division of a world divided into sphere of influence and domination. Re division of the world is an important concept . . . as a theory concept . . . because all the world was already being drawn forward in the orbit of capitalist imperialism . . . before 1913. The domination of the world market and its economic structure . . . based primarily on the closes colonial system . . . as opposed to what Lenin tagged financial industrial imperialism . . . meant that capitalist imperialism had already fundamental triumphed as a colonizing force. An attribute of Lenini's imperialism is the distinction between the export of financial capital as a social power versus the export of raw materials and human capital . . . sorry . . . Organizations of human beings on behalf of the capitalist imperialist. Michael Hudson in his Super Imperialism unravels this export of finance and updates this process in his preface to the 2002 edition. (I have both . . . the original and the update). That is to say the issue was not capitalist imperialism filling in all the non-capitalist space with capitalism . . . a horrible abstraction . . . because at each distinct juncture in the development of the industrial system . . . its colonial adjuncts provide a material function to the imperial centers. We are not talking about a world of 1910 -1913 dominated by fedual imperialism. OK . . . the question is the meaning of "what remains still open of the non-capitalist environment." Then . . . yep . . . then . . . "capital in its competitive struggle" is through in to mean something . . . but imperialism by definition is the export of a more developed means of production . . . as the curve of history . . . to a backwards people . . . or what is politically correct to say today . . . a less economically developed people. What was exported if not bourgeois relations? Filling in the non capitalist environment means filing in the "space" as in putting together a puzzle. Let me guess . . . I miss the dialectic. This is a crappie argument that was solved almost 90 years ago by Lenin and others. I am not arguing the energy question because running out of oil might be the best thing to happen to humanity . .. in the short and long run. I am not arguing entropy . . . but ask the reading to delve into who obesity can be the primary cause of premature death in America today? I have had enough of this for now and disagree with the description of the evolution of the industrial revolution . . . on the basis of quotes for the late Mark Jones. The industrial revolution or what became heavy industry as the pivot evolved from manufacture of heavy manufacture as opposed to the manufacture of consumer goods . . . and this is old hat. As if saying somthing a thousand times makes it right. Well . . . until one unravels the evolution of what is called "needs" and how "need" are restructure and created on the basis of distinct modes of production the energy question remains un resolvable. And reduces communist to asking people not to eat a tuna fish sandwich . . . something I will not do. Why did industrial capitalism develop on a curve of history where the automobile achieve prime important? Here is the energy question in the flesh and the way to take it too our working class. To each his own. And it is good to argue in the same circle. Melvin P.
Re: Fidel Castro horrified by China
In a message dated 8/11/2004 12:06:10 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Also, your employment numbers are fantastically off. Here's a report (2002) from China's State Council: Reply Thanks for the data. Actually . . . they are not my figures . . . and perhaps should not have been used. Here is the data and source of "my" figures from an article dated Nov. 1, 2003: Current Condition of China's Working Class by Liu Shi is a former vice-chairman of the Chairman of the ACFTU (All-China Federation of Trade Unions) "Workers now are responsible for the creation of 72.1% of China's GDP. In 1978, there were 120 million workers in China. By 2000, there were 270 million. Adding the 70 million peasants that have moved to the cities and found long-term wage work, China's working class now numbers approximately 350 million, accounting for half of China's working population. There are currently more than 100 million workers now employed in the non-state sectors. The 13th Party Congress established that workers laboring in private enterprises are wage laborers. What about the SOEs? SOEs have undergone two types of reforms: the small have been sold-off and the large have been transformed into joint-stock corporations. A portion of small and medium-sized SOEs have been sold to private owners, and transformed into private enterprises, while another portion have transferred ownership of a significant portion of enterprise shares to the management. http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php?type=articleid=62 Melvin P.
Re: Fidel Castro horrified by China
In a message dated 8/11/2004 12:06:10 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: From the perspective of living labor, what is the difference betweenstate and non-state management if their common goal is the ruthlessexpansion of value? Comment The property relations that determines the circuit of reproduction and give it a distinct shape. Under the best socialism . . . or rather under the socialism that has and exist . . . one sells their labor power . . . even if it is to a system that is the dictatorship of the proletariat. At best socialism is a transition in the form of property and does not equal the abolition of property. Socialism has never meant freedom to me. You are correct concerning my use of 800 million. They arerural as opposed to agricultural sector. Nevertheless my base question was what did Fidel say that qualified as being horrified by China. Melvin P.
Re: Fidel Castro horrified by China
In a message dated 8/11/2004 3:20:06 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nevertheless my base question was what did Fidel say that qualified as being horrified by China. He probably has never criticized China's capitalist transformation publicly since China has been fairly generous with Cuba economically. The article I forwarded quotes diplomats who were in contact with Castro supposedly, but I doubt you'll find anything specific in print. The last time Castro visited China, he made a rather tactful observation about how much had changed. Reply Agreed . . . and I will most certainly examine the sources indicated. I of course do not deny the existence of the bourgeois property relations in China. Nor do I beleive that one can advance to communism on the basis of the industrial system. My resistance is to an ideological curve in our history that bounces from crying crocodile tears over the alleged famine killing perhaps as many as 40 million people and all kinds of vilification of the revolution in China and the on going revolutionary process. China . . . or rather the character and substance of her economy . . . is most certainly being more and more integrated into the world economy on the basis of bourgeois reproduction or a set of needs that generates profits and the reproduction of the bourgeois property relations. What some call expanded value without qualification. Value is more than one thing . . . and embraces a social relationship. To be frank . . . telling me about the law of value or expanded value in CHina means next to nothing . . . it don't mean shit to me. You did not state this . . . but is there a possibility of us reaching communism without an expanded value that is transformed on the basis of the form of property and the technological regime? We read and can read the same material more than less. I cannot predict the path of the people of China for the next 100 years. Fuck dumb shit. What has been our path for the past 100 years . . . in terms of the liberation of an oppressed class? The class that was liberated was the sharecropper . . . he was fucking abolished or his energy as a class was no longer need as productive activity. All of us speak of value as this mystical thing. My communism is common sense. Yea . . . common sense and not theoretical excursion about alienation. Fuck that abstract shit about expanded value . . . I did that for twenty years. What did Fidel say about China is a valid question and you answered in an honorable way. I know a little bit about Cuba and its curve of history and why Fidel is out of time. Hey . . . I love Fidel . . . but there are some outstanding demographics that cannot be ignored forever. There is some real history involved. Thanks . . . Lou. Melvin P. China . . . or rather her economy . . .
Re: Fidel Castro horrified by China
HORRIFIED BY CHINA Western observers said Castro was shocked by the rapid move to capitalism and growing social differences he witnessed in China last year. "There is no coincidence that a lot of this has happened since he visited China. Many people say he was horrified with what he saw," said a European ambassador. Comment Someone said that Castro said something . . . and with my dumb ass I thought this thread might be about something that FidelCastro (the paramount leader) had stated . . . instead of someone saying that Castro said something . . . about China. From my standpoint the conversation concerning China gets loud because of the lack of concrete economic and political data. Then ideology parades as insight. Last December insurance giant China Life completed the largest initial public offering in the world, raising US$3.46 billion, after raising allotments and pricing shares at the high end of estimates. In terms of the "capitalism or socialism" debate around China . . . and I am of the opinion that China has the largest socialist economy on earth in real time . . . and yes . . . the bourgeois property relations also exists in China . . . hard economic data and economic logic and insight is hard to come by. Dig China Life . . . an insurance company . . . that drew billions of dollars to it in an environment where interest payments from banks can be as small as 1/100 of 1 percent . . . annually. If China's non agricultural workforce is between 350 and 400 million . . . with roughly 100 million in the NON STATE SECTOR . . . then the question becomes what is the economic meaning of state sector and non state sector in China? Let's forget about the 800 million in agriculture . . . who under the best conditions of industrial socialism ... can only alienate their products on the basis of exchange . . . no matter what the form of property in land. What is the non state sector in respects to say China Life? Check out the following excerpt about China Life . . . and then ponder the question is China socialism or capitalism? Excerpt . . . begins here. China Life, like most companies China opens to overseas investors, is state-owned. It's been sliced and diced to create a Frankenstein offering of selected viable parts in order to pass muster with regulators and tempt investors. Bolted on to the top of this monster as its brain is the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The State Council has many constituencies to satisfy, and foreign investors will never climb very high on its list. That's because no foreign investor can threaten the Communist Party's monopoly on power the way domestic rivals or mass unrest might. Foreigners also get limited respect since investors keep falling over themselves to get a piece of the Chinese dream, as they have for the past century and a half. If the Chinese leadership had a good deal to offer, ask yourself, why would they offer it to you and the rest of the overseas investing public? That view may seem outdated, looking at the China that Deng invented and Zhu Rongji revved into the world's fastest-growing nation for a decade. But two other incidents last week, providing background music for flipping your China Life shares, indicate that the political leadership remains intimately involved with the economy in pursuit of its own interests. China's leading car maker, Shanghai Automobile Industrial Corp (SAIC), wants to buy South Korea's Ssangyong Motor, that nation's fourth-largest surviving car company with a dominant position in sport-utility vehicles. But China National Blue Star Group, a chemical company that provides some supplies to the auto industry, likes what it's seen of China's booming car market enough to make its own bid for Ssangyong. This high-stakes acquisition contest didn't play out in the offices of Ssangyong's bankers or lawyers, but in a Beijing meeting of China's National Development and Reform Commission, a body that reports directly to the State Council. As with any good political decision, both companies apparently left the meeting thinking they'd won the nod to bid for Ssangyong. In a wise saying that anyone tempted to think of China as just another economy ought to frame and hang on the wall, a Blue Star spokesman declared: "The Chinese government treats all companies equally - SAIC is state-owned and we are state-owned. This is a market economy, not a planned system." One with distinctly Chinese characteristics, though. This dispute between Chinese suitors will more likely result in heartaches for Ssangyong's sellers rather than a higher price. Whoever winds up with Ssangyong, the new Chinese State owners probably will continue to play by rules that suit themselves. (State-controlled companies, such as Singapore Telecom, buying assets overseas raise a host of competitive and even security questions to be examined in a future column. That Europe has the most experience with such situations is reason enough
Re: Economics and law
David, the problem with the Pinto is that the government does not adequately regulate safety -- not even to the extent of making relevant information available -- so the regulation is left to the lawsuits -- a very inefficient way of doing things. A few bucks for a protective gasket would not have meant that much. In hindsight it was stupid, but very costly for a number of innocent people. Comment Ralph Nader was propelled to fame based on the issue of auto safety and "Unsafe At Any Speed" . . . at the time a furious attack on General Motors and the Corvair. Corvair's would turn over on your ass quicker than a Ford Navigator . . . and there is no such thing as a magic tire that can keep you on the road . . . traveling over 30 miles an hour making sharp turns. We would state . . . growing up in auto (Detroit) as a lifestyle . . . that Ford meant . . . Found On The Road Daily . . . FORD. And "Found On The Road Dead . . . Ford." Chrysler's . . . Plymouth, had those whining starters that would not start when it rained and for 20 years refused to nickel plate the yoke on the transmission shaft so that the whole damn car would lurch forward when you shifted gears or was passing from 30 to 50 miles an hour. Everyone in the corporation knew this and the unofficial official word was that it cost to much to correct problems. The Japanese auto producers and litigation took the auto magnates back to school. They are pathetic and degenerate. And Pinto's were blowing mutherfuckers up like traveling bombs. Was it not the placement of the gas tank? General Motor's and Ford made a decision that the economic cost of not putting out these ill conceived vehicles was greater than the human cost and said to hell with how many people are maimed and murdered. This attitude revolutionized litigation. Documents were produced in the Pinto cases citing internal memo's from Ford pointing out that it would be cheaper to not correct defects . . . move the gas tank . . . than to correct them. I vaguely remember the trials. This period ushered in the "huge settlements" as a dis incentive to companies taking the "cost effective road" versus human lives. Auto safety is tricky from the standpoint of modern communism because what is at stake is not the safety of automobiles as an abstraction . . . driving 70 versus 40 . . . but the whole concept and material reality of individual transportation as a primary mode of travel. I personally love driving between 70 and 90 (on the interstate) . . . in a sturdy small car and between 80 and 110 miles per hour in a "wide track." I accelerate half way into turn on the interstate and the centrical forces works for you every single time. Inertia and shit holds you into the turn. But then I freaking love vehicles and driving in a way that is perhaps not normal. I left out of Houston Texas early Sunday morning at about 5:00 am and was in Detroit Monday at 7:00 PM and did all the driving and had stopped at a motel and slept for about six hours. Yep . . . and when younger really knew had to drive and had the physical stamina. Back in the early 1970s . . . me and the comrades did a run from Detroit to Atlanta in 10 and a half hours and we were pushing 90- 110 in a 1973 Pontiac Catalina. Even with our form of individual transportation . . and I favor mass transit as the primary mode of transporting human beings . . . and any one of age should be able to rent a car . . . it is the technological capability of the infrastructure that makes individual transportation excessively unsafe. For instance . . . the auto companies are not going to pay for an enhanced interstate infrastructure where private vehicles are automatically piloted along at 70 - 90 miles an hour. Who said that private vehicles have to have rubber tires? Electrical vehicles lost out in the market during the turn of the last century. What we call the private mode of transportation evolved from a mechanical military vehicle invented back in the later 1700's . . . and became the centerpiece of industrial bourgeois development during the turn of the last century. Communism solves the problem of safety in transportation by posing the question very differently. The issue of auto safety is not really an issue of the automobile as a private mode of transportation . . . but rather the safety issue dealing with the movement of masses of people. The idea that socialism cannot solve the question of safety is not really looking at the question at its root . . . which is posed as a private mode of transportation as the primary form of people moving versus mass transportation. Don't most vehicle accident take place within 25 miles of a person's residence? Isn't a basic question . . . where were these people going and why? Dig out the stats and see where the people were going. I don't know . . . I think we are still posing the question within the bounds of the bourgeoisie and bourgeois ideology and economics. Aren't
Re: McJobs
To prevent this email message from getting swept up by anoverzealous spam filter, please add our "From" address([EMAIL PROTECTED]) to your address book.August 6, 2004Jobs stink! Stocks crash! SELL now!Dear investorplace.com member,Today, the jobs number came out for July, and it was NOT pretty!The economy added just a paltry 32,000 jobs for the month,suggesting a "recovery" grinding to a standstill.So if you didn't take my words to heart last time I wrote to youabout the SHOCK headed for this schizoid market..you better doit now before it's TOO LATE!This latest jobs number scares traders to death for TWO reasons. The first, and most obvious, is that slow economic growth translatesinto weak consumer spending, which means a slowdown in corporateearnings.That's bad enough. But the second reason really puts the fear ofGod into them. This slowdown in growth and jobs creation couldsound the death knell for George W. Bush -- catapulting John Kerryinto the White House.And that's NOT something Wall Street is eager to see.Couple that with soaring energy costs...huge deficits...and a pileof other worries, it's going to get MUCH WORSE before it getsbetter.The nearly 100 widely-touted companies I name in my new sell-sidereport, "Get Out While You Can," have been banished to mediocrity --and in some cases, scuttled towards bankruptcy -- by fundamentalchanges they are powerless to do anything about.If you own any of them, SELL. If you don't, steer clear or you'lldeeply regret it. Read and print "Get Out While You Can" onlineimmediately, by accepting your risk-free trial subscription toChangeWave Investing here:http://investorplace.com/order/?pc=5EHC179Anyone who has read anything I've written -- or watched me on FoxNews Channel's "Bulls Bears" -- knows I love growth stocks in theright spaces. Like digital camera plays Lexar and SanDisk, which wecashed out for 82% and 120% gains, respectively. Or genericdrug-makers like Eon Labs -- sold for 161% gains.They know I love high yields for an extra measure of safety. Likeour Ballast Income stocks yielding 9%-11% (where we also havecapital gains of 15%-50%).And they also know I love to swing for the fences when I get a bigfat pitch right down the middle. Back in December 2002, I toldsubscribers that XM Satellite Radio would be "a 10-bagger winner ifyou keep your cost around $2." We recommended closing out this saleand redeploying the profits on April 2, 2004 -- with the stock priceat 30 bucks a share!!!BUT -- and this is absolutely critical -- this does NOT mean I'm araging bull on just any stock today. That, my friend, would make mea raving lunatic.Yes, I want you to get the full story on all our current defensiverecommendations on the buy side. And see how we're also investingvery selectively in just a few of the hottest growth stories of thenext nine to 12 months. Get full details online now:http://investorplace.com/order/?pc=5EHC179But whatever you do, don't miss our sell-side research, as well.AS YOU'LL SEE, this list of tortured souls cuts a broad swath acrossWall Street.Retail...pharmaceuticals...transportation...manufacturing...shipping...healthcare... communications...consumer cyclicals...homefurnishings...defense...paper goods...chemicals...and on and on.I guarantee you know the names. I'm willing to bet that most peoplewho read this message own a few.And worst of all, the players on Wall Street are still promotingthese dogs like they're full-blooded pedigrees instead of mutts withmange. Don't fall for their usual load of b.s. Get out, while thegetting's still good.Get your copy of "Get Out While You Can" online now:http://investorplace.com/order/?pc=5EHC179SIMPLY TRY ChangeWave Investing risk-free.
Re: [Marxism] Jonathan Schell on the DP's prowar stance
An invitation to any public forum is important. I have had an opportunity to speak in Churches before . . . Detroit and Montgomery Alabama and did work with the old Theology in the Americas Movement . . . as well as public speaking and giving written reports to trade union members on a weekly and monthly basis. Ever public forum is important and generally in my presentations I stick to the issue. If the issue is war and peace . . . I stick to the issue as a bread and butter issue as well as the general inhumanity of human towards men and women. I interject class . . . not as an ideological question but similar to Michael Moore's 9/11 . . . when be approaches the issue from the standpoint of the poor and those on the bottom of the ladder. Lots of people do not have medical care or access to good schooling and many more do not believe schooling can help them. Most of us are abolitionists on the side of the poor and those on the bottom of the totem pole. It is not that we cannot afford national health care. Rather . . . we can nolonger afford not to have it because it employs doctors and a profession and strengthens the health care system as employment and meeting human needs. Yes, . . . we need to employ more dentist because the people have bad teeth and one way or another the money always end up back into the coffers of government. Crest tooth paste is no substitute for the dentist. For me . . . Kerry would not be the cardinal issue . . . but rather taking a message of inspiration to those deeply interested in the plight of the lowest section of society we call the proletariat. Who ever the most power and arrogant rulers in society come for today . . . is an indication they will come for ustomorrow and the people will understand that. Class inequality in America is not a fat theory or this "big head thing" for intellectuals ... like us to broad about . . . or coattail chat for those of us who can thread water and stay in front of the economic curve. Bush has made it clear that class inequality is about the elite and their bourgeois prejudices and attitude that says if I cannot have things my way . . . I will drive the country into war and poverty for millions. You already know what to say and the protection of the 50 million on the bottom protects everyone above them. We are all on a ladder in society and when the bottom rung is broken the next level becomes bottom. Peace. Melvin P.
Re: China and socialism
I . . .uhhEye against IFlesh of my flesh and Mind of my mind.Two of a kind but one won't survive.The image is reflect in my enemy eyes and my image is reflect in his the same time. Right here is where the end gonna start at.Conflict . . . contact . . . call back.Fighter stand where the land is marked at . . .Settle the dispute about who the livest. . . Free world says who ever survive this. Only one of us can arrive foreverSo you and I can't ride together.We can't live or die together . . .All we can do is collide together.So I skillfully apply the pressure . . . won't stop til i'm forever.ONE!A door step where death never comesSpread across time . . . til my time never done.And I'm never doneWalk tall why . . . every run . . .When they moveth . . . I ever come.Bad man never fret warGeneral we have the stock the mad fire burn. I . . .uhhEye against IFlesh of my flesh and Mind of my mind.Two of a kind but one won't survive.The image is reflect in my enemy eyes and my image is reflect in his the same time. Who am IOne man squadron Man stir the fire that snatches your tomorrow.The thousand yard spear that pierces your armor . . .YOU CAN GET IT ON RIGHT NOW IF YOU WANT TO.But when you front now . . .get marched throughI warned you.You know who forever belongs to. Mos Def : Eye againt I . . . theme to Blade 2
Re: China and socialism
There are also reports of college students who jumped from high-rise dormitory buildings in protest of the governments timid "peaceful" policy over Taiwan independence. The suicide-protestors wanted the government to take Taiwan for force right now and stand up to US bullying. The report that an 18-year-old killed himself over lack of money to pay college fees proves only that 18-year-olds need better counseling. The fact of the matter is that 18-year-olds all over the world flirt with suicide for all kind of reasons, much of which tragically irrational and childish. As for whether China would be a good model for the rest of the Third World, let the people of the Third World decide for themselves. We don't need self-righteous academics in the West to pronounce what is an ideologically correct model for the Third World. The sad fact is that the Western left have done little for the Third World beyond destructive talk. Until members of the Western Left can control their own imperialists governments and improve the lot of the poor in their own societies, they had better be a bit more humble about what is correct. There is a lot about China that is not perfect and a lot of people within China are trying very hard to correct these problems. But believe me, poverty for all is a bad trade-off for ideological purity. The NY Times also printed other articles on China recently: The advent of the vacation is a relatively new phenomenon in China that coincides with the emergence of a new middle class with disposable income. Wealthy Chinese are now flocking to destinations around Southeast Asia and beyond. Others are exploring domestic sites like Qingdao, a popular getaway for people from Beijing. http://nytimes.com/2004/07/30/international/asia/30qing.html?adxnnl=1adxnnlx=1091444128-2e9057b7RGa7p+S9Pv+yyg New Boomtowns Change Path of China's Growth http://nytimes.com/2004/07/28/international/asia/28china.html South China Morning Post (HK) 7/30/04 More are becoming upwardly mobile, but birth still counts Mainlanders' chances of social advancement through merit have improved in the past two decades, but birth still matters for those aiming for political careers. A report on social mobility by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released yesterday shows it is getting easier for mainlanders to upgrade their status within one generation. Before 1980, only 32 per cent of the workforce was able to find a job better than their fathers'. More than 60 per cent had no choice but to accept their parents' station. Since then, however, 40 per cent of working people have managed to advance professionally. Mainlanders are also changing between jobs more frequently that before. Before 1980, 86 per cent of the labour force never changed jobs throughout their working life. But from 1990 to 2000, 54 per cent took their chances and ventured out to seek new jobs. "The rapid development of the economy has created more occupational professions, and many of them are of high level," the report said. "The economic reform policy provides an institutional environment where people can improve their social class on their capabilities and merit. "As a result, Chinese society is becoming more open and mobile." But the report noted it was unlikely that a Bill Clinton or John Edwards - who were born into working-class families but rose to political prominence - would appear in China. To enter the "government official" occupational category, family background remains the determining factor. For every 100 people whose fathers are cadres, seven become government officials themselves. For workers, the ratio is one in 100; for farmers, even less than one. The work mainlanders covet the most is in "government and social administration", based on decades of polling by the academy. People tend to think this public service position will bring them power, the report says: "Without any doubts, cadres are the most powerful people in the country." But for those whose aspirations lie outside the political scope, their fates seem more in their own hands. Educational credentials rank as the No1 factor for a good career, the report says. College graduates have three times more opportunities in the job market than those who only have high school diplomas, even though the latter might come from better family backgrounds. But for well-educated rural people, prospects are less rosy. The urban registration system, which works to prevent rural people from moving freely into urban areas, still limits their work prospects. Three years ago, the academy caused an uproar when it published a study on how the composition of Chinese society had changed over the decades. It was seen by analysts as an effort by the leadership to embrace the rising private sector. But the study confirmed that the social status of farmers and workers had declined significantly
Re: China and socialism . . . yea . . . when it all fall down
The problem, unfortunately, is there has never been anything other than a "scorched earth march to fully developed capitalist property relations" --anywhere, ever. Therefore, the issue becomes: is such a march historically progressive, despite the human toll? Marx, of course, answered in the affirmative in relation to pre-existing modes of development. You know all this. Marx wasn't around to witness the failed experiments to leap over the capitalist stage in both China and the USSR in the 20th century. Comment When it all falls down the ceiling crashes on everyone head without regard to the politics or ideology contained in each head. Without question industrial society and all its boundaries of development set the basis and stage for the communist society Marx spoke of. After many years of considering these questions . . . my own personal opinion is that the communists were more than less doomed by the constrain of the last boundary of history . . . especially so . . . in the absence of public property relations in the advanced industrial countries. Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao ZeDung, Uncle Ho and the paramount leader Fidel are not causes but effects and as such are banners or direction of a particular detachmentof communist leaders. Nor could social revolution be exported to the advance industrially developed countries. And we most certainly could not carry out insurrection in the absence of social revolution in America. To the same degree this is what the Soviets faced and also China. Yes, the Great October Revolution was socialist . . . meaning its leaders held a vision of communism but above all it was the acceleration of the industrial revolution with all its consequences for market exchange and the law of value. The goal of communism has never been public property but the abolish of property on the basis of its last historically evolved form . . . bourgeois property. One cannot have this as a practical task in a more than less agricultural society. I have arrived at the conclusion that the key to what happened in the Soviet Union and what is taking place in China resides in our own history. Not in the sense of us overthrowing the bourgeoisie but curve of development. No one beats the machine of history and overthrowing a bureaucratic order is impossible until history steps into the social arena and erode the basis upon which an "order" is established. China is more complex because it was a national democratic revolution led by communists. The National Democratic Revolution is bourgeois by definition. And the communist of China have carved themselves a noble page . . . chapter in history. The last time history placed social revolution on the agenda in the American Union was the Civil War. The Civil Rights Movement was not social revolution but a reform movement to allow the expansion of the industrial system and the mechanization of agriculture. There was no magical "workers uprising in Russian" but an economic and social collapse as the result of a catastrophic war time defeat during the passing from feudal economic and social relations to industrial relations. Today on a world scale we face the industrial bureaucracy in all its property forms and relations. The intersection is going to be complex and profound. The world has been more than less industrialized and we are at the beginning of this enormous leap to a post industrial world that may take a century of two. We have no way to chart this curve . . . yet. We cannot make anyone . . . especially our own working class do something it does not want to do or understand as rational. Nor could we even maintain our orientation during the past 30 years of assaulting the bourgeois order. Marx said that we hold the key and our actuality was the future of all the areas of the world . . . . economically drawn forward in our wake . . . industrial curve of development. I utterly reject as foolishness that we have failed in discharging our responsibility to our working class because some group was Trotskyists . . . or Stalinists or studied the Thought of Ma ZeDung or practiced Buddhism or "didn't really understand Marx." China is going to face and is facing the exact same social revolution we face in America. Their future resides with their proletariat and not her peasants. The people of China are deciding their fate . . . just as the people of America are deciding our fate. People fight for what they believe in and if no one believes in industrial socialism . . . then we need to understand its objective and subjective dimensions. We need to understand the lesson of the Soviet Union and Putin . . . or rather the counterrevolution that overthrew Reconstruction in America. If a ruling class can have the specific form of its economic base shattered and reemerge as a freaking ruling class . . . then we are in for a rough ride. Communist revolutionaries have not and
Re: Try email stripper to end wrap around
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Re: The Soviet empire was a drain on Moscow
In a message dated 8/2/2004 10:28:39 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Russians lived more poorly than people in any other of the republics or in the Eastern Bloc (except maybe Albania?). Moscow may have been a possible exception. It's one of the reasons why Russia junked them. Ironically, those losses of subsidies have resulted in the wealthiest of the republics -- like Georgia and Moldova -- into the poorest. Russians now live better than people anywhere else in the fSU, except maybe the Baltics, which is why you have so much illegal immigration from them into Russia. There are lots of Soviet jokes depicting Castro as sucking at Brezhnev's teat. Comment This Great Russian Bully . . . seeking the restoration of an historially evolved privledge . . . was unshackled as the results of the era of Nitkia Khrushchev . . . although many may had thought they met the "bully boy." Being forced to try and recover what you had is a harsh school. Striving to receive what you think you have coming is the school of chauvinism. This Great Russian Bully . . . who was handcuffed and forced to serve the dictatorship of the proletariat is going to teach some harsh lessons. Lessons an enormous section of our proletariat learnt in a pervious era and during several junctures in the development of our industrial system. Wealth is measured against master's house and not your neighbors shack. Khruschev's betrayal of Lumumba and the Congo set the basis for the evolution of Soviet policy up to the collapse of Soviet Power and the overthrow of its property relations in the industrial infrastructure. The vassal states of the Soviet Union were not colonies or the meaning of colonies in the sense of bourgeois imperialism. The Soviet Union was an imperial power and its responsibility was to uplift the petty bourgeois countries and aid the world proletariat to the best of its ability. Any modern economy operating on the basis of the exchange of labor is going to manifest economic inequality. What Russia junked was socialism. The people of the Soviet Union understood that Brezhnev was not a Red. I remember their jokes from this period . . . concerning Brezhnev trying to impress his mother with his power and wealth and privileges. At the end of the story . . . Brezhnev's mother looks at him and says . . . "you have done well son . . . but what you gonna do when the Reds come back?" The real ideological basis of support of the counter revolution . . . outside the apparatus that intermingles with international capital and the characters able to exact tribute from Ivan Average on the basis of their station in the bureaucratic apparatus (something understood by every industrial worker having labored in a large factor or tenured Professor languishing under the heavy hand of the machine) . . . is the petty bourgeois intellectual that alter the ideological sphere on behalf of its prejudices. What wrecked the Soviet Union was democracy and I do not mean incarceration or the lack or social engineering . . . but the petty bourgeois concept of workers democracy and political rights. If you are fighting on an economic terrain that is hostile to you all you have is ideology as the social glue. Under the Stalin regime there could be no talk of the ANC being niggers at the trough of the Soviet Economy or Castro sucking a breast. None of us get a world like we envision it and workers in America are in the process of showing the world their conception of democracy. It is not going to be pretty and our greatest failing is the inability to understand how people actually think things out. It means we cannot reach our workers because subjective conception of democracy create the unbridgeable class barrier. Poland gets what it deserves. Those within the former Soviet Union are going to get what they deserve and they are going to pay more than under Sovietism. The world workers are going to get what they deserve and are paying more than under Sovietism. Then again . . . the damn bureaucracy flips . . . man. And the bureaucracy is not a class. In the Soviet Union the bureaucracy was an excretion of the state in practical terms due to its peculiar curve of development. In the historical sense it was part of the line of industrial development. Where in history has any society every overthrown the machine before its economic basis was eroded? The Bully Boy is back . . . the real bully boy and not that guy you freaking thought was a bully. A democratic slave master is still a slave master however . . . and there were some decent slave masters . . . according to some who never escaped the mental chains of slavery . . . or rather bourgeois democracy. Melvin P.
Re: China and socialism- 50 years of the Western Left
Pieinsky wrote: Questions for Henry from an old Maoist: (1) Aren't you concerned at all about the evidence of increasing class disparities and the consequent rise of open class struggles (workers' strikes, farmers' protests, etc.) in "Red" China? What do these occurrences mean, in your opinion? Class is disparity by definition. I am vigorously against income disparity. The working class should enjoy the same income or even higher income than the bourgeoisie. Those members of the bourgeoisie who work to increase income of workers are performing a useful function. Excess profit is not only counterrevolutionary, it is even bad economics in an overcapacity economy. Strikes are not really class struggle activities, especially legal strikes in the context of a capitalist system. General strikes to shut down the economy are revolutionary, but there have not any general strikes for quite a few decades in the West. In a system such as China's, the way to protect worker and peasant interests is not through strikes but through intra party political struggles, to get the right people into the central committee and the polibureau. The private sector grows in China due to very complex political and geopolitical factors. No one can accuse China and the Communist Party of China for not giving Maoism a fair chance. But facts are that while the ideology is admirable, the results have been wanting. Wealth needs to be created before it can be shared. (2) Why does it have to be either poverty or "ideological purity"? Can't a Third World country's development take place, while at the same time preserving and extending more egalitarian social relations, as I think Mao hoped for China? The reasons are very complex. Purity of any kind, including religious purity, tends to require tradeoffs that reduce life to single dimensional results. What we need is to merge ideological aims with utilitarian implementations. Nothing the Western Left has voiced has impressed me as being useful for the situation in China. Noise of no practical value does not deserve attention. In fact, I cannot think of any achievement of significant by the Western left in the last five decades. Despite all the anti-China noise, China is still the most socialist economy in the world. Ask the Cubans who have visited China, including Castro, who has long since stopped criticizing China. Henry C.K. Liu This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm
Re: China and socialism
As for whether China would be a good model for the rest of the Third World, let the people of the Third World decide for themselves. We don't need self-righteous academics in the West to pronounce what is an ideologically correct model for the Third World. The sad fact is that the Western left have done little for the Third World beyond destructive talk. Until members of the Western Left can control their own imperialists governments and improve the lot of the poor in their own societies, they had better be a bit more humble about what is correct. Lou's reply: What arrogance. Henry Liu had no problem lecturing Marxmail about Jews supporting Adolph Hitler, but he is neither Jewish nor German. When he stops writing about things that are not exclusively Chinese, I will stop writing about things that are not exclusively Jewish. Comment When it all fall down and the truth comes out. Ones Jewishness is not an issue because in the American Union . . . Jews are not oppressed and exploited as Jews. Who cares what Jews supported Hitler as a political context? Individuals always try and save their hide and protect their families and conditions under diverse conditions. What are you talking about . . . man? That is to say Chinese and the overseas Chinese appear to have a different relationship to China than Jews to America. This means their social and economic relations in history is different from the Jews to America. There is a difference because China is a geographic bound land mass with a long unbroken continuos history . . . like 2000 years. In the sense of Jews I think we talking about very early mercantilism and coinage. trade and what would a thousand years later be expressed as a form of merchant capital. The real issue is the anti-China lobby and its demand for Regime Change or the overthrow of the government and CPC in China and this political conclusion is embedded in ones economic and political approach to China. It would be a tragedy if Henry limited his writings to China and have lengthy . . . very lengthy writing on the banking system in America and Europe is excellent material . . . even if one disagrees. I happen to think his material is brilliant. It would be a tragedy if Lou did not learn where his individuality ends and others individually begins. On the world stage the revolutionaries in different countries are not and do not take the academic left serious in America because it is the hand maiden of the imperial bourgeoisie. We the Bully Boys on the block . . . Lou . . . you are more American than Jew and you need to ask the world people about this.Lingering in the corridors of ones mind will get them in trouble. It is not the economic data on China that is in question but your politics. You have called the leaders of China some bad things based on the interior of your mind and not the history of China. You know my feeling on this matter . . . rotten chauvinism. In terms of this Jewish thing you raise . . . I am African American and I am not cosmopolitan and at this stage of history the worlds people reject cosmopolitanism as ideology for a complex of reasons. What does you being Jewish mean in America for the social struggle? I can tell you in plain terms what Henry being Chinese mean to the social struggle in America and China. Don't thug . . . outsideof your class league and narrow conceptions. Or rather understand the boundary and limits. Now if you were not anti-China and anti-Soviet and anti-Russian and had the answer for everything on earth . . . but have no credentials . . . wait a minute. Is it because Leon Trotsky was a Jew that you have affinity with him? You raised the Jewish Question. You . . . not me. I only raise the question of social revolution and African American Liberation because it is central to American history. There is no economic contradiction between African American and America as a social and political history and economic formation other than an intractable social position.Is this the case with Jews? What is this Jewish thing about? What . . . you talking about . . . man? What do you suggest for China? You're apparently the "Shell Answer Man." Henry's proposition are extremely clear covering the entire economy form sovereign credit to the relative inequality of equality . . . that is working families can receive more money than that of the bourgeoisie based on need . . . to monetary reform and why China should not devalue its money. Did you know Jefferson's attitude on the baking system and if you did why did you write a nonsensical history of the Civil War and Reconstruction and the property relations of the South? Leave China alone . . . or at any rate be careful. What . . . you have the right to say anything because you a Jew? You inserted this into the question of China for reasons known only to you. See . . . I have no tolerance for the bullshit.
Re: China and socialism
In a message dated 8/2/2004 4:55:52 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have tried to get in touch with Michael and Sabri, but I think that the situation is so urgent that the obvious step has to be taken of terminating the thread which started with discussion of The Monthly Review article on China. It has become too personal and acrimonious. I ask those involved not to contribute any more posts on the subject, and the same applies to other list members, however good their motives or intentions. Urgently, James Daly Comment Why should I not pen/pin the chauvinist I have spent all of my life fighting under impossible conditions of social revolution and then some freaking jerk . . . that has an inclination . . . thinks their opinion about an abstraction is important and then proceed to lecture people about social revolution . . . and has not one single credential in the social struggle? I am ultra hot. I am talking basically about Lou and this garbage about being a Jew. I do not care cause you a Jew. What that supposed to me to me in America? Lou raise these issues and he can be confronted on the basis of the issues he raises. See . . . Lou raised this Jew thing about World War 2 and million Jews . . . and I said what about the 25 million in Russia and then the millions upon millions in China? Where did the Second imperial world war start? Me . . . I am African American and this just so happens to be the central question to revolution in America and the freaking world. Lou is a chauvinists and has always been one and anyone that takes me to task on this has nothing to do but produce his writing on the national question in America. Then we can talk about the working class movement . . . in which I got the fucking credentials. I ask no one for anything . . . but truth. No . . . I will not back down on this political panhandler. Like I give a fuck because some 18 year old jumped in front of a fucking train in China because he could not go to college. This is the stupidest shit I have every read in life . . . and it is written as if has meaning to our working class and intellectuals. Ask the American workers how they feel about not being able to send their kids to college. And this Jew thing you wrote on the A-List . . . are you sure you want to do this Lou? It aint like you Chinese and have China . . . right? Why do you want to go this way in the first place? What next . . . anal sex and homosexuality? This is outrageous. Melvin P. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm
Re: A Question for the Moderator
In a message dated 7/31/2004 7:33:32 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As I recall DuBois and James Jackson produced the best articles on the national question (especially as it regarded African Americans) for PA in the 1950s, all of which broke with the "Black-belt thesis" and the concept of regional autonomy, though they continued to argue for self-determination. In fact, about 10 years before he officially joined the CPUSA, DuBois, according to some, is said to have authored the Party's official position on the question in an article he wrote in 1951 -- the title of which escapes me and I can't find my copy of it. Joel Wendland Comment Yes . . . I still read Political Affairs on line. A part of my political history is tied to the CPUSA . . . through the old Communist League and before than the California Communist League and before that the Provisional Organizing Committee (POC) . . . that break with the party over the question of Stalin Contributions and the Negro Question. The theoretical presentation of issues tends to blind us of the historical moment and context or environment. Montgomery had exploded and most revolutionaries understood that the social and political equality of the African Americans was key to the revolutionary line of march. One must remember that this was the period of Nikita Khrushchev and the 20th party Congress of the CPSU. These sharp theory and ideological battles create a polarity and no one can stand adrift or outside whatever poles become crystallized. It is not a question of one side having all the answers or being "right" and the other side being all wrong. If life was that simply none of us would really have to study the issues closely and master the meaning of language and words. The California Communist League was formed on the basis of the Watts Rebellion in 1965 in Watts. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers or rather what would become the League took shape on the basis of publishing the newspaper "Inner City Voice" and factory leaflets on the heels of the 1967 Rebellion in Detroit . . . 1968. In the summer of 1969 . . . maybe 1970 I had go a part time job at Wayne State University and had been hanging in the offices of the League for about two years. The CPUSA book store was a couple of blocks from Wayne Campus and I use to live in the bookstore. After the split in the League - around 1971 . . . we joined up with the California Communist League on the basis of their presentation of what was then called the Negro National Colonial Question. Their presentation made sense to what we where experiencing as industrial workers . . . not African Americans. The LRBW was a federation with groups and factory circles at every conceivable scale of development. Those who criticized some our actions toward factory gate distributions focused on black workers tend to be people that have never done a factory gate distribution, worked in large scale industry, have never been elected to anything in life or for that matter have any experience in the flow of the social movement. I listen and keep stepping. They remind me of the guy who has never played baseball but also have the answer for what every player should have done . . . after the game is over. We are not involved in a spectator sport. What made us receptive to communism was the history of the CPUSA in the factories and their book store . . . although as a mass we could not accept the proposition of a peaceful transition to socialism . . . after the 1967 Detroit Rebellion and the little written about explosions in Detroit and Highland Park in 1968. Our demand was never for self determination of African Americans as a theory proposition or political policy . . . because it simply does not make sense. This was a demand more in tune with the Republic of New Africa or the Nation of Islam. Self determination for African Americans means electoral rights and voting blacks into political office or Black Power. Our slogans were "Black Workers Power" and we were very clear we did not mean the black bourgeoisie or the black petty bourgeoisie or what in history had been called the "Talented Tenth." The LRBW was formed almost at the exact moment of the political rupture of the workers and black bourgeoisie. The reason I did not join the CPUSA was its lack of militancy and its position on the Negro Question as well, as opposition to the Nikita Khrushchev polarity within the International Communist Movement. We sided with China in the polemics and their were some Maoists within our group as well as followers of Leon Trotsky . . . but our basis of organizational unity was victory to the workers in their current struggle. The point is this . . . if Lenin is the index for the slogan self determination of nations and the African American people are not a nation . . . what is one talking about other than the bourgeois ideology of
Re: A Question for the Moderator- race, ideology and the right thing to do.
In a message dated 7/31/2004 4:17:43 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I remember trying to speak with the boyfriend of my first wife's mother. He worked in a gas station. He was not stupid, but he was angry. He directed much of this anger at Blacks, but I think he was racist. He just had this anger and he did not know where to direct it. Fortunately, I just read a wonderful book -- The Hidden Injuries of Class -- which helped me to translate some of his words into what he was really thinking rather than to come down on him as a stupid racist. I do not pretend to be entirely successful. Usually the discussion would get to a degree of rationality, but then would return to the same ugly spot the next time we would meet. Comment I have met a few . . . not many ideological racists in my time in the plants. They are few and far in between . . . really. And they did not like me or my communism and this had nothing to do with my communism. Really. I must apologize if my distinction between chauvinism and racism is not crisp and sharp enough because none of the comrade are racists . . . period. I have been hard on Lou but he can take it on the chin and he has been most generous with me as a contributor on Marxmail. I am truly grateful for his art at moderation and squeezing out of all contributors . . . everything they got. to give. Folks who in fits of anger or causal conversion spew forth some of the rot all of us inherent in our society should not be condemned but understood and worked with. If I was held responsibly for all of my stupidities I would be in jail facing death role. After 9/11 about 30 percent of my electoral base wanted to string my ass up . . .. and 70% of my area . . . the Machining Division let me know I could kiss their multinational ass. Folks feelings were deeply hurt. The African Americans were disoriented and trying to find their balance in what seems to be unending waves of white chauvinism without beginning or end and the younger white workers wanted to kick my ass. I tend to offend America's honor. This is not my intention as a political leader . . . but what I supposed to say when you keep fucking me up? I happen to love America and hate being fucked up. The Slavic workers were my dogged base of support after I issued the open letter asking it our new German owners were going to put us in the ovens . . . after they called the police to escort the white collar workers from Auburn Hills during the first wave of massive layoff in 2001. (Auburn Hills is the headquarters of Chrysler Group.) The Slavic workers basically said "you really understand class and the German do not discriminate . . . they are better that everyone." Now . . . I happen to like the German managers better than my Yankee brothers and their bullshit. But . . . no one is going to call the police on us to escort us out of work after you have taken my fucking job and livelihood. I told the workers . . . "they coming for us tomorrow" and I will be damned if they did not lay off at the Jefferson plant and ask people to surrender their badges. I was very clear . . . you might think my badge is company property . . . but I shall not surrender shit. Not only am I not surrendering shit . . . but have a notion to chain myself to the job and make your ass pay me for my work. It got sticky and before I knew it my letters where being published in 20 plants in Chrysler's system. My brother was called . . . who is an International Representative in the Chrysler division. "What wrong with your fucking brother . . . we have to cut back staff and this is not no goddamn blue collar workers. Talk to your brother before we put him on the streets and make him bargain for his job back." Big brother is the Stalin of the family and said "fuck you. Why did you call the police on the laid off members of the family in the first place?" "Because they steal the software programs to start an independent business and sabotage the system because they are mad." Brother say "I would steal everything to make sure my family had a chance to each what your family eat and ain't nobody a stool pigeon." The company say . . . "Nobody in the mood for this bullshit Maurice. You and your fucking brother are going to hit the wall." Maurice says . . . "what did you just say?" "Look Maurice we need to get together and resolve this issue. When can we talk/" Now this crap cause me to lose my last election to a black women I have known 40 years . . . and dated. Yers we had sex . . . and a lots of it. Her mother and my mother went to elementary and high school together. She became the first black women to win highest elected union position in our industrial compound . . . by kicking my ass. But then I aint a trade unionist or William Foster but a communist worker. Ain't no abstract class shit but real people and real individuals with opinion
Re: China and socialism
If any confirmation of the correctness of Marty Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett's "China and Socialism" (a book-length article in the July-August 2004 Monthly Review) was needed, you can look at the heartrending Aug. 1, 2004 NY Times article on the suicide of Zheng Qingming. This 18 year old peasant youth threw himself into the path of an onrushing locomotive because he lacked the $80 in fees to continue with college. It is the first in a series of NY Times articles dealing with class divisions in China, a country in which 85 million people earn less than $75 per year. Comment Interesting . . . 85 million people with $75(US) per year . . . what was it twenty years ago? Where is the relationship? What do $75 (US) buy amongst these 85 million peoples . . . peasants? The first rule of politicsfor political leaders on the side of the proletariat in the American Union is that if the New York Times or Washington Post run a story on China . . . position yourself in opposition to it and you will be on the right side of the polarity . . . 90% of the time . . . always. A 10% loss rate is acceptable for any political leader. This is not to say one rejects data from the bourgeoisie . . . but rather . . . the story of an 18 year old boy killing himself because he could not go to college is for suckers and political panhandlers. Let's political thug. Earlier in July there was a series of articles about China on the A-List and the review of the Monthly Review article. To my knowledge no one disputes capitalism in China . . . or rather . . . I do not dispute the existence and operation of the bourgeois property relations and the unrestrained law of value . . . creating the specific circuit of reproduction. By "no one" is meant those who wrote concerning China and prior to that the issue of the loss of manufacturing jobs in China was spoken of. Questions like why are the manufacturing jobs lost was asked since China is hands down the low cost producer? Why are manufacturing jobs being lost in low producer China and the reason is not capitalism. Again . . . I have written nothing to dispute the bourgeois property relations in China . . . at least in the last 15 years. There was a question of what portion of the GDP was driven by FDI and/or its economic weight as reproduction and development of the industrial and post industrial infrastructure . . . as opposed to consumer goods. This includes most certainly the military infrastructure. The military infrastructure emerged as of supreme importance to socialism as a transition in the form of property. The point is that if one is to get into the meat of the matter . . . an analysis from two different direction is necesaary. One direction is the import of the military technology and military wares on the basis of bourgeois property. The other is the system of reproduction of these wares and its subjection to the unrestricted law of value . . . or capitalism. Actually . . . military production is important to bourgeois America and it is all capitalism. Get into the issue and lets dealwith something more than ideology and what we already know about bourgeois property in China. Pardon me . . . but capitalism in China is not what produces class divisions. The bourgeois property relations exacerbates inequality based on property and ownership rights . . . as it takes root on the basis of the industrial system. I do believe that what is taking place in China can . . . in the future . . . open another level of discussion absent amongst Marxists . . . as opposed to the left which is uniformly anti-Communist . . . and have always been basically anti-Communists in America and fundamentally anti-China and anti-Soviet. The strength of the counterrevolution is not a subjective question rooted in the thinking of individuals and I do not subscribe to a "great individual theory" of history. One might as well say that Hitler was responsible for German fascism. No . . . I believe more is involved in history than simply the individuals whose personality captures the moment. In other words I am a dogmatic materialist. Rather the question that has not been explored is the law of value as it operates under the industrial system no matter what stage of transition of its property relations. Here is the economic base of the counterrevolution. This is what Cuba and North Korea faces . . . in addition to a more powerful imperial antagonists. If class divisions are not the result of capitalism (and one must separate these issues or they cannot wage the proper political struggle) but rather the mode of production as a specific combination of human labor + machinery + energy source . . . we can begin to describe more accurately the environment we operate in. This is important because people follow leaders who realize their collective vision and their vision is rooted in how they understand what is possible
Re: ethnic divisions
In a message dated 7/29/2004 2:02:24 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Are the ethnic hostilities something that would naturally die out without being enflamed intentionally for political gains or are they inevitable? The Irish were regarded almost identically to the Blacks in the US. I gave some sources on this a few days ago, I believe. Yet, there is not a high level of anti-Irish feeling in the US. If my suspicion is correct, are there any models for people confronting those who try to whip up divisions? Comment We defeat the ideological advocates of ethnic hostility by winning turf in the social arena. We win at the dinner table and the electoral arena on the basis of the power of one . . . our individual bad ass self. And this works . . . really. As a general rule . . . I spend an inordinate amount of time making sure to NEVER discuss . . . other than in the most general sense . . . any question that deals with oppressed people any where on earth except in America. Then again . . . I have a fundamental distrust of any American Marxists who claims to have an analysis of the national factor anywhere on earth except the American Union. Anything we say about the national factor any where else on earth is going to automatically provoke the most intense disdain and contempt because we are the most imperial of all imperial peoples. Good intentions mean nothing. If you are standing at the dice table . . . rolling the dice and winning . . . with your doll on your arms looking like a million bucks . . . this is not the right time to lecture the guy who cannot get into the game. If you have any compassion in your heart you have to throw him a couple chips . . . which is proof of your imperial status . . . or set the house up (the drinks on me) . . . or be real cool and leave people alone. Ethnic tension that passes over into antagonism do so in an economic context and this is not meant in the sense of economic determinism . . . but the intractability of a historically evolved social position the oppressed occupy in relationship to the oppressing people. Some time ago I read about . . . in New York . . . the wages structure placed on the Irish worker and it was lower than that of the African American about a hundred years ago. A hundred years is not a very long time . . . really. The Slavic workers were "lower" than say the English immigrant. What is called the melting pot in America . . . from the lens of the social and economic position of the African American as a people . . . has meant a process of assimilation that produced what is called Anglo-American and not simply "white." The designation "white." . . . drives me up the wall . . . andis in itself a construct of the bourgeois ideological sphere that robs us of an understanding of the continuous formation and reconfiguration of a historically evolved people unique to America. What happens to the Irish in America . . . after a generation or two . . . is the assimilation of that which is specific to the evolving story called American history. This process of assimilation also happens to . . . not just to . . . so-calledwhite people but blacks . . . African Americans. One can be rewarded by tracing the historic immigration pattern . . . since say 1700 . . . and can chart the formation of the Anglo American people on the basis of successive waves of European immigrants. One can also trace the evolution of the African American people as a people and will discover that they evolved as a people ... Especially after roughly 1850 . . . not based on successive waves of immigration . . . but on an internal dynamic of growth that placesthemat the center of American history. It's DEEP. The point is that we are dealing with a national factor peculiar to our own history and nothing in the writings of Marx . . . Lenin . . . Stalin or even Trotsky (whose insights on the "Negro Question" was always more keen than his followers) is going to allow us to understand our own history. The historic antagonism between the Anglo American people and the African American . . . which has materially lessened since the shattering of the barrier of segregation . . . is fundamentally economic. This is a bourgeois property relations. Whose kids get to go to college . . . who becomes foreman . . . who is promoted on the job . . . what kind of house you can buy . . . what kind of neighborhood one lives in . . . whether or not one is stopped by the police and threatened with incarceration. It is not my intent to present an economic determinists picture of American society . . . but the last large "race riot" in Detroit - attacks of whites against blacks . . . was over housing and who could have access to government sponsored housing. There was no spontaneous ethnic conflict . . . but an attempt to enforce segregation and economic privilege. Left on our own so to speak .
Re: A Question for the Moderator
In a message dated 7/31/2004 8:22:28 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In 1991, Grozny's population was about 50% non-Chechen. The Nautsky district in Chechnya was about 75% non-Chechen, mostly Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks who lived there since the 15th century. Those people have almost entirely fled, been forced out, or killed. None of them would have voted for an independent Chechnya. Do their voices matter? If not that, then who? Ethnic Chechens? What about the Chechen Diaspora? There are more Chechens who live outside Chechnya than inside it, and most of them have family members, and certainly have tribal ties, in Chechnya. What about the 100,000 Chechen Akkins living in Dagestan? What will they say? Comment In my estimate the American Marxists are the least qualified amongst world Marxists when dealing with the national factor. Between 1973 and I978 I had compiled much of the writings on the national factor in our history using a collection of roughly 30 years of Political Affairs as the core material. In terms of the Trotskyists position my base material had been the writings of CLR James. Members of his Facing Reality group had played a role in the formation of the old League of Revolutionary Black Workers . . . notably James Boggs. In our history the national factor has basically meant the color factor. Self determination of nations up to an including the formation of an independent state means exactly that. Self determination as a political slogan and policy meant . . . a nation . . . as opposed to a historically evolved people. For instance the African American people are a historically evolved people and not a nation. Nations are not something one can build. Nations evolve as the historical _expression_ of a community of people, culture, land and economic intercourse at a certain stage in development of commodity production. Self determination for nations mean exactly that . . . the political determination . . . will . . .of a nation not simply a people. Whether a group of people are a nation defines the form of resolution of the national question and national factor for the Bolsheviks. The various Indian nations are not nations in the modern Marxists sense of the word. In my estimate they are advanced national groups whose formation and gestation spans centuries. This is not the case with the African American peoples. The formation of the African American people is unique. Their consolidation was not based on common land or religion. The words "common land" is not simply a geographic description of the land mass called America for instance. Common land embraces a distinct economic center of gravity with a division between town and country and their economic intercourse that welds a nation together. In respects to the African American people there is no internal dynamic to hold them together as a people . . . yet they are a people . . . in transition. The current transition taking place is the result of the destruction of segregation - Jim Crow, and this stage of passing from the industrial system. The force that held them together and formed them as a people is not color or racism but the legal and extra legal pressure of the whites. The most brutal social and political oppression was necessary to carry out the extreme level of economic exploitation of the blacks. After the Civil War and the defeat of Reconstruction the sharecropping blacks were cheated by the landlords, brutalized by the legal authorities, terrorized by the extralegal forces and basically reduced to the level of peasants in India. The near total isolation of the blacks through segregation law and Southern custom was necessary for the level of exploitation they faced and institutionalized. The era of segregation, lasting about 95 years, isolated the mass of African Americans to a greater degree than did slavery. This isolation and oppression based on and institutionalized as the color factor was the condition for the final stage of their development as a people . . . not a nation . . . and self determination is a political solution involving nations. During the 1960s into the 1980s and even today one hears advocacy of self determination for African Americans and it makes no sense. Even a modern scheme for regional autonomy in respects to African Americans make no sense because of their dispersal throughout the American Union. These so-called modern national movements within the former Soviet Union are not national movements or colonial revolts. Very real grievances exist but applying Lenin's pre First Imperial World War slogan prevents the Marxists from understanding the economic logic of nations . . . not peoples . . . and dismiss the class content of these more than less reactionary bourgeois movements. The national factor is a factor operating on the basis of a fundamentally different realignment on earth today. The
Re: A Question for the Moderator
Ours is a war for position and ideological and political statements are converted into policy . . . in real time. Who determines "what" is the great war of attribution and will. If we win over no we lose by default. We cannot win over any segment of our working class on the basis of ideological mental cavities and categories we learn from books. Don't get me wrong. . . I love books . . . but a segment of the so-called Marxist intellegincia have not asked people what they actually think and feel. Melvin P. This was the problem that I was referring to when I was trying todescribe a progression of fragmentations. I first began to think aboutthis sort of problem when Lebanon began to fall apart. At first, itseemed to be a religious division, but then I began to realize thatthere were divisions within each religion that were made each othersthroats. The situation seemed like a fractal to me.Chris Doss wrote:Who gets to determine Chechnya's status? People wholive in Chechnya? In 1991, Grozny's population wasabout 50% non-Chechen. The Nautsky district inChechnya was about 75% non-Chechen, mostly Russians,Ukrainians and Cossacks who lived there since the 15thcentury. Those people have almost entirely fled, beenforced out, or killed. None of them would have votedfor an independent Chechnya. Do their voices matter?
Re: A Question for the Moderator
In a message dated 7/31/2004 7:33:32 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I would be interested to learn which articles in PA you considered valuable and those which you found unhelpful on the subject of the national question. As I recall DuBois and James Jackson produced the best articles on the national question (especially as it regarded African Americans) for PA in the 1950s, all of which broke with the "Black-belt thesis" and the concept of regional autonomy, though they continued to argue for self-determination. In fact, about 10 years before he officially joined the CPUSA, DuBois, according to some, is said to have authored the Party's official position on the question in an article he wrote in 1951 -- the title of which escapes me and I can't find my copy of it. Joel Wendland Reply Perhaps my favorite author was sister Claudia Jones. Memory escapes me . . . but I had lifted the saying "behind the Cotton Curtain" an author who had wrote several articles on what was then called the Negro Question. Harry Haywood "Negro Liberation" is excellent as part of a series of historical documents. I seem to recall a couple articles by James Allen. It of course fell to the lot of William Z. Foster - a great trade union leader and syndicalist, to import within American Marxist the concept of a nation within a nation in respects to African American Liberation. Dr. James Jackson's "New Theoretical Aspects on the Negro Question" was always considered offensive to the communist in Detroit I was a part of. Dr. James Jackson as well as the beloved Dr. Dubios are in history militant representatives of a section of "Negro capital." Whereas Dubois was an authentic intellectual giant . . . . Dr. Jackson theoretical posturing is of no value whatsoever. The color factor and white chauvinism obscures the National Colonial Question in American history. The Mexican national factor . . . Puerto Rico . . . the various Indian nations . . . Appalachia . . . the Black Belt . . . the Aleutian and Hawaii peoples . . . and the list goes on. If the African American people are not a nation and have never been a nation then Dr. Jackson's thesis makes no sense. There is an element of confusion in history related to the original Comintern Documents on the Negro Question - 1928 and 1931 and even Lenin's writing on the Negro Question. Nevertheless, one has to deal with the body of literature as constituting distinct historical time frames and opposing political and ideological tendencies. That is to say Harry Haywood "Negro Liberation" - 1949 and Dr. Jackson's "New Theoretical Aspects" -- around 1951, are grouped together as opposed to simply comparing them with the 1928 Comintern document . . . because the period of the 1920's was the battle for a Leninist approach to the national and colonial question. The Comintern document was forced on the party under the threat of expulsion . . . as was the demand to dismantle the European language press. The African American people as a historically evolved people and the Black Belt of the South as a colonial nation are distinct but interconnected historically evolved entities. America was basically Southern in its inception and evolution up until the Civil War. Its core areas was Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia. America was Southern . . . especially in all its political institutions. The New England states were shipping and manufacturing appendages of the slave plantation system. By roughly the late 1840s, the political leaders of the South viewed the population and industrial growth of the North with apprehension. They realized that the shift from manufacturing to industry was creating a new nation in the North. This new evolving nation in the North was being formed as waves of European immigration created an industrial proletariat in what a few years earlier had been the North western frontier. The evolving culture of the African American slaves is in the final instance what had made the South Southern . . . as it existed in relationship to the evolving nation inNorth of the American Union. What made the North . . . Northern . . . was its working class formed on the basis of successive waves of European immigrants. That is to say the European immigrants did not remain Anglo-European but rather underwent a mechanical and chemical mixture that is the meaning of Anglo American. One can now understand the importance of dismantling the European language press in a country whose primary language is English and Spanish. Plus . . . the language of the South is a Southern form of English rooted in a different development than the North. We have really faced some harsh political dynamics related to our developmental process in the North. The Black Belt nation is called the Black Belt nation referring to its economic centers of gravity . . . not the color of the
Re: Failure of socialist revolution in the West fault of Kremlin/art and beauty
In a message dated 7/30/2004 3:04:47 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Actually there was experimental art in the Soviet Union. It was just not exhibited in public places. I know some of the people involved. They exhibited in their apartments. Just because something was not officially sponsored does not mean that it did not exist. People in the West really, really exaggerate the repressiveness of the Soviet Union, in my opinion. I don't know who is worse on this, the conservatives, the Trotskyists or the anarchists. They all needed an Evil Empire to compare themselves too. Comment I am reminded of an art exhibit I attended while residing in Atlanta Georgia back in 1982 featuring Tom Fielding. Black artists of all kinds have moved in very narrow circles from roughly Emancipation (1865) up until roughly the Crosby Show in the 1980s. The viewing was sponsored by what we called a member of the Mulatto aristocracy in Atlanta . . . very bourgeois . . . very wealthy . . . very accomplished . . . with roots going back to Freeman under slavery. At the time I was editor of the Southern Advocate and moved amongst various layers of society and had enough "juice" to get invited to the inner social circles of the "higher ups." In other words my "wife to be" knew everyone and got us invited to everything. With several cameras slung over shoulders and wife in toll . . . She was tolling me . . . I settled by the rather large indoor swimming pool and had a couple of drinks and causally observed the various painting. Everyone was ever so polite and several folks asked if I wanted a drink or something to eat and would say, "I just Love your little paper." I would smile and offer a thanks and ask for money and say "throw me like you owe me." Checks were written and a hardy thanks was repeated . . . "this will help to keep the news from behind the Cotton Curtain coming." When I had become Editor . . . the Banner and mast of the paper was changed to read in bold type . . . about 48 point "Southern Advocate" and below it in 18 point type "News From Behind The Cotton Curtain" . . . a slogan stolen from an article in the Communist Party USA journal Political Affairs from around 1946. (I can disagree with the historic politics of the CPUSA without being disagreeable in real life or having an urge to repudiate my collective history.) Passing from one room to the next I stumbled upon a photo on the wall of the host hugging President Richard Nixon and I broke out laughing and said "What kind of mutherfucker is hugging Richard Nixon" and laughed until tears came from my eyes. Everyone in the room looked and me and politely left me standing alone. The host pulled me to the side wrote a check for the paper and explained that he was from a family line that had been Republican since Lincoln. My wife to be said something like "does he have a marvelous sense of humor . . . very industrial . . . very proletarian." Everyone smiled and politely laughed and about eight years later I got the joke. It was me and class instincts, feelings and perception of shapes, forms and texture. There are always bodies of art outside the official market for display and class instinct and perspective is material. There is also a certain brooding and melancholy of various layers of the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie called art and my own personal preference has made me a loyal followers of that great photographer Roland Freeman. It is characteristic of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois intellectual and their perpetual attempt to impose on the masses their conception of what should constitute official art . . . democracy and freedom of _expression_. Art in a free market acquires its reproduction dynamic and scale based on who can purchase works of art. Art is not a class phenomenon but is reproduced or subject to the law of reproduction based on buying and selling. Under conditions where the law of value is suppressed . . . the law of value cannot be abolished by politics or political will . . . what is reproduced as art in all fields is subject to political expedience on the basis of suppression of economic factors. Under our own bourgeois art is subject to political expediency based of buying and selling. The idea that the failure of socialists revolution in America is directly attributable to the Kremlin . . . 1920s is designed to obscure and hide the fact of what has paraded itself as the communist and Marxist Movement in American history. The idea and statement . . . that the failure of socialist revolution in America has something to do with various art forms not offered on the open market in the Soviet Union and Gay Rights in the Soviet Union ... democratic tendencies within the Soviet working class being suppressed ... is a monstrous accusation. It is monstrous because it means that the Soviet workers or Kremlin has been the master of the fate
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? - Lou P. and Mr. Green
In a message dated 7/28/2004 12:13:45 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I am simply interested in the proponents of self determination . . . Lou P . . . and Mr. Green and whether they have any material on their support of Regional autonomy for the Southwest in respects to Mexico and the Chicano. The sincerity of ones view is made manifest by their attitude toward the brethren in their own country. How does this self determination formula apply to the American Union in 2004. There are more African Americans in and around metropolitan Detroit than there are Chechens and the Nation of Islam was birthed in Detroit. Do you gentlemen support and advocate for the right of self determination of these real people . . . up to and including the formation of an independent state? Just curious. What is it going to be gentlemen. Dictatorship of the African American proletariat in an independent state system for African Americans? Dictatorship of the Mexican proletariat in an independent state system for Mexicans/Chicano and or the children of Atzlan? Dictatorship of theIndian proletariat in an independent state system for Indians? Pardon . . . the so-called national movements are by definition above classes. Now African Americans are not of course Jamaicans or simply black people. Without question the African American is oppressed and an authentic national question. The African American people have their own economic, social and political organizations and have always had them going back to the Negro Peoples Convention Movement. They are most certainly incarcerated on a scalewithout equalinAmerican history. Now Lenin, Stalin or Trotsky did not make slaves out of the African American or lynch them or segregate them for almost 90 years . . . but white people in America. Now Stalin or Putin ain't did nothing to me and mine and my parents, their parents and their parents parents . . . white people in America been real ugly and they are the ones that continue to enforce the second class citizenship. Minister Louis ain't did nothing to me or to white people in America. And he has a significant organization that does not require approval from white people or anyone else. Do you gentlemen advocate for self determination of African American up to and including formation of an independent state? Or is this something reserved for basically white people in America? Lenin, Stalin or Trotsky did not kill the Indians and Mexicans . . . but white people in America. What about Jews? There are Jews in America and they seem to qualify as oppressed . . . although the body of the African American intellectual elite does not subscribe to this view and not simply the Nation of Islam. It is a tricky game trying to speak for or advocate for others. What of Atzlan? What about the white people in the deep South who are not Yankees? Separate state and self determination? It is infinitely more of them than Chechens. There are more black teenagers than Chechens. Give me a break. These so called national movement . . . I also have Yugoslavia in mind . . . are utterly reactionary movements of and led by the bourgeoisie and none of them even talk about improving the life of the proletariat as proletariat. Minister Louis helps more black proletarians and advocates an economic program for them . . . than the reactionaries in Chechnya and the Ukraine. Melvin P
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
In a message dated 7/29/2004 8:49:16 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: how can you say that the original _expression_ of the local population is irrelevant today? if it is true that the kashmiri people wish to be rid of indian oppression, and we are afraid that the result will be a US protectorate, then our duty is not to deny the former, but to fight the latter, isn't it? --ravi Comment The national factor is a tricky question . . . most certainly attempting to assert what the oppressed want. The bottom line is that the oppressed do not want to be oppressed . . . and how this is articulated as politics and ideology depends on the organizations doing the articulation. In respects to the African American people . . . and not simply any black group of people in America . . . the Nation of Islam cannot be ignored. Although I personal understand the national factor in relations to African Americans different from the fluctuating and changing policy of the Nation of Islam . . . I find nothing offense in their official Theology and their prophecy of the Original Black Man . . . once one reduce this theology to its basic logic structure. After all the most modern evidence I am aware of tracing mankinds origin on earth back to Mother Africa and the women called "Eve." Affirmative action programs do not and cannot solve the fundamental problem of a historically forced and institutionalized social position of the African American people as a people. When one even mentions the shattering and break up of the US multinational state many so-called progressives, revolutionaries and even Marxists become eerily quiet. The self determination program up to and including the formation of an independent state is evidently reserved for "genuine movements of the oppressed" outside the boundary of our own bourgeoisie. I have never advocated a program of integration because the African American people have always been integrated into American society at the bottom. Desegregation and so-called integration are radically different political constructs. African Americans were owned by the whites - North and South, and no issue in our country is as emotionally charged as the so-called "Negro Question." The socialists and many communist do not even know how to approach the question and apparently wish it would just go away. Well, 40 million people cannot "just go away." Nor . . . can they be placed on "reservations." The physical mass of the African American people means their social position can only be maintained through state coercion and heavy does of violence and incarceration . . . that, since their formation as a people makes Stalin's policy on the national factor seem like a Saturday night basement party. The location of the African American at the heart of the American proletariat and their physical mass . . . as well as dispersal throughout the country makes for an interesting National Factor. The national factor everywhere on earth deals with economic centers of gravity. Now the Mexican nationals that flow back and forth across the Mexican/US border . . . and the Mexican national minority that resides in the American Union . . . and the Chicano and/or children of Atzlan are in their mass - density, located throughout the Southwest that gravitates economically and socially to Mexico because this area was part of Mexico. Regional autonomy is the obvious short term solution from the standpoint of the communists of the North of the American Union. Even the term American Union is avoided like the plague by virtually all the so called revolutionaries and progressives in the American Union. The African American people as a historically evolved people . . .THAT ARE NOTAnglo Americans . . . according to how every ANGLO AMERICAN writer and political figure in the history of American has defined Anglo-Americans as a collection of peoples . . . simmering in the "melting pot" . . . are not a nation . . . but rather a historically evolved people. What ever the economic, social, political, cultural and psychological reasons that the Anglo American people define themselves as different or NOT AFRICAN AMERICAN . . . is the meaning of the national character of the Anglo-American people as a people. The reason Mark Twain or Michael Moore or Bill Clinton or George Bush are not self defined as African American ... establishes the national character of the African American people. I do not believe it is wish or serious thinking to separate historically evolved people on the basis of that which makes them different and define themselves as different in relationship to one another . . . on the basis of that which defines them as different. Difference or that by which people define themselves as different . . . especially as understood by the ruling or oppressor people and the striving of the oppressed not to be oppressed is not the
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state?
In a message dated 7/29/2004 9:58:32 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Charles Brown wrote: CB: The SU had autonomous regions.They were formally autonomous. In reality, there was Great Russianchauvinism from just around the time that Stalin was consolidatingpower. Lenin's concern over this matter prompted him to wage his finalstruggle against Stalin.http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/autonomy.htmIt is said that a united apparatus was needed. Where did that assurancecome from? Did it not come from that same Russian apparatus which, as Ipointed out in one of the preceding sections of my diary, we took overfrom tsarism and slightly anointed with Soviet oil?There is no doubt that that measure should have been delayed somewhatuntil we could say that we vouched for our apparatus as our own. Butrnow, we must, in all consicence, admit the contrary; the apparatus wecall ours is, in fact, still quite alien to us; it is a bourgeois andtasrist hotch-potch and there has been no posibility of getting rid ofit in the course of the past five years without the help of othercountries and because we have been "busy" most of the time with militaryengagements and the fight against famine.It is quite natural that in such circumstances the "freedom to secedefrom the union" by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap ofpaper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of thatreally Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascaland a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is nodoubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workerswill drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riffraff like afly in milk.It is said in defence of this measure that the People's Commissariatsdirectly concerned with national psychology and national education wereset up as separate bodies. But there the question arises: can thesePeople's Commissariats be made quite independent? and secondly: were wecareful enough to take measures to provide the non-Russians with a realsafeguard against the truly Russian bully? I do not think we took suchmeasures although we could and should have done so.I think that Stalin's haste and his infatuation with pure adminstration,together with his spite against the notorious "nationalist-socialism",played a fatal role here. In politics spite generally plays the basestof roles.
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state?
In a message dated 7/29/2004 9:58:32 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Charles Brown wrote: CB: The SU had autonomous regions. They were formally autonomous. In reality, there was Great Russian chauvinism from just around the time that Stalin was consolidating power. Lenin's concern over this matter prompted him to wage his final struggle against Stalin. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/autonomy.htm It is said that a united apparatus was needed. Where did that assurance come from? Did it not come from that same Russian apparatus which, as I pointed out in one of the preceding sections of my diary, we took over from tsarism and slightly anointed with Soviet oil? It is quite natural that in such circumstances the "freedom to secede from the union" by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riffraff like a fly in milk. But there the question arises: can these People's Commissariats be made quite independent? and secondly: were we careful enough to take measures to provide the non-Russians with a real safeguard against the truly Russian bully? I do not think we took such measures although we could and should have done so. I think that Stalin's haste and his infatuation with pure adminstration, together with his spite against the notorious "nationalist-socialism", played a fatal role here. In politics spite generally plays the basest of roles. Comment Lenin of course is dead . . . as is the Leninist presentation of the national question. The national question died as a national question before Lenin's death and became a colonial question with all its ramifications to the actual alignment of class forces in the post First Imperial War era. The national colonial question under went further change in the Post Second Imperial World War era and the rise of the so-called Third World. We of course know today where the Third Path leads . . . into the waiting arms of the bourgeoisie. The national-colonial question under went further change after the victory of the revolutionary forces in Vietnam. Today the national factor presents itself different from in the 1970s and 1980s. Leninism is very dead and Lenin needs to be buried and taken off of display. Actually . . . Lenin was incorrect on his writings on the Negro Question. His economic analysis is incorrect as is his formulation of the African American people as a people and his description of the social relations of the old plantation South. He is simply wrong. He is wrong and this is no crime. However, he was more correct than the American communists and Socialists of the period of his writings. These revolutionaries during this era in history are scoundrels and more than less outright chauvinists. Stalin's writings on the national factor are more correct than Lenin's . . . although had Lenin not died . . . and he died . . . he would have altered the conception of the national factor between 1920 and the end of the Second World Imperial War. The national factor cannot be resolved on the basis of the industrial system and in America this is obvious to anyone except those with blinders on and hopelessly addicted to their own ideology. One cannot legislate away an intractable social position that is class and class configuration. All policy enacted is by default inadequate and administrative. The quote above proves the opposite of what is stated as Lenin's reasoning. Any one that takes time to actually read what Lenin states comes to the conclusion that Great Russian chauvinism did not begin consolidation around 1922 . . . but was already consolidated as the state . . . before . . . the Soviet's took over. Big countries and large states drive history and this is not going to change because one ideologically disagrees with this reality. History has proven Lenin incorrect on several actual curves of historical development. Lenin was also wrong in history in the sense that there was no direct revolutionary support of an insurrectionary Europe. Folks are still waiting on an insurrectionary "Europe" and a comeback of the Jackson 5. Regional autonomy is in fact an administrative solution because what determines the day is economic centers of gravity. The issue is deeper than its presentation by the oppressing people. The national factor or the national question is a question formulated by the oppressing people . . . not the oppressed. An autonomous region is not a state structure as such . . . that is independent of the multinational state or the economic centers of gravity upon which
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
In a message dated 7/29/2004 12:47:43 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And Lenin outlines issues for struggling against chauvinism including affirmative action: "That is why internationalism on the part of oppressors or "great" nations, as they are called (though they are great only in their violence, only great as bullies), must consist not only in the observance of the formal equality of nations but even in an inequality of the oppressor nation, the great nation, that must make up for the inequality which obtains in actual practice. Anybody who does not understand this has not grasped the real proletarian attitude to the national question, he is still essentially petty bourgeois in his point of view and is, therefore, sure to descend to the bourgeois point of view" Comment Brilliant . . . and here is the real problem. The material basis of chauvinism and in America white chauvinism is not ideology but economic logic and how social and class relations are institutionalized. The idea that Great Russian Chauvinism was consolidated with Stalin is preposterous and almost laughable if this was not a serious issue. Does not the beginning of what would become the Russian State go back at least 400 years? Affirmative action becomes an issue of policy because the oppressing nations are more economically advanced than the non sovereign peoples. I absolutely support a form of autonomous regions and areas for the Indian peoples in the American Union but they still must eat . . . have housing . . . and absolute and unconditional access to all the modern amenities of our society and this can only take place on the basis of an administrative act by the policy makers and holders of power in a New America. This question of the Kurds or the Soviet experience are important in the sense of informing us of what is possible during a historical era and what is not possible and the direction of policy. If a Georgian with a goofy accent can be a Great Russian chauvinist. Let's see, Stalin - Georgian, Khrushchev = Ukrainian, Brezhnev = probably an ethnic Ukrainian from Moldova, Gorbachev = from Ukraine too... hey, were any of the "Great Russian chauvinist" leaders actually Russian? Nope. If nothing else one has to at least try to understand and see the evolution of centers of economic gravity and state development of the more advance economic structures of the dominating peoples. Stalin or Khrushchev were not Great Russian Chauvinists as the ideologist assert . . . but inherited a certain historically evolved state system of government. In this regard Lou P. tends to the melodramatic and ideological and his anti-Sovietism blinds him to elementary logic. His writings on the African American people and the history of the communist movement are an affront to anyone with common sense and history in the communist movement. I have taken him to task on this question . . . and makes it clear that he would do better defining himself. He therefore defines the world around him because the moment he deals with American history he gets into trouble because he has not studied the issue and what he understands is down right bizarre. What our dear "brother" has written is that Great Russian chauvinism consolidated itself with Stalin and basically that Lenin himself was not a manifestation of history development that confirms the status of the oppressing people . . . domination and chauvinism. Lenin was not a chauvinist . . . and neither was Stalin or Khrushchev and Brezhnev . . . for that matter. Stalin's Soviet Union makes American history look like a freaking Friday night house party and the ideologists do not understand the facts of history and perpetually cry over democracy. I did the body count years ago and watched the incarceration rates over the last 40 years. My disagreement with the ideologists is profound - who suggest I be kicked off of Pen-L for talking about spanking my children, and has everything to do with economic logic and the economic centers of gravity of an epoch and historical era. My point is that one cannot engage an ideologists because they proceed from the contours of the interior of their mind and have no inkling about the life of our working class. The ideologist can validate no real activity as leaders of anything except their hollow conceptions. Mr. Lou P. is a chauvinist . . . and I do not mean a racists. One must read what he has written about the communist movement and the African American people and the nationality question in the Soviet Union. I have read all of his material several times that he has posted. He represents a different class and I come from the upper stratum of the working class and a former member of the labor aristocracy. The difference is that I am not politically stupid and understand that I was not from the lowest stratum of the proletariat. In respects to the African
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
In a message dated 7/29/2004 1:22:52 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: OK.Let's end this thread right away!--Michael PerelmanEconomics DepartmentCalifornia State UniversityChico, CA 95929 Comment Sorry . . . sent last reply before rading this. No more from me. Melvin P.
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state?
In a message dated 7/29/2004 2:05:52 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: by Louis Proyect-clip-... and the failure tomake socialist revolution in the West--a failure in itself directlyattributable to the Kremlin's own lack of Marxist insights.CB: Failure to make socialist revolution in the West was not attributable tothe Kremlin, was it ? Responsibility for that lies with the workers of theWest. Here is Mr. P chauvinism. He deliberately covers and distortsour own history and states that the Kremlin determined the organizational forms of the American proletariat and sabotaged the revolutionary process when we know different. The fundamental split institutionalized in the working class of our country occurred as the by product of the defeat of r\Reconstruction, which happened more than two decades before the Soviet Revolution. The origins and genisis of the insturional split resides in American history and slavery. Mr. P says it was the result of Stalin and Stalinism. This is not even a reasonable understanding of American history. Am I wrong to label him the chauvinists that he is and has always been? This is a man that suggested that I be kicked off of Pen-L because I said I spanked my kids on their hand for sticking a freaking folk in the electrical outlets. Melvin P.
Re: Failure of socialist revolution in the West is fault of Kremlin
The Great Russian chauvinism went hand in hand with hostility to gay rights, feminism, experimentalism in the arts, workers democracy and every other emancipatory impulse in the USSR. Stalin was transmitting the social pressure of Czarist officialdom, which was re-emerging in the 1920s in the vacuum created by the civil war, and a general rightward climate brought on by imperialism and the failure to make socialist revolution in the West--a failure in itself directly attributable to the Kremlin's own lack of Marxist insights. Comment Social Revolution in the West . . . do this include England, the American Union and South America and say Mexico? I know "the West" generally does not include say Japan . . . or the so-called Middle East or Africa. "the failure to make socialist revolution in the West . . . directly attributable to the Kremlin's . . . " is the repudiation of history and common sense. This is what is being stated. The failure of socialist revolution in the American union in 1920 is attributable to the Kremlin. The failure of socialist revolution in the American union in 1930 is attributable to the Kremlin. The failure of socialist revolution in the American union in 1940 is attributable to the Kremlin. The failure of socialist revolution in the American union in 1950 is attributable to the Kremlin. The failure of socialist revolution in the American union in 1960 is attributable to the Kremlin. The failure of socialist revolution in the American union in 1970 is attributable to the Kremlin. The failure of socialist revolution in the American union in 1980 is attributable to the Kremlin. The failure of socialist revolution in the American union in 1990 is attributable to the Kremlin. The failure of socialist revolution in the American union in 2004 is attributable to the Kremlin. Pardon . . . directly attributable to the Kremlin. Not just the failure of socialist revolution in America but all of the West is DIRECTLY attributable to the Kremlin. Now this failure of socialist revolution in the West . . . which is DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE TO THE KREMLIN ... occurred because of a lack of MARXIST INSIGHT. The diverse peoples of America wanted a socialist revolution and their striving was defeated as the direct result of the Kremlin. Nay . . . the peoples of the West . . . this includes Mexico and South America and England and Ireland ... wanted a socialist revolution and their striving was defeated as the direct result of the Kremlin. If one allow Mr. P to rant long enough all of his rank Great American chauvinism and anti-Russianism . . . which is disguised as anti-Stalinism . . . comes spewing out. There is . . . let me guess . . . a "dialectical connection" between Gay Rights in the Soviet Union and the failure of Socialist Revolution not just in America, Mexico, Argentina, England, Ireland and the rest of the West . . . that is directly attributable to the Kremlin. The failure of socialist revolution in America is not directly attributable to any economic, social or political factors in America or the White House . . . but the Kremlin. Every generation of communist in American history has had to confront the institutionalized spilt in our working class that took the form of the segregation of the African American and the most brutal and violenct forms of white chauvanism in the Western world . . . but thishas not beenthe fundamental ideological impediment to socialist revolution . . . but rather the Kremlin's lack of Marxist insight and "hostility to gay rights, feminism, experimentalism in the arts, workers democracy and every other emancipatory impulse in the USSR." I call this kind of thinking what it is . . . rotten white chauvinism and an affront to the battered proletarian masses in American history. During the 1920's and the period that birth the Red Summers as a mass orgy of hangings, lynching's and bombings of African Americans . . . yes bombings . . . is swept under the rug to covered the criminal contempt of murderers and jackals of imperial capital . . . and the failure of socialist revolution is attributable to the Kremlin. Man . . . you need to be cool . . . and not let everyone know you are the anti Russian rotten chauvinist that you are . . . trying to dictate to the world's people about what they should do to be free as you pound away on keyboard in the most imperial of all imperial centers. What a lack of common sense. You are saying that the failure of socialist revolution in the West . . . America and 90 years of brutal segregation is directly attributable to the Kremlin and not the contempt that the Anglo American people have poured on the African American masses for the better part of a century . . . and this is connected to the lack of GayRights and experimental art in the freaking Soviet Union. You are a rank chauvinist of the worst kind. Let me guess . . . me being an
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state?
In a message dated 7/28/2004 11:41:00 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Look, mister alienatethepublicwiththenameofmywebsite.com, I actually know Chechens. Real-live Chechens. They live in Moscow. I get drunk with them. They do not support the jihadis. I am not going to argue this with you. Comment What is called the national factor and oppressed peoples (without quotes) and national movements and the right to self determination within a multinational state system is apparently a source of considerable disagreement. I personally do not consider the various modern nationalists movements to be the meaning of "national movement" or anti-colonial revolts . . . especially within the former Soviet Union. There are roughly 40 million African Americans and perhaps 30 million Mexicans (incorporating Mexican national minorities and Chicano's) . . . various Indian nations or what I would personally called advanced national groups of Indians . . . Puerto Ricans outside of Puerto Rico but within the multinational state structure and federal system of the American Union . . . the Alaskan Eskimo's . . . the Aleutian and Hawaiian peoples and then the Appalachians and Southern whites who define their heritage very different from Yankee whites and all these peoples are to varying degrees oppressed. The various ideologists of self determination are asked if they support a seperate state for blacks as more than less advocated as a form of self determination by groups like the Nation of Islam? I mention the Natin of Islam because it is one of the oldest and most influential organizations amongst blacks and its paramount leader . . . Minister Louis . . . called for a Million Man march and brought together one of the largest mass meetings and protest to Washington in the history of America. This singular action led by Minister Louis set the bar for mobilization and became a radically new form of protest . . . with trade union leaders now calling for a Million Workers March . . . and other segments of the population doing likewise. Time to get real and compare ones attitude towards their own country men with that of the world. I am simply interested in the proponents of self determination . . . Lou P . . . and Mr. Green and whether they have any material on their support of Regional autonomy for the Southwest in respects to Mexico and the Chicano. The sincerity of ones view is made manifest by their attitude toward the brethren in their own country. How does this self determination formula apply to the American Union in 2004. There are more African Americans in and around metropolitan Detroit than there are Chechens and the Nation of Islam was birthed in Detroit. Do you gentlemen support and advocate for the right of self determination of these real people . . . up to and including the formation of an independent state? Just curious. Personally . . . I do not support such a demand and recognize it as no more than the voice of the reactionary and conservative black bourgeoisie and an attempt to further subjugate the African American people and keep the under the heel of capital. Is self determination for the Indians up to the formation of an independent state supported by the self determination advocates and can they point to any writing on this subject advocating such? Is self determination for theMexican,the Alaskan Eskimo's . . . the Aleutian and Hawaiian peoples and then the Appalachians as somewhat distinct from the Southern whites who define their heritage very different from Yankee whites . . . up to the formation of an independent state supported by the self determination advocates and can they point to any writing on this subject advocating such? Melvin P.
Re: The Blind Swordsman Zatoichi
In a message dated 7/28/2004 12:16:54 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: didn't straight-to-video fave Rutger Hauer star in a film about a blind swordsman once? dd Comment Not sure but every since Rutger Hauer's incredible performance in Blade Runner . . . I have been in awe. "Its not often one gets a chance to meet his maker . . . If you could see what I have seen with your eyes . . . Po . . .lice. . .Man? . . . Time to Die!." Ouch. This guy set a new bar for the "European archetype" that left me breathless two decades ago. His eyes . . . his face . . . the contours of his mouth and passion was . . . incredible. Then we have the Mexican Factor asserting itself at the end of the movie . . . "Its to bad she won't live . . . but then again who does?" Damn. Twenty-one years ago Hollywood's stupidity was still in full force and Pam Greir would have been perfect in Blade Runner . . . balancing Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer. What would Rutger Hauer's dialogue been to Pam . . . and the chemistry would have been electric. Our vision of 2017 is very different today . . . but Ridley Scott hit one out of the ballpark back then. Melvin P.
Re: John Kerry and Langston Hughes
In a message dated 7/26/2004 9:57:10 AM Central Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Hughes ends his poem on a more hopeful note ("America
never was America to me/ And yet I swear this oath/ America will be!"), but the
future Hughes imagined for America when he wrote those words probably looked a
lot like Stalinist Russia.
Comment
Talk about cheap Red baiting.
Langston Hughes lived through the period of American history
that birthed the Red Hot Summers and this reality helped shape the core of his
vision . . . not to mention his personal history. Without question Langston's
vision was of an America where blacks were not murdered and lynched in mass and
segregated for another half century . . . which you equate with a Stalinists
vision or a Stalinists America.
You state in a dry "as a matter of fact manner" that "the
future Hughes imagined for America when he wrote those words probably looked a
lot like Stalinist Russia" and the year as index in 1938.
In exercising your freedom of speech you play with fire and
reveal something profound in your character and mental politics . . . that
smells rotten.
Langston Hughes vision of the kind of America he conceived is
contained in his many poems.
(February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967) Born in Joplin, Missouri,
James Langston Hughes was a member of an abolitionist family. He was the
great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston, brother of John Mercer Langston,
who was the first Black American to be elected to public office, in 1855. Hughes
attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, but began writing poetry in the
eighth grade, and was selected as Class Poet. His father didn't think he would
be able to make a living at writing, and encouraged him to pursue a more
practical career. He paid his son's tuition to Columbia University on the
grounds he study engineering. After a short time, Langston dropped out of the
program with a B+ average; all the while he continued writing poetry. His first
published poem was also one of his most famous, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers",
and it appeared in Brownie's Book. Later, his poems, short plays, essays and
short stories appeared in the NAACP publication Crisis Magazine and in
Opportunity Magazine and other publications.
One of Hughes' finest essays appeared in the Nation in 1926,
entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain". It spoke of Black writers
and poets, "who would surrender racial pride in the name of a false
integration," where a talented Black writer would prefer to be considered a
poet, not a Black poet, which to Hughes meant he subconsciously wanted to write
like a white poet. Hughes argued, "no great poet has ever been afraid of being
himself." He wrote in this essay, "We younger Negro artists now intend to
express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white
people are pleased we are glad. If they aren't, it doesn't matter. We know we
are beautiful. And ugly too... If colored people are pleased we are glad. If
they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for
tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free
within ourselves."
In 1923, Hughes traveled abroad on a freighter to the Senegal,
Nigeria, the Cameroons, Belgium Congo, Angola, and Guinea in Africa, and later
to Italy and France, Russia and Spain. One of his favorite pastimes whether
abroad or in Washington, D.C. or Harlem, New York was sitting in the clubs
listening to blues, jazz and writing poetry. Through these experiences a new
rhythm emerged in his writing, and a series of poems such as "The Weary Blues"
were penned. He returned to Harlem, in 1924, the period known as the Harlem
Renaissance. During this period, his work was frequently published and his
writing flourished. In 1925 he moved to Washington, D.C., still spending more
time in blues and jazz clubs. He said, "I tried to write poems like the songs
they sang on Seventh Street...(these songs) had the pulse beat of the people who
keep on going." At this same time, Hughes accepted a job with Dr. Carter G.
Woodson, editor of the Journal of Negro Life and History and founder of Black
History Week in 1926. He returned to his beloved Harlem later that year.
http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html
What if Langston Hughes vision and ideas of Russia was based
on his visit to the country and his vision of a future of America was based on
being born and living the American experience as an American citizen.
What a cheap shot and disgusting Red Baiting.
You seriously need to study the years of the Red Hot
Summers.But then again you already know what Mr. Hughes vision of the
future was.
Sad.
Melvin P.
Re: John Kerry and Langston Hughes
In a message dated 7/26/2004 11:02:14 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I was quoting a Slate.com article. Comment Sorry . . . and apologies are due. There are times when the distinction is blurred and indistinguishable. Melvin P.
Re: Query: Ford/General Motors - correction
In a message dated 7/23/2004 6:35:11 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A per unit drop of labor input of 40% in 30 years is running at an annual improvement factor of more than 10% and what is built into the union contract is an annual improvement factor of 3% increase in wages. The 3% annual improvement factor (AIF) was actually lost during years of concessionary contracts - 1980-1993, and "re-won" in the mid 1990s. Correction 10% should be one percent. Contract negotiations took place every three years until changed in the late 1990s to a five year contract.
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
In a message dated 7/24/2004 1:04:02 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Or to put it another way, to reject Marx's distinction between productive and unproductive labor (by placing on it the burden of practical economics or political economy) you will completely lose the main point of Marx's whole life's labor, that capitalism is a _historical_ phenomenon. That it is _different_. And it is different (among other reasons) because of the difference between the two types of human activity which our Walgreens' clerk has exhibited for us. That distinction could not have arisen except in a capitalist economy. And it probably can't be translated into empirically confirmable/disconfirmable statements about the "actual" economy -- but one cannot let that interfere with developing one's historical and cultural understanding of the distinctions in living human activity involved. Carrol Comment Poetic. I understand my historical connection. You are correct on the entire spans of the polemics concerning electoral politics and Marx Capital Volume 1 . . . in my opinion. Profound piece. Nothing anarchist about it. Very working class . . . very proletarian . . . very communist. Melvin P.
Re: Query: Ford/General Motors
Wall Street analysts said they'd like to see GM -- as well as Ford -- make more money from selling cars and trucks. Ford is even more dependent than GM on its credit business, getting about 77 percent of its profits from there. "I think at both GM and Ford the reliance is a general concern. If you buy the stock of these companies, it's like you are buying a finance company that comes with an auto piece attached," said Daman Blakeney, an equity analyst for Victory Capital Management, which manages about $50 billion for investors. "They are supposed to be selling cars and making money at that." Worldwide, GM's profits on the sale of new cars and trucks rose to $529 million, up from $140 million a year ago. In North America, GM earned $328 million, up from $83 million a year ago. GM sales for the quarter grew 7 percent to $49.1 billion, up from $48.3 billion a year ago, largely because it sold more vehicles in Latin America and the Asian Pacific. GM continued to struggle in Europe, which has been a sore spot for years. GM had quarterly losses of $45 million, compared with a loss of $3 million a year ago. Devine said sales improved in Europe but GM's costs were too high, a signal GM may be preparing for more cuts on the continent. FULL: http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/gm22_20040722.htm
Re: Query: Ford/General Motors
In a message dated 7/23/2004 4:04:00 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: CB: Well GM is only about the third largest company in the world now. I wonder if what's good for General Motors is still good for America. Way back in the thirties it was Alfred P. Sloan ( I think) who said GM is in the business of making money, not cars. Nice slogan for the merger of industrial and finance capital as Finance Capital. Comment Would one call General Motors and Ford Motors primary sources of profitability - outside of purely vehicle financing . . . mortgages for instance (DITECH) . . . a tendency towards the domination . . . if not outright domination . . . of speculative capital? This is meant in the sense that no one speaks of an industrial capital today that is dominated by banks . . . but rather something that is different. General Motors owned the Hughes communications outfit (counterpart and competitor of DIRECTV). All the large automakers have these massive high tech communications networks to tie their organizations together. For instance DaimlerChrysler has it own television network that runs continuous news in its plants as well as its financial arm . . . Chrysler Financial. These communications system are league beyond video conferences and match modern news agencies like CNN. About a year or so ago on Marxmail we had a discussion about "profitless prosperity." "Profitless prosperity"was the exact term used by the financial analyst of Ford Motor Company in a worldwide broadcast on the state of the auto industry and its market shares and projections for the future back in December 2002. It was in fact about a year ago that a discussion took place where Sartesian pointed out the 40% drop in labor input per vehicle since 1973 . . . yet the competition in auto is a dogfight . . . always requiring a massive outlay of capital to intensify the production process (organic composition), maintain the production and administrative infrastructure as well as other cost associated with labor. Profitless prosperity on the basis of vehicle production speaks of the incredible pull of value in the direction of zero and not away from zero. These companies possess incredible and magnificent industrial and communications infrastructures tied together an increasingly interactive world. Wait until the vehicles from China hit the market and go after first the Korea makers and then everyone else. The vehicles are already produced and waiting approval for market entry. For my money I cannot understand the economic incentive for the large automakers to NOT advocate for a nationwide health plan paid by the government. Chrysler has a 1 employed for two retired workers cost structure . . . and just cut some of our health benefits . . . for retired workers and GM slashed the medical benefits for its retired executive workers (nonunion) almost a decade ago and won it case in court about 3 . . . maybe four years ago. Jergen Schemp announced back in 2001 that perhaps upwards of 200,000 workers would be cut from the world automotive industry. Then again it was rumored that a section of the management of Chrysler Motors wanted to drop the car division altogether and concentrate on trucks. Strange. General Motors put on the back burner for a moment its new production facility design of modular produced vehicles . .. where the modules are shipped to a central point for assembly. By the early 1970 General Motors already had the blueprints for a 90 - 95% automated engine assembly plant . . . and I remember their statement that such a plant would destroy the labor market and their consumer base. Even without utilizing the advance technology available per unit labor input has still dropped at least 40% in 30 years. What next . . . trying to make money at big stakes crap tables? Melvin P.
Re: Query: Ford/General Motors
General Motors put on the back burner for a moment its new production facility design of modular produced vehicles . .. where the modules are shipped to a central point for assembly. By the early 1970 General Motors already had the blueprints for a 90 - 95% automated engine assembly plant . . . and I remember their statement that such a plant would destroy the labor market and their consumer base. Even without utilizing the advance technology available per unit labor input has still dropped at least 40% in 30 years. What next . . . trying to make money at big stakes crap tables? Melvin P. Comment A per unit drop of labor input of 40% in 30 years is running at an annual improvement factor of more than 10% and what is built into the union contract is an annual improvement factor of 3% increase in wages. The 3% annual improvement factor (AIF) was actually lost during years of concessionary contracts - 1980-1993, and "re-won" in the mid 1990s. If you were hired in the auto industry in 1972 and retired 2002 - after 30 years, what you experienced was a revolution in production that defines the meaning of downsizing. The increase in production was not accomplished just on the basis of speed up. Speed up is very different from a deep going intensification of the production process itself. There is another process of revolution in the material power of the productive forces taking place. The physicaltoilof a man's muscles can get easier as he is deployed to do the job of 25 people . . . due to advanced robotics and computers. Ford is slated to build its 3rd plant in China . . . in partnership with local manufacturers and these new plants are always built on the basis of a quantitative expansion of the intensive dynamic - quality, of the configuration of the production process. Unlike the Ford Motor Company's dealing with the Soviets in the 1920 and 1930 where they sold the USSR old tooling and antiquated production equipment . . . vehicles from China can only be profitable on the basis of not just cheap labor but revolutionizing the production process itself. Auto seems to be in the process of catching a cold . . . although the expansion of credit and debt has taught me a real lesson about consumption and production. I thought we would crash in 1996, 97 and 98 . . . only to see the expansion of credit and then in the wake of 9/11 . . . 2001/2202 cycle . . . zero interest rates. I did not predict zero interest rates and 60 month car notes. I actually come out of a historic 36-48 month credit and production cycle. What next . . . the ten year loan . . . with a guaranteed free upkeep - scheduled maintenance of ones vehicle? The Koreas makers are setting the pace on maintenance. And no . . . Marx did not predict this. Wasn't Marx dead when the gasoline automobile came on line? He did predict the process as the general law of capital accumulation in its absolute sense. Nevertheless when auto catches a cold the economy goes into withdrawal from consumption . . . and is driven to the emergency room for blood transfusion and pumped up with dope. Melvin P.
Re: Monthly Review: China and Market Socialism
What is the best source that discusses the pre-reform political and economic developments in China. The Monthly Review special issue focuses almost entirely on post-1978. Would a comparison of directions/developments pre- and post -978 be worthwhile? Joel Wendland http://www.politicalaffairs.net Reply The archives of the A-List probably contains much material on China. Henry C.K. Lis is a first rate . . . actually excellent economist . . . in my opinion and is well within Marxism and a prolific writer on China and world economy. http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/a-list Recently we discussed aspects of the Monthly Review article on China. Currently things are a bit slow with it being the vacation time of year and all. Henry is a regular contribution to Asia Times. I generally write a more intense version of material sent to Pen-L on the A-List. At any rate the archives are really worth looking at. Melvin P.
Re: The South and the Election
The south and the elections By John Slaughter The benchmark of American democracy since its inception has been the vote. While the masses of the people who participated in the revolution of 1776 -- the workers fresh from the debtor's prisons of Europe, indentured servants, farmers, slaves, native Americans -- fought for a vision of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," their cause also included the fight for "representation," a government of the people. Today, in 2004, elections are showcased as the preeminent _expression_ of our democracy. Revolutions, however, are ultimately about which class will assume power, and who determines how society is reorganized. The propertied classes moved quickly to take control of the new government, and formed it to safeguard their interests. The aims of the masses were thwarted, and the battle continues to this day. When the form of rule is a democracy, an essential aspect of the exercise of that rule is the skillful control and manipulation of elections. Central to that process in the history of this country is the role of the South. A Slaveholders' 'Democracy' At the founding Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Rutledge, delegate from South Carolina, declared "[Economic] interest alone" should be "the governing principle of nations." By interest he meant property, specifically slave property. The Southern delegates insisted, as a condition of their states' participation in the new Union, that certain clauses be included to protect and further the interests of the slave power. These included especially the three-fifths clause (Article 1, Section 2). Full: http://www.lrna.org/league/PT/PT.2004.04/PT.2004.04.5.html
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
In a message dated 7/20/2004 1:20:58 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Just one more thing: Is apologizing for the occupation part of being a great "uniter" rather than a "divider" of the working class? Just curious, you know, because my experience with union bureaucracies and leadership was that they were the dividers, like, ummh... Douglas Fraser, who secured his position in the UAW, and I would guess the board of Chrysler, after leading armed goons into the Jefferson Avenue plant to break the wildcat strike of the mostly African-American workers protesting the speed-ups and lack of safety. Now that's unity._ Comment Yea . . . Doug Fraser was a piece of work. An old timer out of the Desoto plants and "hard fist socialists" - rough counterpart to say A. Philip Randolph. Fraser was rewarded with a seat on the Chrysler Board of Directors in the wake of the company's failure to meet its obligations in the bond market in 1980 . . . the collapse hit November 1979 when Chrysler reported its greatest lost of revenue in history. The Jefferson events of 1973 was part of an intense strike wave. The summer months in Chrysler plants were unbearable . . . which no one understood because at that time Chrysler was the largest producer of industrial air conditioning units. The speed up . . . literally turning the speed of the assembly line up . . . was unbearable. You would literally run to keep up. On July 24, 1973 Issac Shorter and Larry Carter took direct action and climbed into the elctric power control cage and pushed one button and shut down the assembly line. They negoitated with the company directly from the cage and the workers pretended any action of force from removing them until the grievences were met. 13 hours later both of them were carried from the cage into the streets on the shoulders of a mass of workers that remain one of the most famous and important pictures of this era. Our unit immediately recruited Shorter into the Communist League . . . who had been the local Chairman of the Panther's Committee to Combat Fascism in Cleveland Mississippi. He had left Mississippi . . . goddamn . . . and move to Los Angeles and got a job with Chrysler only to be laid off. In 1971 he arrived in Detroit already political. A few weeks later the Chrysler Forge plant went on an unauthorized strike . . . a "wildcat strike" over working conditions. Fraser had stated earlier in respect to the Jefferson "wild cat strike" that the company had lost its "manhood" by not going through union channels and negotiating directly with the insurgents. At the Forge strike Fraser showed up in force with a squad of goons. The workers would not bulge and Fraser invited one of the leaders outside for a gentleman game of fisticuffs . . . a white worker named John Taylor who was a member of the Motor City Labor League. Anyone that even heard of John Taylor knew he was anything but soft. A year or two later all of us combined together to form the Communist Labor Party. "You want soft? . . . you better go get toilet paper. With the cameras rolling John politely explained that there was no need to go outside because we can fight our way onto the fucking street. Fraser back down on television and his goons were hopelessly outnumbered with many of them on the side of the strikers. The intensity of this strike wave was such that the conservative Detroit News was running headlines like . . . "Chrysler Treats Men Like A Piece of Meat." By the summer of 1973 there were dozens of groups with hundreds of active members in the plants. The cyclical nature of auto would disrupt all forms of organization because the cycles of work generally ran 36 months . . . maximum. Fraser was bad news all over and outlived his moment in history. He was not a bad individual as such but outlived his moment in history. For the record it was Alonzo Chandler and Larry Robinson (DA Mitchell) . . . because Larry Robinson was a phony name used because many of us were black balled and all had alias to get work . . . that recruited Shorter into the Communist League. Actually Alonzo was working under an alias that would not be resolved until he retired in year 2000 and the union won recognition of his work under another name. Even General Baker, Jr. worked under another name for Ford . . . Alexander Ware and the company tried to fired him when they found out. He won his case because their is a contract clause that allows anyone to work under an alias if they last 18 months on the job. I actually picked up 6 months toward retirement from someone working under my name at Jefferson Assembly. The established leaders are . . . established on the basis of another cycle of the class struggle and composition of the working class. Those were the days. John would have been harshly criticized for fighting Fraser because he was to old. On
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece/union democracy and revolutionary impulse
In a message dated 7/22/2004 4:36:59 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thanks for that Brother Melvin. Damned if I didn't think that Fraser tried to fight his way into Jefferson Avenue. But I was out of Detroit in 1973, and heard about it, and the other battles, from friends. 1970-73 were the years, though, weren't they. Funny how it coincides with a peak in the rate of profit, a big dip, and then a recovery in the rate. Reply Yea man . . . many folks on the left called this the period of the "Black Workers insurgency" but this description is inaccurate. One day after the Forge Strike was settled and Fraser backed down from this threat to fight the militant leaders . . . Mack Stamping plant exploded. William Gilbreth . . . a white member of Progressive Labor and member of the Workers Action Movement touched off the strike when he was fired for agitating over working conditions. He returned to work the next day on his regularly scheduled shift and sat down on the conveyor belt and the shift hit the fan. Gilbreth was what we called an open communist and the list of demand drawn up on the spot contained some party demands including a 30 hour work week. No one in their right mind opposed 30 for 40 . . . even those who did not know what it meant or how it was to be implemented. 30 for 40 sound good and meant more for less. All the local militants from every plant in the Detroit area showed up at Mack and lend support. All the subtle difference concerning the meaning of Marx in Chapter 25 of volume 48 in respect to an obscure footnote means nothing during a strike wave. Yet . . . the workers were eating up copies of the Communist Manifesto and walking around with "State and Revolution" in their coveralls. Most did not read the book but like the way "State and Revolution" sounded and would ask the seller of literature what the book was about. The standard reply was overthrowing the state and revolution and the reply would always be "give me a copy of that." Any way Fraser had learned his lesson from John Taylor and the Forge strike and this time he vowed to open the plant with union members. Interestingly during this period the company never considered calling on the police. The riot of 67 and 1968 had not been that long ago and the Southern white workers relocated to Detroit did most of the shooting and sniping at police and army guys . . . true story. To my memory and knowledge not one black person was shot by these white southern workers. Fraser cut a deal with the police Commissioner John Nicholas . . . who had declared that he would run for Mayor of Detroit. Detroit was a political inferno. All the scattered groups producing thousands of leaflets and distributing hundred of thousands copies of newspapers could not keep pace with the masses in motion. Now the police were in a state of panic because three guys had formed themselves into a unit and were kicking in the doors of dope houses and robbing them and leafleting neighborhoods talking about "off the dope pusher." One evening they were stopped by the police during a traffic check and this lead to gun play with them escaping and a couple officers dead. Any way this story played itself out a couple years later with one of them being slain in Atlanta Georgia. When his body was returned to Detroit for a funeral a little over 5,000 people showed up to paid honor and the local media went berserk . . . basically calling the masses ignorant lawless mutherfuckers. The men that made up this unit were known to all of us and named "Brown, Boyd and Bethune" . . . or the three "B's" or the blade, boot and the bullet. Our lead attorney's had gotten Brown exonerated before a jury of his peers and the political polarization was thicker than New York cheese cake. Back to Fraser. After the workers shut down Mack Fraser cut his deal with the Police Commissioner and showed up at the plant gate with 2,000 union members . . . many retired to open the plant. Some fighting took place but the size of the goon squad was overwhelming and caught everyone by surprise. It was a sad day for the union and forever spilt the union because workers who did not like communist propaganda could not comprehend why the top Union leaders would organized against its own members. For the rest of the year local union went in receivership for ousting the Woodcock slate and condemning Fraser in resolution after resolution . . . starting at the old Griggs Local . . . and they where the first to go under receivership. (Receivership means the International Union suspends all the local representatives and take over the day to day running of the Local Union). That was the fight for union democracy. Marxism is going to hit the streets in a big way and the semi-illiterate mass is going tolearn how to read in groups reading communist leaflets and books . . . really . . . and nothing on earth is going to
Re: FW: berger whopper
testing
Re: Loss of faith in higher education
test
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
These claims about how a subjectivity willing and able to transform productive relations into rational relations are mistaken. Individuals immiserized in this way would ( not) be subjects of this kind. there is no necessity, however, for capitalism to produce immiserization. The organic composition of capital doesn't have to change in the way marx assumes. For this and other reasons, the creation of an industrial reserve army isn't a "necessity" i.e. a necessary feature of these relations. Nor is it necessary that: "they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital." Comment Marx explained what had already happened as the result of a long historical process that separates the producer from their means of production. Then made a series of projection based on the further unfolding of the process that separates the producer from his means of production. The fact of the matter is falling real wages since about 1973. The fact of the matter is a gigantic polarization between wealth and poverty. The fact of the matter is an enormous increase in debt and longer hours of work. There is an iron necessity for the bourgeois property relations to produce poverty . . . and poverty is a relationship with wealth. This does not require Marxists dialectic but reading economic indicators and walking outside and looking around. How we choose to explain this is a horse of a different color. What is missed is the revolution in the means of production that tends to cheaper agricultural products at a greater pace than industrial products and the actual dynamic of reproduction as a bourgeois property relations. The fact of unemployment is higher than the theory of why this unemployment occurs. Look at the world market and the six billion people on earth. Melvin P.
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
In a message dated 7/21/2004 8:07:43 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: there is no necessity, however, for capitalism to produce immiserization. The organic composition of capital doesn't have to change in the way Marx assumes. For this and other reasons, the creation of an industrial reserve army isn't a "necessity" i.e. a necessary feature of these relations. Nor is it necessary that: "they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital." Comment The increased poverty (immiserization) of the working class does not exist in a comparison of the working class with itself . . . say . . . as it existed in 1840, 1900, 1960 or 2004. The increased poverty of the working class exists in relationship to the increase of the total wealth of society and can be measured against the increase in wealth of capitalists as a class or those regarded as capitalists due to their wealth. Today's article on Bill Gates is a case in point. The organic composition of capital does not speak of the reforms and concessions the working class wrestle from the capitalists. Rather, what is spoken of is the direction of how the productive forces increase in capacity . . . from the standpoint of the consistent increase in spending and deployment of machinery and technological development versus human labor . . . as a ratio . . and its impact on the working class and capitalists. The polarization between the poorest and the richest does in fact increase. In the world total social capital the spending on machinery and technology rises in relationship to the spending on hands . . . even during period of absolute increase in the size of the industrial class. The amount of labor deployed in the production of commodities moves in the direction of zero . . . as an aggregate of labor ... as opposed to away from zero . . . as the general law of capital accumulation in the absolute sense. The sometimes fast and sometimes slow improvement of production methods and/or revolutionizing of the material power of production is an absolute law of not just bourgeois production . . . but all social production. Melvin P.
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
In a message dated 7/21/2004 11:03:21 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The facts are that the economy is worse off now than before; living standards continue to decline; oil revenues are misappropriated. This was/is a capitalist assault against the social costs of reproducing an economy that might support something more than starvation and deprivation. The only rationale, humane, position is the radical and revolutionary position, OUT NOW, and that's just for starters. Comment This thread is needed and heart breaking. Being compelled to ask if the people of Iraq are better off today than they were yesterday . . . is mindboggling. Our government bombed this country for ten years after Desert Storm . . . inflcited horrible destruction upon the people of Iraq . . . murdering their babies . . . then destroyed their infrastructure to a large degree and one is asked if the new rulers are going to be better than those who created the situation in the first place. What kind of question is that? The idea that we are bringing democracy and goodness to the world and people of Iraq is not well thought out and without any merit whatsoever. We are to pretend that this was not plunder on a grand scale? The first targets seized in Iraq were the national museums and banks . . . stealing national artifacts and money in full view of the world. Then . . . then . . . one of the primary objectives was targeted (among other geopolitical considerations of the bourgeoisie) . . . making sure that Iraqi oil was taken off the world market to manipulate the price of oil upwards as the bourgeoisie's answer to falling rates of profit! "Their thugs" . . . are most certainly our thugs or as it is called in the penal institutions of America . . . "turn keys" for the Warden or the bourgeois order headed by our personalbourgeoisie. "Out Now" is urgent because we could not prevent them from going in . . . in the first place. If we could have stayed the hand of our bourgeoisie . . . there would be no need to even "discuss" whose bad guys are the worst. Melvin P.
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation/dialectics and logic
In a message dated 7/21/2004 11:36:26 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The contradictions dealt with in the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation are the poverty and unemployment that inherently accompany technological progress under capitalist relations of production, a contradiction of regress and progress, with regress being "absolute" and progress relative. Reply: I'd say that poverty and unemployment are results of the contradiction. ^^ CB: A result of which contradiction? Comment Private appropriation of the products of social production as fundamentality . . . or private appropriation in contradiction with the social character of production. This private appropriation is a form of property relations that imparts a distinct circuit . . . mode of operation to continuous cycles of reproduction . . . how labor is deployed in a given branch of industry and on what basis. The bottom line basis of deployment is based on what is profitable to the bourgeois property relations as individual owners or an institutional relations based on private ownership of the productive forces. A multiplicity of other contradictory factors flow from the property relations within this form of social production. Other contradictions flow from the fact of human beings engaging production no matter what the property relations. Melvin P.
Re: unions
In a message dated 7/19/2004 11:16:11 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't see why pushing to make labor unions more democratic and to make the established leadership more responsible represents a "split in the working class." A union would be more effective if it were more democratic rather than having decisions made on high by plump cats. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine sartesian wrote:an industrial union, like the UAW or UMW, and even there and then independent workers organizations had to be, and will have to be again, constructed against the established leadership. end Ah yes. More splits in the working class.Joel Wendland Comment The organized sector of the working class called trade unions or the trade union movement . . . by definition represents an institutional spilt in the working class between the organized and the unorganized. There are enormous differences and splits between various kinds of unions . . . with perhaps the oldest being the great division and shift from craft unionism to industrial unionism. From the late 1930s up until yesterday the great spilt was manifested in the CIO or as it stands today the UAW and the AFI. Within the industrial form of unions are the great divergence and splits between skilled and unskilled. The color factor has always been a sharp form of the institutional spilt within the working class as a whole and the trade union movement. However, it would be a serious and unpardonable mistake to dismiss the other aspects of the national factor than manifested itself as a spilt in the union movement within the European immigrant workers. The Slavic workers lingering on the bottom of the totem pole until this social position at the bottom was replaced by blacks have craved themselves a heroic chapter in the history of our country. The history and memory of "Big Steel" (and "little steel") will live forever. Within the skilled sector of the unions exists splits as wage differentials that grew out of the evolution of different crafts or kinds of skilled work. The electrician is higher than the pipe fitters and the old German style machinists has been obliterated by the advance of industrial technique. In the old Steel Workers Union and the UAW the historic split within the unions appeared as the skilled sector occupying all the bargaining positions and given the color factor in our history appeared as the skilled white workers dominating the unskilled mass that was black at its core. We do however understand that the blacks as a mass simply replaced the Slavic workers not only in the unions but as the configuration of the housing pattern in the industrial centers. There is an enormous split within the working class on the basis of wage structures that is manifest as the worse paid sector of the working class called the proletariat (the lowest stratum of society - Communist Manifesto) and the higher paid workers who may or may not be in trade unions. This lowest paid stratum of the working class called the proletariat is female in its dimensions and a "womanists" point of view - as opposed to say . . . political feminism, cannot be lightly dismissed or ignored because what is being expressed is an economic category as female . . . whereas one hundred years ago and closer . . . the female category in society expressed a range of economic categories.The shifting emphasisare not separate categories but the proletariat as . . . is . . . female. The fight for union democracy (without quotes) is a mixed bag and tricky. The "referendum vote" demand in the union movement picks up steam during different periods of history based on the changing composition of the industries the unions are connected to and the downward push on wages. The fight for union democracy makes sense . . . in my opinion, when it is housed in a specific demand from the company . . . other than that this political forum of insurgency quickly degenerates into sectarian politics and pursuit of the individual for office . . . especially in an industrial union. In an industrial union like the UAW 90% of your International Representatives (not the staff that service the activity of the International reps and the staff cannot vote on contract issues as such or policy as such) come from the factory floor and in fact make less in wages than the highest paid skilled workers. They are fat cats in relationship to the unskilled and receive a generous pension - two pensions. One from the company and one from the union after ten years of service as International reps . . . or roughly $6,000.00 a month in addition to medical benefits andother benefits . . . like tuition refund given to all retirees. The large unions in our country tend to be modeled on the constitutional framework of our government, with elected representatives electing the next level of leadership.
Re: Socialism Betrayed/4 - value and the industrial system
The intention was to do perhaps two more pieces on "Socialism Betrayed" focusing on the Epilogue. In my opinion how one assess Soviet socialism and its overthrow pushes the boundary of how the past generation of communist workers and Marxist understood the law of value, its operations and the context called the industrial mode of production - with the property relations within. The question of the second economy or the black market as an attribute of the industrial mode of production is important because one cannot liquidate the act of exchange - outside the bound of legality, under conditions of relative scarcity and industrial bureaucracy. For instance the pipes under the kitchen stink leaks and one sign up for repair and goes on the waiting list. A waiting list exits in the first place as a manifestation of shortage of plumbers or plumbers being deployed for more important work in the national economy. I happen to know Ivan the plumber next door and we go back twenty years and he does things for me and I do things for him to shortcut the system. These simple and not so simple acts of exchange of labor cannot be outlawed and becomes a vortex drawing people into the value relationship because acts of exchange of labor under these conditions must reach a certain equilibrium or you deny the labor input to your family. People turn to the second economy (SE) for the same reason they do it in America . . . and everywhere else on earth, today . . . to increase consumption and gain access to greater services. Yes, this is simplistic but far to often true in real life. The point is that the industrial mode of production is advanced productive forces looking through the prism of history and primitive looking through the prism of a vision of the future . . . on hundred years of development of computers, digitalized production processes and advance robotics. "Socialism Betrayed" assembles all the pieces of the puzzle and I do not object to their treatment of leaders as manifestation of classes, class fragments and policy. How the puzzle is assembled is what challenges everyone's ideology and thinking. The authors pose in an easy to read framework every fundamental question in my opinion. I assemble the puzzle differently. The fact of the criticism of Stalin and the actual policy of those putting forth the criticism cannot be dismissed, although Stalin remains the bone in the throat of the communist movement that can neither be swallowed of spit up. The fact of the matter is a policy shift - beginning with Nikita K. on the emphasis of developing heavy or light industry, which determines the rate of reproduction and extensive expansion of the industrial mode of production. This is an issue that may never be solved in our lifetime. Sides were taken and I never took Nikita K. side . . . and have always been firmly within the Stalin polarity concerning the operation of the law of value and why it cannot be abolished under industrial socialism. This question of democracy is not an abstract category depending on ones belief system. To ascertain "where was the working class" one has to dig into the fact of society administration, the culture of the average Soviet citizen, rates of incarceration compared to say . . . bourgeois America today . . . forms of organizations engaging the average citizen . . . scale of trade union organizations . . . actual working of Soviets and cooperative societies . . . vacation time . . . educational levels, etc. How the Soviets developed industrial socialism has no framework of real comparison in the sense that we can speak of how America developed the bourgeois mode of production and compare it with say Germany, England or Japan. Ones ideological bent . . . which in American tends to be utterly bourgeois, needs to be suspended and Soviet society be looked at on the basis of tits own internal development on a hostile mode of production in a hostile world. These are sharp questions that cannot be treated lightly. Why could they not overcome the law of value? Melvin P. Waistline2 wrote:"Socialism Betrayed" by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny contains an underlying theory grid that evolved from the evolution of the Communist Party USA . . in my opinion . . . and limited to the industrial phase of development.I read "SB" as well and also consider it worth reading, but was lessimpressed. I was disappointed that the book almost solely focuses oninner-party conflict and, contrary to what one might expect from anhistorian like Roger Keeran, it presents a socialist version of the "greatman" history (if that is possible) we were supposed to have rejected from bourgeois historians. Their conclusion: one man, specifically Mickail G. is responsible for the collapse of the USSR, and along the way competing personalities repr
Re: Venture Communism/morped/ Socialism Betrayed
In a message dated 7/18/2004 3:16:15 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: CB: Yes, the South started the Civil War (a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat see Aptheker) because the slave system could only survive by constantly expanding geographically ,i.e. by geographical extension, or extensive development. Marx discusses this in his essays on the Civil War and U.S. economy at that time. Reply My understanding is that the plantation South attempted to secede from the Union . . . but that is not the point. By counterrevolution in the American Union . . . the Civil War itself is not referred to but rather the period of history constituting the overthrow of Reconstruction . . . or the chain of events that was the result of the Hayes Tilden agreement of 1876 . . . leading to Plessy versus Ferguson. One aspect - among several factors, of the outward expansion of the system of plantation slavery is the form of labor itself and the laboring process of gangs of slaves. The form of the laboring process of the slave system contains its own barrier that prevents an internal intensive development. This limitation of the form of slave labor has everything to do with the tools and energy source deployed by masses of slaves. Actually . . . we discussed this issue before . . . Sartesian, yourself and myself and it is all right to disagree over the form of the laboring process . . . the economic character of plantation slavery . . . why it was not a form of primitive accumulation . . . etc. Extensive and intensive development of the material power of production are not isolated categories . . . yet what is being discussed is on what basis the form of the laboring process itself is changed and what constitute a revolution in the form of the labor process - the basis or internal components of it intensive development . . . as opposed to extensive expansion. A soft ware programmer in the same building as a machinists is a different creature expressing a change in the form of the laboring process. The productive forces are revolutionized . . . sublated . . . and by definition this takes place incrementally. For instance, providing the slaves with better plows, hoes, etc., and the driver man with a better whip, cannot lead to the internal intensive development of agricultural production beyond the point of human muscle effort . . . because the form of slave labor as a laboring process contains its own barrier. This self contained barrier can only be shattered - sublated, with the development of the means of production . . . that is tools, instruments and machine development driven by a different energy source . . . radically different from the tools, instruments and energy source underlying the form of slave labor. Providing slaves with a tractor constitutes a revolution in the form of the laboring process . . . even if he remains a slave for a period of time . . . and this "period of time" is short because the form of labor corresponding to a slave mode is not compatible with mechanization of agriculture and the value system. The form of the laboring process is burst asunder. The Civil War itself is considered revolutionary because the Slave Oligarchy was overthrown and shattered as a slave oligarchy and ruling class. In this sense the abolition of slavery was a social revolution without a preceding or corresponding economic revolution. That is, the instruments of production of the agricultural South did not advance, but the North imposed a revolution in the social relations upon the South with the freeing of the slaves. Every truly great social revolution must proceed from, stand upon and develop from an economic revolution. It is not possible to truly free slaves or proletarians without replacing them with more efficient energy. At the time of Emancipation, there was no such economic revolution in the means of production connected to Southern agriculture. This truth couple with a growing domestic and international demand for cotton and tobacco condemned the freemen to a new and often more brutal form of exploitation. Without question political alliances between Northern - Wall Street Finance capital, and the conversion of the Slave Oligarchy into the landlord planter class has everything to do with the counter revolution in full swing by 1890 . . . but what is being isolated is the conditions by which the form of the laboring process is transformed. The tools or instruments of production connected to Southern agriculture changed very little between 1870 and say . . . 1940. Sharecropping and the convict-lease system became new forms of slavery for the African American and this form of labor - the laboring process itself, would undergo revolutionizing with the invention of the mechanical cotton picker and the mechanization of agriculture, the development of weed killing chemicals, tractors etc. These developments in the mean
Re: /morped/ Socialism Betrayed - the property relations within, its meaning
CB: I'm not sure what you mean by "with the property relations within" ^ The unions of labor force of the workers and the means of production is simultaneously a connection of productive forces and a connection of people in the process of production which together makes up relations. The division of labor in manufacture is a relation in production and also emerges as a productive force. This applies to industrial society and the post industrial society evolving in front of us. CB: I'd differentiate between the technological organization of production, including machines and who stands where on the shop floor, and property relations, who appropriates the products. Comment/Reply The beginning of a qualitatively new production process that changes the form of the laboring process is always somewhat difficult to describe because all the new features have not yet emerged . . . and cannot emerged without political revolution that overthows the old relations of production and property relations within, that block their development. Yet, one can follow the direction ofthis development and apply certain lessons from our own history of development. Take for instance the biogenetic revolution which in fact is an authentic revolution in the material power of production that changes the form of the laboring process . . . especially in relationship to agriculture. From the standpoint of the form of slave labor prior to Emancipation to Emancipation - (which ended in counterrevolution that would eventually trap five million blacks and six million whites in the sharecropping system), to deployment of the mechanical cotton picker and the tractor . . . to the growth of the huge industrial farms to the emergence of "frankenfoods" . . . or the application of science - biogenetic, to farming . . . we are speak of a huge revolution in the mode of production. The fact of the matter is that the instruments . . . tools . . . deployment of human labor as the primary energy source of Southern agriculture did not change between say 1865 and 1900. With all due respect to Mr. Aptheker . . . I profoundly disagree that Lincoln's election constituted a revolution. I also have disagreed with his economic description of slavery and the aftermath of the Civil War for the past 30 years. Such is life. What is being spoken of is a qualitatively different production process that forever changes the form of the laboring process that arose and emerged with the industrial system. The implications are staggering because this qualitatively new production technique - regime, begins unraveling and shattering the commodity form and value. This does not mean that "all of the old mode of production (laboring process) disappears" . . . but rather the old process is sublated. Farming still takes place in the Mississippi Delta using a set of instruments and machinery half a century old. The meaning of "the property relations within" is the property relations within a given mode of production. In my opinion this is at the base of our divergence and most Marxists have in the past defined modes of production on the basis of the form of the labor process . . . like slavery, feudalism and capitalism. I am aware that I divergence from this description, while remaining consistent with the method Marx deploys in describing the advance of industry in the Communist Manifesto and Engels description of the advance of industry in Anti-Durhing. Here is what Marx states concerning "the property relations within:" "At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or what is but a legal _expression_ for the same thing with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm The "property relations within" are not simply within the legal _expression_ as abstraction . . . because what the "legal" expresses is relations of production or how people are aggregated together to utilize a given state of development of the mode of production. "From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters." The productive forces begin with human being and the specific mode of human labor + tools, instruments and/or machinery + energy source and how they are organized. How the people are organized are the relations being referred to this relation becomes a fetter in the face of the development of the productive forces - with the property relations within. The issue connected to "Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union" by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny is the economic phenomena inherit to an industrial mode of
Re: the property relations within, its meaning- Last
In a message dated 7/19/2004 11:49:28 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: CB: Well, "property relations within WHICH the productive forces work" Comment Last response . . . the moderator has called for an end. Read what Marx states because you reverse what he stated. Marx does not explain things from the stand point of "property relations wihtin Which the productive forces work." He states the exact opposite. "At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces ofsociety come in conflict with the existing relations of production, . . . with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. My political conclusion are derived from a different assessment of the meaning of productive forces or what is the same . . . the material power of the productive forces. This means I have a racially different view of social revolution and the meaning of the proletariat as the lowest strata of society and the prospect of political revolution in America. This is all right because we have been here before. The reason the productive forces are fundamental is because they are the more mobile aspect of the mode of production with the property relations within. Productive forces of course presuppose the existence of human beings and human will as it operates in a definable "mode of production." Soviet industrial socialism was an industrial society and industrial society is being changed. In this sense it is no different from America in its industrial mode of production. That is why the law of value could not be abolished. World socialism on the basis of the industrial system cannot abolish the law of value and regulate exchange to the dustbin of history. World revolution in an industrial society would still call for a revolution in the mode of production to get to economic communism. The difference is that this leap would not take place on the basis of contradiction passing into antagonism. You have the last word. Melvin P.
Re: Venture Communism
In a message dated 7/17/2004 6:48:01 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This is why venture communism attempts to subvert the system by sharing profit equally, instead of making surplus value into private accumulation, it makes into shared wealth. We are losing the revolution. The capitalists are accumulating more, and we are left with less. When do you imagine this upsurge will change that? Reply Cooperative movements - local and those with nationwide scope, are not new in American society. To a large degree the Amish, Mormons and even the Nation of Islam are more than less cooperative movements, with the Nation of Islam commanding a pool of financial capital and labor resources. Millions of people in our country take part in all kinds of co-opts and group themselves together into investment co-opts seeking to maintain or improve their quality of life. Then there is the shadow economy or the illegal economy or the black market . . . whose working is in fact another form of cooperation to escape the price structures of the legal economy . . . by laboring and exchange "off the books." People never "do nothing" but respond to the pressure of bourgeois society in millions of different ways. There have been venture capital funds for women . . . blacks . . . Mexicans . . . gentlemen clubs . . . upper middle class circles . . . big capitalists and virtually every kind of association possible. There are millions of ways to blunt the sharp edge of the "absoluteness" of the general law of capitalist accumulation. This general law basically states that wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of capitalists in direct proportion to the increase of poverty amongst the people. Speculators and owners at one pole commanding billions upon billions of dollars and billions of people at the other end of the pole unable to acquire the means to enter exchange in a way to take care of themselves and their family. This is a law of capital accumulation in the same way that "water runs downstream" expresses a general law of gravity. I am not against building canals and irrigation systems to harness water under the impact of the law of gravity . . . but I am aware than no amount of human will can change the law of gravity. We are not losing the revolution and political revolution is absolute inevitable in our country. The social revolution comes about as the result of changes in the material power of production . . . that compels society to leap to a new political and economic (exchange) basis. We work in different fields and areas and it is important that we always fight to explain to every larger sections of the people of America what is taking place so that they can develop the understanding of why our society is undergoing social revolution. Abe Lincoln had a plan to gradually abolish slavery . . . ending it in 1940. The military and radical political leaders would not accept Lincoln's plan . . . so he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Perhaps 25 maybe 30 years ago some of us pondered Lincoln targeting 1940 as a buy out date for the slave oligarchy because it was precisely 1940 when the mechanization of agriculture took off in our country and ended an increasingly obsolete form of agricultural laboring called the sharecropping system. Elements of the Southern ruling class sought to create a modern infrastructure connected to the plantation system but it was something amongst the dominate section of the Slave oligarchy that made war a necessity. This "something" is bound up with the fact that Jeff Davis was the largest slave holder and riches man in America at the time and his vision was that he and the system he represented was the pinnacle of civilization. In a similar manner almost a hundred years earlier George Washington was the largest slave holder and riches man in America. Class is a dry category on paper but human behavior in real life. In speaking of an upsurge of the people of America, one is not talking about everyone running in the streets or a massive general strike . . . although people are going to protest to improve their lot in life. The upsurge is in process and manifest itself in a million and one different ways . . . for instant the impact of Moore's Fahrenheit 911 movie and it altering and consolidating the social consciousness of people. This has profound impact on the body politic in America. Over the past 48 months a couple of small rebellions against police violence has erupted and their will be more to come. Upsurge is speaking of the social process not unlike the old Civil Rights Movement. When and how events are going to take place I cannot say. No one could predict Montgomery Alabama . . . the defeat in Albany Georgia . . . the rebellion in Birmingham Alabama in 1963 or Watts 1965 and Detroit 1967 going over the nodal point of politics . . . as they had existed in America at that time.
Re: Socialism Betrayed/2
"Socialism Betrayed: Behind the collapse of the Soviet Union,"by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny remains a good read. Chapter 7 - Conclusions and Implications contains theoretical implications and statements as facts that reveal that far to many Marxists in the American Union have yet to get honest with themselves . . . with historical events and our own history. The economic thread of Chapter 7 is riveted to the unregulated character of the second economy or black market and the enormous shifting of labor and resources allowed by the Gorbachev clique. As an individual I misunderstood the profound meaning of "market socialism" between the years 1985 and 1989 and than Gorbachev's policies would bring an end to the Soviet Union. The battle over economic policy in the Soviet Union goes all the way back to 1917 and I could not and did not predict the collapse of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of public property relations. During this time frame I understood the impact of the Reagan Revolution as a radical assault on the lowest sector of the proletariat within the USNA and external pressure on the Soviets . . . although it was clear that counterrevolution was gaining strength after the events in Poland and the reactionary Solidarity Movement. I had a gut instinct that became a theoretical framework concerning the Soviet revisionists that was born of the great polemics that was called the Sino-Soviet split. When our tiny party mass published "The Program and Principles of the Revolutionary Soviet Communists" in 1979, my generation was given an opportunity to understand the complex struggle within the Soviet Union on the basis of the Soviet Communist themselves. Economic policy was articulated as political direction internally and externally and this was the context of the polemical battles between 1956 and say ... the early 1970s. In this pamphlet the Soviet communists speak directly to the communist approach to the peace movement and the profound implications of the policy of the Soviet Revisionists and why it would lead to the defeat of the Soviet proletariat and disorient the communist and workers movements world wide. In this regard Chapter 7 and the assessment of the Sino-Soviet spilt is less than honest. Here is what is stated: "A clear analysis of the Soviet Union was also undoubtedly hindered by the difficulty of sorting out legitimate criticism from the mass of generalized hostility directed the Soviet Union's way. The Chinese Communists did condemn "Khrushchev revisionism" in 1956-1964. Their polemics, however, struck many as crude, dogmatic, and self serving. The Chinese policy veered from left to right, and included Mao's de facto anti-Soviet alliance with the US For anyone with a shred of sympathy for the Soviet Union, the Chinese criticism increasingly lacked credibility. On the other end of the spectrum, the Eurocommmunists merely echoed the hoary criticism of the social democrats." Everything is wrong with the above. I began reading the criticism of a section of communists in China in 1969 at age 17 by way of the "Peking Review" and the documents under the heading "Proposals Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement." Their criticism was not crude at all and has to be assessed based on the literature of the period indicated. The Soviet Communist devote an entire Chapter to the question of peace and defense of the position of the Communists of China and Albania in this period. In the fourth paragraph on the very first page of the Soviet Communists statement they state: "it is necessary for us to speak about those projections (of the Soviet revisionists) from our own concrete experience, thereby substantiating and concretizing what our Chinese and Albanian comrades have already stated." The Soviet Communist say nothing about an alleged crude criticism and in fact state the very opposite in the third (preceding) paragraph on the very first page of their document. Here is what they state: "In their exposure of modern opportunism the Chinese and Albanian Communists have given proof of a most profound adherence to revolutionary principles as well as devotion and self sacrifice. The documents of the Communist Party of China and those of the Albanian Party of Labor expose the path of class collaboration and betrayals of the interests of the Socialist revolution, upon which the leadership of the CPSU embarked after the death of Stalin." Mr. Keenan and Kenny basically combine Nixon's visit to China - almost a decade later, with the period 1956-1964 to distort the evolution of the struggle against Soviet revisionism. This distortion is a class phenomena rooted in the upper stratum of our working class and the material tendency to collaborate with ones own bourgeoisie . . . and this tendency is an ideological _expression_ of the material bond that exist between workers and capitalists as
Re: Venture Communism/morped/ Socialism Betrayed
In a message dated 7/18/2004 10:41:09 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: CB: Yep, I feel you. However, unfortunately, I am skeptical about industrial society and its bureaucracy going away, going "post". I think one could argue that it is going "super" rather than going "post". The breaking up of the factory concentration based on the revolutions in communication and transportation, and cyberizing machines makes the world's technological regime approach one big industrial factory, which seems more superindustrial than postindustrial to me. Comment "Post industrial" is defined on the basis of that which distinguishes manufacture from industrial. No one defines the industrial system as the manufacturing system or the industrial bureaucracy as the bureaucracy of the manufacturing process because of the specific combination of human labor + resources + energy grid as a process. The world technological regime that is evolving in no way resembles one big industrial machine . . . or an extensively developed industrial machine embracing the world as a system of electro- mechanical process. The period of history of extensive development of increasingly large industrial factories, as the basis of increased production as the primarily signature of industrial society - electromechanical process,is over. This does not mean there will be no more industrial machines on earth. The word "post" in post industrial society means that the extensive and intense development of the productive forces as driven by the electro mechanical process is halted and a different process of radical intensive development and expansion of the material power of production is under way. Manufacture is the predominance of man over machine and strictly speaking means "hand" . . . human and animal power as energy grid. Manufacture refers to a period of history before the emergence and domination of machino-facture and steam power. Industrial production proper is an electromechanical process that supersede or sublates machino-facture and steam power. The post industrial society in front of us is not a further extensive development of the electro- mechanical process but the evolution of the electro-computerized era. It is this electro-computerized process that makes a revolutionary intensive development and expansion of the material power of productive forces possible. The industrial bureaucracy does not simply go away but is sublated and reconfigured on the basis of the revolution in the technological regime that eliminates layer after layer of organization based on the electromechanical process. Factory concentration and productivity today is based on the intensive development of the material power of production which renders "industrial giant enterprises" or "big" obsolete. A different form of intensive development will drive extensive expansion of production. Actually "big" is sublated or redefined in the same way that industrial relations redefined machino-facture and systems driven by steam power. Development from manufacture to machine production was not only a change of productive forces, but a qualitative development and spreading of new productive relations - with the property relations within. The unions of labor force of the workers and the means of production is simultaneously a connection of productive forces and a connection of people in the process of production which together makes up relations. The division of labor in manufacture is a relation in production and also emerges as a productive force. This applies to industrial society and the post industrial society evolving in front of us. We do not even have a name for this new evolving society . . . yet. Marx dubbed the industrial system the capitalist mode of production and up until the emergence of Soviet industrial socialism the industrial system was called the capitalist mode of production. In the 1930s and 1940s one spoke of socialist industrialization . . . but everyone understood we were dealing with the industrial system as a specific unity of human labor + machines + energy source - with the property relations within. Qualitative changes in the material power of production changes the form of how labor is aggregated and put to work and reconfigure the basis classes in a social system. Industrial machinery as the electromechanical process creates and necessitates industrial machinists . . . as opposed to soft ware programmers. "Post" means the form of the labor process as the industrial process is undergoing change. In the context of Soviet socialism if is my belief and understanding that one of the objective process they faced was the limit to the extensive development of industry as electro- mechanical process. This limit to extensive development based on electro-mechanical process is only resolvable on the basis of a revolution in production . . . a
Re: Socialism Betrayed/3 - value and the industrial system
"The entire history of Soviet socialism shows that class struggle, the struggle to abolish classes, does not end with the seizure of state power and does not end after seventy years of building socialism, although in truth the USSR actually had far than seven decades to build socialism, since it had to devote so much of its time to preparing for wars, fighting wars, and recovering from them. Indeed the whole idea that the class struggle is over in a world still dominated by capitalism and imperialism, or within the socialist state, is itself a manifestation of the class struggle at an ideological level. Succumbing to that idea is one of the gravest threats to building socialism." Socialism Betrayed: Chapter 7 "Conclusion and Implications" page 186. Isolating selective passages from any book is a tricky game because the context is often distorted. In the paragraph before this quote, authors Keeran and Kenny trace what they call Gorbachev's revisionism back to the late 1920s in the person of Nikolai Bukharin and link "Bukharin, Khrushchev and Gorbachev" into a consistent political trend within the Soviet party. The authors state in the previous paragraph and sentence before the above quote: "That the tendency that Bukharin, Khrushchev and Gorbachev represented kept reasserting itself and finally won, bears witness to its stubborn material roots, no longer in the peasant outlook so tenacious in the first revolutionary decades but in the spreading commercialism and crime of the second economy." Anyone can shoot fish in a barrel and call it a challenging sport. Bukharin has most certainly taken it on the chin and paid dearly for his political body of knowledge and economic theory. I have no interest beating a dead horse. Another set of questions is posed upon carefully reading how the authors pose the issues. "Soviet socialism shows that class struggle, the struggle to abolish classes, does not end with the seizure of state power" . . . basically means the essence of the class struggle is to abolish classes and one needs to be vigilant. Why must one be vigilant? Because of bourgeois property and the world bourgeoisie and the small scale production/producers that generates the impulse for exchange . . . the value relationship and bad ideas of the history of capital in peoples heads. Well, the issues seem more profound than this. Class struggle is not a struggle to abolish classes to begin with . . . rather the class struggle leads to the abolition of classes as they move in antagonism. The intention is not to be petty but it seems that we have posed the issues based on a boundary of development of the industrial system and not on the basis of the industrial system itself as a value producing system. We cannot abolish value as an economic category just because we want to or because it is a good idea. Political will and decrees cannot abolish value as an economic category or classes for that matter. Classes are formed on the basis of the development of the means of production . . . as this development reconfigures the form of the laboring process, with the property relations within. Class struggle is political. It becomes a life and death fight to overthrow a social system and create a new one . . . and this life and death struggle leads to the abolition of classes . . . as they move in antagonism. A class of producers or form of the laboring process cannot be abolished by political will or correct ideology . . . but something else must happen in the mode of production that makes the abolition of a class possible through implementing policy that hastens a material development . . . already underway. This is an "economic determinists" observation or as it has been called . . . a "techno-communist viewpoint" . . . but it seems closer to the truth than posing the question backwards . . . and it is based on real history in America. The sharecropper as a material class of real people was abolished as the result of changes in the technological regime that replaced the form of their laboring processand this specific form of agriculture production. They were abolished as a class. The serf was abolished as a class . . . the landlord planter was abolished as a class . . . the slave oligarchy was abolished as a class . . . the industrial capitalist as industrial capitalist was abolished as a class fragment. This abolition takes place at the hands of the advance of industry and is put into affect by political means that hasten a process all ready underway. One can possess the will and energy to do something or fight but the results are going to be governed in the last instance by what is possible during a given historical stage of development of the productive forces. It seem to me that what the entire history of Soviet industrial socialism shows something very different from the idea "the struggle to abolish classes, does not
Re: Socialism Betrayed/4 - value and the industrial system
Is there no way to get to communist society more directly from relative scarcity, as might be the case in the wake of war or "natural" disaster? A dogmatic economic-determinist interpretation of Marx suggests not, but I think that's too narrow, at least in the present and likely future circumstances: communism could be a political necessity for survival not a luxury we can afford thanks to material development of the forces of production, much as that would be appreciated. many more comments to make on your critique of KK on "socialism betrayed" but just passed through some fever dreams (might have been my brush with West Nile) and have a lot of work to catch up on keep on pushin' d Reply Keep on Pushin . . . Can't stop now . . . move a little higher! I do hope you feel better "D" and recover quickly. "Socialism Betrayed" by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny covers a lot of ground. I enjoyed this book because it consolidates a lot of events and key figures in Soviet history in an easy to read format . . . without being to "ideologically thick." It is true that I come from a different body of politics and theory development and gained some real world experience as a machinist/job setter. All industrial machinery operating on the basis of electromechanical processes run in the same direction or operate on the same universal principles in every country on earth. And all of them have the same red, white, yellow and green buttons that governs the transfer process and cutting, machining and stamping. The new technology is different and I remember the first advanced robot places at our plant (which is not advance by today's technology). We called the robot "Henry" and he was a sight to see. "Henry" was not accurate but had "vision" . . . and his real problem was that he was built by a company using old technology and Chrysler would have done better going to Japan, where the extensive and intensive development of their heavy industry and robotics producers took place on a different curve of development than the incremental industrial development in America. Being a union guy . . . I had no interest in eliminating jobs and gave less than a fu*k about the companies rate of profits . . . to a degree. I was not going to cut off my nose in arguing with my face. The bond between labor and capital that is the basis of the industrial system ties the worker to capital by a million threads. No one can magically leap outside this relationship and become a super revolutionary. It is not possible. Not being able to leap outside the structures of a society that form the two basic social classes as the economic logic and driving impulses of a system of production is a theory proposition. The workers are not going to one day "wake up" and overthrow capital because they can compel capital - through the bond that binds them together, to meet their basic needs . . . even while ever greater section of labor are ousted from the production process as meaningful employedlabor. It ain't happened and aint going to happen because it can't. The two basic classes of a social system are never free to overthrow the system of production they composed and it has never happened in human history. Something else must happen for a social system to be overthrown. I have a duty to bring an understanding of extensive and intensive development and evolution . . . in its concreteness, . . . to bear on this subject. Perhaps that is my purpose. This is not your "father's Marxism." "Socialism Betrayed" contains an economic approach that attempts to unravel the economic essence of Soviet socialism and how various leaders fought over direction. Keeran and Kenny traces the inner party struggle over economic policy and pinpoints Nikolai Bukharin as representing what would later emerge as the policy of Khrushchev and subsequent Soviet party leaders. Several real theory problems emerge in any discussion over the economic basis of communist society. These theory problems are legitimate in as much as Marx's clearest statement concerning the economic basis of communism is perhaps contained in his Critique of the Gotha Program. By communist society I specifically mean a society that has completed . . . completed . . . the transition Marx calls "between capitalism and communism." In this sense my basic proposition is that one cannot leap to communist society on the basis of an industrial mode of production. From this point of view my proposition can be called economic determinists or techno-communist. I do not object to these labels because history is the supreme arbiter of theoretical disputes . . . And it is understood that I am putting forth a radically different conception of communist experience and viewpoint based on American history and personal experience. What has been called the communist movement for the past 150 years has not really been an economic movement of
Re: Venture Communism/morped/ Socialism Betrayed
In a message dated 7/18/2004 3:16:15 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: CB: I'd call it superindustrial, because the machines are augmented by the computers, and the machines are the "absolute" in industry and thecooperation is the "relative" term. The scattering of the co-operation isbetter termed more industrial rather than post industrial. "Industry" alsorefers to the large number of products produced, mass production. This also continues. "Post-industrial" sounds like there is no longer massproduction. There is more mass production than ever. Reply What can I say. If post industrial sounds like there is no longer mass production after I have explained the meaning of intensive development as increasing the productivity of labor . . . and making mass "super mass" in relationship to the deployment of labor . . . I do not know what to say. The Coogi sweaters are the product of a radically new technology that has the ability to mass produce a billion different color pattern and configuration as a process. This is a different technology than the mass production as cookie cutter patterns. The latter is industrial electromechanical and the former is electro-computerized and infinitely more productive. If super . . . as in superman . . . means the qualitative change in the technological regime that distinguishes it from electromechanical process as the direction of the future - the next one hundred years or the period of time that is the equivalent of from 1865 - 1980, we should not quibble over words. The scattering of production misses the point of intensive development and its trajectory for the next one hundred years. We are not talking about the extensive development of the industrial system for the next one hundred years in my opinion . . . although time will tell. Bottom line . . . we are undergoing a revolution in the mode of production not unlike the revolution from manufacture to industry in its implications for society as a whole. Revolution in the mode of production as opposed to "super" the quantitative expansion of the same thing in gigantic propositions. And . . . yes this is different and a different proposition . . . that I believe will be confirmed for everyone on earth by the year 2030. Melvin P. Peace Melvin P.
Re: [Fwd: Swans' Release: July 19, 2004]
In a message dated 7/18/2004 5:05:30 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I've stay out of this discussion, to everybody's relief (and my own), but is it possible that anyone can really endorse voting for a national Democratic candidate as progressive, or even the lesser evil? I guess so, but it takes a complete disavowal of history to do so. It takes a deliberate denial of reality. Ask a simple question: Are the Democratic Party and its national candidates calling for immediate, unconditional withdrawal from Iraq? No. Reply I believe that voting for the lesser of two evils is also driven by fear and means endorsing the evil you happen to see as "less." An enormous section of society - the working class, that actually votes . . . is scared to death. Voting for the lesser of two evils means that the lesser evil can prevail. Not voting . . . from the perspective of the lesser of two evils reality, means that the evil that is not less . . . wins. We have to face our fears in society. Breaking with the two party system in its actual mechanics means that the greater evil is going to momentarily triumph. This prospect frightens the hell out of the middle classes and is something I have thought about since our "Vote Communist Campaigns" in 1976 and 1978 - Detroit. There is no other path available. The question deepens if you are the sorry bloke - with Red credentials, assigned or self assigned, to work in the electoral arena. Do you break your connection with the people who you are working with . . . by militantly opposing Kerry and advocating for Nader? No . . . you better not. The communists, militant leftists and progressives . . . in fact refuse . . . refuse . . . to break their connection with a mass of people involved in the electoral arena and we should understand this process. Are they right? They most certainly are not wrong. Personally, I will vote for a dead man . . . an American tradition, before I vote for Bush Jr. or Kerry . . . meaning I will write in Lenin's name on the freaking ballot. And urge everyone I know to vote for Lenin or Abe Lincoln. But . . . I am not currently involved in the mechanics of this electoral work although I took part in it for the better part of a decade. The social democratic left fronting as communists says . . . "Melvin P. don't understand class and the mechanics of the class struggle and reaction." This is not true and in fact we ushered in the new political frameworks in which the current political struggle in America is evolving. These are strange days . . . but we have been here before. Michael Moore could probably get more voters than Nader. You and I could run for president and vice president and probably get more votes than Nader without a nation wide electoral apparatus because the thinking of the diverse peoples of American is in flux. Then some knucklehead would scream to the high heavens that you and I caused reaction to win. You wrote about a year ago about the prospect of enlarging the coup that the Bush Jr. grouping carried out in 2000 . . . as the standard for operations in the electoral arena for 2004 . . . and I did not take this lightly. This is a real threat and your vision on this matter should be documented for the historical record. Bottom line is that communist cannot support Kerry . . . and those comrades laboring in the electoral arena can carry out policy as they see fit . . . but must never raise their specific work to a level of strategy. Under no conditions can the connection with our diverse people be broken and this is going to be a complex task. Pass out your communist propaganda and do not beat people over the head. We have discussed what is taking place and the move in Florida that disfranchised thousands of African Americans has gone nation wide and is the prelude to disfranchising millions of Anglo-Americans . . . "whose names" are suspect. Even this is not enough for the Bush clique and the coup is in the wings waiting. I endorsed the "anybody but Bush campaign" in 2003 and stated that this form of campaigning must be discarded in January 2004 and another political equation and consolidation be fought for. This is because I have personally been involved in elections as candidate and broad electoral politics. An election is a living things with its own logic and law systems and the "party line" does not mean we do not fight out the day to day battle and the shifts . . . fissures . . . and divisions that always take place as a product of any election. The coup you spoke of - damn near a year ago . . . is being fought for in front of our eyes. I aint scared and the game is played out at the highest level. Melvin P.
Re: [Fwd: Swans' Release: July 19, 2004]
In a message dated 7/18/2004 4:33:01 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Response Jim C: "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." (Josef Stalin) Comment This is true and how it playsitself out in real life and real time is the substance of the class struggle and the art of politics. The year was 1968 - a little over a year from the 1967 rebellion in Detroit. It was hot . . . man. Year later Stevie Wonder would create his "Hotter than July" album. "From the park I hear rhythm. Marlye's hot on the box. Tonight there will be a party . . . on the corner at the end of the block And didn't you know U . . . would be jamming until the break of dawn. They want us to do their fighting. But our answer today Is to let all our worries like the breeze in the summer slip away." Ok! Dig . . . September 1968 was an election for Trustee at the Dodge Main Local Union. We field a candidate . . . Ron March. Our slogan was not the dictatorship of the proletariat or workers control nut. . . "March with March." We knew we had won the election and had challengers to oversee the counting of votes . . . in the run off election because we kicked ass September 26 and the run-off election was October 3, 1968. We fought out way into the run off. OK . . . when the polls closed we started celebrating everybody loved us . . . or at least the overwhelming voting majority. The local police entered the Local Union and commenced to kicking our nature ass . . . Billy club and all. Naturally we fought back and drove the mutherfuckers out of the Local Union onto the street . . . where there are hoards of workers ready for combat. That is when they hit us with the tear gas and came back into the local union and literally stole the ballot boxes. They took the Ballot boxes and we thought they were simply there to kick our asses . . . no problem . . . because if you are scared to fight the police . . . I even don't want your fucking vote. The Police stole all the ballot boxes and took them to the Police Station overnight to "secure theintegrity of the election! " The next day the ballots were totaled and we lost. What kind of shit is that? In other words when a real third force enter the electoral arena we have to be organized with soft ware programmers that can ensure the integrity of the elections and check all the machines and vote counts. It is more of us than them so this is not hard to do in the future. This happened in 1968 and by the time of the "Vote Communist Campaigns in 1976 and 1978" we were battle hardened . . . and had . . . mutherfuckers everywhere. The challengers had relief people and the relief people had their relief. We were told when the votes were counted that we lost by a nose in 1978. Wait until our next campaigns. Melvin P.
Fahrenheit 911
Yesterday - 7/16 .. . was the wife birthday and among other things we had planned on going to the movie and hanging out in celebration of her first birthday in a new city and state many miles from Detroit. Both of us are native Detroiters, having recently left the children (all adults) and relocated to Bryan/College Station Texas . . . about 90 minutes from Houston. We ended up watching Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, although my first suggestion was "I, Robot" with a promise that we would do "Fahrenheit" the next day. Given the media event Fahrenheit has stirred, she was adamant is seeing Moore's documentary on the Bush Jr. administration. When Fahrenheit first opened it was not scheduled in our neck of the woods and when the kids back in Detroit found out, volunteered to send us a bootleg copy of the movie. After the first weekend numbers of Fahrenheit's profitability it was scheduled in our location. We went to the first showing of the movie and perhaps 30-40 folks were in the theater . . . with us being the only African Americans. During the showing the wife was strangely quiet and several times seem to be on the verge of tears. Every now and then . . . almost imperceptibly . . . she was say "rotten mutherfuckers" . . . and finally "that's why you a communist . . . I really get it now." As the movie was coming to an obvious end she said "baby I do not want to talk about this." I had notice that folks in the theater were strangely silent and at one point in the movie I remarked to one of Bush ignorant utterances . . . "boy this guy is stupid, dangerous and a fucking fascists . . . with Congress kissing his ass." Several folks turned around and looked at me and I was not talking loud but the theater was strangely silent. When the movie ended we left the theater with everyone strangely silent. It made me wish that I had a leaflet or something to pass out explaining some of the detail of the movie and why corporate power and dominance was the meaning of bourgeois power and capital as a living embodiment of absolute greed and debasement of that which makes us human. Leaving the parking lot of the theater in silence I reached to turn on the radio and she said, "I do not want to listen to any music." I had notice that walking to our vehicle her eyes was watery. "Let's go and get something to eat and start celebrating your new freedom." She nodded in agreement and several minutes later said "How can a human being be that ignorant?" I said nothing and nodded slightly. We pulled up to a joint to eat and inside the discussion began on a strange note. While placing her order she mentioned to the waitress that today was her birthday and we had just come from the movies. The waitress asked, "What did you see?" "Fahrenheit 911" "How was it?" "You have to see this one for yourself because Bush is crazy and the war was for money." The waitress looked at me for a response and to take my order. I asked about the menu and ordered some fish and between looking over the side dishes said . . . "as long as people think they are doing all right no one thinks about things. Bush represent the most narrow money interest in the country . . . everyone knows he stole the election and for my money can go straight to hell." The waitress took the rest of my order and stated she had not seen the movie yet and asked if we had seen "Spiderman?" The wife replied "Of course and it was good." I smiled in agreement. The waitress left the table to place our order and the discussion began. "That's why I am becoming more spiritual because if I was in some political group I would want to kill all those mutherfuckers." I waited a moment . . . "yea it does make you crazy to get an eye full of truth but killing an individual won't change the system. This shit's deeper than that. Baby you having a spiritual and political awakening on your birthday." "That stupid flag waving bitch in the movie had to have her son killed in Iraq to have a clue about the country?" The "flag waving bitch" she was referring to was MS Lila Lipscomb whose transformation is recorded on film from a decent, God fearing supporter of the American military to a person unable to come to grips with her own concept of our bourgeois democracy because of the death of her son. Early in the documentary Lila proudly explains the military tradition in her family and how she had hated the "war protesters" and only recently began to understand that protesters did not hate the troops by government policy. Apparently she strongly believed in bourgeois democracy . . . American style . . . and conceded that other have the right to have an opinion different from hers. In front of the camera Lila speaks proudly of how everyday since Gulf 1 she had put up outside her home a rather large American flag and during Gulf 1 prayed to God for the safe return of her daughter . . . and then adds in
Re: Venture Communism
In a message dated 7/16/2004 3:50:55 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The Venture Communist is a Public Entrepreneur, Venture Communism is not a political model, but rather it is a transitional tacticdesigned to promote an equitable distribution of wealth via theenterprising initiates of communities, rather than through thecentral authority of the state.Venture Communism is an alternative Revolutionary Strategy to ViolentRevolution, one that preserves existing social accumulation ratherthan destroying it. Comment Venture Communism would face several real world obstacles that are economic and social in my opinion. This is not to say I am against socially responsible investments . . . with "socially responsible" increasing defined on the basis of protecting the metabolic process of the earth and women as priority one. Nor am I opposed to various projects seeking to link the less developed areas into the world distribution networks on the basis of low to zero cost communications networks based on "localized" energy grids earth friendly. An economic block to venture communism or a challenge . . . dependening on ones view, is consumption. That is to say there is a little over six billion people in the world and roughly 4 billion live on a couple of dollars a day and less. The venture communist fund would need some kind of system of "sovereign credit" for four billion people that allows them to consume the products being funded and produced by the venture communist fund. That is to say human beings must have a way to enter the exchange market and a system of "sovereign credit" means at birth one has an inalienable right to access the system or some form of modern communism identified with the writings and doctrine of Karl Marx. All the economic data I have read over the past period of my life speaks of the technological revolution ousting increasing large masses of labor from the production process as fewer and fewer hands are need to produce a previous mass of goods. In fact the venture communism proposal is predicated on a vision of the expanding capacity of production. Everyone runs into certain economic laws that have become barriers to drawing four of the six billion people on earth into the modern system of production and exchange. This means how is this going to help the lowest 30% of the American workers? Without question there is no need for the state to be a property holder in America or serves as central authority of production and distribution. Whether or not the social revolution gives rise to violent political revolution really depends upon the ruling class. If American history is to be used as a framework one must ask why the slave oligarchy refused the offer to be compensated - bought out, to end slavery. Why did the slave oligarchy refuse to be bought out as a transition program to end slavery? I do not advocate a program of violent change in America and urge the bourgeoisie to stop beating up demonstrators and protesters . . . but strongly believe that if you are shot at you must shoot back. Actually venture communism is what was attempted in the old Soviet Union during the entire decade of the 1980s . . . in my opinion. Melvin P.
Re: Fahrenheit 911
In a message dated 7/17/2004 8:59:28 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Fahrenheit 911 shattered something in the consciousness of my wife that is similar to an addict hitting bottom and having to face the consequence of his actions and belief system. The transformation of the consciousness of the peoples of the American Union has the potential to be changed at lightening speeds. Follow -Up Comment In terms of social consciousness and lifestyle behavior my wife stopped watching local news broadcast back in the early 1990s . . . although it is my understanding that she never really watched the "News" because in her words "its all muder and rape." I have never watched local news broadcast . . . as a pattern of behavior . . . or with any regularity . . . in my entire 51 years on earth. Fahrenheit 911 is very powerful in its images of the most poverty stricken proletarians and the bourgeois leaders of America. Moore combines news clips that documents one endless series of justifications of plunder, greed and outright selfishness . . . that is the face of class exploitation and oppression in America. The visual presentation of Bush stating to the camera, "I am a war president" will be shocking to most people and only keep intact Bush Jr. core base amongst the American people . . . in my opinion. Moore need to rush into the studio and gather mountains of footage he did not use and put together Fahrenheit 911 (Part 2 - Temperature Rising) for October 2004. He will not have to do any advertisement for such a project. In Fahrenheit 911 (Part 2 - Temperature Rising) he need to talk about depleted nuclear shells used by our bourgeoisie and its meaning. Updates on the transfer to power in Iraq would be a big hit. He would probably have to blank out Bush Jr. face to pass the censures but everyone would know who it is. Melvin P. Melvin P.
Re: Fahrenheit 911
In a message dated 7/17/2004 9:48:40 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Fahrenheit 911 shattered something in the consciousness of my wife that is similar to an addict hitting bottom and having to face the consequence of his actions and belief system. The transformation of the consciousness of the peoples of the American Union has the potential to be changed at lightening speeds. Last Comment I just asked my wife to give me a one liner on her thoughts about Fahrenheit 911. She stated . . . "It was the most profound and sharp emotional pain I have ever experience in my life." I believe she is experiencing a political awakening or the first leg of the formation ofa mass social and then class consciousness. The silence in the theater during the viewing of this movie was itself a sign of being shattered emotionally. It is one thing to privately believe that the rulers are America are greedy self serving criminals of the bourgeois order. It is a different matter to share this private belief as an experience in a public setting where no one can pretend they had not witnessed a crime. Fahrenheit 911 have done what I could not do . . . shatter the collective illusion. Melvin P.
Re: Venture Communism/morped/ Socialism Betrayed
I'd be interested in further comments on Keeran and Kenny's "Socialism Betrayed." I'm not sure what to think. They put a lot of emphasis on the destructive role of the black market, but it's not clear what they propose should have been done about it. (They do more or less make the claim that Andropov was on the right path, but that everything was later taken too far by Gorbachev's "reforms" and the pace of the changes outstripped themselves, etc.) Should the black market have simply been repressed? But how do you actually do that? Part of their explanation is also that the consumer propaganda from the West created consumer needs that had to be met by the black market -- and they seem to imply that tighter controls over media and publishing should have been kept and strengthened. Comment "Socialism Betrayed - Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union" by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny is worth owning and reading several times. On a scale of 1 - 10 . . . I would rate it 7.5. The 2.5 which prevents it from being a "10" . . . are highly theoretical and . . . has to do with the specific ideology and politics of the authors. Nevertheless, I would suggest the book to anyone seeking a general view "of what happened" ushering in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why do communists fight over questions of extensive versus intensive development and financial markets as regulators of production? To answer the question one has to develop an understanding of the mechanics of industrial production and the shape of reproduction as determined by different property relations. Is central planning the essence of industrial socialism and why is it necessary to speak of industrial socialism and not simply socialism? Central planning is a method of "something else" and not . . . "the something else." If Central planning is the method of something else then we have to define the "something else." First of all central planning means the allocation of resources and labor power towards economic development and expansion . . . and this exists not as an abstraction . . . but in relationship to planning on the basis of property rights. Individuals owning the power of capital or capitalism and endowed with the legal right to invest and organized the material power of production gives a specific shape to how reproduction takes place and on what basis. The "basis" is "what is profitable to me as an individual corporate entity" and this individualism becomes the driving feature of a system of reproduction. Individuals owning the power of capital as factories and having the social power - authority, to hire labor power and put it to work, or accumulate the power of money as property can reinvest this money into production and create a distinct shape of the cycles of reproduction. What is fundamental to socialism and most certainly industrial socialism is the property relations or the property rights of individuals . . . acting and behaving as individuals. Property relations does not mean "workers control." Property relations or property rights refer to the rights of individual members of society in relationship to the factors of production. Property rights under Soviet industrial socialism meant that individuals did not have the legal right to convert money possession or governmental authority into individual ownership of the means of production . . . especially in the industrial infrastructure. Individual ownership of means of production imparts an individual will to reproduction that comes into conflict with other individual wills as competition over market shares. In Marx "Critique of the Gotha Program" he makes this fairly clear and when speaking of the transition to a communist society, states that nothing but means of consumption can pass into the hands of individuals. According to the Communists in the Soviet Union - writing during the early 1960s, what you had in the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev, was the development of a caricature of the bourgeoisie . . . these are their exact words . . . and not simply a "petty bourgeoisie." Keeran and Kenny's insights and articulation of the extensive and intensive development of the second economy (black market) is extremely insightful and important and explains how "the caricature of the bourgeoisie" was able to usher in the counter revolution and abolish public property in the industrial infrastructure and change the cycle of reproduction. What is the origin of this "caricature of the bourgeoisie" . . . according to the Soviet communist? This "caricature of the bourgeoisie" is not a petty bourgeoisie as I understand the meaning of the term or "small scale producer" laboring in the second economy but an excretion of the state . . . while the low scale producer in the second economy is an _expression_ of shortage and the value relationship in any industrial society. Then it is helpful that one has an
Re: Venture Communism
In a message dated 7/17/2004 11:53:55 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I see, so what do you suggest workers do in the mean time, give up? Be happy working for capitalists and having no stake? Starve? Or should we grab a molitov cocktail and hit the streets immediately to die for your revolution? Perhaps we should just read about history and do nothing at all? Venture Communism is not a political system, as I've explained, it is a (emerging) plan for starting new organizations, organizations that are Equitable and democratic. Despite your unexplained insistence to the contrary, I believe than new organizations can replace old organizations and change the world. Regards, Dmytri. Reply In my first reply . . . I believe in my heart a valid question was asked: "If American history is to be used as a framework one must ask why the slave oligarchy refused the offer to be compensated - bought out, to end slavery. Why did the slave oligarchy refuse to be bought out as a transition program to end slavery? " We are dealing with cold economic logic and human beings who conceived the world a certain way and earnestly believe that we have come to the end of human history when one challenges their right to be ruling class. In theory we cannot buy back the productive forces because they operate on the basis of being put to work . . . on the basis . . . ofpaying the workers a sum total that is smaller than what the owners realized as profits in the process of buying and selling. In other words our collective wages are not greater than that portion of capital the bourgeoisie appropriates for itself as a class. Individual capitalist do not have to be bought out and a handful goes over to the revolutionary upsurge of the people. Yes, . . . we fight tooth and nail for socially responsible investments. It is not fair to answer a critique on the basis of someone's "dying for an individuals social revolution," because many folks have thought these question out for many decades. Or should we grab a Molotov cocktail and hit the streets immediately to die for your revolution? As a statement of fact the Molotov cocktail is not historically obsolete. Does it not depend on terrain and conditions of warfare? It is not "my" revolution or this guys or girls revolution . . . but social revolution that can only be resolved by a political transition to something we like and agree with . . . in general. OK where do I throw my little dough to prove that we will not and cannot buy out a class or improve the lot of the American people through capitalistic market financial schemes. The most we do is improve the lot of the individual investor . . . with thoughtful investments. Exchange of labor schemes do not work in a system of private ownership of the material power of production. "Do not work" means that the bottom 30% of American society cannot be help by investment in the financial markets. You suggest creating another - alternative . . . infrastructure where the labor of real human beings can be exchanged and converted on the market into products of consumption. Great. The plan need a hell of a lot of development. I got five on it" . . . and I do not mean $5. Melvin P.
Re: Mark Jones archive
In a message dated 7/15/2004 2:54:17 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Now that I have a bit less family and work pressure on me, I am gettingback to a project I began about a year ago. I am pulling together MarkJones's writings on the Internet, plus some written material that I havescanned in.This is the first installment:http://www.marxmail.org/mark_jones_archive.htm Comment Thanks. Melvin P.
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
In a message dated 7/14/2004 9:03:49 AM Central Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Modern industry never views or treats the existing form of a
production process as the definitive one. Its technical basis is
therefore revolutionary, whereas all earlier modes of production were
essentially conservative.29 By means of machinery, chemical processes
and other methods, it is continually transforming not only the
technical basis of production but also the functions of the worker
and the social combinations of the labour-process. At the same time,
it thereby also revolutionises the division of labour within society,
and incessantly throws masses of capital and of workers from one
branch of production to another. Thus large-scale industry, by its
very nature, necessitates variation of labour, fluidity of functions,
and mobility of the worker in all directions. But on the other
hand, in its capitalist form, it reproduces the old division of
labour with its ossified
particularities.
Comment
"Modern
industry. . .technical basis is therefore revolutionary . . . By
means of machinery, chemical processes and other methods, it is continually
transforming . . . the functions of the worker and the social combinations of
the labour-process.. .Thus large-scale industry, by its very nature,
necessitates variation of labour, fluidity of functions, and mobility of the
worker in all directions. But on the other hand, in its capitalist form,
it reproduces the old division of labour with its ossified
particularities."
"In its capitalist form" . . . begs the question . . . exactly or
specifically what is in its capitalist form? Engels call capitalist production a
"social form" of something. ("capitalist production . . . clearly proves that
this social form was necessary to develop the productive forces of society.)
Answer: the industrial system.
Large scale industry or the industrial system - in its capitalist form
or/and in its Soviet form, evolves and expands extensively and intensively, with
both forms of this process passing the one into the other. Extensively as a
world changing process in relationship to feudal economic and social relations .
. . and this extensively development that replaces the feudal system is
itself a certain intensive implementation and expansion of the technical
properties that distinguish large scale industry from manufacture. The
"internal" intensive development of particular branches of the industrial system
occurs on the basis of continually revolutionizing the technologically regime.
Revolutionizing the technological regime . . . as intensive development . . .
drive extensive expansion as a given state of technology is applied that alters
and expands all the pathways of the industrial system.
Each quantitative expansion of the industrial system further alter the form
of the working class and all classes of the industrial system . . . as the
system evolves on the basis of it extensive and intensive development. The
revolution in the technological regime ("technical basis is therefore
revolutionary") begins the leap from industrial society to post industrial
society "in its capitalist form."
It is not that Marx ignores the subjective or human quality that makes
society . . . a collection of human beings organized a certain way. Rather . . .
his argument is what drives history as qualitative leaps in development and
production. The technical basis is mobile - revolutionary, in relationship to
the social relations existing as a given was people are organized as
implementation of production.
Engles state:
"But capital does not merely reproduce itself: it is continually increased
and multiplied--andthereby its power over the propertyless class of workers.
And just as ititself is reproduced on an ever greater scale, so the modern
capitalist modeof production reproduces the class of propertyless workers
also on an evergreater scale, in even greater numbers. "...Accumulation of
capitalreproduces the capital-relation on a progressive scale, more
capitalists orlarger capitalists at this pole, more wage-workers at that
Accumulationof capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat"
Where do these people come from that are being converted into and
reproduced as property less proletarians? "(T)he modern capitalist mode of
production reproduces the class of propertyless workers also on an ever greater
scale."
Here is the theory problem or finding our place and moment in history. The
industrial system fundamentally converted the world and . . . radically
eliminated the last vestiges of feudal economic and social relations as the
result of the Second World Imperial War . . . along with destroying the
closed colonial system. The closed colonial system itself was a certain
_expression_ of the extensive development of the industrial system - with the
property relations
Re: The End Of Management?
In a message dated 7/14/2004 2:21:54 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: TIME.com: The End Of Management? -- Jul. 12, 2004 http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/article/0,9171,1101040712-660965,00.html The article states: The end of management just might look something like this. You show up for work, boot up your computer and log onto your company's Intranet to make a few trades before getting down to work. You see how your stocks did the day before and then execute a few new orders. You think your company should step up production next month, and you trade on that thought. Comment Industrial management and the industrial bureaucracy that permeates society is undergoing revolution as we pass deeper into the post industrial era. Industrial management and the industrial bureaucracy are not two separate categories of the economy or forms of organization of the industrial infrastructure and superstructure but interpenetrate one another. The above writer conceives the revolution in the technological regime and its material impact on who people are organized to utilize the material power of production from the standpoint of the interaction of the individual with financial - capital, markets. The layers of Industrial management and the industrial bureaucracy . . . which were once graphically illustrated by the General Motors building in Detroit (with its famous 14 floors of industrial management) and the management style of Alfred Sloan has gone the way of all flesh. Managing the flow of labor and resources through financial markets is a vision limited to the bourgeois property relations in my opinion. Tracking the moment of labor and resources through the prism of gambling in the market for financial reward is the vision of the bourgeoisie for post industrial society. This gambling in the financial market is not a thing in itself . . . non is compensation for excellence a bad word. Rather the larger question is who the new technology, labor and resources are to be deployed and on whose behalf as a property relations. Management as administration has no end . . . in human history . . . but management as administration is profoundly riveted to a distinct stage of development of the productivity forces . . . the system of communications and distributionand the property relations within. Here is what is missing. Yes, . . . the management system is undergoing revolutionary change and this changes expresses revolution in the mode of production on which sits the previous and pre existing management system. The previous and preexisting management system is part of the industrial mode of production . . . which seems not to be understood. I have some practical experience with this . . . Especially when the auto industry in American attempted to assimilate the advance production and management system of Japan . . . the Just In Time system and its corresponding management structure. This is not an abstract question but has profound theory implications that cannot be answered on the basis of ideology and democratic proclamations and protestations. Melvin P.
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
A spectre is haunting the developed world - the spectre of the Limits to Growth. All the makers of accepted opinion have combined to exorcise this spectre: market analysts, editorialists, news anchors, economists. But the spectre remains as the economy's problems grow. We are now about to enter the third year of faltering growth. Unemployment has risen one million. The information technology bubble has burst. Corporate profits have plunged. Stock prices and interest rates have declined, and prices at the producer level are stagnant or falling. Is this just another business cycle bottom or something more significant? Growth is essential for both labor and capital. In developed economies job growth no longer results from expanding markets. Quite the contrary: from 1992-2001, industrial production rose 40.1 percent while manufacturing employment fell from 18.1 million to 17.7 million. This is the other side of "increasing productivity". Increasingly today, corporations raise their profits through lower costs-reduced labor but also the "synergies" resulting from industry consolidation that permits the elimination of duplicate activities such as advertising, accounting, and finance. All of these developments eliminated jobs, but the economy was spared the problem of rising unemployment by an offsetting rise in employment in the services sector. The growth in this sector was essential for continued job growth overall. Growth is equally essential for capital. Fundamentally, capital is resources not needed for current consumption. The poorest classes have no capital, but the wealthy classes have a great deal. This capital has one goal: that goal is to multiply itself. In a healthy economy there are many opportunities to invest capital in ways that increase wealth and at the same time multiply capital itself. In a former age that meant building railroads, cities, factories, power sources, etc. More recently, it has meant a huge outpouring of consumer goods, culminating in the communications and computer technology termed "the new economy". As the 20th century closed, it became ever more difficult to find productive uses for capital. Mature industries financed over 75 percent of their investment from internal sources. Overseas investment proved in many countries to be a losing venture because those countries could not earn the money in a competitive world economy needed to repay the money they borrowed. The one sector that was growing - information technology - was inundated with "venture capital" only to end in a bubble that burst with the loss of $ billions of that capital. The ef- fects of this collapse are still unfolding. http://www.comw.org/poc/0210.htm
Re: Klebnikov
In a message dated 7/11/2004 1:20:45 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It's a useful corollorary (?) of social network theory that almost all badlads are joined up together, via a smallish number of "connected node"individuals. The North Korean government's forged $100 bills ended up financing the ecstasy trade in Birmingham, via the Libyans, the mafiya and the Official (Maoist) IRA.dd Comment Explain the context of "bad" and why one would link the government of North Korea with the Mafia . . . although I have no moral gripe with counterfeit money. It is my understanding the biggest counterfeiter of currency is the world today is the US government. Is not fiat money counterfeit by definition? Why is this important or rather what is the meaning? I have no principle opposition to counterfeiting . . . only bourgeois property. Do you mean Birmingham in Alabama or England? Just curious. Does it follow that without the North Korea government there would be no ecstasy trade in Birmingham? If not . . . what is the point of this? Dope as consumption always drives private accumulation of capital . . . going back to the evolution of spices and sugar as items of trade. Molasses . . . liquor and opium came later . . . but its all dope . . . converted into a "need" diving private accumulation. Is this a moral position on how the IRA raises money? Is it better to rob banks . . . cheat the tax man . . . or put a few products in ones purse while shopping? I am all ears. Melvin P.
Re: Klebnikov
In a message dated 7/11/2004 3:13:15 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Cynical jaded New Yorker wants to know: When you lend someone counterfeit money, are you still doing that person a good turn? Should expect repayment, with interest? In real or counterfeit money? Comment Actually a friend of mine . . . a comrade . . . did a 5 to 10 year bit in Mississippi for counterfit 20s in the late mid 1980s. JHe got caught up in the "New African thing" and the "Black Liberation Army" and literally named his first born male SinQ. I was like . . . "damn brother . . . don't you think you carrying this thing a little to far?" Counterfeitwas never my thing as such and I figured if I could not win at the poker table . . . or . . . 7 days 12 hours was enough for me. Then the first wife worked at the old Cadillac plant on Michigan . . . not the Fisher plant on Fort Street. :-) Counterfeit and its exchange rates depends on what is being exchanged. And yes you can get interest on it in all the secondary markets. Counterfeit money is no different from when a section of Soviet society - the secondary economy, was using Marlboros as a medium of exchange. The only objection to counterfeit in the world exchange markets is the governments and banks that prevents its conversion. You can circulate counterfeit within a certain market framework forever and it develops its own logic. Is not the real question the counterfeit nature of fiat money versus species money? I read some book twenty years ago . . . that I honestly forget . . . that placed quarters as the most counterfeit money. The only problem anyone in society has with counterfeit money is the point at which its conversion is blocked. No one really cares. Ok . . . I stop by your house and we go get some beers and watch the Yankees on the big screen. I set the bar up a couple of times and lose the bet and set the bar up again paying with good counterfeit . . . that cannot be detected with a brown colored pen. (I did work in a Casino and they have tough procedures. Only governments detect good counterfeit produced by other governments with similar technology). The barkeep cannot detect the counterfeit and it completes a transaction. This counterfiet is passed - unknowing to the barkeep, as change for his customers. Really we talking about the value relationship. I cannot think of the book I read years ago but it had a story about a guy in the late 1890 who literally painted 50 dollar bills. When he got busted . . . the judge let him off over a dispute about who could issue legal tender. I hate it when I forget what I remember. Melvin P.
Re: Klebnikov
In a message dated 7/11/2004 5:02:03 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Galbraith referred to it as "the bezzle" -- the increment to national wealth during that period when the conman knows he has got the mark's money, but the mark is as yet not aware that he has been dispossessed of it ... Comment Hahahahahahahahah hahahahah hahahahahah hahahahah. One born everyday. I am glad I was not born today. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH Whatever the market will bear . . . bear. There was a period in the early 1980s when the government barred IBM from selling a copying machine it put on the market because of its high quality reproduction capacity and color quality that allowed it to copy and reproduced money at a scale that the average merchant could not detect. I sued to follow these things coming up in the propaganda apparatus and all. Counterfeit is huge. Counterfeit insurance certificates was a boom industry when the first wave of "no fault insurance laws" were passed in the late 1970s. Then there are the counterfeit CDs and DVDs . . . most of which are not small producers but coming out of the back doors of the large manufacturers. I had a guy on the street offer me a copy of "I-Robot" last week for 10 bucks. If I had come counterfeit I would have paid for it on the spot.:-) Enough . . .hahahahahahahahhahahaha. The bourgeoisie is all screwed up . . .man . . . and cannot get out of this one alive. Melvin P. Melvin P.
Re: counterfeit currency
In a message dated 7/11/2004 5:48:40 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It is my understanding the biggest counterfeiter of currency is the world today is the US government. Is not fiat money counterfeit by definition? no. in a system of fiat money, the state defines what's counterfeit and what's not. If you disagree, they've got more guns than you. Comment You are Correct. Trying to be clever never works . . . especially when you have very few guns . . . or power. :-( Melvin P. PS. Does this mean to get rid of my counterfeit that works?
Re: Fw: [stop-imf] Africa should not pay its debts - Jeffrey Sachs
In a message dated 7/10/2004 12:27:28 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sachs has always been basically a man of the left, and has been saying sensible things about sovereign default fo longer than anyone else I can remember (including me and Richard Portes). Perhaps the whole Harvard Institute thing should be viewed by revisionist historians as a brief aberration in the career of a basically good bloke. dd Comment There is some basic economic common sense involved in exchange and debt. As long as I owe the banks and financial institutions $50,000 and a house mortgage I have a problem . . . a debt problem. When the banks allow me to run my debt up to $1,000,000 - and I am making ever humanly possible effort to attain this goal ... they have the problem. $50K . . . my problem . . . $1m . . . the banks problem. And I have forbidden the wife from us ever discussing insurance to cover our debt. Africa cannot pay its debt and the Russians are stopping payments here and there. Putin is burning the midnight oil . . . and the shift is going to hit the fan. What is taking place is the first wave of political assertions of the real social revolution. Sorry if it does not conform to the text in ones head. Melvin P.
Re: Fw: [stop-imf] Africa should not pay its debts - Jeffrey Sachs
In a message dated 7/10/2004 1:11:33 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Really? That's quite an aberration-- participating in the dismantling ofthe Russian Revolution, transforming the remnants of socialized propertyinto private fortunes. And now Sachs got religion? Yeah right, him andO'Neil. Save us from the basically good blokes and we can handle the rest. Comment Correct again . . . to suggest that my debt be suspended because I have proven that I cannot and will not pay it is hardly radical . . . which was my real point. Africa really does not have a debt problem . . . the financial institutions - capital,have a debt problem. This "thing" about the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation is . . . interesting. We are facing perhaps the greatest polarization between wealth and poverty in human history as the absolute _expression_ of the absoluteness of capital accumulation . . . in America . . . not overseas or somewhere else and apparently this is not understood. The industrial reserve army of unemployed belongs to another period of history - when the industrial system is in ascendency and the population is being converted into modern proletarians. The population of America is not being converted into modern proletarians but facing an absolute reduction in real wages that has been taking place for a solid thirty years. They were already proletarians. Perhaps it will take another ten years or so to understand that we are dealing with a different set of factors generated as the absolute _expression_ of the absoluteness of capital accumulation in America . . . not overseas or somewhere else. Seems to me that two sets of factors obscure what should be obvious. Monetary policy as US dominated exchange and debt structure . . . the printing of worthless money and the low wage structure in areas like China that allows that labor embodied in their commodities to fall faster than the real wages of the American consumer. This is not to say . . . it is China's fault . . . but rather the absolute _expression_ of the absoluteness of capital accumulation. And of course the low wages of the workers in China do not appear in the pay envelop of the American workers. What the American workers get is Wal Mart while their wages drift to the bottom or towards zero and not away from zero. And yes . . . China is currently hitting the wall as the absolute _expression_ of the absoluteness of capital accumulation . . . not the scrabble for "natural resources" and population matters. Securing oil reserves will save no one . . . which is why Putin is burning the midnight oil. Nothing short of proletarian revolution in Russiapromises even a glimmer of hope no matter how many "gangster capitalists "Putin steps on. I simply enjoy seeing capitalists jailed under any pretext. Why we always have to be the only ones in jail . . . although I enjoy your jail house rap. Billionaires in Russia . . . China . . . America is of course the absolute _expression_ of the absoluteness of capital accumulation . . . while the soup kitchens grow in America, and theseare working families . . . not the industrial army of reserve of one hundred . . . no . . . fifty . . . years ago. Social revolution does not require our working class to be reduced to the level of the India peasant of the past. "What is taking place is the first wave of political assertions of the real social revolution," means the bourgeoisie response to debt. Liquidating debt means you have a chance to accumulate it again . . . as the absolute . . . . Melvin P
Re: An editorial worth repeating
In a message dated 7/9/2004 1:53:58 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That reminds me. I've been meaning to research how Hitler came to power.You have to remember that the German SP was the ABB of its day, exceptthat it was ABH instead. They kept backing lesser evils until they gotthe most evil lesser evil in Hindenberg who virtually turned over thepower to Hitler once in power. With Hitler's rise, you got WWII and the extermination of the Jews.Today, it won't be anything that dramatic unless some crazed terroristgets a hold of a nuclear device and sets it off in Soho. Goodbye, Starbucks. COmment What a bizarre revision of world history. With German fascism and its aftermathyou first and foremost had 22 million Soviets dead and 40 million wounded. Billions in property destroyed and Europa in ruins. This does not mean six million Jews were not killed but reveals ones point of view. Is 20 million plus 40 million . . . plus Europe in ruinsmore than six million? How bizarre. Melvin P.
Re: China and the American consumer
In a message dated 7/4/2004 1:13:56 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The article itself, like those articles about 20 years ago, have a lot ofthe old "yellow peril" theme.The Chinese economy is about as uneven, ragged, stumbling as you can get and still be upright. Agriculture has been decimated-- and there is no contradiction between internal decimation and increased exports, in fact as the same past 20 years have shown, the two go hand in hand. Comment Your comments on China are very considerate and takes into account the configuration of the on going revolutionary process in that country. Those of us in the most imperial of all imperial countries must always be careful and if we error it is better to error on the side of caution. What is called the "Chinese Revolution" is in my opinion, actually the revolutionary process in China. I am prohibited from criticizing the "Chinese Revolution" but can comment on the revolutionary process in China. The modern revolution in China began around 1811 and has gone through extraordinary twists and turns that would baffle any economist or so-called political Marxists. What is not baffling is the current generation of China produced automobiles and vehicles poised to hit the American market with a price range between $9,000 and $15,000. (USA Today June 1, 2004 - Inexpensive Chinese Cars On Way Soon). We are talking not just about foreign investment as an abstraction but the value system and making profits the old bourgeois way or the China connection and material action in the world market. If you are behind the curve of industrial development then you must trade to realize a technological transfer and adhere to the world historic transition from agricultural relations to industrial relations of production - with the property relations within. I'll buy one of these vehicles in 36 months after I pay off the two vehicles the banks and finance companies allow me to drive. I believe you are correct to point out the enormous difference in economic development in the various regions of China. Back when I was still employed with Chrysler and later after its acquisition by Daimler Benz, it was rather simple to keep up with certain events in economic China. Chrysler was one of the first large industrial American companies to go into China building Jeep. Then . . . later . . . with Daimler at the helm I was informed through their excellent quarterly magazine - and I mean excellent, that Guzodong Province, had the largest concentration of Mercedes Benz buyers and owners on earth. Sidenote: It is not generally understood about the role Jergen Schempp played in the freeing of Nelson Mandela and why several years ago DamilerChrysler erected a new public school in the areas of Nelson's birth. Or the special relationship DaimlerChrysler has with the South African government to this very day. The quarterly journal of DaimlerChrysler is really excellent and I tossed them before moving to Texas. (There were always the stories of the smuggle of Mercedes by the PLA - Peoples Liberation Army apparatus and dragging vehicles through the water in large condom like sacks . . . and the backdoor building of Jeeps would be spoken about by the upper echelon of the corporation. Reminds me of a young American Republic stealing British technology). What is complicated about the revolution in China is not the existence of the bourgeois property relations and old fashion bourgeois profits, but the political basis of the so-called Chinese Revolution. China has the oldest existing continuous culture on earth - the third planet from the sun. Intensely proud and patriotic, they have been humiliated for at least 150 years by "foreign barbarians." The communists, to succeed had to take serious account of the national pride and striving of the people of China for independence, in a way not UN-similar to how we should understand the vision of 1776 and why it continues to inspire a vast segment of the American people. The communists in China were ideological communist or people who believed in communism because you cannot build communism on the basis of an agricultural society. Taking into account where they where in history, Chairman Mao summed up his victory in the war for national liberation by simple stating "China has stood up." Now the communist were successful for a combination of reasons and results of the Second World Imperial War . . . but their slogans was for a "New Democracy," redistribution of the land, a guarantee of food for all or food for no one - and most importantly, the rebirth of China. China began industrialization of her could - after 1949, based on the strength of the USSR and this was short lived due to what became called the Sino-Soviet split. Newly independent China could not accept what it considered appeasement with US imperialism by the regime of Nikita
Re: JULY 4, the Vision of Marx and the Theory of the American Revolution -2
The Revolution of 1776 was big by any estimate. The Revolution of 1776 ushered in something new in human history . . . a whole new epoch of political revolution under the banner of national liberation. National liberation meant more than "me and my country" being liberated from "you and your country" because it happened in a very distinct economic and social context. 1776 was big. 1776 birthed what would be called the national liberation movement and this process of national liberation went on for another two hundred years. It reached its peak with the tidal waves ofnational liberation uprisings between 1940s through 1970s. It should come as no surprise than many Americans have always supported national liberation throughout the world as a lofty and noble goal and this includedAmerican resistance to the reckless and criminal war against the Vietnamese. More complicated reasons are involved in why a section of our bourgeoisie has always fought against the closed colonial system that prevented their investment of finance into all areas of the world. Nevertheless, 1776 inspired a vision because it was a new thing in history. The French bourgeoisie and the British bourgeoisie had a revolution to free themselves from the feudal estate system and its political restraints that were based on serf and master and a system of privilege when you did not have to proceed anything . . . but rather has force and connections with owners of landed property. America was different. America was founded as a capitalist colony. This meant that it was owned by England and its supreme purpose in life was to ship goods and resources back to the mother country - the Crown. For the first time in history a revolutionary colonial revolt was bound up with the revolution against feudalism, because the American bourgeoisie wanted freedom from feudal England. The United States is perhaps the only country in the world, most certainly in the Western Hemisphere, that was never tainted with feudal economic relations. Canada was, Mexico was and everything else south of the border was tainted. To say the revolution of 1776 was a national democratic revolution is not enough. To say there was not feudal economic relations is not enough. 1776 was an agrarian bourgeois democratic revolution and all the agrarian classes more than less are destined to disintegrate in the face of the advance of modern industrial. The vision of 1776 could only be advanced when the foundation for the industrial bourgeoisie had been laid and they assumed power. People fight for ideas. People fight for their vision even when they cannot achieve their vision. Each time they gain a little bit more as society develops the economic legs to make a noble vision attainable. As technology develops and the mighty forces of production expands a new generation recast the old vision in their image based on what they conceive as possible. The clearest thinking people in 1776 understood that unless national liberation emancipated the slaves they would have to fight the revolution over again to achieve the vision put forth. George Washington was the largest slave holder at the time and Jefferson ... well we know his history and the difference between his vision and real life as a slave master. In this sense, the Civil War was a continuation of 1776. In the same sense we can see in the growing revolution today that the subjective side of the social process - how people actually think things out, is inexplicably connected to the vision proclaimed by the Civil War or the "Second Edition" of the American revolution. This vision could not and was not achieved. The vision was mass democracy or a nation - not a union of people or distinct ethnic groups, conceived in liberty and justice for all. What is democracy? Democracy is the rule of the people and such rule must rest upon the ability of the people to choice freely. That, in turn means independence or individual freedom. Independence and individual freedom rests upon a person's secure access and control over the necessities of life. If I depend on someone else for food, shelter and clothing, then I am a person's slave. If I am compelled to do that person's bidding to secure the necessities of life, then I am that person slave no matter how democratic and subtle the command is. The ideas of Jefferson democracy rest on this understanding. Hence, the demand for independence provided by the small family farm and land ownership. The Revolution did not achieve Jeffersonian democracy, nor did the Civil War. History seems to keep repeating itself on a higher and spiraling level and the social movements keep demanding the same thing under changing conditions and each time the demands of the vision of 1776 advances the revolutionary process. In this sense there is a chain of demands from one revolution to the next, culminating in the outbreak of warfare.
Re: JULY 4 and the Vision of Marx
Karl Marx was specific concerning his contribution to economic thought, social theory and why social and political revolution takes place in the life of society. Marx and Engels spent an inordinate amount of time and writing riveted to changes in the economic life of society or the material power of the forces - tools, instruments, machines, energy source, human labor, used for production. Their basic proposition - which constituted a revolution in how we think things out concerning society changes, is that social revolution comes about as a result of the spontaneous development of the means of production and distribution and communications is connected to production as a part of economic life. Changes in the economybrings abouta spontaneous movement for reform because the way we produce has been altered. For example, as the industrial process called Fordism developed - assembly line production on a mass scale, industries began to change how people were grouped together in production and the scale in which people were brought under one roof. Another side of this change was the development of a spontaneous movement for labor unions. Labor unions had already existed but what now was fought for was an industrial form of unionsinstead of the old union of the highly skilled workers that grew out of a different system of production technique. Quantitative changes in the material power of production causes reform movements or movements to reformulate relations in society to conform to the new changes. When eleven million sharecroppers were tractor off the land and agriculture underwent mechanization, this economic impulse created a movement to reform the social structures of society to allow these sharecroppers to pass into the industrial infrastructure and become industrial workers. Jim Crow prevented this and the age old battle of the black against Jim Crow acquired economic legs to stand upon. A complex social struggle took place involving all classes, social groups and political organizations.Jim Crow was shattered and overcome as the result of the striving of millions of people, with competing and overlapping economic- class, interest. The period of industrial unionism and its ascendency and then the Civil Rights Movements were magnificent social movements for reform seeking to realize the revolutionary vision of 1776 and 1865. Revolution is a complicated process and its would seem that each revolution creates the conditions for the next. The vision of 1776 was not realized and became shipwrecked on the rock of slavery and genocide. The cause of in the Revolutionary War was for national independence from the Crown. The vision was stated in the Declaration of Independence and continues to inspire broad segments of the diverse peoples of America and indeed the world. The vision was noble but flawed because it was based on the genocide of a people - the Indian, and the institution of slavery was not abolished. Since the vision was not fulfilled another revolution became inevitable. The cause of one revolution lay the foundation for the next and the human actors in the drama of society fight these things out based on a complex of factors related to . . . "how complete" . . . or how much of the vision of the revolution did we achieve? The cause in the Civil War was preservation of the Union and Southern slavery as a social and economic institution, stood in the way.States left the Union in order to maintain a form of ancient democracy founded on slavery and the cries of the slave maters for self determination fell on deaf ears because their cause was not honorable. Marxists look at economic relations as a framework of events. Preservation of the Union implicitly meant under the leadership of the representatives of the advancing industrial society . . . in the North. The Civil War produced two visions about American society. Slavery versus industrial democracy, with the vision of the slave holders being the oldest, because America had evolved as a Southern country in its economic and social structures. Old does not necessarily mean better. Lincoln stated the vision as a nation - not a union, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and slavery stood in the way of this vision with arms. They were defeated and their economic system of slavery destroyed. This was the right thing to do. Men went to their grave singing, "he died to make men Holy let us die to make them free" and the cause of the slave oligarchy was lost forever. The vision of 1776 was advanced another rung on the historical ladder. Lincoln'svision was most honorable , , , but would not acquire its economic legs to stand upon for decades to come. Lincoln's vision could not and did not achieve its victory as the result of the "bloody conflict" for a complex of reasons of which mean and women influence and make
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
In a message dated 7/2/2004 12:40:40 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We were just discussing that capitalism is theft, appropriation of value, etc. Now, how did this play out at the concert? There were about 18,000 tickets sold. Let's conservatively say at an average price of $150, so there was a gross of $2,700,000 for one night's work. The Hollywood Bowl got a leasing fee. The crew was paid. Simon and Garfunkel either received a very hefty fee or a piece of the gate shared with the promoter. Now, from a Marxist perspective, what were the class relations at play? Whose labor created what value? Who exploited who? How would it work in PEN-Ltopia? Comment Capitalism in its evolution from the prrevious economic and social order is birthed drench in blood, murder and theft. Capitalism means the private ownership of capital as means of production. Means of production are not never abstract and what is being referenced is the growth and expansion of the industrial system with the bourgeois property relations within. The industrial system with the bourgeois property relations within or in short speak, capitalism evolved on the basis of the slave trade and the expansion of heavy manufacture which made "modern" ship construction possible and the "mass production" of fire arms, steel and all the ingredients of sea travel and conquest. The development of navigation and science in general is given an impetus. The transition in the primary form of wealth from land to gold gave further impetus to the conquest of the Americas and theft of gold from the native populations. The industrial revolution basically began with the landing of Europeans in the Americas and its infrastructure basis took shape on the basis of the slave trade, as opposed to an abstract trafficking in black skin. War generally involves theft, plunder, rape and conquest. After the bourgeois property relations hasstood on its feet and transformed the old world to that of the new . . . industrial society . . . huge segments of the population have been converted into proletarians. The exploitation of the workers refers to the expropriation of the products of the workers and paying them as an aggregate a sum that is less than the prodeucts will fetch in the market. This surplus product or rather this surplus value is appropraited by the individual owners of productive forces and he may dispose of this surplus anyway he chooses. A portion of this surplus value will find its way back into production as each individual owners fights to expand his share ofwhat is in fact, an expandingsocietal value. This competition between individual owners of capital produces a series of economic and social consequences. The form of individual property ownership does not stand still. Today in the American union we have an economic and social system that allows individuals in possession of capital -- money, to be regarded as capitalist or treated as capitalist on the basis of wealth. One does not have to individually own a factory or the local pizza joint to be treated and regarded as a capitalists. Inherited wealth works just fine. However, the reality of private ownership is expressed as a bourgeois property relation on the basis by which products are created, bought and sold, the basis of their distribution and the circuit logic of reproduction as it is driven by competition between capital. Soviet industrial socialism most certainly did not pay the workers the full value of their labor, or rather an amount in wages that was the equivalent of the products produces or there would be nothing left over for expansion of productive forces. Capitalism or the bourgeois property relations does not pay the workers the equivalent of the products produces or there would be nothing left over for expansion of productive forces. The fundamental economic and social logic difference between Soviet industrial socialism and capitalist America is that in the former, no amount of money possession count allow one to convert their money into ownership of means of production with the power to privately expropriate the products of workers and reinvest the surplus into privately own enterprises. The element of competition between capitals in the market was absent and this produces a different curve and character of production and reproduction. There was most certainly theft, bribery, swindling and cheating under industrial socialism. Nevertheless, the state was the property holder and enacted laws that prevented the individual from converting money possession into ownership of means of production. The issue becomes a little complicated because all value producing systems - industrial systems, have certain features in common no matter what the property relations. This is true as development took place on earth. There were concerts under Soviet socialism and probably
Re: Sowell and the big lie.
In a message dated 7/2/2004 5:22:00 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Traditional justice, at least in the American tradition, involves treating people the same, holding them to the same standards and having them play by the same rules. Cosmic justice tries to make their prospects equal. One example: this brouhaha about people in the third world making clothing and running shoes -- Kathie Lee and all that. What's being said is: Isn't it awful that these people have to work for such little rewards, while those back here who are selling the shoes are making such fabulous amounts of money? And that's certainly true. Comment This entire discussion concerning Mr. Sowell has an unreal quality that originates in his biases and dishonest assessment with the actual life of American society. Traditional justice in America have never involved treating everyone the same because America was more than less a Southern country in its genesis and this involved slavery and before that the genocidal extermination of the Indian. Slavery distorted everything that America - since 1776, professed it believed in. "Traditional Justice" dates from when and what is the empirical data concerning incarceration rates for the same crimes amongst different population groups? There is a point at which intellectual discourse becomes meaningless if one is not willing to confront the truth of our history and current reality. Enough of Mr. Sowell . . . and his obvious lies. Traditional American justice has never been treating everyone the same . . . and this includes in the ideological realm. Enough of this nonsense concerning Mr. Sowell. I would of course challenge him to debate amongst working class citizens and the lowest economic stratum of society and union members and give him the spanking he deserves . . . especially on issues like gun control and education. On affirmative action he would be run out of the podium and forced to understand the real meaning of traditional American justice. The poor would most certainly string him up and I would not object. Melvin P.
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
In a message dated 7/2/2004 5:54:30 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Let's imagine the crew does all their work. They set up the special sound and light systems, etc. However, Simon and Garfunkel get into a fight and refuse to perform, so the show is cancelled and all ticket are refunded. The next night, Simon and Garfunkel reunite. The crew, pissed off, refuses to do any work. So Simon and Garfunkel go on stage, Simon plugs his guitar into the existent sound system, and notwithstanding the lack of special lighting, a backup band, etc., the two of them perform for 18,000 people who pay $2.7 million.I am not sure what my questions are. In what sense is the crew producing surplus value? What value did they produce on night one? What exactly is the value that is being created? Isn't all the value, for all practical purposes, being created by Simon and Garfunkel? Isn't the crews' value purely contextual and unrelated to their labor per se? Comment I assume your question is honest. "So Simon and Garfunkel go on stage, Simon plugs his guitar into the existent sound system, . . .the two of them perform . . ." The existing sound system is a given state of technology and labor that exist as the infrastructure of the arena or there would be nothing to plug into. We can say that this preexisting infrastructure is so much dead labor . . . but it once was the work and effort of real human beings and a real technology. This dead labor - the infrastructure that Simon and Garfunkel are plugging into has been factored into the rent of the stadium. Dead labor is excited to life by living labor in the process that makes money. Even without special lighting they are standing on a stage - platform, that is the result of human labor and technology and the arena has seats that is the result of human labor and technology and represents what might be called "constant capital" or represents the results of labor that can be called "dead labor." This dead labor is excited to life by human activity or the people paying their money, sitting in the seats, the artists plugging into the sound system and entertaining. What is so difficult about this? Someone is running the lighting so that the people can see and they are going to be paid. Someone is selling hot dogs and beer and the people performing the administration of these things are being paid wages. The people who clean the bathrooms are being paid wages that comes out of the yearly revenues of the arena. The same applies to the parking attendants, the guards and folks punching your ticket and the ushers escorting one to their seats. This is not Marxism but elementary common economic sense. There is an unreal element to this entire conversation and far to many individually conceived ideas are attributed to Marx. Simon and Garfunkel get paid and their pay may come from a sponsor - Chrysler, and a thousand tickets as a block may have been purchased by the Miller Brewing Company or a dozen different scenarios. When Committeeman I would always run into convert ticket from vendors, hats, ink pens, calendars and an assortment of things that represented profit or surplus value to the producer. The system or economy is a totality and not one group of guys that may or may not work on any given Sunday. There is a combination of dead and living labor in everything . . . and one can always loss in the market and go out of business. Should we not think things out a little more rather than point an accusing finger at Marx . . . especially if one has not gotten further than Marxism 101? The thing I enjoyed about negotiating with the company at the upper levels is that they tend to be honest about cost and wages. They are very clear about dead labor - machinery and buildings, or fixed cost or constant capital. The categories swing back and forth because individuals want to call advertisement a fixed cost because it is indispensable to selling products. There are conceptional difference between real life definitions and Marx approach. Hell, if you call advertisement a fixed cost I am not going to argue with you from across the table. The finance guys are always screaming about cost because that is their jobs to stop the spending before the bottom of the bell curve becomes reality. In the auto industry more than half of management hate the finance guys and their perpetual cost cutting. Simon and Garfunkel plugged their equipment into something that already existed as part of the infrastructure and its cost is already factored into rent. However, all this dead shit takes real people . . . living human beings and living labor to exist to life as production of surplus value. ] Then you can go out of business. Melvin P.
Re: Sowell and the big lie.
In a message dated 7/2/2004 6:42:37 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As Godwin's Law approaches, I am done with the thread. David Shemano Comment I understand . . . but there are times I speak as an insurgent partisan. I would debate Mr. Sowell in front of the people who actually have elected me to offices . . . offices . . . on things like the military budget. I am not a liberal or leftist. I am a communist worker who is not ashamed of the path I traveled from Christ communism to modern communism. And more than capable of presenting coherent arguments to masses. I do not advocate dividing one fish amongst 40 people. I do believe and can convince the diverse peoples of American that the billions of dollars cycling through the circuit of speculation could be better spend on real things like health care, hot dogsand child care for the majority of the workers who happen to be women. If you cannot spend a billion dollars then I am not advocating taking anything from you but an abstraction that is wealth that means nothing to the multitude. I am not interested in expropriating ones rather large mansion . . . because I refuse to be responsible for the administrative task of a mansion. You hire a cook and have to feed him to cook the food that feeds you. And then the cook have to feed his or her family and the cycle deepens. You slowly discover that the people you have hired are actually making you work to pay them. OK! There is some deeper logic and morality to society that does not always match our noble aspirations and ideological proclamations. I'll eat Mr. Sowell alive and my brother would bury him for sure. Peace Melvin P.
Re: Sowell
The wonders of the Internet. Here is Sowell explaining his shift away from Marxism: http://www.salon.com/books/int/1999/11/10/sowell/index1.htmlDavid Shemano Comment Mr. Sowell is of course no one fool or "boy" . . . and most certainly not an Uncle Tom . . . a characterization that can mean virtually anything depending on usage. In Michigan one of the very first African Americans and Marxist to declare themselves for the Republican Party was a gentlemen named William Brown Jr. Bill and I were leaders in the "student movement" and member of the old League of Revolutionary Black Workers and later the Communist League. There was always "something conservative" about Bill and here is the dilemma. There was always "something conservative" about African Americans and a very large segment of them. What was trying to be conserved was the right to enter American society as equal and "have my own thing" or to "make my way in life" using all that is available in society. Bill's political evolution amazed none of us because we lived the polarization and shifting economic relations amongst the African American people as they sought to take their place in American society as equals to their respective counterparts. I became a union leader, whichis an economic category several steps above the most poverty stricken. This reality of the African American as a people has not been properly understood . . . or rather, interpreted very different. If one suspends the color factor and their subjective understanding of color for a moment the path of theAfrican American has not been unlike that of variousethnic groups in theireconomic and political strivings. The force that has held the African American people together as a people was not language, religion or other "ethnic" factors present as the quest of the Italian or Irish or Slavic workers in American history, but rather the violence of the whites, legal and extra legal measures and pressures in the context of about 90 years of segregation. Mr. Sowell understands this dynamic but he apparently understands as an outsider or one who has not studied the issue in its concreteness. For instance, in the interview pointed out above that is a radically incorrect notion of the meaning and origins of Jim Crow and segregation. For instance, segregation and what would become the Jim Crow laws have their origins in the North and not the South. There is a reason that Detroit exploded violently in 1967 . . . and the catalyst was in fact a crap game. The source material for this specific evolution is "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" by C. Vann Woodward. Dr. Claude Anderson - formerly of the Carter administration, traces the peculiar evolution of what became the black community in the North in his "Black Labor/White Wealth," and he uses as a line of delineation the freeing of 30,000 black slaves in the North in 1790 and their subsequent social and economic evolution. Mr. Sowell's evolution out of Marxism is neither surprising and questionable as an assertion. There are as many different brands of Marxism as their are Republicans, Democrats and General Motors divisions and make of automobiles. One can argue the meaning of "Marxism" and end up with a definition that proceeds from ones "brand identity." I most certainly did not and do not espouse what has been "brand Marxism" between the period of the 1960s and 1990s. Mr. Sowell is correct in my opinion concerning vouchers and most blacks I have lived with and represented in various organizations and the Union would immediately opt for the chance to send their children to better schools. This would not of course alleviate or radically alter the intractable social position of the most poverty stricken and destitute in our society and I refer to this segment of society as the "real proletariat" - the bottom stratum of society. I do not question the sincerity of Mr. Sowell's vision but rather all the assumptions about American society implicit in his vision. Blacks or rather African Americans or the descendants of slaves of the old plantation system manifest the intractable social position of not being slaves but rather being on the bottom of the social ladder. This is a different conceptual framework from Mr. Sowell. The bottom of the social ladder means the bottom of all the classes and class fragments that correspond with their counterpart amongst the Anglo American people . . . although cities like Atlanta Georgia continue to amaze me. The rebellion in Detroit - 1967, and why the catalyst was literally a crap game or "blind pig" or what we simply call "an after-hours joint" is not understood. This is actually an economic question and involves money. Who has money to frequent an after hours joint in the first place? Higher paid industrial workers, street entrepreneurs and hustlers . . . number men or those who booked the illegal numbers. The
Re: Sowell - follow up
In a message dated 7/1/2004 8:28:43 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mr. Sowell is of course no one fool or "boy" . . . and most certainly not an Uncle Tom . . . a characterization that can mean virtually anything depending on usage. Comment - Follow up There is a tendency to reframe from characterizing a leader such as Thomas Sowell because no one wants to be accused of "color blindness" or "insensitivity." I believe other more profound factors about American society are involved that has generally escaped the logic of the radicals and liberals . . . socialists and many communists. Perhaps a year or maybe 18 months ago I wrote a couple articles called the "Peculiar Phenomena called the Black Leader" or something to thataffect on Marxmail. If this articles was written today it would be different in exposition but not its underlying internal components. Mr. Sowell is not a black leader but a leader who happens to be black. On the other hadReverend Al Sharpton is a black leader being reinvented as a leader that happens to be black. Al Sharpton was literally won over and recruited by a politically and economically important segment of the African American intelligenica that persuaded him to take off his "jump suits" and get a hair cut. The Minister Louis Farrakhan is a black leader, while Julian Bond is a leader than happens to be black, although he began as a black leader in the Civil Rights Movement. The distinction is not an ideological category but the face of the shifting economic and political relations in the American Union. The "Peculiar Phenomena called the Black Leader" arose on the basis of the defeat of Reconstruction and its political aftermath. The first set of political leaders from the slave class after Emancipation were not black leaders but leaders who were black. One must read and understand the demands of that time for reform of the system. The broad institution of Jim Crow and segregation is the context for the emergence of the"Peculiar Phenomena called the Black Leader." The destruction of Jim Crow and segregation is removing the social framework of the "Peculiar Phenomena called the Black Leader." There will always be leaders that are black. My brother's story might illustrate why one needs a concrete understanding of the evolution of American society to understand the modern world of politics instead of ideological proclamations. My brother Maurice is an International Representative of the UAW - the autoworkers union. He is not a black leader but most certainly African American. He is perhaps the most knowledgeable and militant leader the UAW currently possesses and more than less "conservative," having taken part in negotiating contracts since 1984. Maurice began his unioncareer at the Detroit Universal Division of Chrysler in Dearborn Michigan - the home of Ford Rouge, and a city where blacks could not pass through unless they had a factory badge indicating what plant they workedat.Her won his first union position as Chief Steward around 1976 andat that time much of our battle was liberally against Ku Klux Klan type groups in the plant.He had been earlier fired - discharged, for fighting a white co worker and the union returned the other guy back to work but not Maurice. We had to go to the Civil Rights Commission to get his job back. Detroit Universal made drive shafts and when Chrysler failed to meet its obligation in the bond market - 1979, and was threatening to go belly up the plant was closed. I was tossed in the streets for four years - 1980-1984, and Maurice went to Sterling Stamping, the largest stamping facility in North America with a little over 5,000 workers. I was called back to work in January 1984, zoomed in from Chicagoand moved in with my brother. He decided to run for the office of Committeeman in the upcoming May election and we analyzed the political forces and determined he had a long shot and if we ran a well organized intense campaign he could take the office two years later. The district he was running in was composed of roughly 1700 people with a workforce 30% black. Two political caucuses controlled the Local Union 1264 and the Shop floor, not unlike the Republican and Democratic Party. Maurice worked the midnight shift and had a reputation for being knowledge about contract matters, fiercely loyal to his coworkers, a lover of overtime work and took crap from on one - black or white. As a young man he actually enjoyed fisticuffs and considers himself a capitalist minded worker. Working midnight's means one has an opportunity to mingle with the workers on days and afternoons because shifts overlap so everyone knew him and the black workers loved him deeply for his iron will and ability to get things done. Real leaders get things done. As preparation for his election, which involves lots of leaflets and propaganda, he demanded that I read and
