[Marxism] Trump, neo-fascism, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

[Richard Modiano via Marxism]

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-- We are still in the early stages of the pandemic. Yet, what we are
seeing in the United States is a class-based phenomenon of “social murder,”
as Frederick Engels called it in *The Condition of the Working Class in
England*, where the deaths of what are now called “essential workers” are
seen as necessary for the further promotion of the economy. The body count
will pile up. --

https://mronline.org/2020/04/11/trump-neo-fascism-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/


Richard Modiano
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[Marxism] Episode 13: The Revolution Continues with the Revolutionary Historian Doug Greene

[Jim Farmelant via Marxism]

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https://tinyurl.com/seltuaq


Jim Farmelant
http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
http://www.foxymath.com 
Learn or Review Basic Math


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[Marxism] It was only a matter of time . . .

[John Edmundson via Marxism]

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https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/13/sanders-endorses-biden-183961


“Today, I am asking all Americans — I'm asking every Democrat; I’m asking
every independent; I’m asking a lot of Republicans — to come together in
this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse, to make certain
that we defeat somebody who I believe is the most dangerous president in
the modern history of this country,” Sanders told Biden.

“I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe,” Sanders pledged,
after calling Trump a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and a religious bigot
who botched the nation’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Bleah,

John


-- 
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose
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[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-AmIndian]: Cothran on Delucia, 'Memory Lands: King Philip's War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
- - -
Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via 
https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/

Begin forwarded message:

> From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
> Date: April 13, 2020 at 12:02:23 PM EDT
> To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> Cc: H-Net Staff 
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-AmIndian]:  Cothran on Delucia, 'Memory Lands: King 
> Philip's War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast'
> Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> 
> Christine M. Delucia.  Memory Lands: King Philip's War and the Place 
> of Violence in the Northeast.  New Haven  Yale University Press, 
> 2018.  496 pp.  $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-300-20117-8.
> 
> Reviewed by Boyd Cothran (York University)
> Published on H-AmIndian (April, 2020)
> Commissioned by F. Evan Nooe
> 
> Dwelling in the Shadow of King Philip's War
> 
> Christine M. DeLucia introduces her book by quoting Colin Calloway's 
> observation that King Philip's War remains one of the "great 
> watershed" moments in the Indigenous and colonial history of New 
> England. "It is difficult to escape the shadow it casts," he said. 
> "We cannot study Indian New England prior to 1675 without the 
> knowledge of the destruction to come; after the war, things are never 
> the same again" (p. 1). A terrible, genocidal conflict that raged 
> throughout southern New England from 1675 to 1678, King Philip's War 
> was, without a doubt, "one of the most devastating periods in the 
> history of the early American Northeast" (p. xi). Led by the 
> Pokanoket Wampanoag leader Metacomet, called King Philip by the 
> English, the war drew together a diverse coalition of Indigenous 
> tribes including the Nipmuck, Pocumtuck, and Narraganset against the 
> English and their Mohegan and Mohawk allies. Commonly considered one 
> of the deadliest wars in American history by relative population, 
> King Philip's War casts across the history of New England and the 
> United States a long shadow indeed. 
> 
> But DeLucia's exhaustively researched and extensively documented 
> study of the history and legacy of King Philip's War dwells in 
> another shadow, too: the titanic shadow of Jill Lepore's Bancroft 
> Prize-winning _The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of 
> American Identity _(1999)_. _Published over twenty years ago, _The 
> Name of War_ has, in many ways, laid the foundation for historians' 
> contemporary understanding of this conflict. Focusing on the 
> development of a peculiarly American "national _mentalité _and 
> mythos" (p. 2) that justified tremendous violence through the 
> literary deployment of racial ideologies of civilization and 
> savagery, Lepore's popular book reintroduced thousands of Americans 
> to a largely forgotten regional conflict that occurred nearly 350 
> years ago. DeLucia, however, takes issue with Lepore's methodology. 
> Lepore's focus on elite print culture and her historiographical 
> concern with tracing the origins of American identity led her to 
> ignore or even misunderstand the meaning of this conflict for 
> Indigenous communities. As DeLucia puts it: "As a result of focusing 
> tightly on narrative language, Lepore's constrained methodology 
> foreclosed important avenues of inquiry. 'How those Algonquians who 
> survived King Philip's War commemorated and remembered the war is, 
> sadly, mere speculation,' _The Name of War _lamented. This is 
> misleading" (pp. 14-15). 
> 
> Over the course of seven chapters, DeLucia constructs a different 
> understanding of King Philip's War and its legacy in the US 
> Northeast. The book draws on extensive archival material from small 
> archives and local historical societies as well as material cultural 
> objects such as wampum belts, deerskins maps, petroglyphs, and 
> megaliths. Focusing on the contested making of place through acts of 
> commemoration, memorialization, and counter- or rememorializations, 
> _Memory Lands_ takes the reader on a simultaneously far-reaching and 
> meticulously detailed study of four memoryscapes, "constellations of 
> spots on the land that have accrued stories over time, transforming 
> them from seemingly blank or neutral spaces into emotionally infused, 
> political potent places" (p. 3). 
> 
> Structurally, _Memory Lands _eschews chronology. Instead, DeLucia 
> roots her understanding of the presence of the past in space. After a 
> substantial preface and introduction, the book opens with an 
> examination of Deer Island in Boston Harbor, which was used as a 
> prison camp for New England Natives during the war. Moving both 
> forward and backward through time, DeLucia traces minutely, though 
> not always sy

Re: [Marxism] The Leaked Labour Party Report Is Shameful. It’s Time for an Investigation.

[John Edmundson via Marxism]

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And concludes with, "For all those socialists in the Labour Party, there is
one final lesson: don’t let this demoralize you. Stay in the party and seek
justice. As this document makes clear, the very worst elements of our party
would be only too happy for you to leave." Yawn . . .

Cheers,
John

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 10:47 AM Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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> *
>
> Casual snobbery. Sexist and racist commentary. Clandestine plotting.
> Contempt for democracy. A sense of privilege and entitlement.
>
> This is not the Bullingdon Club, it is what runs through the messages
> revealed in the leaked document which found its way online yesterday.
>
> Many of its revelations are truly shocking.
>
> It shows that some of the most senior employees of the Labour Party held
> its elected leadership in contempt, despised their own party members and
> even acted in a conspiratorial manner that undermined our 2017 general
> election campaign.
>
> https://jacobinmag.com/2020/4/labour-party-report-corbyn-2017-election
>
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-- 
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose
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[Marxism] The Leaked Labour Party Report Is Shameful. It’s Time for an Investigation.

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Casual snobbery. Sexist and racist commentary. Clandestine plotting. 
Contempt for democracy. A sense of privilege and entitlement.


This is not the Bullingdon Club, it is what runs through the messages 
revealed in the leaked document which found its way online yesterday.


Many of its revelations are truly shocking.

It shows that some of the most senior employees of the Labour Party held 
its elected leadership in contempt, despised their own party members and 
even acted in a conspiratorial manner that undermined our 2017 general 
election campaign.


https://jacobinmag.com/2020/4/labour-party-report-corbyn-2017-election

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[Marxism] Virtual Screenings of Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s EARTH to mark Earth Day’s 50th anniversary

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://mailchi.mp/55d01fdd9c7d/virtual-screenings-of-nikolaus-geyrhalters-earth-to-mark-earth-days-50th-anniversary

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Re: [Marxism] The essential and the expendable: Class, race, and xenophobia during the pandemic – International Socialism Project

[Saman Sepehri via Marxism]

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 Well I guess Sharon Smith and ex-ISO zombie old guard are following the motto: 
"Write about what you know". 
Essential and Expendable is exactly how they for years treated the 
membership--- Essential to be on every paper sale, spend your every minute on 
"building the ISO", your every penny was essential in dues..
And you were immediately Expendable as soon as you questioned too much...Or 
couldn't stomach abuse and cover ups anymore.



On Monday, April 13, 2020, 11:47:16 AM CDT, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
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https://internationalsocialism.net/the-essential-and-the-expendable-class-race-and-xenophobia-during-the-pandemic/

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[Marxism] Pulitzer prize-winning author Laurie Garrett’s recent article “Grim Reapers”

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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clip from long article -

This is why the 2020 pandemic is, at its root, the story of two deeply
flawed leaders, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, who for too long minimized the
coronavirus threat—and who, because of the enormous, largely unaccountable
power they wield, must share responsibility for its global scale. At key
moments when their mutual transparency and collaboration might have spared
the world a catastrophic pandemic, the world’s two most powerful men fought
a war of words over trade policies, and charged each other with
responsibility for the spread of the disease. When scientists worldwide
could have benefited from details of China’s new disease, perhaps thereby
preventing thousands of hospitalizations and deaths, the Chinese Communist
Party’s instincts were to arrest conveyors of information, shut down social
media, and prohibit visiting teams of World Health Organization and foreign
disease-control experts.



For its part, the United States was uniquely positioned, thanks to the
chronology of the outbreak, to learn from China’s initial mistakes, and
heed the example of the Xi regime’s belated epidemic control efforts. The
order of the day, as all sorts of public health experts and officials from
past administrations had stressed at the time, was to kick on-the-ground
prevention and containment efforts into high gear. To begin with, Trump
officials should have been preparing lab tests, hospital infection control
plans, supply chains of vital equipment, and implementing a
chain-of-command reordering of governance on an emergency footing. They
should also have been securing budget proposals for emergency funds, and
overseeing fuller coordination with state and local health departments
across American states and territories.



Instead, the main message of the Trump White House was stunningly oblivious
to the real emergency the country was facing. Addressing a press
conference at the World Economic Forum on January 22, President Trump
insisted that when it came to the coronavirus threat, “We have it totally
under control,” despite the Washington state case. “It’s one person coming
in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine,” he
said. For good measure, he added that he had a “great relationship” with
Xi, who assured him China’s epidemic was also controlled.



… But that February 7 message bore almost no substantive relation to the
Trump administration’s own coronavirus response. Trump and his senior
advisers remained confident that border closures and airplane shutdowns
would keep Covid-19 out of America—and so the White House took almost no
interest in the potential of a pandemic sweeping America. In 2018, Trump
had eliminated most of the Obama-era pandemic response capacities inside
federal agencies, especially the National Security Council and Department
of Homeland Security—which meant that Trump was dangerously insulated from
critical sources of information about America’s acute vulnerability to
emerging viral threats. The Trump administration had no coordination of
information and analysis in the National Security Council, no command
operation inside the Department of Homeland Security, a diminished set of
global health and epidemic programs at the CDC, lapsed funding for training
grassroots medical personnel in infection control, and a weakened capacity
to rush diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines through FDA safety checks and
approval.



Despite warnings

from
his own national intelligence community that Covid-19 displayed “pandemic
potential,” the President insisted the Chinese outbreak posed no threat to
America. Some critics have labeled this call “the worst intelligence
failure in U.S. history,” comparing it to past American leaders’ neglect of
crucial reports of hostile activity prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor
and the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

It is tragic and perverse that animosities between two egotistical leaders
and their sycophantic circles of advisers have placed the entire world in
grave peril. Trade disputes between Washington and Beijing were already
producing widespread global fallout before the emergence of Covid-19.

True, conventional diplomatic initiatives can control some of this damage
but it’s also the case that no reasonable dialogue between the United
States and China can transpire unless both sides are willing to start the
conversation based on valid science. Neither Beijing nor Washington seems
remotely inclined to take on this humbling challenge to the actual legacies
of the

[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-LatAm]: Dillingham on Young, 'Making the Revolution: Histories of the Latin American Left'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message -
From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW 
Date: Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 12:35 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-LatAm]: Dillingham on Young, 'Making the
Revolution: Histories of the Latin American Left'
To: 
Cc: H-Net Staff 


Kevin A. Young, ed.  Making the Revolution: Histories of the Latin
American Left.  Cambridge  Cambridge University Press, 2019.  xvii +
302 pp.  $29.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-108-43925-1; $99.99 (cloth), ISBN
978-1-108-42399-1.

Reviewed by A. S. Dillingham (Spring Hill College)
Published on H-LatAm (April, 2020)
Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz

On November 10, 2019, the Bolivian military "requested" that
President Evo Morales vacate the presidency, which he did. After
innitially fleeing to Mexico, Morales settled as an exile in
Argentina. This coup d'état, which came in the aftermath of
contested elections and mass mobilizations, repeated a familiar
dynamic in Latin American history of armed forces ousting
democratically elected officials from office. Yet in the aftermath of
the November events, those on the political left in Bolivia and
beyond debated how to properly understand what had happened. Some
pointed to popular opposition to Morales's presidency, during which
social movements have confronted the limits of his extractivist
policies, as evidence that it was in fact not a coup. Others
emphasized the role of the armed forces in "requesting" Morales's
resignation as clear evidence of a non-electoral removal from power,
underscoring how there have frequently been levels of popular support
for such undemocratic actions. These debates, which played out as
events unfolded, centered on the relationship between social
movements, left electoral strategies, and state power. They also
involved questions of indigeneity and the nature of representational
politics. According to some, President Morales's ouster may mark the
definitive end of the so-called pink tide in Latin America. Today the
prospects for the left in Latin America are sobering.[1]

In this context, the new edited volume _Making the Revolution:
Histories of the Latin American Left_ is a welcome contribution for
understanding the left's past but also its potential futures.
Covering the broad sweep of the twentieth century in ten different
countries, _Making the Revolution_ offers a detailed portrayal of a
diverse and heterogenous left. The contributors, whether senior or
up-and-coming historians, share a scholarly and political agenda of
thinking through the left's engagement with questions of gender,
race, and indigeneity. This has an enormous analytical yield. Taken
together, the chapters provide a rich and nuanced understanding of
struggles against inequality in nearly all its forms in the region.
The volume constitutes a resounding riposte to narratives of the
"left's class reductionism" (p. 2). The essays emphasize the
significance of alliance and coalition building, personal or
affective relationships, and the politics of solidarity in left
organizing. The authors are at their best when paying attention to
the processes of revolutionary organizing, emphasizing the quotidian
practice of left politics more than official leaders or party
discourses.

In his introduction, Kevin A. Young offers a four-part periodization
to think through this history. Young identifies the first period as
the years immediately following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and
the rise of Communist parties throughout the hemisphere. The second
period centers on the years of the popular front through the
post-World War II era. Margaret Powers's chapter on the US Communist
Party's relationship with Puerto Rican nationalist organizing
demonstrates the internationalism of this period and the significance
of personal relationships in solidarity activism. The 1959 Cuban
Revolution anchors the third period, which was shaped by the
popularity of new left ideas and third-worldism. Finally, Young
offers the 1970s and 1980s and the renewed revolutionary ferment in
Central America as the fourth period of the century.

Michele Chase's chapter on the 1959 Congress of Latin American Women
is a highlight of the volume and demonstrates the utility of its
analytical focus. The congress, held in Santiago, Chile, was part of
longer-standing, Old Left internationalist organizing. Examining
Cuban participation at the congress in the aftermath of the 1959
revolution, Chase moves beyond simplistic narratives of state
co-optation of women's rights activism, either by the Cuban
postrevolutionary state or by Soviet allies. By analyzing the
multiple tendencies within women's rights organizing in Cuba, Chase
demonstrates the depth of the politica

[Marxism] The essential and the expendable: Class, race, and xenophobia during the pandemic – International Socialism Project

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://internationalsocialism.net/the-essential-and-the-expendable-class-race-and-xenophobia-during-the-pandemic/

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[Marxism] [UCE] Rob Wallace webinar

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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Comrades might find it interesting also. This is a webinar with
evoloutionary biologist Rob Wallace and food justice activists:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10221464511542738&set=a.1352365169721&type=3&theater

John Reimann
-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] Fredric Jameson on Joseph Conrad

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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LRB, Vol. 42 No. 8 · 16 April 2020
Time and the Sea
Fredric Jameson on Joseph Conrad

Recently​ a happy accident put me in possession of a rarely seen film by 
Andrzej Wajda, Smuga cienia, from 1976. It is an adaptation of Joseph 
Conrad’s short, openly autobiographical novel The Shadow-Line (1916). 
Wajda conceived the film as a modest docudrama based on Conrad’s last 
mission at sea. The British government, in the thick of the First World 
War, had enlisted the ageing celebrity for a brief, hopefully not too 
dangerous foray in the North Sea to hunt for German U-boats. The trip 
was undertaken without incident and – as its captain, James Sutherland, 
recorded – without any great satisfaction either. Conrad wrote very 
little during the war, with the exception of The Shadow-Line, which 
draws on memories of his first command in the British merchant navy some 
thirty years earlier. So it seems Wajda ended up combining these two 
episodes, the North Sea expedition and the first command, in a scenario 
from which Captain Sutherland and the U-boats disappeared altogether.


F.R. Leavis would not have approved of The Shadow-Line, whose 
broken-backed structure is perhaps no less objectionable than the double 
plot Leavis deplored in Daniel Deronda. Nearly a third of the novel is 
given over to bureaucratic machinations on shore, which Wajda wisely 
shortened but was unable to omit entirely. This opening part of the book 
turns on the inexplicable decision of the unnamed protagonist, the 
Conrad figure, to abandon his position as mate on ‘an Eastern ship’ and 
return to England, effectively giving up his career. He doesn’t say why 
(acte gratuit? existential choice?): there is a lot of speculation, 
people try to dissuade him, rumours abound. The hum of activity is 
calculated to heighten the shock of what happens next, an unexpected 
reversal. The captain of a barque has died at sea, and his place is 
offered to the protagonist, who accepts it just as impulsively as he had 
earlier decided to drop out of the game.


First command in Conrad is as romantic as first love, and is never 
disillusioned. An alternative version of the unique experience is 
offered by Marlow in ‘Youth’ (1898), where the longing ‘to see the East’ 
encounters as many obstacles as in The Shadow-Line but reaches a 
different and more wondrous conclusion (Francis Ford Coppola borrowed it 
for Apocalypse Now, his film version of Heart of Darkness). Touching 
shore at long last in the dark, Marlow wakes from the sleep of 
exhaustion to a silent dawn:


I opened my eyes ... and then I saw the men of the East – they were 
looking at me. The whole length of the jetty was full of people. I saw 
brown, bronze, yellow faces, the black eyes, the glitter, the colour of 
an Eastern crowd. And all these beings stared without a murmur, without 
a sigh, without a movement. They stared down at the boats, at the 
sleeping men who at night had come to them from the sea. Nothing moved.


For the human animal, the experience of being looked at is profoundly 
ontological, and often traumatic. Conrad wanted to leave London, an 
acquaintance testified, because ‘the crowd in the streets so terrified 
him. “Terrified? By that dull stream of obliterated faces?” He leaned 
forward with both hands raised and clenched. “Yes, terrified: I see 
their personalities all leaping out at me like tigers!”’ This ‘first 
contact’, the enigmatic silence of otherness, is the moment of 
imperialism: Achebe called it racism in his denunciation of Heart of 
Darkness. It is carefully excised from The Shadow-Line, where there are 
only European sailors, the stay in Bangkok is non-exotic, and the 
destination is Australia.


This is perhaps the moment to say something about Conrad’s relationship 
to empire. I would suggest that what is asphyxiating about Heart of 
Darkness is not, in the first place, what so exasperated Achebe, but a 
personal crisis in Conrad’s life that is rarely discussed: the 
historical transition to steam, the replacement of the sailing ship by 
machine power in the 1870s and 1880s, a development repugnant to the 
seamen of Conrad’s generation. It surely played a part in his change of 
profession, his abandonment of maritime commerce for the perilous new 
métier of writing for a living. Indeed, I conjecture that Conrad 
unconsciously projected this existential choice onto the unmotivated 
decision that opens The Shadow-Line. Conrad’s choice may be interpreted 
as a response to what might be called the dialectic of success.


The shift from sail to steam power made ‘freshwater shipping’ possible, 
to the great contempt of traditional seamen. This i

[Marxism] Adam Tooze on the pandemic’s consequences for the world economy

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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LRB, Vol. 42 No. 8 · 16 April 2020
Adam Tooze on the pandemic’s consequences for the world economy

In​ March, as Europe and the US began to apprehend the scale of the 
Covid-19 pandemic, investors panicked. Financial markets plunged. The 
rout was so severe that on several occasions in the second and third 
week of March, normal market functioning was in question. The prices of 
US Treasuries, the ultimate safe asset for investors all over the world, 
swung wildly as fund managers, scrambling for cash, sold everything they 
could sell. In the foreign exchange market, through which more than $6 
trillion normally swirl every day, the traffic was all one way: out of 
every currency in the world, into dollars. No market can function for 
long like that. Sterling plunged. Even gold was sold off. This was not a 
banking crisis like the one in 2008, but, had it not been for the 
spectacular intervention carried out by the US Federal Reserve, the Bank 
of England and the European Central Bank, we would now be facing not 
only the ravages of Covid-19 and the disastrous social and economic 
consequences of the lockdown, but a financial heart attack as well. 
Instead, we are experiencing a shockwave of credit contraction. 
Production and employment have shrunk dramatically. Huge programmes of 
government spending have been set in motion, not to create new jobs but 
to sustain the economy on life-support. The challenge isn’t merely 
technical. This is a global crisis, which affects virtually every 
community on the planet. And it has exposed stark differences between 
the major economic blocs, such that it is now more difficult than ever 
to understand how the thing we call the world economy actually fits 
together.


The three great centres of production, exchange and corporate activity 
are the US, China and the Eurozone. These economic hubs are tied 
together through flows of trade, organised through complex supply chains 
that span the globe. Each of the three hubs has a hinterland extending 
into neighbouring regions in Latin America, East Central Europe, Africa 
and across Asia. They are all stitched into a global financial system 
that uses the US dollar as its currency of trade and credit. Each of the 
three hubs has characteristic weaknesses. The worry about China is the 
sustainability of its debt-fuelled economic growth. The basic weaknesses 
of the Eurozone are that it still doesn’t have a backstop for its 
rickety banking system and that it lacks a shared fiscal capacity; 
what’s more, Italy’s finances are so weak that they continually threaten 
to upset European solidarity. In the US, the national institutions of 
economic policy actually work: they demonstrated this in 2008 and are 
doing so again now. The Fed and the Treasury exert a huge influence not 
only over the US economy but the entire global system. The question is 
how they stand in relation to a profoundly divided American society and 
how their technocratic style of policymaking is received by the 
know-nothing nationalist right wing of the Republican Party and its 
champion in the White House.


Over recent years, each of these weaknesses has at various times seized 
the attention of the fund managers and business leaders who direct 
global business, and the experts and technicians who advise them. It 
isn’t a secret that China’s debt bubble, Europe’s divisions and 
America’s irrational political culture pose a challenge to the 
functioning of what we know as the world economy. What caused the panic 
last month was the realisation that Covid-19 has exposed all three 
weaknesses simultaneously. Indeed, in Europe and the US the failure of 
government has been so severe that we now face a public health 
catastrophe and an economic disaster at the same time. And to make 
matters worse, Donald Trump appears tempted to juggle the two.


Since 2008, the world economy has come to depend to a disconcerting 
degree on government stimulus. No one can pretend that our reality bears 
much resemblance to the pristine market models so popular in the 1980s 
and 1990s. But anyone who took those at face value was missing the 
point. All along, the state was actually involved, whether as a creator 
of markets, or as a distributor and enforcer of property rights. What is 
new is that the central banks are now permanently on call, adding 
further stimulus whenever growth flags. And they have been called on 
regularly because productivity growth has been so slow. At the same 
time, in an age of austerity, we have not been able to count on 
politicians to deliver adequate fiscal stimulus. The EU has until the 
current moment been deaf to any cal

[Marxism] Trump is posing a public health threat that must be addressed | TheHill

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/492441-trump-is-posing-a-public-health-threat-that-must-be-addressed

Plus this:

The Memo: Political tide on crisis threatens to turn against Trump

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/492439-the-memo-political-tide-on-crisis-threatens-to-turn-against-trump

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[Marxism] Webinar Registration - Zoom

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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A Recipe for Disaster: Globalised food systems, structural inequality 
and COVID-19


Description

The third in our weekly webinar series will feature a dialogue between 
Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and agrarian justice 
activists from Myanmar, Palestine, Indonesia and Europe.


Confirmed speakers:

- Rob Wallace author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and co-author of 
Neoliberal Ebola: Modeling Disease Emergence from Finance to Forest and 
Farm.
- Moayyad Bsharat of Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), 
member organization of La Via Campesina in Palestine.
- Arie Kurniawaty of Indonesian feminist organization Solidaritas 
Perempuan (SP) which works with women in grassroots communities across 
the urban-rural spectrum.

- Sai Sam Kham of Metta Foundation in Myanmar.
- Paula Gioia of European Coordination Via Campesina (TBC).

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PH_vcIRGQaOpXdrOcURgTg

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Re: [Marxism] Howie Hawkins statement on COVID-19

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

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This is not a criticism of your statement, but reading this had me again 
thinking about the focus recently only being on medical care (M4A) or equipment 
(DPA) by Bernie.

While those are both extremely important, there are ongoing actions, movements 
and causes directly related to and started by the workers who keep the world 
functioning even during this crisis -- sanitation workers, delivery workers, 
health care workers, warehouse workers, agriculture workers, electric grid 
workers, network engineers... 

This crisis lays bare not only the changes we need around medical care, 
housing, planning and production outside the market, but also how so many 
workers can be forced to put their lives at risk with absolutely no control 
over the conditions, except for striking which we've seen recent cases of this 
leading to workers being fired, like Chris Smalls at Amazon.

Socialists need to be pointing out that it should be the workers in control of 
what is an essential item that needs to be delivered and what changes to the 
work environment make them safest.

The call for revolutionizing the economy around democratic control is one thing 
that separates socialists from New Deal Democrats and something that always 
frustrated me with the rallying around Sanders. While he offered proposals 
around co-ops and increased unionization, even those limited policies seemed 
unimportant to the message.

Tristan

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Re: [Marxism] Reformism Yesterday and Social Democracy Today

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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But URL indicates that Jacobin posted the article in August 2018, when they 
were already beating the drums for Sanders.

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis 
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2020 10:19 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Cc: Louis Proyect
Subject: [Marxism] Reformism Yesterday and Social Democracy Today

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(From a 1985 Socialist Register article by Marcel Liebman. Could it 
possibly be the first inkling that the Jacobin intellectuals realize 
they have been wasting their time with this "democratic socialism" 
baloney? Probably not...)

Even the accomplishments of the old social democracy — the precious but 
limited reforms which did not even challenge the capitalist order — are 
beyond the grasp of contemporary reformism. Whilst tradition obliges us 
to use labels like “reformism” and “social democracy,” only those who 
stand to gain from them are fooled by them.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/08/social-democracy-marcel-liebman-socialist-politics

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[Marxism] How "Just-in-Time" Capitalism Spread COVID-19 – Spectre Journal

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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By Kim Moody on April 8

How “Just-in-Time” Capitalism Spread COVID-19

https://spectrejournal.com/how-just-in-time-capitalism-spread-covid-19/



Me on April 3rd (have I been plagiarized?)

COVID-19 and the “Just-in-Time” Supply Chain: Why Hospitals Ran Out of 
Ventilators and Grocery Stores Ran Out of Toilet Paper


https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/03/covid-19-and-the-just-in-time-supply-chain-why-hospitals-ran-out-of-ventilators-and-grocery-stores-ran-out-of-toilet-paper/

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[Marxism] Reformism Yesterday and Social Democracy Today

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(From a 1985 Socialist Register article by Marcel Liebman. Could it 
possibly be the first inkling that the Jacobin intellectuals realize 
they have been wasting their time with this "democratic socialism" 
baloney? Probably not...)


Even the accomplishments of the old social democracy — the precious but 
limited reforms which did not even challenge the capitalist order — are 
beyond the grasp of contemporary reformism. Whilst tradition obliges us 
to use labels like “reformism” and “social democracy,” only those who 
stand to gain from them are fooled by them.


https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/08/social-democracy-marcel-liebman-socialist-politics

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[Marxism] Vietnam donating hundreds of thousands of anti-bacterial masks, protective suits, to Europe, US

[mkaradjis . via Marxism]

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(Compiled by Chuck Searcey, long-time American resident in Vietnam):

Vietnam is donating 550,000 anti-bacterial masks to European countries.

Viet Nam informed ambassadors of France, Germany, Italy, Spain the UK, and
the head of the European Union Delegation to Vietnam that Viet Nam is
donating 550,000 masks to counter the threat of COVID-19 in Europe, Thomson
Reuters <
https://kfgo.com/2020/04/07/vietnam-donates-55-masks-to-eu-countries-in-coronavirus-fight/>
reports. According to Nhân Dân <
https://en.nhandan.org.vn/politics/item/8553402-vietnam-presents-antibacterial-masks-to-european-countries.html>
newspaper, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs To Anh Dung said at the
handover event, “Amid the current global medical crisis, no single country
could effectively contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Viet Nam
has asked its mask producers to step up production to make 5 million masks
a day. [MORE]
<
https://kfgo.com/2020/04/07/vietnam-donates-55-masks-to-eu-countries-in-coronavirus-fight/
>

In early April, Vietnam sent Germany 6,000 test tubes <
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/vietnam-donates-6-000-test-tubes-to-germany-for-covid-19-cure-trials-4078121.html>
to aid the country in finding a cure for the Covid-19 disease.

Meanwhile:

Viet Nam has sent 450,000 protective suits to the U.S. to help frontline
healthcare professionals fight the Covid-19 pandemic, and Pres. Trump has
tweeted his appreciation. "This morning, 450,000 protective suits landed
in Dallas, Texas,” Trump tweeted on Thursday morning (GMT+7). “This was
made possible because of the partnership of two great American companies –
DuPont and FedEx – and our friends in Vietnam. Thank you," [MORE]
<
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/president-trump-thanks-vietnam-for-covid-19-protective-suits-4081958.html
>

Vietnam has also given medical equipment, including specialized protective
clothing, medical masks and Covid-19 test kits worth over VND7 billion
($296,000) as gifts to Laos and Cambodia.

In early February, Vietnam donated $500,000 worth of goods and medical
supplies to help China <
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/vietnam-offers-china-500-000-to-fight-coronavirus-epidemic-4048746.html>
deal with the fast-spreading novel coronavirus outbreak. [MORE]
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[Marxism] Plague and Civilization - CounterPunch.org

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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The historical record of plagues is muddled. Like us, past societies 
under the existential stress of pandemics, failed to keep records, much 
less accurate records. In many instances, past and present, rulers, 
medical bureaucrats, and journalists subvert the truth. Political and 
economic oligarchs fight for survival and supremacy. The picture that 
survives death is distorted, exactly like the story victors tell after war.


https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/13/plague-and-civilization/

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[Marxism] "Capitalism is incapable of responding to a crisis of this kind" - YouTube

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Interview with spokesperson of South African metalworkers union

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NOD0sw6uZc

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[Marxism] The Pandemic Is Not a Natural Disaster | The New Yorker

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(Our friend Rob Wallace gets cited in The New Yorker)

Barns packed with animals are good places to breed pathogens. 
Monocultures, in which all animals are genetically similar, offer few 
speed bumps to transmission. “You got fifty thousand turkeys in a barn,” 
Robert Wallace, the author of “Big Farms Make Big Flu,” told me. “They 
are all genetically the same, and you are growing them for a turn-around 
time of six weeks. That is all food for flu.” Normally, pathogens evolve 
to be harmful but not deadly: they want to co-opt hosts without killing 
them, so that they can continue their spread. But in the fast-paced 
world of an industrial hen house, where birds come and go quickly, 
pathogens select for the most virulent strains, no matter how deadly. 
Within the uniform predictability of modern agriculture, the 
unpredictable emerges.


https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-pandemic-is-not-a-natural-disaster

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[Marxism] Coronavirus: Vaccine development is a case of 'market failure'. Here's why

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.theage.com.au/national/vaccine-development-is-a-case-of-market-failure-here-s-why-20200413-p54jez.html

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Re: [Marxism] He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, l

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 4/12/20 10:34 PM, John Obrien via Marxism wrote:


But it seems to me that most all of the world left groups,
including ones involved in science and medicine - were way behind preparing and 
offering any plans either.


There are all sorts of good plans out there, including from Bernie Sanders.

The real challenge, however, is addressing the underlying cause--namely 
industrial farming. That requires socialist revolution, which by its 
very nature involves an entirely different approach than what Bernie 
Sanders proposed. In fact, by your foolish stumping for Sanders here, 
you seem ill-disposed to such a quixotic project involving the 
construction of a revolutionary party and all those other vain hopes of 
your ill-spent youth.


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Re: [Marxism] From Prominent Turkish Philanthropist to Political Prisoner

[Dayne Goodwin via Marxism]

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The Coronavirus Meets Authoritarianism in Turkey
by Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, April 3, 2020
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-coronavirus-meets-authoritarianism-in-turkey


On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 9:18 AM Louis Proyect via Marxism
 wrote:
>
> NY Times, April 11, 2020
>  From Prominent Turkish Philanthropist to Political Prisoner
> By Carlotta Gall
>
> ISTANBUL — During a tumultuous day in court in February, the Turkish
> businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala was unexpectedly acquitted
> of trying to overthrow the government and then rearrested before he
> could walk free.
>  .  .  .

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