[Marxism] Fwd: Kremlinology: an intervention | openDemocracy

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/sean-guillory/kremlinology-intervention
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[Marxism] [UCE] Fwd: Jo Cox, the White Helmets and the Baathist amen corner | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Since the White Helmets documentary has generated an organized smear 
campaign, I am reposting this.


https://louisproyect.org/2016/06/20/jo-cox-the-white-helmets-and-the-baathist-amen-corner/
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[Marxism] Doug Greene on The Communist Manifesto: A weapon of war

[Jim Farmelant via Marxism]

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With the exception of the Bible, no other work in history has been more praised 
and denounced, analyzed and criticized, both seriously and superficially, than 
the Communist Manifesto. Whenever the ruling class imposes censorship on works 
which contain “subversive” ideas, the Communist Manifesto is inevitably at the 
top of the list. Students of history, politics, philosophy, sociology and 
economics who ignore the impact of the Communist Manifesto, do so at their 
peril. The Communist Manifesto is the one piece of writing by Marx and Engels 
that most people, not merely leftists, have read. It has been translated into 
almost every major language in the world and is the most influential political 
pamphlet ever written. There is not a single wasted word in the Communist 
Manifesto with its sweeping historical vision that simultaneously indicts and 
praises the capitalist order, while call upon the workers of the world to take 
action to overthrow it. Despite being written over 160 years ago, the Communist 
Manifesto remains as relevant as ever. For generations of workers, socialists 
and communists, whether in factories, manning the barricades, students, 
guerrillas in the jungles and hills, the Communist Manifesto was, and remains, 
a weapon of war.

more:
http://links.org.au/communist-manifesto-marx-engels-weapon-war-greene

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


Watch: Alzheimer’s Reversal “Cocktail� Changing Lives
Nutrition and Healing
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[Marxism] Fwd: Snowden | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Like Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and John Ford, Oliver Stone is a true 
auteur—a director who puts his unique stamp on a body of work defined by 
a particular theme and aesthetic. In Stone’s case, it is the story of 
lost innocence as the protagonist discovers essential truths about 
himself and the debased American system he mistakenly believed in. In 
“Born on the Fourth of July” and “Platoon”, the hero is a young man who 
joins the military to defend freedom in Vietnam only realizing in the 
end that he was a hired gun for Wall Street as Smedley Butler once put 
it. Landing in that “Wall Street”, a young stockbroker decides that jail 
and a loss of a lucrative career is preferable to robbing ordinary 
working people with a fountain pen as Woody Guthrie put it in “Pretty 
Boy Floyd”. Even if “JFK” trafficked in wildly improbable conspiracy 
mongering, it shared their basic message, namely that the 
military-industrial complex and the big banks are enemies of peace and 
freedom.


full: https://louisproyect.org/2016/09/15/snowden/
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[Marxism] The presidential horse race

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(Written on FB by my old friend from Bard College Richard Greener who 
worked in radio for about the same amount of time I have been involved 
with socialism.)


Why am I asked so often if I "still think" Hillary Clinton is going to 
beat Trump with ease? After all, aren't the polls getting tighter and 
isn't the election getting closer by the day? No, this election is not 
close. We're watching too much television.


A reminder not to pay attention to the “pretend journalists” who 
populate the TV channels like flies on a garbage heap. On commercial TV 
(and that includes Public Television, PBA), all the coverage of the 
presidential campaign is a show business production and all those 
involved in the coverage are performers. Ask their agents and bankers. 
"Broadcast journalism" is an oxymoron.


As a former broadcaster I remember well that there are 168 hours in 
every week and each minute of those 168 hours requires programming. 
Plus, there are on average 16 minutes of commercials in each hour of TV 
programming. Many of those commercials are only 20 seconds; some are 30 
seconds; the rest are 60 seconds. Between now and Election Day there 
will be hundreds of millions of dollars spent on both political 
commercials and regular product commercials on all TV networks and 
stations combined. In order to satisfy the demands of these advertisers, 
and justify the high prices charged, TV must deliver the highest ratings 
possible. In order to produce those high ratings the TV “pretend 
newspeople” will tell us with renewed urgency every day that the race is 
getting closer and closer, tighter and tighter, that the outcome is in 
question, and the next president could be… Hillary Clinton or Donald 
Trump. Either one – it’s a tossup! You better keep watching.


This, of course, will be nonsense. It will be the same nonsense fed to 
us in 2008 and again in 2012. Do you remember that even Mitt Romney 
actually thought he was going to win and it never occurred to him to 
write a concession speech? People will believe anything. You'd never 
know it from TV, but we haven't had a close election since 2000.
In 2008 Obama defeated McCain by 10 million votes and whipped him in the 
Electoral College 365 to 173. Yet, not a single TV channel told you this 
would happen by such a wide margin. Instead, they all pretended the race 
was getting closer and closer, tighter and tighter as Election Day loomed.


In 2012 Obama beat Romney by 5 million votes, smashing him in the 
Electoral College 332 to 206. Yet, once more the TV channels all said 
the race was close and getting closer as we approached Election Day. 
Barack Obama won 2 landslide elections and neither of them was foreseen 
by anyone on TV. Is that even possible? Well, it was never reported this 
way.


And of course, the same thing is happening again this year. The real 
"Reality TV" is not Trump, it's the TV coverage of the campaign. Don't 
believe what you see and hear, especially in the coming weeks. This race 
has never been close and it will not be close when the votes are 
counted. I believe HRC will win at least 35 states with 386 Electoral 
votes, while Trump wins at most 15 with only 152 Electoral votes. Some 
of you may recall my 2012 state-by-state predictions where I correctly 
predicted every state except one (Missouri). If anything, this time I'm 
overstating Trump's totals. He will save McCain's reputation because he 
may lose by as many as 15 million votes.


When the totals are in and Hillary Clinton is easily elected you will 
not hear one word from the “pretend journalists” on TV about how badly 
they missed the results. And I am certain we will be subjected to the 
same bullshit once more in 2020. There’s no business like Show Business. 
As The Donald himself likes to say, "Believe me."

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[Marxism] Mode of Production Theory according to Wikipedia

[Brian McKenna via Marxism]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_of_production

Nothing much on Russia and Chine as being State Capitalist. . .nothing on
the Germanic Mode. .

Best,
Brian



-- 
Brian McKenna, Ph.D.
Anthropologist
Department of Behavioral Sciences
CASL 4025
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Dearborn, Michigan
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[Marxism] Fwd: Why Assad's Army Has Not Defected | The National Interest

[DW via Marxism]

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Interesting. I never knew the *National Interest *was a neo-con journal.
The reason, is that I never really cared to look beyond the specific issue
that the NI excels in: the debates and discussions around military
technology as used by the U.S. and and how it stacks up against other
countries latest developments in human destruction. NI reflects the ruling
class debates over military expenditures, weapons systems and deployment.
NI plays the same role with regards to these issues as* Foreign Affairs *does
in reflecting a wing of ruling class' foreign policy initiatives and
proposals (and is still very useful in this role).

I haven't read the article that Louis posted but you can be sure the ideas
that flow from it due represent (or at least are read!) by various
important policy wonks in the government (and despite it's neo-Con
heritage, read by the same types in both parties).

David
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[Marxism] era of endless wars

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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Danny Katch does a great job of detailing the history, roots and impact of
the bipartisan "War on Terror."
IMO, Danny - like Ashley and others before him in the pages of SW -
https://socialistworker.org/2016/09/15/how-the-era-of-endless-wars-began -
doesn't let that history blind him to the tactical differences within the
rulers' politicians about when and how to apply military power.
And his hard-hitting attack on our rulers provides a context allowing for
this recognition of reality:

"Unfortunately, it's not just the right wing that doesn't seem to know its
history. The leftists who look at the destruction wrought in Syria by an
Assad regime backed by Russia and Iran and see only the threat of U.S.
intervention are stuck in 2003.

"They don't realize that Obama's imperial mandate has been to pull back
from Bush's reckless drive toward regime change--and they seem to have
forgotten, if they ever knew it, that when the Syrian people call for
regime change, that's not a CIA plot, that's revolution."
Those paragraphs are a breath of fresh air after reading the BAR garbage.
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[Marxism] Fwd: Why Assad's Army Has Not Defected | The National Interest

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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An Assadist propaganda piece published in the magazine started by neocon 
Irving Kristol that has Henry Kissinger as an honorary chairman of the 
board. A while back it evolved in a "realist" direction not that 
inconsistent with Kissinger's Metternichian outlook. Just about every 
key outlet of bourgeois and leftist opinion seems united on the need to 
keep the gangster Bashar al-Assad on his throne.


http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-assads-army-has-not-defected-15190?page=show
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[Marxism] Colin Powell, in Hacked Emails, Shows Scorn for Trump and Irritation at Clinton

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Sept. 15 2016
Colin Powell, in Hacked Emails, Shows Scorn for Trump and Irritation at 
Clinton

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has long been one 
of the high priests of the Washington establishment, staying quiet in 
this year’s raucous presidential campaign while tending to his 
reputation as a thoughtful officer and diplomat.


But a hack of Mr. Powell’s email this week has ripped away the 
diplomatic jargon and political niceties to reveal his unvarnished 
disdain of Donald J. Trump as a “national disgrace,” his personal peeves 
with Hillary Clinton and his lingering, but still very raw, anger with 
the Republican colleagues with whom he so often clashed a decade ago.


There has been an expectation that Mr. Powell, who waited until the 
final weeks to endorse Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, would do the same 
for Mrs. Clinton this year. But in one 2014 email released online, Mr. 
Powell lamented that while he respected Mrs. Clinton, he would “rather 
not have to vote for her,” describing the Democratic presidential 
nominee as having “a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not 
transformational.”


The emails make clear that if Mr. Powell endorses Mrs. Clinton, he will 
be motivated by intense feelings about Mr. Trump, whom he also called an 
“international pariah.”


In the email messages, which an aide to Mr. Powell confirmed were 
authentic, the retired four-star general who served as President George 
W. Bush’s top diplomat also accuses Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee 
for president, of having embraced what Mr. Powell called a “racist” 
movement when he aggressively questioned the validity of Mr. Obama’s 
birth certificate and his legitimacy to serve as the country’s top 
elected official.


But the emails, many of which were sent in recent weeks, also reveal Mr. 
Powell’s disapproval of Mrs. Clinton’s handling of her email scandal and 
expose his sometimes unflattering observations of the Democratic 
presidential nominee and her husband. In a series of exchanges, Mr. 
Powell lamented efforts by Mrs. Clinton’s “minions” to drag him into the 
controversy surrounding her use of a private email server by claiming he 
had advised her on the issue.


“H.R.C. could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone 
honestly what she had done and not tie me into it,” Mr. Powell wrote 
late last month, referring to Mrs. Clinton by her initials. “I told her 
staff three times not to try that gambit. I had to throw a mini-tantrum 
at a Hamptons party to get their attention. She keeps tripping into 
these ‘character’ minefields.”


In the 2014 email, Mr. Powell, though offering no independent knowledge, 
alluded in graphic language to coverage in The New York Post suggesting 
that Bill Clinton had continued to cheat on his wife.


The emails, some of which were first reported by BuzzFeed News, also 
show Mr. Powell venting about some members of Mr. Bush’s administration. 
In one reference to Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, he 
accuses “the idiot Rummy” of being disloyal to both President Bushes. In 
another email, Mr. Powell calls Dick Cheney, the former vice president, 
and his daughter Liz Cheney “idiots and a spent force peddling a book 
that ain’t going nowhere.”


Mr. Powell appeared to be angry that NBC proposed that he appear on 
“Meet the Press” with Mr. Cheney and his daughter, who were promoting a 
book they wrote together. In the email, Mr. Powell said the network 
agreed to invite the Cheneys at a later date.


Mr. Powell’s emails appeared on a website called DCLeaks.com, which had 
previously posted documents that the site had obtained after hacks into 
the accounts of prominent Democrats and some Republicans, including Gen. 
Philip M. Breedlove, the former commander of NATO forces in Europe, and 
George Soros, a wealthy backer of liberal causes. It is unclear who 
operates DCLeaks.com.


Peggy Cifrino, an aide to Mr. Powell, responded Wednesday morning to an 
inquiry about the emails: “We are confirming that General Powell has 
been hacked and that they are his emails. We have no further comment at 
this time.” Mr. Powell did not respond to an email sent directly to his 
personal account.


In several emails, Mr. Powell suggested that speaking out against Mr. 
Trump would only add to the attention the Republican nominee was getting 
from the news media. Responding to a reporter asking for comment, Mr. 
Powell wrote last month that Mr. Trump is “his own best enemy” and 
added: “I will speak out when I feel it appropriate and not after every 
idiot thing he says.”


But the emails make 

[Marxism] Fwd: John Kerry’s last hurrah: With the Syrian cease-fire, the secretary of state takes a parting swipe at Russophobia - Salon.com

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Patrick Lawrence, who used to write for Salon using the name Patrick L. 
Smith, is one of the biggest Assadist tools there is. This article 
should give you a sense of how much overlap there is today between US 
and Russian goals in Syria.


http://www.salon.com/2016/09/14/john-kerrys-last-hurrah-with-syrian-ceasefire-the-secretary-of-state-takes-a-parting-swipe-at-russophobia/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Globalisation and Milanovic’s elephant | Michael Roberts Blog

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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So let’s sum up; what does all the analysis of global and national 
inequality tell us?


First, that global inequality has increased since the early 1980s, when 
‘globalisation’ got moving.  Second, that global growth of incomes has 
been concentrated in China, and to a lesser extent and more recently, 
India.  Otherwise average global household income growth would have been 
much lower.  Third, there has been a rise in average household incomes 
in the major advanced capitalist economies since the 1980s, but the 
growth has been much less than in China or India (starting from way 
further down the income levels) and much less than the top 1-5% have 
gained.  Fourth, since the beginning of the millennium, most households 
in the top capitalist economies have seen their incomes from work or 
interest on savings stagnate and must rely on transfers and benefits to 
improve their lot.


full: 
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/globalisation-and-milanovics-elephant/

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[Marxism] Fwd: Scratching the surface of Syria's ceasefire

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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By Sam Hamad

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2016/9/14/scratching-the-surface-of-syrias-ceasefire
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[Marxism] UK matters

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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i have not posted to the list lately on the Leadership crisis in the UK
Labour Party.  My excuse is that I have been thoroughly immersed in the
twitter traffic and at some stage I should do  reflection on that whole
experience. To tweet is hopeless in terms of analysis but great in terms of
egalitarianism and immediacy. I have had likes from George Galloway (2 ),
one from a Labour MP and one from Aaron Bastani of Novara Media (alas
only one ). I have been studiously ignored by Owen Jones, whom I like but
think needs to toughen up, and George Eaton who is on the right of the
Labour Party spectrum, so who cares?. Worst of all all though Richard
Seymour doesn't even seem to know of my existence .

But apart from my desperate search for strokes, what have I learned?  Well,
I think it is worth noting that twitter provides an outlet for people who
normally would be isolated.  Thus the purge unleashed on the  Corbyn
supporters in the Labour Party membership has created a twitter storm.
Moreover it is one that Watson, the Deputy Leader and Ian McNicol the Party
secretary have had to address. It is no longer the case that someone can be
made to vanish quietly from the electoral rolls.  Victims tweet and their
screams echo throughout the twitter sphere.  Barristers appear and offer to
defend the expelled.  Curses and imprecations are showered on Watson and
McNicol.  No one, it would appear goes quietly into that good night anymore.

Tweets attempt to contain analyses in the form of photos of texts and
references to blogs and articles. So there is some scope to educate oneself.

Best of all that tweets have heavily advertised Richard Seymour's book on
Corbyn.  I have to give a talk on it for the Socialist Alliance and will
try and post it to the list as well.  But for now I cannot recommend the
book too highly.  Richard belongs to the "pessimism of the intellect"
school of Marxism, while I think we badly need some optimism even of the
slightly foolish variety. But I loved his clinical analysis of Labour and
what was for me almost holy scorn directed at the Blairite wing of the
Labour Party.  The book is superbly polemical and thoroughly analytical at
the same time. In sort it is a brilliant achievement.

But what happens now?  Well I think the purge will not be of sufficient
dimensions to prevent a Corbyn victory. The 172 parliamentarians that voted
against Corbyn will then have a stark choice. They will either fight on in
some form or seek surrender terms.  Corbyn will accommodate them,I think,
but his supporters may be difficult to control. There is real anger at the
first wave of Blarite resignations that sought to force Corbyn to resign.
There is even more anger springing from the second stage of the coup when
Tom Watson of the Old Right and McNicol of the Soft Left took charge of the
plotting. Their petty maneuvers to restrict members' rights and to raise
the cost of being a supporter and to purge Corbyn's supporters have all
generated hatred and that is not too strong a word to use.

But it is significant that question time in Parliament yesterday, Labour
members for the first time publicly supported Corbyn. So some of them would
appear to be looking at the wall and noticing the writing and reacting
accordingly.

Hopefully, I will get time to talk more on the "what now?"

Comradely

Gary
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Re: [Marxism] [UCE] Fwd: Who's wasting their vote? | SocialistWorker.org

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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Not the SWP. Try ISO.

> 
>
> Just to take one tiny example from the SWP to show how when you start to
> deviate from Marxism you end up throwing the method out with it:
>
>
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Re: [Marxism] [UCE] Fwd: Who's wasting their vote? | SocialistWorker.org

[Clay Claiborne via Marxism]

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Just to take one tiny example from the SWP to show how when you start to
deviate from Marxism you end up throwing the method out with it:

The most compelling portion of the essay is Weese's analysis of what
> constitutes a "wasted vote." According to Weese, the definitions of a
> wasted vote, mathematically speaking, are: 1) Votes cast for candidates who
> do not win; and 2) Excess votes for candidates who do win.


So if a ton of ore has to be mined to find a single diamond, mining the ton
of ore minus a few carets is wasted labor. Worst yet, if the Syrian
revolution loses all the thuwar will have wasted their lives and if they
win those who died after victory was assured ...

And rewrite the Marxist theory of value to take the social out of it so
that labor that goes to crops that fail can be called wasted labor and only
the labor that goes towards crops that are ultimately harvested can be
considered productive labor.

This makes for fun after-the-fact condemnation of failed efforts but it is
of little guidance to the farmer who knows beforehand that a certain
percentage of his crops will fail but not which or how many.

Or to break it down even further, the farmer may know that only 50% of the
planted seeds will germinate, but he doesn't know which ones, so he plants
100 seeds to produce 50 seedling. If he uses "Weese's analysis" he should
consider the time to plant 50 of the seeds a waste of time and plantings of
50 seeds time well spent. Fortunately, he doesn't apply "Weese's analysis,"
so he correctly takes the entire time involved in planting 100 seeds as the
necessary labor to raise 50 seedlings. This, of course assumes that he
plants all of those seeds in such a way that they have an even chance of
spouting. If, on the other hand, he were to plant those 50 seeds in dry
salty beach sand with no water source but the ocean, well that would be
like casting a vote for someone who has absolutely no chance of winning, it
would be a complete waste of time and seeds.

Weese is wrong - if the point of the election is to chose a new POTUS and
there are two possible outcomes then every vote for one of those possible
outcomes is a vote that effects the outcome. Votes that aren't cast for one
of the contenders, like votes that aren't cast at all, are votes that play
no role in choosing the POTUS.

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

Read my blogs at the Linux Beach 


On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 7:57 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

> https://socialistworker.org/2016/09/14/whos-wasting-their-vote
>
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