[Marxism] Series on dialectics, pt 3: dialectical systems and order

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


http://rdln.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/dialectical-system-and-order-pt-3-of-series-on-dialectics/

Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Maidan and Beyond, Part II: The Cacophony of Donbas | e-flux

[Matthew Russo via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


OK, so I keep reading the output on Ukraine, and the same questions keep
bugging me, and I have to get it off my chest:

So what IS the characterization of the present Kiev regime (is it "OK" to
call it a regime, or is that also "siding with Kremlin propaganda")?
Something more than the obvious, that it is a capitalist regime.  More
details, please.

Apparently any attempt at correct characterization is to be discounted as
"Kremlin propaganda".  This is to adopt the same methods as one's erstwhile
opponents in the "anti-imperialist" pro-Russian imperialist camp, for whom
to express any sympathy for Ukrainian self-determination is to be a "CIA
stooge":

1) An implied, fixed, received and unexamined perspective is the point of
departure for "analysis";
2) The "analysis" is window-dressed with selected "theoretical" fragments;
3) This "analytical framework" filters out inconvenient facts to be flushed
down the memory-hole. Fetishized taboos are erected against ever mentioning
them.

Facts like: the character of the Kiev regime, the exact character of US
and, variously, EU involvement, and the ATO in Donbass.

I was impressed by Volodymyr Ishchenko and his attention to detail in his
NLR interview, the main limitations are on the part of the interviewer
failing to ask all the key questions: http://links.org.au/node/3942

In particular here I see eye-to-eye with Ishchenko:  "They will not be able
to achieve military success without inflicting severe casualties on the
civilian population. It’s a basic choice: either you have serious
bloodshed, with millions of refugees and many cities destroyed.." This is
what I predicted from the start. I got to watch on TV the Ukranian
"National Guard", known to be a hotbed for neo-nazi volunteers, launch a
wholesale, indiscriminate mortar bombardment on the outskirts of Lugansk a
couple days back.  No doubt to terrorize civilians into flight, of which
now there are estimated by the UN to be some 110K in Russia and some 50K
displaced internally.  These aren't Austrian neo-fascists farting up a
government chair in an office somewhere in Vienna.

and:

"...these ‘terrorists’ are becoming something like legitimate authorities,
in the absence of any other representative forces. [An absence precisely
due to the ATO -Matt] If you want peace, you have to talk to them. A clear
stance in favour of a negotiated solution, and against this civil war, *is
the most principled position available now.*"  [My emphasis]  Amen.  There
are no political working class issues at stake in the confrontation in the
Donbas.  I don't care how many proletarians you can stuff into a province,
if the politics on the scene don't express this, then there are no
proletarian politics at stake, other than to avoid having people and
infrastructure - productive forces - destroyed by either Kiev or the
separatists.  Hence unconditional opposition to the civil war is the only
principled stand.  But hey, maybe a U.S.-backed Kiev wants to destroy
productive forces, especially in a place like Donbass.  Would fit the
"neo-liberal" agenda like a glove.  But we'll never know from Marxmail, UM
or Linux Beach at the rate these are going with this apparently taboo
subject.

And don't tell me that these Donbass separatists "took up arms and occupied
state buildings from the start" separately from the masses (true), and
therefore "deserve what they get", whereas the opposition to Assad began
peacefully and had to resort to armed resistance out of necessity. [A
message to Clay] True in Syria, not true in Ukraine, where the "armed
struggle" ball was got rolling by the neo-fascists in Kiev and elsewhere in
W. Ukraine.  It was there that armories were broken into, state buildings
were taken over, and the first shots rang out. Their far-right inspired
separatist counterparts in Donbass merely showed their lack of political
imagination by mimicking the West Ukraine neo-fascists.  Who could blame
then tactically, given that "anti-government armed struggle' was now
legitimized, including by the backers in the "West" itself?

That, BTW, is a good example of the problem with ready-made cookie-cutter
approaches to situations, the kind the pro-Russian imperialists excel in.

And did I mention what a huge inspiration Ukrainian neo-fascism has been to
neo-fascists across Europe?  For anecdotal example, the neo-Nazi abuse of
the YouTube "Rammstein-o-meter" - where video glorification of Hitler and
the SS is set to their German heavy metal music (while Rammstein is
actually Left and bisexual) - has been going off the charts lately.  The
events in Ukraine are having far more impact than Putin's coquetting with
the quotidien Euro Far Right.

Also, Ukrainian national self-determination != the Ukraine that presently
exists within intern

[Marxism] books for review

[George Snedeker via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Socialism and Democracy is looking for someone to review each of the following 
two books. Each book will have a separate reviewer. When you write to me be 
sure to tell me which book you want to review.

 

  1.. MAKING MONEY by Ole Bjerg, Verso, 2014. This book presents a discussion 
of the process of financialization. The author tries to answer the following 
question: What does it mean to make money?  2. GLOBAL IMPERIALISM AND THE GREAT 
CRISIS by Ernesto Screpanti, Monthly Review, 2014. This book presents an 
analysis of the new form imperialism has taken as the result of the 
globalization of the world economy. The author tries to demonstrate that there 
is a new form of imperialism.  
 

To see sample book reviews we have published go to www.sdonline.org When you 
write to me don't just send me your CV. Tell me why you want to review the book 
and send me a sample review you have published. Paste your review into your 
message. Do not send attachments.

 

George Snedeker

Book Review Editor 

Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Rabble.ca and Syria - two starkly opposed narratives

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


On 7/10/14 12:57 PM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism wrote:


Louis Proyect said:
Bartlett is on the steering committee of the "Syria Solidarity Movement" that 
toured Baathist apologist Mother Agnes. Check:  
http://www.syriasolidaritymovement.org/about/steering-committee/

Ken Hiebert replies:
I see that Sara Flounders of the International Action Center was on that 
steering committee, but I have been unable to find any reference to Mother 
Agnes or to her tour on the IAC website.
http://www.iacenter.org/



Satuday's edition of Mother Agnes-Mariam "North American Speaking Tour" 
starts at 7:00PM and is titled "What is Really Happening in Syria 
Today?" and is to be held at Jesus Sacred Heart Church, 10837 Collins 
St, North Hollywood, CA 91601. Her tour is being sponsored by the Syrian 
Solidarity Movement and this Los Angeles appearance is being hosted by 
Arab-Americans For Syria.


full: 
http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2013/11/syrian-american-council-takes-on-la.html



Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Rabble.ca and Syria - two starkly opposed narratives

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Louis Proyect said:
Bartlett is on the steering committee of the "Syria Solidarity Movement" that 
toured Baathist apologist Mother Agnes. Check:  
http://www.syriasolidaritymovement.org/about/steering-committee/

Ken Hiebert replies:
I see that Sara Flounders of the International Action Center was on that 
steering committee, but I have been unable to find any reference to Mother 
Agnes or to her tour on the IAC website.
http://www.iacenter.org/

Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Rabble.ca and Syria - two starkly opposed narratives

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


On 7/10/14 12:22 PM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism wrote:

In April of this year Eva Bartlett went to Syria.  She has her own 
bloghttp://ingaza.wordpress.com/  As well some of her blog entries appear as a 
Rabble bloghttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/eva-bartlett-gaza


Bartlett is on the steering committee of the "Syria Solidarity Movement" 
that toured Baathist apologist Mother Agnes. Check: 
http://www.syriasolidaritymovement.org/about/steering-committee/


Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Rabble.ca and Syria - two starkly opposed narratives

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


This message sent to Rabble.ca and to Eva Bartlett last week.
ken h

When Ali Mustafa was killed in Syria in March of this year, Rabble.ca carried 
articles in remembrance of him, as well as linking to an interview with him on 
Syria.


http://rabble.ca/babble/media/progressive-toronto-photojournalist-ali-mustafa-killed-syria

http://rabble.ca/news/2014/03/remembering-peoples-journalist-ali-mustafa
What are some of the points of the major media coverage on the war in Syria 
that you feel are inaccurate and should be looked at critically?

AM I think the first rule of the Western mainstream media has been to frame 
what is happening in Syria in overly simplified sectarian terms, portraying it 
as a war between Syrian president Bashar al Assad’s Alawite sect on one hand, 
and radical Sunni rebels on the other.

Although sectarianism is definitely one of the key factors at play in Syria and 
should not be overlooked, it’s also a problematic way of trying to understand 
the reality on the ground for two basic reasons. First, the origins of the 
conflict – the real, deep-rooted grievances against the Assad regime that led 
Syrians to revolt in the first place – are completely ignored in this 
narrative. Second, it mistakes the effect for the cause, reducing the 
complexity of the conflict to its simplest, lowest common denominator. As a 
result, the war in Syria is framed as something primordial, ahistorical, and 
perpetual – it is without end because it has always existed.



http://frombeyondthemargins.blogspot.ca/2013/10/reporting-from-inside-interview-with.html

AM The Syrian revolution first began when a few youth in Daraa, in southern 
Syria, spray-painted some anti-government graffiti on the walls of a building. 
They were arrested, beaten, and badly tortured. This sparked major protests in 
Daraa and that spread across the country. The protests were brutally crushed by 
the regime, which dispatched armed thugs known as shabiha to arrest, beat, and 
kill many protesters.

The Syrian revolution began very much in the same spirit as the uprisings 
against dictatorship in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere in the region as part of 
the so-called Arab Spring. Yet the level of regime brutality in Syria was, and 
continues to be, without parallel. It is important to remember that the first 
six or seven months of the uprising was peaceful. The movement used tactics 
like mass protests, sit-ins, and other types of creative actions. At that 
stage, the protests were not even calling for the overthrow of the regime but 
basic political reform, like fair elections, freedom of speech, and other 
rights taken for granted here in the West.

It was the Assad regime that decided to militarize the uprising, turning it 
into a bloody war. The Assad regime forced the crisis to a point of no return. 
Once the level of brutality escalated, many ordinary civilians felt that they 
were forced to take up arms in defence.

* * * * * *

In April of this year Eva Bartlett went to Syria.  She has her own blog 
http://ingaza.wordpress.com/ As well some of her blog entries appear as a 
Rabble blog http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/eva-bartlett-gaza  


April 8
For the next undetermined period I'll be blogging and re-posting publishings on 
Syria, again with the sole intent of shedding light on what is and is not a 
complex issue: Syria is in the crosshairs of the same powers that ravaged Iraq 
and Libya, to name but two, in the name of "human rights" and "democracy." The 
complexities lie in the media misinformation on who is at fault or not and the 
obfuscation of influence and involvement of external powers (U.S., Saudi, 
Turkey, Qatar, Israel, to name a few) who wish to see yet another strong Arab 
nation torn apart. 

May 14
Syria, in its fourth year of a devastating foreign-backed and armed attempt to 
overthrow the government, is somehow still pulsing with life and hope
"We have a leader, Dr. Bashar Al-Assad. We love him so much, we don't want 
anything else. We want him, we want Syria back."


The narrative presented by Ali Mustafa and that presented by Eva Bartlett are 
irreconcilably opposed to each other.
We can no longer ask Mustafa how he would respond to Bartlett's blog, but we 
can ask Bartlett what she thinks of Mustafa's writings.  And we can ask the 
editorial team at Rabble what they make of these two narratives.  

Ken Hiebert

Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Ford Says Committed to South Africa, Plays Down Concern Over Strikes

[Bonnie Weinstein via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Ford Says Committed to South Africa, Plays Down Concern Over Strikes

By REUTERS 

JULY 10, 2014, 9:23 A.M. E.D.T.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/07/10/business/10reuters-ford-motor-safrica.html?src=busln


JOHANNESBURG — Ford Motor Co has a long-term commitment to South Africa, its 
regional head said, playing down any concerns about strikes that an engineering 
federation said had prompted the U.S. carmaker to consider pulling out of the 
country.

The Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA) said 
the local head of Ford, Jeff Nemeth, told SEIFSA's chief executive that "he was 
under pressure from his head office to pull the company's operation out South 
Africa."

Nemeth told SEIFSA of concerns within Ford over strike action, SEIFSA 
spokeswoman Ollie Madlala said.

Nemeth spoke to SEIFSA shortly before more than 220,000 workers led by the 
NUMSA metalworkers union - South Africa's biggest - launched a strike for 
higher pay that has hit the supply of auto parts.

Asked to comment, the president of Ford's Middle East and Africa operations, 
Jim Benintende, said: "We have a long-term commitment to South Africa... and 
we're making news next week about future products." 

Ford wanted to respect the strike negotiation process "so all we have to say is 
that we hope all sides come to amicable agreements as soon as possible," he 
said.

The strike, now in its second week, has already forced General Motors to halt 
production, and Ford and other automakers could follow suit if it continues.

The NUMSA strike follows a walkout by platinum miners that lasted five months 
and ended two weeks ago. 

A four-week strike last year by more than 30,000 NUMSA members at major 
automakers cost the industry around $2 billion.

Ford sells around 6,000 vehicles a month in South Africa, making it the 
third-largest seller behind Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG.

It also exports vehicles from South Africa.

(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by David Dolan and John Stonestreet)

Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Little Annis Fannis reports from Crimea

[Clay Claiborne via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Shows not speaking the language can be an asset when you already know what
you are going to report before the visit.

Clay Claiborne, Director
Vietnam: American Holocaust 
Linux Beach Productions
Venice, CA 90291
(310) 581-1536

Read my blogs at the Linux Beach 


Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Moscow 1937

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


LRB Vol. 36 No. 14 · 17 July 2014r
The Dzhaz Age
Stephen Lovell

Moscow 1937 by Karl Schlögel, translated by Rodney Livingstone
Polity, 650 pp, £16.99, March, ISBN 978 0 7456 5077 7

Over the last thirty years, Karl Schlögel has been the most 
distinguished flâneur among historians of Russia. A sense of place – 
both as the setting for human encounters and something that conditions 
cultural and intellectual life – has informed much of his work. In 1984 
he published Moskau lesen, an essayistic exploration of the Soviet 
capital, while his later books include a history of St Petersburg in the 
early 20th century which sees the city as a ‘laboratory of modernity’, 
and a study of Russian-German interactions through the prism of Berlin, 
which Schlögel christens ‘Europe’s Ostbahnhof’.


In this latest book, however, the flâneur has to change his mode of 
transport. To represent Moscow in 1937, the leisurely intellectual 
stroll is traded for a bumpy ride on a witch’s broomstick. Moscow 1937 
opens with the heroine’s flight in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, 
which, for all its phantasmagoric trappings, provides an 
ethnographically grounded depiction of the city in the 1930s. Schlögel’s 
book, like Bulgakov’s, has stomach-churning narrative lurches. Bulgakov 
gives us a variety show that turns into a public execution; Schlögel has 
the NKVD co-ordinators of mass murder holding a public celebration in 
the Bolshoi Theatre to mark the twentieth anniversary of their 
organisation in December 1937. The grotesquerie is unavoidable. 
Schlögel’s task is to describe one of the most notoriously violent 
peacetime societies in modern history at its most notoriously violent 
moment.


The period has been much written about in the forty years since Robert 
Conquest made the Soviet 1930s synonymous with the Great Terror. 
Scholarship on prewar Stalinism has bifurcated. On the one hand, studies 
of the Terror have become more detailed and nuanced. Now that the Soviet 
archives have been opened, it seems that the number of victims in 
1937-38 was lower than Conquest estimated. But the horror has not 
diminished. Rather the contrary: we now know far more about the Soviet 
phenomenon of death by quota. Besides taking aim at former 
oppositionists and ‘counter-revolutionaries’ in the state apparatus, the 
Great Terror consisted of ‘mass operations’ against whole categories of 
the population that were deemed dangerous: priests, Poles, de-kulakised 
vagrants and many others.


On the other hand, historians have painted Stalinist society as a new 
and distinctive civilisation. In attempting to launch itself into 
industrial modernity, it borrowed feverishly from the rest of the world 
(even if it tried to conceal the fact), but it remained distinctive, if 
only because of the scale of the civilising mission, the speed at which 
it was implemented, and the social backdrop against which it was 
conducted. For all the chaos, violence and squalor of the times, the 
1930s saw the birth of a new social order based on industrialisation, 
coercion and mobilisation, but buttressed by patriotism and aspirations 
to a socialist version of self-betterment.


While most historians see both terror and civilisation as important to 
understanding the Soviet experience of the 1930s, they tend to spend 
their time investigating either one or the other. Schlögel is the first 
to attempt to knit them together so intricately. The title of the German 
edition of his book (published in 2008) makes the point absolutely 
clear: Terror und Traum. As he notes à propos the frenzied pageantry of 
parades on Red Square, ‘Everything came together: confetti parade and 
death-sentence plebiscite, popular celebrations and thirst for revenge, 
carnival extravaganza and orgies of hatred.’


Representing this chaos – keeping it chaotic without rendering it 
nonsensical – is a stylistic and formal problem as much as a 
historiographical one. Schlögel’s solution is what he calls 
‘stereoscopic’ vision. The text is divided into 39 chapters ranging in 
length from one page to more than thirty; it takes us swiftly back and 
forth between show trials and executions, ‘Soviet Hollywood’ and shop 
windows. The grand scale is combined with the vignette. Schlögel doesn’t 
just change topics; he changes tone and perspective. On occasion he 
passes judgment; at other times he lets documents speak for themselves. 
When the issue is the culpability of the Soviet leadership, there is no 
text more powerful than Operational Order No. 00447, of 30 July 1937, 
which listed nine distinct ‘groups subject to punitive measures’ and set 
out in advance how many people were to be executed in the various 
administrative units of the USSR. The Eastern Siberian Region, for 
exam

[Marxism] Fwd: How US Foreign Policy Created an Immigrant Refugee Crisis on Its Own Southern Border | The Nation

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==




http://www.thenation.com/article/180578/how-us-foreign-policy-created-immigrant-refugee-crisis-its-own-southern-border

Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Little Annis Fannis reports from Crimea

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Television channels on the hotel room television include news channels 
from Ukraine. I don’t understand the language, but the images paint a 
clear picture of the news being presented—a relentless propaganda 
barrage of the horrors of the “terrorists” in eastern Ukraine that the 
government and heroic (fascist) militias are attacking and whose cities 
they are bombing. Geez, and here I am thinking the CBC is bad!


full: http://www.rogerannis.com/a-visitor-to-simferopol-crimea/

---

Analogue broadcasts of all Ukrainian television channels have been shut 
off in the Crimea and Russian TV channels are being broadcast on some of 
the vacated frequencies, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.


The television station Inter has been blocked and NTV is broadcasting on 
its frequency, Russia's Channel One is available on the frequency of the 
blocked 1+1, Russia's RTR broadcasts can be watched on the frequency of 
Ukraine's First National Channel, Zvezda television on STB's frequency, 
TNT on the frequency of Ukraine's Channel Five and TNV-Planeta on the 
frequency of ICTV.


Rossiya 24 is broadcasting on the frequency of the Crimean Black Sea 
Television and Radio Company.


The television stations K1, TET, Mega, M1, New Channel, NTN, Ukraine and 
2+2 have been blocked.


full: 
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukrainian-tv-channels-blocked-in-crimea-338901.html


Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Elitist sneering at Palmer and co won't undermine them

[John Passant via Marxism]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Sandra Bloodworth in Red Flag writes that sneering middle class elitism 
directed at the Palmer United Party senators just gives credence to the 
conception that the left is sympathetic only to the inner city university 
educated and only serves to push the disaffected into the arms of populists 
like Palmer.
 
http://enpassant.com.au/2014/07/10/elitist-sneering-at-palmer-and-co-wont-undermine-them/

Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com