Re: [Marxism] Behind the Money Curtain: A Left Take on Taxes, Spending and Modern Monetary Theory - CounterPunch.org

[Daniel Lindvall via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

But, if you have to rise taxes, not to fund the spending as such, but to offset 
inflation, how much difference does it really make?

Kavanagh: ”…surtaxing the rich does not transfer funds directly to pay for 
another activity like healthcare, but it does help configure the money supply 
on a macro level to enable more social spending. It averts the inflation that 
would occur if both a lot of spending on healthcare andthe infinite 
appropriation of money by individuals were tolerated. Taxes don’t raise funds; 
they do help control the money supply.”



> 
> 
> 
> This is quite a useful piece by Jim Kavanagh on the Counterpunch website from 
> a couple of years ago. It’s lengthy; I’ll post a few key passages but it’s 
> worth reading in full:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/22/behind-the-money-curtain-a-left-take-on-taxes-spending-and-modern-monetary-theory/
>  
> 
> 
> 
> _
> Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
> Set your options at: 
> https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/daniel.lindvall%40filmint.nu


_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Solidarity activists report on visit to Venezuela (Green Left)

[Chris Slee via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/solidarity-activists-report-visit-venezuela

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Behind the Money Curtain: A Left Take on Taxes, Spending and Modern Monetary Theory - CounterPunch.org

[MM via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

> On Feb 14, 2020, at 4:01 AM, Daniel Lindvall  
> wrote:
> 
> But, if you have to rise taxes, not to fund the spending as such, but to 
> offset inflation, how much difference does it really make?
> 
> Kavanagh: ”…surtaxing the rich does not transfer funds directly to pay for 
> another activity like healthcare, but it does help configure the money supply 
> on a macro level to enable more social spending. It averts the inflation that 
> would occur if both a lot of spending on healthcare andthe infinite 
> appropriation of money by individuals were tolerated. Taxes don’t raise 
> funds; they do help control the money supply.”

If you can read that piece and be left with that question, and without any 
curiosity to pursue any of the ideas mentioned in it, there’s nothing 
whatsoever I can do to help you. 
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] A Short History of Humanity’s Future - CounterPunch.org

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/14/a-short-history-of-humanitys-future/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Irish voters reject the Right: a new opportunity for the Left? | Lefteast

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

https://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/irish-voters-reject-the-right-a-new-opportunity-for-the-left/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Marx, Lincoln and Project 1619 | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

It must have enraged the historians who signed Sean Wilentz’s open 
letter to the New York Times and their World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) 
allies to see Abraham Lincoln knocked off his pedestal. How insolent for 
Nikole Hannah-Jones to write in her introductory essay for Project 1619 
that “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country, as does 
the belief, so well articulated by Lincoln, that black people are the 
obstacle to national unity.” Lincoln was not only an iconic figure for 
the average American. Karl Marx admired him as well for his war on 
slavery. Since the primary goal of the critics of Project 1619 was to 
prioritize class over “identity”, naturally Karl Marx was just the 
authority to help make their case against the bourgeois New York Times 
intent on dividing the working-class.


Since the WSWS sets itself up as a Marxist gate-keeper par excellence, 
we can assume that the historians also had the Karl Marx-Abraham Lincoln 
in mind when they hooked up with the Trotskyist sect. James McPherson is 
probably the closest to WSWS ideologically, having granted them 
interviews over the years. When they asked him if he read Karl Marx’s 
writings on the Civil War, the historian replied, “Well, I think they 
have a lot of very good insight into what was going on in the American 
Civil War. Marx certainly saw the abolition of slavery as a kind of 
bourgeois revolution that paved the way for the proletarian revolution 
that he hoped would come in another generation or so. It was a crucial 
step on the way to the eventual proletarian revolution, as Marx 
perceived it.”


In this article, I will look critically at what Karl Marx and Friedrich 
Engels wrote about these questions. Although I have been a Marxist for 
52 years, I have little patience with those who put him (or Lenin and 
Trotsky) on a pedestal. I believe that Nikole Hannah-Jones had good 
reasons to question his sanctity. More to the point, I will argue that 
Marx and Engels lacked the political foresight to see how black 
Americans would be short-changed after the Civil War. Keeping in mind 
that the first socialist international was located in the United States, 
we must examine its relationship to the newly emancipated black 
population. Based on my reading of Timothy Messer-Kruse’s “The Yankee 
International,” my conclusion is that it fell short.


full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/02/14/marx-lincoln-and-project-1619/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Behind the Money Curtain: A Left Take on Taxes, Spending and Modern Monetary Theory - CounterPunch.org

[Daniel Lindvall via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

It sometimes feels as if people here are determined to make the worst possible 
interpretations of comments. It was a straight question, asked precisely out of 
curiosity, not the lack of it. I’m not dismissing the general importance of 
understanding money, but the text left me wondering what difference it makes to 
someone in an electoral campaign if s/he has to argue that we need to raise 
taxes to avoid inflation rather than to pay for progressive policies as such? 


> 14 feb. 2020 kl. 13:19 skrev MM :
> 
>> On Feb 14, 2020, at 4:01 AM, Daniel Lindvall > > wrote:
>> 
>> But, if you have to rise taxes, not to fund the spending as such, but to 
>> offset inflation, how much difference does it really make?
>> 
>> Kavanagh: ”…surtaxing the rich does not transfer funds directly to pay for 
>> another activity like healthcare, but it does help configure the money 
>> supply on a macro level to enable more social spending. It averts the 
>> inflation that would occur if both a lot of spending on healthcare andthe 
>> infinite appropriation of money by individuals were tolerated. Taxes don’t 
>> raise funds; they do help control the money supply.”
> 
> If you can read that piece and be left with that question, and without any 
> curiosity to pursue any of the ideas mentioned in it, there’s nothing 
> whatsoever I can do to help you. 

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Lovecraft Adaptation ‘Color Out of Space’ Aims for Greatness, Stumbles | Washington Babylon

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

https://washingtonbabylon.com/lovecraft-color-out-of-space/


Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
- - -
Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via 
https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Marx, Lincoln and Project 1619 | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

There's plenty worth discussing here.

American radicals naturally had a better handle on most of these things
than Marx and Engels.  Those interested in their thinking could consult
_Long Road to Harpers Ferry_, written without the sanction and support of a
Genius Grant from the MacArthur Fellowship or any other corporate
sponsors--or getting regular public service blurbs on cable TV, in between
the insurance ads and the 24/7 arguments to persuade us that
African-Americans are pragmatically shifting their support from Joe Biden
to Mike Bloomberg.

Someone was asking earlier for a radical response to _Winners Take All: The
Elite Charade of Changing the World_ by Anand Giridharadas.  Although there
are obvious problems with the book, I would urge that it be read.  It makes
some very important points that serious radicals need to consider,
particularly the way corporate venues have rather successfully undercut
independent movement-oriented radicalism over the last twenty or thirty
years..

Cheers,
Mark L.
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Behind the Money Curtain: A Left Take on Taxes, Spending and Modern Monetary Theory - CounterPunch.org

[MM via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

> On Feb 14, 2020, at 9:26 AM, Daniel Lindvall  
> wrote:
> 
> It sometimes feels as if people here are determined to make the worst 
> possible interpretations of comments. It was a straight question, asked 
> precisely out of curiosity, not the lack of it. I’m not dismissing the 
> general importance of understanding money, but the text left me wondering 
> what difference it makes to someone in an electoral campaign if s/he has to 
> argue that we need to raise taxes to avoid inflation rather than to pay for 
> progressive policies as such? 

Yeah, I don’t think that would be a very effective campaign strategy. If you’re 
a campaign advisor to anyone, I’d suggest not using that approach.

One of the things you learn when teaching university students is how to spot 
the guys — and they are always guys — who are committed to not learning things, 
or who expect to be spoon-fed insights, or who think they can trick you into 
doing their thinking for them. At least, I did. They lack even a modicum of 
healthy shame. And they get defensive when you point that out.

But I’ll indulge you one last time.

You’re asking what the difference is between a government whose spending is 
constrained in advance by its ability to raise funds from taxes, and a 
government that isn’t so constrained in advance, but may have to tax what it 
spends into the economy back out at some point.

Can you see now where this is headed?

When a government uses its spending power to build useful infrastructure, 
productive economic capacity and good social programs — which, gosh, sounds 
like something even a socialist government would want to do — then what you 
have at the end of that process is… wait for it… useful infrastructure, 
productive economic capacity and good social programs. You also have a bunch of 
liquidity circulating through the economy, which the government injected into 
it by hiring all of the people it hired to build and do all of those things.

Now, it might become necessary to tax some of that liquidity back out of the 
economy in order to prevent overheating. My guess is people are less likely to 
mind paying some taxes now that they’ve got useful infrastructure, productive 
capacity and good social programs. But there are other options. For instance, 
you could do what the US government did during WWII and issue savings bonds at 
a modest interest rate in order to tie up some of that liquidity for a few 
years until the productive capacity can catch up to the point where it can 
satisfy the extra demand. (And if anyone is under the impression that the 
purpose of those bonds was to raise funds to “pay for the war,” I would *urge* 
you, in the strongest possible terms, to read Sam Levey’s piece before 
responding and making an absolute ass of yourself.)

Obviously, this whole time you’re going to be working towards an industrial 
strategy to decarbonize the economy and prioritize for sustainable forms of 
economic activity, at least if you have any sense. But I digress.

Can you see how much difference it makes now? On one approach, you don’t end up 
with useful infrastructure, productive industrial capacity and good social 
programs. On the other approach, you do. I feel silly having to point out to 
someone on the left that we should be fighting to have them.

Honestly, there’s a lot of excellent material out there for anyone who’s even 
mildly curious. There’s also a lot of willful misrepresentation from mainstream 
economists (many of whom do understand it, and thus understand what a danger it 
poses to the continuation of the ruling hegemony) and witless misrepresentation 
from quite a few Marxists (who don’t understand it, and are committed to making 
sure they don’t start to — because that would require them to admit they’ve 
gotten some things badly wrong).
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] How Margaret Mead became a hate figure for conservatives

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

In 1978, after 50 years at the pinnacle of American opinion, the
anthropologist Margaret Mead died with a secure reputation and a lustrous
legacy. Her ascent seemed to mirror the societal ascent of American women.
In some two dozen books and countless articles, she gave a forceful voice
to a sturdy if cautious liberalism: resolutely antiracist, pro-choice; open
to ‘new ways of thinking’ yet wary of premarital sex and hesitant about the
Pill. The tensions in public opinion were hers, too. In her obituary,
*The* *New
York* *Times* called her ‘a national oracle’.

But posthumous reputation is a brittle thing. It’s difficult to defend
oneself after death, and the years wear away a name, eventually reducing it
to dust or mere ‘influence’. Issues change, standards shift, new thinkers
rise: few names last forever. Within anthropology, Mead is still revered,
but mostly as a way to understand the discipline’s origins. In the popular
mind, Mead’s name has all but vanished, her reputation whittled down to an
apocryphal quote found on coffee mugs and dorm-room posters: ‘Never doubt
that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world;
indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’

What’s more, Mead has become a target of vitriolic dislike for a particular
kind of cultural conservatism. In 1999, the Intercollegiate Studies
Institute, a group that promotes conservatism in colleges, ranked
Mead’s *Coming
of Age in Samoa* (1928) as the single worst nonfiction book of the 20th
century. In his *Letters to a Young Conservative* (2002), the splenetic
pseudo-thinker Dinesh D’Souza accused Mead, as many others have done, of
wounding ‘Western culture’ by introducing some kind of noxious,
destabilising relativism. And in *The Closing of the American Mind* (1987),
the philosopher Allan Bloom trashed Mead as a ‘sexual adventurer’.

What happened? More than the passage of time dispatching her name into the
history books, Mead had an enemy who attacked with uncommon hatred: Derek
Freeman, a New Zealand anthropologist who made it his life’s work to
expunge Mead after her death. His criticisms have stuck. Like a parasite,
his own name has lived on as ‘Mead’s critic’ (he died in 2001), leading to
a strange alchemy: to the extent that Mead is remembered now, it is most
often as one who was proven wrong. Freeman gave her opponents a readymade
cudgel to bludgeon not only her anthropological work but everything she
represented beyond that. And what, indeed, was that?

full article -
https://aeon.co/essays/how-margaret-mead-became-a-hate-figure-for-conservatives
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Behind the Money Curtain: A Left Take on Taxes, Spending and Modern Monetary Theory - CounterPunch.org

[Daniel Lindvall via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

I’m sorry, I must be expressing myself very clumsily, English after all is not 
my first language. My question was purely about campaign strategy, I get the 
rest of it. But it’s not like a candidate is going to get around the screams of 
”inflation, inflation, inflation”, so how could s/he get around discussing 
higher taxes as part of what is needed to curb it eventually? I can’t see that 
question going away until x years later when people see the great new 
infrastructure. Just as ruling class resistance via financial warfare won’t go 
away just because many of them understand that their purported theory defending 
this warfare (”budget balance” etc) is a crappy excuse.

I hope to be proven wrong and I support any serious attempt at pushing through 
real reforms, but I can’t see it happen without a mass movement threatening the 
hell out of the ruling class. The limited (in time and space) successes of 
social democracy after all came about through an almost perfect storm: a 
vibrant labour movement, a successful revolution in a major country that 
threatened to spread, two world wars and a depression within the space of 30 
years destroying massive amounts of capital, the war economy and the collective 
effort needed to win the war, and on top of that took place in countries that 
benefited from centuries of globally highly uneven industrialization ultimately 
fed by the spoils of colonialism. 

> 
>> On Feb 14, 2020, at 9:26 AM, Daniel Lindvall > > wrote:
>> 
>> It sometimes feels as if people here are determined to make the worst 
>> possible interpretations of comments. It was a straight question, asked 
>> precisely out of curiosity, not the lack of it. I’m not dismissing the 
>> general importance of understanding money, but the text left me wondering 
>> what difference it makes to someone in an electoral campaign if s/he has to 
>> argue that we need to raise taxes to avoid inflation rather than to pay for 
>> progressive policies as such? 
> 
> Yeah, I don’t think that would be a very effective campaign strategy. If 
> you’re a campaign advisor to anyone, I’d suggest not using that approach.
> 

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Behind the Money Curtain: A Left Take on Taxes, Spending and Modern Monetary Theory - CounterPunch.org

[Daniel Lindvall via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

Btw, this all makes the Corbyn debacle doubly sad. If a second wave of social 
democratic/welfare capitalist reforms were thinkable at all, then surely a 
situation where Corbyn led the UK and Sanders the US simultaneously would have 
been that moment of possibility.

> 
> 
> I’m sorry, I must be expressing myself very clumsily, English after all is 
> not my first language. My question was purely about campaign strategy, I get 
> the rest of it. But it’s not like a candidate is going to get around the 
> screams of ”inflation, inflation, inflation”, so how could s/he get around 
> discussing higher taxes as part of what is needed to curb it eventually? I 
> can’t see that question going away until x years later when people see the 
> great new infrastructure. Just as ruling class resistance via financial 
> warfare won’t go away just because many of them understand that their 
> purported theory defending this warfare (”budget balance” etc) is a crappy 
> excuse.
> 
> I hope to be proven wrong and I support any serious attempt at pushing 
> through real reforms, but I can’t see it happen without a mass movement 
> threatening the hell out of the ruling class. The limited (in time and space) 
> successes of social democracy after all came about through an almost perfect 
> storm: a vibrant labour movement, a successful revolution in a major country 
> that threatened to spread, two world wars and a depression within the space 
> of 30 years destroying massive amounts of capital, the war economy and the 
> collective effort needed to win the war, and on top of that took place in 
> countries that benefited from centuries of globally highly uneven 
> industrialization ultimately fed by the spoils of colonialism. 
> 


_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] The Wild, Anti-Authoritarian Art of Peter Saul - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

Best seen on NYT website for graphics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/arts/design/peter-saul-new-museum.html
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] William Barr says Trump's tweets about DOJ cases make it 'impossible to do my job - CNNPolitics

[John Reimann via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

Barr took an enormous hit with that whole event of the recommended sentence
to Stone being withdrawn immediately after Trump's tweet. It was crystal
clear that Trump is now running the (in)Justice Department. And, in fact,
so did Trump. Trump's response was completely out of character for him.
Completely and totally. To just respond that Barr has a right to express
his opinion? No. In my opinion, this was all a set up job, agreed upon
between Trump and Barr in advance, made to try to heal Barr's image.

John

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] William Barr says Trump's tweets about DOJ cases make it 'impossible to do my job - CNNPolitics

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

On 2/14/20 11:25 AM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:

Barr took an enormous hit with that whole event of the recommended sentence
to Stone being withdrawn immediately after Trump's tweet. It was crystal
clear that Trump is now running the (in)Justice Department. And, in fact,
so did Trump. Trump's response was completely out of character for him.
Completely and totally. To just respond that Barr has a right to express
his opinion? No. In my opinion, this was all a set up job, agreed upon
between Trump and Barr in advance, made to try to heal Barr's image.

John



NY Times, Feb. 14, 2020
Trump Claims ‘Legal Right’ to Interfere in Justice Dept. Cases
By Michael D. Shear

WASHINGTON — President Trump asserted Friday that he had the legal right 
to intervene in federal criminal cases, a day after Attorney General 
William P. Barr publicly rebuked him for attacks on Justice Department 
prosecutors and others involved in the case of Roger J. Stone Jr., the 
president’s longtime friend.


In a morning tweet, Mr. Trump quoted Mr. Barr saying that the president 
“has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” The president 
said he had “so far chosen” not to interfere in a criminal case even 
though he insisted that he was not legally bound to do so.


“This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to 
do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!” he said.


Though he and Mr. Barr both said the president had not directly asked 
for any specific inquiries, Mr. Trump has long pressured law enforcement 
officials both publicly and privately to open investigations into 
political rivals and to drop inquiries. Mr. Trump also pressed former 
Attorney General Jeff Sessions to retake control of the Russia 
investigation after he recused himself.


The assertion by the president, which implicitly rejected a request by 
Mr. Barr to stop tweeting about the department’s cases, adds to the 
mounting controversy over the decision by senior Justice Department 
officials to overrule prosecutors who had recommended a seven- to 
nine-year sentence for Mr. Stone, who was convicted of seven felonies in 
a bid to obstruct a congressional investigation that threatened the 
president.


That recommendation infuriated Mr. Trump, who called the department’s 
handling of the case “a disgrace” and later praised Mr. Barr after his 
top officials intervened to recommend a lighter sentence for Mr. Stone. 
The four prosecutors who were overruled resigned from the case in 
protest; one quit the department entirely.


Seeking to calm the upheaval in his department, Mr. Barr issued a 
pointed denunciation on Thursday of Mr. Trump’s tweets, which included 
criticism of the federal judge overseeing the Stone case and even the 
jury forewoman. Mr. Barr said the commentary from the president made it 
“impossible for me to do my job” and insisted that “I’m not going to be 
bullied or influenced by anybody.”


“I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background 
commentary that undercuts me,” said Mr. Barr, who has been one of Mr. 
Trump’s closest and most reliable allies since taking over at the 
Justice Department.


Past presidents in both parties have respected long standing traditions 
that are aimed at preventing political influence from the White House on 
Justice Department investigations, especially criminal inquiries that 
involved administration officials or friends of the president. The rules 
have been in place since the Watergate investigation, in which President 
Richard M. Nixon sought to pressure the F.B.I.


Mr. Trump has repeatedly ignored those traditions, making contact with 
F.B.I. officials and communicating with top Justice Department officials 
through Twitter and in person. His claim in Friday’s tweet that he had 
“so far chosen” not to interfere in criminal cases is contradicted by a 
record of his actions during his three years in office.


Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russian election 
interference inquiry, documented numerous instances in which the 
president sought to impede federal investigators as they examined the 
activities of Mr. Trump’s White House advisers and former campaign aides 
in what could be construed as obstruction of justice. In his final 
report, Mr. Mueller said that Justice Department rules did not allow 
sitting presidents to be indicted.

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] William Barr says Trump's tweets about DOJ cases make it 'impossible to do my job - CNNPolitics

[MM via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

> On Feb 14, 2020, at 11:39 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> On 2/14/20 11:25 AM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:
>> Barr took an enormous hit with that whole event of the recommended sentence
>> to Stone being withdrawn immediately after Trump's tweet. It was crystal
>> clear that Trump is now running the (in)Justice Department. And, in fact,
>> so did Trump. Trump's response was completely out of character for him.
>> Completely and totally. To just respond that Barr has a right to express
>> his opinion? No. In my opinion, this was all a set up job, agreed upon
>> between Trump and Barr in advance, made to try to heal Barr's image.
>> John
> 
> NY Times, Feb. 14, 2020
> Trump Claims ‘Legal Right’ to Interfere in Justice Dept. Cases
> By Michael D. Shear

The NYT piece is perfectly consistent with John’s reading, and I think he’s 
correct, but I think the truth is even scarier. What better cover for a radical 
politicization of the DOJ than to set up an orchestrated and perfectly 
manageable tension between Trump and Barr for public consumption? It “proves” 
that Barr is a man of principle, fighting to preserve the integrity of the DOJ 
and maintain his independence, and simultaneously allows Trump to keep huffing 
and puffing to keep his base happy, but leave Barr in place as “proof” that 
Trump isn’t a tyrannical despot. It’s genius.
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] book for review

[george snedker via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

I am looking for someone to review the following book for Socialism and 
Democracy:


The Punishment Monopoly: Tales of My Ancestors, Dispossession, and the Building 
of the United States by Pem Davidson Buck , Monthly Review Press, 2020.

$23.00. 

 

The Punishment Monopoly challenges our everyday understanding of American 
history, focusing on the constructions of race, class, and gender upon which 
the United States was built, and which still support racial capitalism and the 
carceral state. After all, Buck writes, "a state, to be a state, has to punish 
. bottom line, that is what a state and the force it controls is for."

Using stories of her European ancestors, who arrived in colonial Virginia in 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and following their descendants into 
the early nineteenth century, Buck shows how struggles over the right to 
punish, backed by the growing power of the state governed by a white elite, 
made possible the dispossession of Africans, Native Americans, and poor whites. 
Those struggles led to the creation of the low-wage working classes that 
capitalism requires, locked in by a metastasizing white supremacy that Buck's 
ancestors, with many others, defined as white, helped establish and manipulate. 
Examining those foundational struggles illuminates some of the most contentious 
issues of the twenty-first century: the exploitation and detention of 
immigrants; mass incarceration as a central institution; Islamophobia; white 
privilege; judicial and extra-judicial killings of people of color and poor 
whites. The Punishment Monopoly makes it clear that none of these injustices 
was accidental or inevitable; that shifting our state-sanctioned understandings 
of history is a step toward liberating us from its control of the present.



This is a great book. It deals with the rise of the punative state and the role 
of whiteness in the development of capitalism in the USA. The author is an 
historical anthropology. 



Write to me at george.snedeker@verizon if you want to review this book. 



George
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Behind the Money Curtain: A Left Take on Taxes, Spending and Modern Monetary Theory - CounterPunch.org

[MM via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

> On Feb 14, 2020, at 10:51 AM, Daniel Lindvall  
> wrote:
> 
> I hope to be proven wrong and I support any serious attempt at pushing 
> through real reforms, but I can’t see it happen without a mass movement 
> threatening the hell out of the ruling class.


Who said it will happen without a mass movement? You didn’t watch the video of 
Raul Carrillo, did you? The entire MMT activist base — and there are many 
thousands of people involved, in countries around the world, as well as several 
recurring podcasts, blogs, conferences, and a very active publication scene — 
are completely focused on building a mass movement — radical mass movement. 
Much of the entrenched left is making itself deeply irrelevant by refusing to 
engage with this body of ideas and this emerging movement. You see all those 
people at the Sanders rallies? What about the Sunrise Movement occupation of 
Pelosi’s office? Those are significantly due to the work that’s been done 
around MMT over the past 20 years. It isn’t an odd coincidence that Stephanie 
Kelton is a close advisor to Sanders. It also isn’t an accident that he is 
still committed to showing how things can be paid for — because he knows that 
even many people on the left aren’t prepared for the radical truth that “budget 
discipline” for a monetarily sovereign government is a ruling class fiction.

I don’t think there’s anything more tedious than engaging with people who “hope 
to be proven wrong”; what a dreadful spiritual condition that must be. Roll up 
your sleeves and start helping — filling the gaps in your knowledge and 
alleviating your doubts, or sharpening your critique if you still have one — or 
get out of the way. Nobody owes you “proof” of anything.
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Frederick Koch, Subject of Brothers' Antigay Blackmail Plot, Has Died

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

https://www.advocate.com/news/2020/2/13/frederick-koch-subject-brothers-antigay-blackmail-plot-has-died
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Bolivia: An Election in the Midst of an Ongoing Coup (Vijay Prashad)

[Chris Slee via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*



~~~ T h e B u l l e t ~~~
A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1999 ... February 14, 2020
_
Bolivia: An Election in the Midst of an Ongoing 
Coup
Vijay Prashad
On May 3, 2020, the Bolivian people will go to the polls once more. They return 
there because President Evo Morales had been overthrown in a coup in November 
2019. Morales had just won a presidential election in October for a term that 
would have begun in January 2020. Based on a preliminary investigation by the 
Organization of American States (OAS) that claimed that there was fraud in the 
election, Morales was prematurely removed from office; the term for his 2014 
presidential election victory did not end until January. Yet, he was told by 
the military to leave office. An interim president -- Jeanine Áñez -- appointed 
herself. She said she was taking this office only on an interim basis and would 
not run for election when Bolivia held another election. She is a candidate for 
the May 3 election.

Meanwhile, Morales has been in exile in Argentina. His party -- the Movement 
for Socialism (MAS) -- has candidates for the presidency and the vice 
presidency, but their party cadres and followers are facing a difficult time 
making their case to the people. Their radio stations have been blocked, their 
leaders arrested or exiled (or sitting in foreign embassies waiting for 
asylum), their cadre beaten up and intimidated.

The United Nations secretary-general’s personal envoy Jean Arnault released a 
statement on February 3 that expressed caution about the elections. The 
situation in Bolivia, Arnault said, is "characterized by an exacerbated 
polarization and mixed feelings of hope, but also of uncertainty, restlessness 
and resentment after the serious political and social crisis of last year." 
This careful language of the UN needs to be looked at closely. When Arnault 
says there is "exacerbated polarization," he means that the situation is 
extremely tense. When he asks that the interim government "outlaw hate speech 
and direct or indirect incitement to violence or discrimination," he means that 
the government and its far-right followers need to be very careful about what 
they say and how much violence they use in this election.
Continue reading

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Iraqi women protest in defiance of Al-Sadr's demands

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

Hundreds of women defended their right to participate in Iraq’s protests
after controversial cleric Moqtada Al Sadr called for gender segregation at
sit-ins

https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/iraqi-women-protest-in-defiance-of-cleric-s-demands-1.978783

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Trump, Barr and Julius Caesar

[John Reimann via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

When I first heard about it, I had thought that the whole dance between
Trump and Barr was carefully choreographed. But then, reading further and
realizing that such a scheme would be too subtle for Trump's lizard brain,
I changed my view.

"The present melodrama surrounding the sentencing guidelines of Trump
partner-in-crime Roger Stone shows the same process as has Trump’s drive to
take one person control over the State Department and the National Security
Council.

Trump had to get rid of his political soul-mate, Jeff Sessions, because
Sessions had an eye to his future and, therefore, wouldn’t simply be the
complete lackey for Trump. He had to recuse himself from the investigation
of what amounted to Trump’s ties with Putin. (That this investigation was
not serious is another story.) Trump seemed to have struck gold with the
hiring of Barr who, among other things, refused to turn over and then lied
about Mueller’s ultimate report."

https://secure-web.cisco.com/1CEfvKytPqJQnClUvnoE8k51lM4J2aLHBsKhFnuY40iUJaW6TmXUjLVbQNUNzPoLICD41RuS0oNDP9cEomnmcRRK7bfFExcG6o6KmP99fPmvWfuGkN4HuhIINxrn8-mKMCdFLwcs8VmpxZVNi3XqqbSUYI1_NNKihHheGrT6Rvn1aGFHQrYaeUdFXzOV9ue-h21BNeNSqNHd4Oo0zYZL-l7GJeHaD4BM1uNi4oQaMRPc19EAg6-3ttaKHNilnTN1yZWISkbFvgdfEQ4Av9HjF3kV6X7E9xj-ss9pWNJaWlN3vLWcN99hBCkxxrAqYiB5ceKKhKAwbrR1MKJx-uXoC44h9Qky_cYLbGZL5A2ZHp9C_pg0lBJghk5C2ADgNNISo/https%3A%2F%2Foaklandsocialist.com%2F2020%2F02%2F15%2Ftrump-barr-and-julius-caesar%2F

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check 
out:https:http://secure-web.cisco.com/1JWqTLCzffiCeuLweDagHF6efJrd4VDuk5CVQPn6LVXg6A6c2cm4ExQ74JKi8U7-mtQP7oHzJyzFAOciO4vvQn1gSsIVD1G1ouW-owqaBHKYGUzrXifdPlRAZKV0Ec_CwTkViojETDI8W-9dFWxV5ntqSMaqGTOiui-07w-1ZRU4X4RPs6ElgWYi3bE5y6aiLttIy2pDPsiqm6LlDfS321GRr_1KD1Y8Pn1_HZIG7glgfLnFA6wWM-L7Woq6cOZ0YJtVveBWRNtEQpKH9kq7j8rTcIuTZciy1AhfvspYXKkSduiCBDIZ_FwizbpkY1YYyoRIYh5DVy317I2S9diQJjabnQ8asb8zt5Xage1Q3coaU0vACOsbcKBIgJKDMdj1r/http%3A%2F%2Foaklandsocialist.com
 also on Facebook
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Trump, Barr and Julius Caesar

[MM via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

> On Feb 14, 2020, at 8:21 PM, John Reimann via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> When I first heard about it, I had thought that the whole dance between
> Trump and Barr was carefully choreographed. But then, reading further and
> realizing that such a scheme would be too subtle for Trump's lizard brain,
> I changed my view.

There’s no doubt that what’s happening is complex, but this line from John’s 
linked piece is hard to take seriously:

"Trump’s lizard brain must have started to get the feeling that he was moving 
towards a situation similar to that of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play of 
that name.” 

So Trump’s “lizard brain” can’t handle the kind of political machination that 
would be involved in a corrupt conspiracy with Barr, but he’s somehow motivated 
by an instinctive familiarity with the dilemma faced by Shakespeare’s Julius 
Caesar? I’m not sure John has really thought this line of reasoning through 
very carefully. I think there’s a fundamental misjudgment here about what Trump 
is and is not good at; I think it should be considered beyond question that 
he’s pretty good at orchestrating criminal conspiracy. Still, I confess I’d 
love to see an interviewer ask him for his take on the play.

But there’s also this:

“Meanwhile, socialists and real working class fighters should be explaining and 
agitating for working class independence and for organizing out in the streets 
to fight this onslaught of capitalism driven mad in the person of Trump… and 
whoever follows him.” 

Organizing them to do what? And how do you plan to pay for it? 
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Trump, Barr and Julius Caesar

[John Reimann via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

In the first place, it's not really all that critical whether Trump and
Barr planned it out before hand. The basic dynamics remain the same.

As far as organize to do what: I've spelled that out many times in many of
the articles of Oaklandsocialist. I don't think it's necessary to do so
every single time.

John Reimann

On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 6:28 PM MM  wrote:

> On Feb 14, 2020, at 8:21 PM, John Reimann via Marxism <
> marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
>
> When I first heard about it, I had thought that the whole dance between
> Trump and Barr was carefully choreographed. But then, reading further and
> realizing that such a scheme would be too subtle for Trump's lizard brain,
> I changed my view.
>
>
> There’s no doubt that what’s happening is complex, but this line from
> John’s linked piece is hard to take seriously:
>
> "Trump’s lizard brain must have started to get the feeling that he was
> moving towards a situation similar to that of Julius Caesar in
> Shakespeare’s play of that name.”
>
> So Trump’s “lizard brain” can’t handle the kind of political machination
> that would be involved in a corrupt conspiracy with Barr, but he’s somehow
> motivated by an instinctive familiarity with the dilemma faced by
> Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar? I’m not sure John has really thought this line
> of reasoning through very carefully. I think there’s a fundamental
> misjudgment here about what Trump is and is not good at; I think it should
> be considered beyond question that he’s pretty good at orchestrating
> criminal conspiracy. Still, I confess I’d love to see an interviewer ask
> him for his take on the play.
>
> But there’s also this:
>
> “Meanwhile, socialists and real working class fighters should
> be explaining and agitating for working class independence and
> for organizing out in the streets to fight this onslaught of
> capitalism driven mad in the person of Trump… and whoever follows him.”
>
> Organizing them to do what? And how do you plan to pay for it?
>


-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] 2019 Corona Virus: The Hypocrisy of Anti-Chinese Chauvinism in the West

[RKOB via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

2019 Corona Virus: The Hypocrisy of Anti-Chinese Chauvinism in the West

A few facts about the rate of mortality of the COVID-19 pandemia in 
comparison with Influenza


by Michael Pröbsting, 14 February 2020

https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/2019-corona-virus-the-hypocrisy-of-anti-chinese-chauvinism-in-the-west/


--
Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG
(Österreichische Sektion der RCIT,www.thecommunists.net)
www.rkob.net
ak...@rkob.net
Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com