[Marxism] Trump Broadens his base

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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"Trump spent his first month in office consolidating his base among the
bigots and the deluded. He also spent it building a team that will lead a
massive assault on the environment, on specially oppressed minorities, and
on the working class as a whole. That came at the cost of alienating large
sectors of the US population as well as the major sectors of the US
capitalist class. His speech before congress was aimed at rectifying this
in order to fully carry out his assaults. That Bernie Sanders was
applauding parts of his speech is a sign that he succeeded. As liberal
commentator Van Jones put it in praising Trump, “He (Trump) became
President of The United States”. In other words, he prepared to draw wider
layers of the population in his wake, thereby reassuring the tops of the
capitalist class.

"Corporate America, even the Wall Street Journal, has been criticizing his
negative tone. This time, though, it was more like Reagan’s “Dawn in
America”. *“We are witnessing… the Renewal of the American Spirit,” *he
said in his speech to Congress*. “America is once again ready to lead…
America is strong… proud, and… free….” *There were the rosy
predictions: “*Dying
industries will come roaring back to life…. Crumbling infrastructure will
be replaced…. Our terrible drug epidemic will… ultimately stop. And our
neglected inner cities will see a rebirth of hope, safety, and
opportunity.”* and the imagery of *“new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports
and railways gleaming across our beautiful land.” *There were the boastful
claims of success already that come from every president. *“Since my
election, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, General Motors… and many others have
announced they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and
will create tens of thousands of new American jobs…. The stock market has
gained almost three trillion dollars in value since the election.”*
**
*Read the entire article: *
https://oaklandsocialist.com/2017/03/02/trump-moves-to-broaden-base/
--

"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."
Asata Shakur
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com and //
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[Marxism] Fwd: My response to Trump's address

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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 Forwarded Message 
Subject:My response to Trump's address
Date:   Thu, 2 Mar 2017 23:29:06 +
From:   Kshama Sawant 
Reply-To:   Kshama Sawant 
To: l...@panix.com



My response to Trump's address

/Below is the speech I delivered in response to Trump’s first 
congressional address.  As I said, Trump can be defeated  - but *it’s 
going to take a massive escalation of the resistance. *


Myself, Movement for the 99%, and Socialist Students are building on the 
tremendously successful student walkouts and demonstrations we organized 
in over 16 cities and in collaboration with our sister organizations in 
at least 45 countries on Trump’s inauguration to help *build the largest 
protest actions across the country on May 1st, up to and including mass 
strike action.*Chapters from New York City to Chicago to Seattle are 
energetically stepping up to organize actions. But to build for May Day 
we need to raise $25,000 to print picket signs, rent sound equipment, 
produce thousands of posters and fliers, and support full time 
organizers. Please donate $25, $50, or $100 today to support building 
the biggest possible actions on May 1st. 
/


To watch a video of the speech, go here 
.


Sisters and Brothers,

In just five weeks, Donald Trump has unleashed a series of vicious 
attacks on one group of Americans after another: From his Muslim ban to 
the ramping up of ICE raids; to his anti-trans executive order; to his 
budget proposal to slash vital public services; and more.


The ruling class is sharply divided about Trump. Capitalist strategists 
are horrified by the growing popular revolt and the damage his reckless 
policies and conduct will inflict on their system. Yet much of big 
business is salivating at the prospect of Trump’s corporate tax cuts and 
radical deregulation.


But amongst millions of working people like us, there is a growing 
unity, that we want no part of Trump’s bigoted, misogynist, 
anti-immigrant, racist agenda. We’re seeing *a mood of rebellion* on a 
scale not seen since the Vietnam war.


*Trump can be defeated.* The protests in this first month were a 
tremendous starting point, but far more will be needed.  We need to 
disrupt business-as-usual through peaceful mass civil disobedience. 
Shutting down airports, highways, ICE offices, and prominent businesses.


*On March 8, International Women’s Day, a “Women’s Strike” has been 
called by the organizers of the January 21 marches. Let’s take this up, 
and build for the largest actions possible.* May 1, or “May Day,” is 
International Workers’ Day, and has long been a day of working class 
action globally.


Donate $25 today to send a clear message to Trump and the Billionaires’ 
that you stand with immigrants by building the largest protest and 
strike actions on March 8th and May 1st. 



In 2006, immigrants brought the tradition of May Day back to the United 
States. Millions marched, many went on strike, and helped force back 
egregious anti-immigrant legislation. This year, facing Trump’s brutal 
attacks, immigrants are again organizing en masse.  Discussions are also 
underway about strike and protest action in the labor movement, which is 
facing unprecedented attacks, with national “right to work” laws coming 
down the pike.


Working people have enormous potential power to fight Trump by *shutting 
down the profits of big business*. This can be done through traditional 
strikes by the majority of workers at a workplace, but also by many 
non-union workers through taking the day off, calling in sick, or 
through other creative means.


Bottom line: *We want the largest possible show of force on May 1st*, 
while keeping in mind that some actions would be too risky for some 
workers to participate in. To be successful, however, we cannot limit 
our movement to purely playing defense against Trump.


*We need to also fight offensively for concrete gains* that can inspire 
the broader working and middle class. We must not only oppose, for 
example, the attacks on women’s rights and Planned Parenthood, but also 
fight to extend reproductive care, for it to be free and accessible to 
all women. For paid family leave, for affordable childcare, and for a 
national $15/hour minimum wage.


I 

[Marxism] Fwd: The deathbed of capitalism - H-Alter - Udruga za medijsku kulturu

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Q: You write about the way the crises of our time — of resources, 
climate, financial system – fit together. How do they fit together, and 
why is it important to see them that way?


A: The crisis of our time – financialization, the questions of income 
and wealth and inequality, climate change, droughts, ocean acidification 
and so on – we need to answer how all of those questions fit together, 
how they are connected. Otherwise, we end up seeing the problem in a 
deeply fragmented way, which is exactly how the ruling classes of our 
time want us to see it. We live in a world that is made by rationality, 
but a particular kind of rationality. It is a rationality of fragments, 
although it has the appearance of being holistic, because you can 
quantify, you can subject everything into an algorithm. We need to move 
beyond fragments and see how things are connected.


full: http://www.h-alter.org/vijesti/the-deathbed-of-capitalism
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[Marxism] Fwd: Donald Trump signifies he will end US support for Syrian rebels despite their pleas to him for help | The Independent

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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So all those Assadist jerks that I've been slicing and dicing for the 
past 6 years better wise up now. The verdict is in. Guilty as charged.



full: 
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-president-elect-donald-trump-support-assad-putin-syria-remove-rebel-backing-a7413346.html

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Re: [Marxism] coddling "revolutionary socialist" Assadists

[Brian Slocock via Marxism]

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John Rees, of course, co-authored a book on the Arab Spring with Joseph 
Daher in 2011, which had a rather different line than his present one. En 
router to where they are  now Rees reported the following to the 
Counterfire Conference in 2015: 

The defeat of the Arab revolutions has meant that the majority of these 
non-state actors are reactionary in nature and often sponsored by imperial 
states or sub-imperial states. This is true of ISIS and the FSA, to the 
extent that its members have not defected to ISIS, in Syria; to the 
contending militias in Libya, to the Kiev government that came out of the 
Maidan movement, and to the Iraqi Kurdish leadership. It is not true 
however of various progressive resistance movements: Hamas, Hezbollah, the 
Kurdish struggle as a whole, especially the PKK in Turkey and its Syrian 
allies.


On Wednesday, March 1, 2017 at 2:29:16 PM UTC, Andrew Pollack wrote:
>
> At the top of today's SW page is this speech by Paul Le Blanc to the 
> Counterfire conference marking the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution.
>
> https://socialistworker.org/2017/03/01/take-power-into-the-hands-of-your-soviets
>
> I know when the conference was first announced I complained about the 
> participation of people who should know better, i.e. that Counterfire's 
> role as main ideological and organizational prop for the Assadist-appeasing 
> Stop the War should have told comrades to stay away.
>
> Wish I'd complained more loudly.
>
>
>
>
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[Marxism] Fwd: 2563. Neighborhood Committees in the Iranian Revolution of 1979: A Case Study

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://forhumanliberation.blogspot.com/2017/02/2563-neighborhood-committees-in-iranian.html
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Re: [Marxism] Fascism or Just More Barbarism?

[Fred Murphy via Marxism]

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Anemic turnout - in the low hundreds - for pro-Trump rallies:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/us/trump-rallies.html


On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:59 PM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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> *
>
> Trump in Perspective: Fascism or Just More  Barbarism?
>
> http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=13187
>
>
> My comment on the article.
> ken h
>
>
> While fascists have taken heart form the Trump victory, I agree with the
> author that we are not at the point of fascism.
> My understanding of fascism is that it is a mass movement and it has the
> capacity to engage in street combat.  The relationship of forces has not
> gone that far, as yet.
>
> During the wonderful airport demonstrations I caught a fragment on cable
> TV that suggested Trump supporters were on their way to the Los Angeles
> airport.  I heard no more about that.  A strong fascist movement would have
> been able to mobilize anti-immigrant demonstrations at the airports, even
> going so far as to attack the pro-immigrant demonstrations.
>
> Again and again, since the inauguration, we have seen people in the
> street.  The Women's March, the Yemeni bodega owners, the Day(s) Without
> Immigrants.
> No doubt there were fascists that would have wanted to attack these
> demonstrations.  But they did not have the forces.
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[Marxism] Textbook Recommendation - Scaling Techniques (Social Sciences)

[Craig Butosi via Marxism]

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Comrades,

I was wondering if anyone on the list might recommend a good textbook or
handbook on scaling techniques for social science research (I use this term
broadly). I am particularly looking for information on the development of
Likert scales, Thurstone scales, and Guttman scales, as well as the
statistical tools used in each.

Though I've found several promising titles and have a modest background in
quantitative methods, I'd like to know what you would recommend or have
found immensely useful. Some specific areas that I need to look into are
reliability testing, validity testing, and a general overview of the
process of creating these scales.

So far, I've found:

Spector, Paul E. - Summated Rating Scale Construction  An Introduction
(Sage)
Netemeyer, et al. - Scaling procedures: Issues and applications (Sage)
Various online resources like: socialresearchmethods.net (good primer but
lacking specificity)

Thanks all,

Craig Butosi, MA, MLIS, B Mus (Hons)
Website: http://www.craigbutosi.ca
Library: library.craigbutosi.ca
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[Marxism] Edward G Robinson on the Difference Between Labor-power and Labor

[John A Imani via Marxism]

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*Edward G Robinson
*on
the Difference Between Labor-power and Labor

"The sitting around on the set is awful. But I always figure that's what
they pay me for. The acting I do for free."
*http://www.imdb.com/name/nm064/bio
*

Identifying the difference between labor-power and labor has tripped up
many (self included) neophyte Marxists at the beginnings of their studies.
Simply put, labor-power is the ability to do work while labor is that
labor-power in action, i.e. working. Its kinda like a sewing machine and
the actual sewing. One pays for the sewing machine but does not pay
additionally for its usage.

Marx' creation of the category labor-power, rather his recognition of its
existence, can be seen as a means of resolving an economic contradiction:
If the wage is 'fair', i.e. if the worker is paid what he was worth, then
how is it that the capitalist makes a profit? Profit could then be
seen as coming
as a result of cheating, i.e. paying the worker less than he was worth.
(And, no doubt, this happens but wage-cheating is not necessary to making a
profit, i.e. not necessary for the existence of exploitation as profit =
exploitation.)

This contradiction could be resolved only by recognizing the singular
difference between the worker and all of the other factors of production
that the capitalist bought so as to produce. These other factors (e.g.
materials, fuels, machines, etc.) were indeed worth only what they were
worth. For if a machine, say, selling for $1000 could add more than $1000
in value then the seller would be cheating himself. And if it could add
less than $1000 then the buyer would have been screwed. So a machine sells
for what it is worth. While there was and is something magical about
humans:

We were (and are) worth more than we are worth.

This seeming paradox is resolved when it is understood that what a person
is worth is what went into making him as a worker (food, shelter,
education, etc.). These are the workers' costs-of-production. And these are
paid back to him pro rata on a regular basis in the form of the wage. But
what a person is worth in working is more than that. Simply put a worker
out-reproduces himself, i.e. the value added by his work is more than the
value of what went into the makings of that worker. This is the secret of
humanity's long climb up from savagery: ants make the most wonderful hills
and nests but they have been doing the same thing for millions of years
while humankind has been on a more or less steady (until now) upward climb
because we are capable of producing a surplus, i.e. more than we ourselves
normally use. There is one unfortunate result of this wizardry: producing
more than one could use now meant that that one could be enslaved (not
episodically—as in the case of non-surplus-producing workers who if you
took part of what he produced then he would die—but over the long term, even
life-times); and a portion of what the worker produced could be seized by
one who was stronger or more intelligent or more crafty. The surplus is the
historical necessity that produced all class-based societies. And the
historical origin of capitalism rests just so upon this difference between
labor-power and labor. Value-wise this is labor – labor-power = surplus;
or, labor = labor-power + surplus.

So, yeah, ya see...the great Edward G was paid for his ability to act but
once paid he acted for free.  Specifically, he worked part of the time to
make up his own salary while the profits from the other part of the time he
worked went to the studio heads. These, respectively, are termed 'necessary
labor'  and
'surplus-labor' ; the results
of which are, respectively, wages and profits.

JAI

For those who want to read Marx' solution of a problem posed by but never
solved by what he called "Classical Political Economy" see:
*Quotation by Marx on the value of labour power and classical political
economy
*
(*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_power#Quotation_by_Marx_on_the_value_of_labour_power_and_classical_political_economy
)*

Or read the entire selection at *Capital Vol. 1**, chapter 19.*
 (

[Marxism] Fwd: Edward G Robinson on the Difference Between Labor-power and Labor

[John A Imani via Marxism]

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*Edward G Robinson
*on
the Difference Between Labor-power and Labor

"The sitting around on the set is awful. But I always figure that's what
they pay me for. The acting I do for free."
*http://www.imdb.com/name/nm064/bio
*

Identifying the difference between labor-power and labor has tripped up
many (self included) neophyte Marxists at the beginnings of their studies.
Simply put, labor-power is the ability to do work while labor is that
labor-power in action, i.e. working. Its kinda like a sewing machine and
the actual sewing. One pays for the sewing machine but does not pay
additionally for its usage.

Marx' creation of the category labor-power, rather his recognition of its
existence, can be seen as a means of resolving an economic contradiction:
If the wage is 'fair', i.e. if the worker is paid what he was worth, then
how is it that the capitalist makes a profit? Profit could then be
seen as coming
as a result of cheating, i.e. paying the worker less than he was worth.
(And, no doubt, this happens but wage-cheating is not necessary to making a
profit, i.e. not necessary for the existence of exploitation as profit =
exploitation.)

This contradiction could be resolved only by recognizing the singular
difference between the worker and all of the other factors of production
that the capitalist bought so as to produce. These other factors (e.g.
materials, fuels, machines, etc.) were indeed worth only what they were
worth. For if a machine, say, selling for $1000 could add more than $1000
in value then the seller would be cheating himself. And if it could add
less than $1000 then the buyer would have been screwed. So a machine sells
for what it is worth. While there was and is something magical about
humans:

We were (and are) worth more than we are worth.

This seeming paradox is resolved when it is understood that what a person
is worth is what went into making him as a worker (food, shelter,
education, etc.). These are the workers' costs-of-production. And these are
paid back to him pro rata on a regular basis in the form of the wage. But
what a person is worth in working is more than that. Simply put a worker
out-reproduces himself, i.e. the value added by his work is more than the
value of what went into the makings of that worker. This is the secret of
humanity's long climb up from savagery: ants make the most wonderful hills
and nests but they have been doing the same thing for millions of years
while humankind has been on a more or less steady (until now) upward climb
because we are capable of producing a surplus, i.e. more than we ourselves
normally use. There is one unfortunate result of this wizardry: producing
more than one could use now meant that that one could be enslaved (not
episodically—as in the case of non-surplus-producing workers who if you
took part of what he produced then he would die—but over the long term, even
life-times); and a portion of what the worker produced could be seized by
one who was stronger or more intelligent or more crafty. The surplus is the
historical necessity that produced all class-based societies. And the
historical origin of capitalism rests just so upon this difference between
labor-power and labor. Value-wise this is labor – labor-power = surplus;
or, labor = labor-power + surplus.

So, yeah, ya see...the great Edward G was paid for his ability to act but
once paid he worked part of the time to make up his own salary while the
profits from the other part of the time he worked went to the studio heads.
These, respectively, are termed 'necessary labor' and 'surplus-labor'; the
results of which are, respectively, wages and profits.

JAI

For those who want to read Marx' solution of a problem posed by but never
solved by what he called "Classical Political Economy" see:
*Quotation by Marx on the value of labour power and classical political
economy
*
(*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_power#Quotation_by_Marx_on_the_value_of_labour_power_and_classical_political_economy
)*

Or read the entire selection at *Capital Vol. 1**, chapter 19.*
 (
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch19.htm)
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[Marxism] Fwd: 2545. The Historic Women's Marches of January 21, 2017

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://forhumanliberation.blogspot.com/2017/02/2545-historic-womens-marches-of-january.html
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[Marxism] Fwd: 2572. Is Palestinian Right to Self-Determination Compatible with the Israel's "Right to Exist?"

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://forhumanliberation.blogspot.com/2017/03/2572-is-palestinian-right-to-self.html
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June,

[DW via Marxism]

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I don't believe that Joseph Green understands very much about the theory of
Permanent Revolution. It is, as a  theory (and a programmatic perspective)
proven by negative example all the time, *especially* in Egypt, to cite one
example, Tunisia another and the list tragically goes on. Has PR been used
(and still is) dogmatically with sad consequences? Of course it has.

One the starkest examples is post-WWII India where the Calcutta Trotskyist
organization, based on their incorrect understanding of PR, exclaimed that
Indian independence from Britain would be impossible to achieve short of
the revolution growing over into a full fledged socialist one. India
achieved "independence" in the formal sense exactly as had all of Latin
America 120 years previously. But this doesn't mean the totality of
democratic tasks can be achieved without a total confrontation with the
'national' capitalists. And, even where independence is acheived, the
*subordination* of the recently independent countries to the Imperialist
center was always occurring, if not immediately, then as a constant
process, which reverses those gains, even if it takes decades to do so.

The basis of PR, *especially in this Century* is that Imperialism will
always use it's local agents, the local clientele capitalists in the still
capitalist states to push, and reverse, every gain ever made by the working
class and peasantry in developing countries. That is clearly evident in
Egypt where the formal democratic gains were pushed aside by the very
pro-capitalist (albeit bonapartist) army on behest of the Imperialists.

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

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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Abuse? I'm not the one telling the working classes of entire nations to
shut up and follow bourgeois leadership.
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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

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

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



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[Marxism] Fascism or Just More Barbarism?

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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Trump in Perspective: Fascism or Just More  Barbarism?

http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=13187


My comment on the article.
ken h


While fascists have taken heart form the Trump victory, I agree with the author 
that we are not at the point of fascism.
My understanding of fascism is that it is a mass movement and it has the 
capacity to engage in street combat.  The relationship of forces has not gone 
that far, as yet.

During the wonderful airport demonstrations I caught a fragment on cable TV 
that suggested Trump supporters were on their way to the Los Angeles airport.  
I heard no more about that.  A strong fascist movement would have been able to 
mobilize anti-immigrant demonstrations at the airports, even going so far as to 
attack the pro-immigrant demonstrations.

Again and again, since the inauguration, we have seen people in the street.  
The Women's March, the Yemeni bodega owners, the Day(s) Without Immigrants.
No doubt there were fascists that would have wanted to attack these 
demonstrations.  But they did not have the forces.
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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1. About a month ago tens of thousands of mostly women textile workers went
on strike in Egypt, and as is always the case faced threats of firing or
worse:

http://www.madamasr.com/en/2017/02/09/news/u/mahalla-textile-workers-temporarily-call-off-strike-5-strike-leaders-face-disciplinary-hearings/

Which side of that combined economic/social/political struggle are you on,
Joseph?

2. Also recently several South African revolutionaries described in
Pambazuka the battles, both in the workplaces and streets and in ideas,
between South Africa's bourgeois rulers and its workers:

http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article40214

Some of the articles mention that NUMSA's "marxist-leninist" leadership is
backtracking from its promised drive for socialist politics and strategy.
Where do you stand on that, Joseph?

And for god's sake don't just copy and paste your old emails.
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 3/2/17 12:04 PM, Joseph Green via Marxism wrote:


Again and again, the theory of permanent revolution has been proved wrong.
According to the permanent revolution, the neoliberal nature of the ANC
government should have meant that all the democratic gains were lost, and we
should have seen South Africa suffering again from apartheid, indeed perhaps
an even more intense apartheid than before. Instead we see that the old
apartheid is dead, but the "social tensions" are increasing, and the
extension and intensification of the class struggle is on the agenda.


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

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

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Marxism] Fwd: Trump in Perspective: Fascism or Just More Barbarism? (part one)

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=13187
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[Marxism] Fwd: Trump in Historical Perspective: From Nixon to Breitbart

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Good analysis from Jack Rasmus.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/02/trump-in-historical-perspective-from-nixon-to-breitbart/
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[Marxism] Opening of Trump Tower Vancouver riddled with "alternative facts" about building

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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http://www.straight.com/blogra/875276/opening-trump-tower-vancouver-riddled-alternative-facts-about-building

The opening of Trump Tower was riddled with "alternative facts", which local 
media have pointed out as erroneous.
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[Marxism] Fwd: AFL-CIO president on Trump speech: One of his finest moments | Fox Business Video

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/5343246555001/?#sp=show-clips
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[Marxism] How Craig Steven Wilder exposed higher education's past

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION REVIEW
Stained by Slavery
How Craig Steven Wilder exposed higher education's past
By Marc Parry MARCH 02, 2017  PREMIUM

In the fall of 2006, Brown University published a landmark report 
detailing the historical complicity of its founders and benefactors in 
slavery. Craig Steven Wilder, a historian then at Dartmouth College who 
had spent years researching related themes, thought he knew what would 
happen next. Brown’s peers would borrow the report’s template to examine 
their histories of bondage. And Wilder, his own project put out of 
business by the new research, would move on to studying something else.


But to his shock, Brown’s sister Ivies responded mostly with silence. 
Asked for comment, Richard C. Levin, Yale’s president at the time, told 
the campus newspaper that Yale’s slavery links were "simply a fact of 
history." Student journalists looking into the University of 
Pennsylvania’s ties reported that their campus was "all clear." 
Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, a Civil War historian who wrote 
a book about how society reckons with trauma, informed The Harvard 
Crimson that she would not start an institutional investigation.


"The institutions themselves did really virtually nothing, officially," 
says Wilder, 51, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. "That’s what kept me going … this sense that there was a 
story to be told that we weren’t telling."


The result, published in 2013, was Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the 
Troubled History of America’s Universities (Bloomsbury). Wilder’s book 
broadened Brown’s work to show that all of the country’s oldest seats of 
higher learning had been entangled with slavery. It traced how Ivy 
League institutions deployed slave labor to build campuses, depended on 
slave traders and owners for money and students, and developed the 
intellectual arguments that nourished slavery.


But the book’s release didn’t end Wilder’s efforts to expose the slave 
roots of academe. It deepened them.


More than a decade after the Brown report, universities are now obsessed 
with the legacy they once avoided. Georgetown. Rutgers. Columbia. Hardly 
a month passes without fresh headlines about another institution 
confronting its most sordid heritage. Scholars at the vanguard of this 
movement are scheduled to convene at Harvard on March 3 for a conference 
on slavery and universities. Faust is to share a stage with one of 
America’s most prominent writers on race, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Even the 
event’s overflow venues were booked weeks before.


"The more that have done it, the more the center of gravity has 
shifted," says James T. Campbell, a historian at Stanford University who 
chaired the committee that produced Brown’s slavery report. "Now, the 
question you’d be asked would be, Why wouldn’t you? Every other 
university has done this work."


If there’s one scholar most responsible for shifting the conversation 
about universities and slavery — the guiding hand behind the headlines — 
it’s Wilder. How did he become the guru of a new movement?


To understand that story, it helps to watch Wilder in action recently at 
Yale. It was there, in 2001, that the first stirrings of academe’s 
modern slavery reckoning began. The issue came up as Yale celebrated its 
tercentennial, a moment the university chose to highlight its historical 
contributions to abolitionism. In response, three graduate students 
challenged that narrative with a paper and website that presented Yale’s 
much longer embrace of slavery. Among their findings: Eight of the 
university’s 12 residential colleges had been named for slaveholders.


“Campuses are not museums for the emotional and psychological bigotries 
of the alumni.” Fast forward to 2015. Students nationwide rose up to 
protest racism on campus and beyond. In New Haven, minority activists 
demanded the renaming of Calhoun College, a residential community that 
honored a Yale graduate, South Carolina senator, and leading 
19th-century champion of slavery: John C. Calhoun. What followed was 
more than a year of debate, protests, vandalism, petition-writing, 
committee-forming, and report-drafting, as Yale initially pledged to 
keep Calhoun’s name before reversing course and scrapping it.
And so, just over a week after the university announced that decision, 
Wilder arrives in New Haven to help the campus think through how it got 
to this point and where to go now.


Over two days of public lectures and panel discussions in late February, 
Wilder offers some 200 students and professors a kind of People’s 
History of the Ivy League. The settings for his 

[Marxism] Fwd: Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, June 2013)

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://mondediplo.com/2013/06/05brothers
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[Marxism] Fwd: Trump’s 100 days | Michael Roberts Blog

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https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/trumps-100-days/
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Democrat calls himself a Republican in response to Trump speech | New York Post

[wytheholt--- via Marxism]

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As a racist Governor of Alabama once said, there's not a dime's worth of 
difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.  Wythe


 Louis Proyect via Marxism  wrote: 
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> http://nypost.com/2017/03/01/democrat-giving-response-to-trump-speech-calls-himself-a-republican/
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Before Lenin: Bolshevik Theory and Practice in February 1917 Revisited | Historical Materialism

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The RS leaflets of the time illustrated how