Re: [Marxism] For all 'Sanderistas' out there: Bernie campaign inspires radical movement.
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Talking about Australian politics— I’m enjoying this podcast about the 1975 Whitlam sacking by the Queen https://pca.st/episode/a46447dc-8b5e-4747-8e4f-b2d46423 Some insights 1 The power of the state to waive election results at will. 2 How useless well intentioned people are without a decent socialist party And social movement. 3. How even with these constraints some good and lasting changes can be made. 4. How much there is to learn from fxxk ups. Cheers, Walter -- Sent from Gmail Mobile _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Is Joe Biden the American Brezhnev? | Ben Judah | Opinion | The Guardian
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Re: [Marxism] For all 'Sanderistas' out there: Bernie campaign inspires radical movement.
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 3/6/20 7:28 PM, Nick Fredman via Marxism wrote: On Green Left's coverage: Louis has expressed disdain at Australians having an opinion on the Sanders movement, but inconsistently as he prefers the opinion of a Socialist Alternative staffer who I don't know has ever been active outside Melbourne, to those of US Marxists covered recently in Green Left: Vince Emanuele < Yes, I do value Socialist Alternative's analysis highly. I have even on occasion proffered my advice on elections taking place in other countries when the class issues are so patently obvious. 18 years ago there was an ongoing debate on the French elections on Marxmail, with some comrades urging a vote for Chirac, a bourgeois politician, as a way of fending off Le Pen (the father, not the daughter.) My views on the election can be read here: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2002-May/068648.html I think that you and your comrades have extrapolated from the rottenness of the Australian Labour Party the rationale that since it is rotten and since the Democratic Party in the USA is rotten, why not a "tactical" vote for another rotten party when the candidate is so breathtakingly wonderful like Bernie Sanders. After Lenin recommended that the British Communists vote for Labour that had candidates far worse than Sanders, what's the big deal about voting for Democrats? Didn't Lenin urge supporting Labour like a rope supports a hanging man? I have often considered the possibility of spending a month or so studying the Australian Labour Party in order to give you and your comrades a proper answer but I've learned that you are here mainly to intervene. It would be a waste of time for me to get up to speed on Australian politics when the other side of a debate is so into groupthink. Viva Rojova. Viva Sanders. Bleh-bleh. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Chile changing: transgender student leader lends voice to renewed protests - Reuters
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * [Emilia is the great granddaughter of General Rene Schneider.] SANTIAGO (Reuters) - As the long southern hemisphere summer holiday draws to an end this month, students in Chile are returning to college - but not always to classes. Many are getting ready to head out into the streets and breathe new life into the protests that rocked the country last year. Organizers of marches to mark International Women’s Day on Sunday are hoping to attract large crowds. Last year, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 attended the one in Santiago. One of the loudest and most influential voices pressing for change is Emilia Schneider, a transgender, feminist and militant leftist who is the leader of the Student Federation of the University of Chile (Fech), the country’s oldest student union. The Fech is known for its role in demonstrations for free education between 2011 and 2013 that brought Chile and its student leaders global attention. But it was caught on the backfoot in October last year when civil disobedience over public transport fare hikes spiraled into weeks of widespread violence and demonstrations over inequality and elitism. The protests were Chile’s most profound unrest since the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1990. They cost the economy millions of dollars, at least 31 people died, more than 3,000 were injured, and 30,000 were arrested. Now, the Fech is joining in, and has endorsed the protesters’ demands for deep societal changes. “We are the sons and daughters of neo-liberal Chile and the shortcomings that came with it,” Schneider, a 23-year-old law student, told Reuters this week in an interview at the headquarters of the Fech. “We had seen years of protests in this country but the demands had not been heeded,” she said, citing the highly privatized provision of services such as health, education and pensions that had sparked a “sense of discomfort that built up over years.” Schneider said she has benefited from a Gender Identity Law that allows people to legally change their name and sex and took effect in December last year. The passing of the law caused shockwaves in the historically conservative and predominantly Catholic country, where divorce was legalized just 16 years ago and abortion is allowed only in extreme situations. She argues that her gender change was only made possible by her privileged position as a student leader and the support of her liberal family. Many like her still face job insecurity, discrimination, and patchy access to health services, she said. Schneider has a potent link to the country’s dark past: her great-grandfather was General Rene Schneider, a well-known figure in Chile who opposed plans for a military coup in 1970 and was killed by a far-right group. Older Chileans lived through the chilling effect of the 1973-1990 dictatorship but younger people protesting had less “fear of participating in politics,” she said. President Sebastian Pinera has sought to address protesters’ grievances by sacking his most unpopular ministers and introducing new laws to improve salaries, pensions and healthcare. He also backed a growing clamor for a new constitution to replace the incumbent drafted during the Pinochet regime. But many remain dubious about his ability to push the laws through a divided Congress and, if he does, how much change they will really bring. Schneider has turned her organization’s focus to lobbying for influence over the new constitution and specifically the participation of more women in the drafting of the new text if it is approved in a referendum on April 26. “We want a feminist constitution,” she said, “one that guarantees sexual and reproductive rights, gender equality and greater participation by women and those who do not conform to traditional genders.” Chile may be changing, she said - but not fast enough. “We have to keep seeking new policies to generate fresh changes,” she said. “Protests alone will not get us there.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-protests-transgender-idUSKBN20S2JL _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] David Brooks gets it right
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*
Really? "It’s still better to work the room than storm the barricades"
"gets it right"? It might be true that that's how the Democratic Party and
bourgeois politics works but how is that "right" to a Marxist.
And as for "If Joe Biden wins the nomination but loses to Donald Trump . .
. young progressives will turn on the Democratic establishment with
unprecedented fury. . .” and "If Biden wins the White House but doesn’t
deliver . . . the populist uprisings of 2024 will make the populist
uprisings of
today look genteel by comparison." Is this not the same old Leninist
wishful thinking (support the Labour Party like a rope supports a hanging
man) that the left has grimly clung to for the last 100 years. When Lenin
said that, the British Labour Party had never been tested in government.
The Democratic Party has been given more than enough opportunity to show
its true colours. A Biden Presidency will be exactly the "restoration or a
return to normalcy" that David Brooks can't see happening. Four years of
"at least we got rid of Trump, now be grateful and swallow this dead rat".
I'm no Sandernista (I don't even live in the States, as my spelling will
attest) but I just can't see this Biden propaganda piece ("Let's just be
grateful we've re-found unity in the Dems") ringing true.
Brooks in this very article notes that Sanders has been unable to get that
much discussed surge of younger voters out to back him. His is a failed
parliamentary strategy. If there had been a mass movement in support of
Sanders, what he said may have had a ring of truth. In the absence of any
such movement, it sounds to me like a fantasy.
Cheers,
John
On Sat, Mar 7, 2020 at 8:49 AM John Reimann via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
> POSTING RULES & NOTES
> #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
> #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
> *
>
> "I don’t know about you, but the election results this week filled me with
> more hope than I’ve felt in years. It felt like somebody turning down the
> volume.
>
> The angry and putrid shouting that has marked the last four years — and
> that would mark a Trump vs. Sanders campaign — might actually come to an
> end. Suddenly we got a glimpse of a world in which we can hear each other
> talk, in which actual governance can happen, in which gridlock can be
> avoided and actual change can come.
>
> But the results carried a more portentous message as well. For those of us
> who believe in our political system, it’s put up or shut up time. The
> establishment gets one last chance.
>
> If Joe Biden wins the nomination but loses to Donald Trump in the general
> election, young progressives will turn on the Democratic establishment with
> unprecedented fury. “See? We were right again!” they’ll say. And maybe
> they’ll have a point.
>
> If Biden wins the White House but doesn’t deliver real benefits for
> disaffected working-class Trumpians and disillusioned young Bernie Bros,
> then the populist uprisings of 2024 will make the populist uprisings of
> today look genteel by comparison. “The system is rotten to the core,”
> they’ll say. “It’s time to burn it all down.”
>
> Some people are saying a Biden presidency would be a restoration or a
> return to normalcy. He’ll be a calming Gerald Ford after the scandal of
> Richard Nixon.
>
> But I don’t see how that could be. The politics of the last four years have
> taught us that tens of millions of Americans feel that their institutions
> have completely failed them. The legitimacy of the whole system is still
> hanging by a thread. The core truth of a Biden administration would be
> bring change or reap the whirlwind.
>
> There would be no choice but to somehow pass his agenda: a climate plan,
> infrastructure spending, investments in the heartland, his $750 billion
> education plan and health care subsidies. If disaffected voters don’t see
> tangible changes in their lives over the next few years, it’s not that one
> party or another will lose the next election. The current political order
> will be upended by some future Bernie/Trump figure times 10.
>
> This week’s results carried a few more lessons:
>
> Democrats are not just a party; they’re a community. In my years of
> covering politics I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like what happened
> in the 48 hours after South Carolina — millions of Democrats from all
> around the country, from many different demographics, turning as one and
> arriving at
Re: [Marxism] For all 'Sanderistas' out there: Bernie campaign inspires radical movement.
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Green Left's coverage: Louis has expressed disdain at Australians having an opinion on the Sanders movement, but inconsistently as he prefers the opinion of a Socialist Alternative staffer who I don't know has ever been active outside Melbourne, to those of US Marxists covered recently in Green Left: Vince Emanuele < https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/hope-and-hate-us-electoral-race>; Boots Riley < https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/boots-riley-why-i-am-voting-bernie-sanders> and Isaac Silver < https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/united-states-sanders-campaign-invigorating-and-unifying-left>. To describe as cheerleading these views, based on what's happening on the ground rather than high principles applied from afar (not to mention the regular Sanders-scepticism expressed in Green Left by Barry Sheppard) is rather churlish. Silver in particular was very clear about limitations and potential pitfalls, and Emmanuele has a very clear summary of revolutionary united front approach to the campaign: "Never in my life have I poured this much time, effort, sweat, emotions and resources into an electoral campaign. Generally, I avoid electoral politics like the plague, but this campaign is different in every way, from its vision and connection to social movements to its ability to bring out poor and working-class Americans who have given up on the system and everything in between. "Any serious left-wing organiser in the US should view the Sanders campaign as a strategic opportunity to not only potentially have an ally in the White House, but to use the campaign as a way to bolster existing social movement efforts and build independent left-wing organisations that outlast the 2020 campaign and go beyond Sanders’ vision." This seems much the same view as those of Kshama Sawant and the US Socialist Alternative, the half of Solidarity that apparently voted to be part of the campaign, much of the former ISO, and may voices within the DSA. To suggest there's principled defenders of political independence on one side and a bunch of demoralised sheeple blindly following in Harrington's footsteps on the other is a caricature and block to real discussion. And an unfortunate habit of the Australian Socialist Alternative who despite their good work tend to draw exaggerated lines between themselves and the rest of the far left, as a show of being the only real revolutionaries. On Fri, Mar 6, 2020 at 4:10 PM Ratbag Media via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > > https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/green-left-issue-1256 > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/nick.j.fredman%40gmail.com > _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Innocuous and Familiar Story of Bernie Sanders’s Trip to Russia | The New Yorker
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[Marxism] Now Streaming: 13 New Films on Russia
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * (Comrades, have you subscribed to Ovid yet? What's the matter with you? This is great stuff.) We're kicking off March with 13 new documentaries on Russia and the former USSR! This includes the film DOUBLE LIFE, A SHORT HISTORY OF SEX IN THE USSR, which revisits 70 years of communist power in the Eastern Bloc through the prism of sexuality. Also included in this wave of releases is ART AND OLIGARCHS, a work on newly-minted Russian art collectors and their not entirely wholesome reasons for investing in art. These works join 10 other films on Russia/USSR already on OVID making this the largest collection of its type available anywhere online. Check out these films as well as our pick from the OVID archives: DARK DAYS, filmmaker Marc Singer's legendary work on a community of homeless people living in NYC's underground tunnels. P.S. If you have a film you love on OVID, tell us which film it is and what makes it special... you might just featured next week! https://mailchi.mp/de64769fb226/new-films-on-russia-the-ussr?e=037f0fe5b0 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] David Brooks gets it right
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * "I don’t know about you, but the election results this week filled me with more hope than I’ve felt in years. It felt like somebody turning down the volume. The angry and putrid shouting that has marked the last four years — and that would mark a Trump vs. Sanders campaign — might actually come to an end. Suddenly we got a glimpse of a world in which we can hear each other talk, in which actual governance can happen, in which gridlock can be avoided and actual change can come. But the results carried a more portentous message as well. For those of us who believe in our political system, it’s put up or shut up time. The establishment gets one last chance. If Joe Biden wins the nomination but loses to Donald Trump in the general election, young progressives will turn on the Democratic establishment with unprecedented fury. “See? We were right again!” they’ll say. And maybe they’ll have a point. If Biden wins the White House but doesn’t deliver real benefits for disaffected working-class Trumpians and disillusioned young Bernie Bros, then the populist uprisings of 2024 will make the populist uprisings of today look genteel by comparison. “The system is rotten to the core,” they’ll say. “It’s time to burn it all down.” Some people are saying a Biden presidency would be a restoration or a return to normalcy. He’ll be a calming Gerald Ford after the scandal of Richard Nixon. But I don’t see how that could be. The politics of the last four years have taught us that tens of millions of Americans feel that their institutions have completely failed them. The legitimacy of the whole system is still hanging by a thread. The core truth of a Biden administration would be bring change or reap the whirlwind. There would be no choice but to somehow pass his agenda: a climate plan, infrastructure spending, investments in the heartland, his $750 billion education plan and health care subsidies. If disaffected voters don’t see tangible changes in their lives over the next few years, it’s not that one party or another will lose the next election. The current political order will be upended by some future Bernie/Trump figure times 10. This week’s results carried a few more lessons: Democrats are not just a party; they’re a community. In my years of covering politics I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like what happened in the 48 hours after South Carolina — millions of Democrats from all around the country, from many different demographics, turning as one and arriving at a common decision. It was like watching a flock of geese or a school of fish, seemingly leaderless, sensing some shift in conditions, sensing each other’s intuitions, and smoothly shifting direction en masse. A community is more than the sum of its parts. It is a shared sensibility and a pattern of response. This is a core Democratic strength. Intersectionality is moderate. Campus radicals have always dreamed of building a rainbow coalition of all oppressed groups. But most black voters are less radical and more institutional than the campus radicals. They rarely prefer the same primary candidates. If there’s any intersectionality it’s in the center. Moderate or mainstream Democrats like Biden, Clinton and Obama are the ones who put together rainbow coalitions: black, brown, white, suburban and working class. The new Democrats are coming from the right. Bernie Sanders thought he could mobilize a new mass of young progressives. That did not happen. Young voters have made up a smaller share of the electorate in the primaries so far this year than in 2016 in almost every state, including Vermont. Meanwhile there were astounding turnout surges in middle-class and affluent suburbs. Turnout was up by 76 percent in the Virginia suburbs around Washington, Richmond and parts of Norfolk. Turnout was up 49 percent over all in Texas. Many of these new voters must be disaffected Republicans who now consider themselves Democrats. It’s still better to work the room than storm the barricades. Biden grew up in a political era in which politics was still about persuasion, not compulsion; building diverse coalitions, not just firing up your base. He’s been able to win over many of his former presidential rivals and cement a series of valuable alliances, especially with Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. As Ezra Klein pointed out in Vox, Sanders tried to win over the Democratic Party by attacking the Democratic Party and treating its leaders with contempt. In fact, some Sanders surrogates are attacking Biden’s skill in building coalitions as a sign of evil elitism, as something only those nasty insiders do. Biden’s wins this week, and his incredible
[Marxism] Craig F. tweets about Kevin Coogan
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[Marxism] The Sublime Farewell of Gerhard Richter, Master of Doubt - The New York Times
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Important new show of 88-year old German painter who despite fleeing East Germany was by no means a fan of capitalism. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/arts/design/gerhard-richter-review-met-breuer.html My review of a documentary about Richter: https://louisproyect.org/2013/04/08/notes-on-modern-art-part-two/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Opinion | How Working-Class Life Is Killing Americans, in Charts - The New York Times
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[Marxism] The Romanian New Wave | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Although I was only one of the few film critics who did not find Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” worthy of an Academy Award for best film of 2020, I was happy to see a foreign-language film get such an award for the first time. As a fan of two of his earlier films (The Host, Mother), I do count him as one of South Korea’s top directors. As should be obvious from my surveys of South Korean film for CounterPunch, I consider the country to be on the leading edge of filmmaking today, alongside Iran, China and Romania. Ironically, these four nations that have long histories of repression are far more richly endowed cinematically. Perhaps, it is not such an irony in light of our greatest composers having served as court musicians under clerics and monarchs. Until now, there has only been a single review of a Romanian film on CounterPunch, and it was not mine. It was by the redoubtable Kim Nicolini, who in 2008 described “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days” as “the movie that I’ve been waiting to see for months, and it did not disappoint.” Here’s the good news. “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days”, which describes the desperate search by a young woman to find someone in 1980s Romania to perform an illegal abortion, is part of a traveling film festival titled “Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema.” Scheduling information is here. The festival includes thirty films, including a number originating before what film scholars have dubbed the Romanian New Wave or New Romanian Cinema. full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/03/06/the-romanian-new-wave/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Break Their Haughty Power » Review: “Dreamer of the Day” by Kevin Coogan
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[Marxism] LAROUCHE PLANET | Library / SMILING MAN FROM A DEAD PLANET: THE MYSTERY OF LYNDON LAROUCHE
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * (Kevin Coogan's website) By Hylozoic Hedgehog for LaRouche Planet September 2009 About the Author: "Hylozoic Hedgehog" is the nom de guerre of a former NCLC member who first joined the LaRouche organization in 1971. He worked in the group's Manhattan-based National Office "Intelligence Staff" from 1974 until 1979, when he quit the organization in disgust over its ties to the far right. In January 2013, his book How It All Began: The Origins and History of the National Caucus of Labor Committees in New York and Philadelphia (1966-1971) was published by LaRouche Planet at http://laroucheplanet.info/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Library.HIABcover. More here. http://laroucheplanet.info/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Library.UnityNow _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Kevin Coogan has died
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Most of you probably don't know who he is but I got to know him as a regular and very smart commenter on my blog as Hylozoic Hedgehog. It turns out that he had adopted that name after beginning to post attacks on Larouche's movement so as to protect himself against retaliation. He showed up after I began writing a series of posts on Larouche myself. He is the author of a book titled "Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey & The Postwar Fascist" that is obviously related to his interest in the American ultraright. The last I heard from him was on February 14th. After I had written something about Victoria Woodhull versus Friedrich Sorge for CounterPunch, he told me about a project he had abandoned years ago. This will give you an idea of how consumed he could become in his research: Hi Louis, Some years ago, I began a huge project on Marx and the 19th century. Although my main interest was in the "Great Game" involving England, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire (Marx was a Turkophile), I did get diverted into the Marx/race issue. One reason is that one centerpiece of my study was Marx's totally obscure book Herr Vogt. Karl Vogt was a leading scientific racist as well as an 1848 revolutionary. In a way, this project ironically mimicked Capital, which Marx basically gave up after Volume One. I gave up for a lot of reasons, including my belief that I was writing for a Left that no longer existed. The deeper I got, the more I felt this stuff was simply too esoteric for a movement whose intellectual depth was like an inch deep. It just became too big and too depressing. In any case, here are three draft sections from the book. The first is on Marx and the South and the debates over slavery. I think Marx is awful, but he does evolve a bit from the nadir which is in the 1840s-1850s. But he is terrible. I also began research into Engels and I spent a bit of time in Manchester. I was trying to find out more about his firm Ermen and Engels. They were a cotton textile firm and Engels was supported in a way by black slave labor as the firm got its cotton from the South. At one point, Engels was even supposed to visit New Orleans. The second section is on the 1848 radicals and how some of them backed the South. It goes to my investigation of Karl Vogt, a key ideologue of scientific racism and a mentor of Agassiz if I can even remember what I wrote. IN my book, I write as a historian and not a cheerleader. Nor did I find much to cheer about. I entered the project inspired by Hal Draper. At the end, I was amazed at how Draper could write five books and Marx comes out as the hero every time. It felt preposterous. Section three is on a weird French racial writer who believed geography is destiny that Marx liked and Engels rightly thought was crazy. Anyway, it's been over a decade since I abandoned the project as it had grown so massive that it was crushing me for no real purpose that I could see except bringing me down while further isolating me. But I'm sending you these excerpts. If nothing else, I have a lot of great sources in the footnotes. Again, I have not looked at all this for over a decade. I have no idea if I can defend everything I wrote and I'm also sending you first drafts. Don't read it as an argument; just read it for background. Frankly, when I was copying sections of it, I could not even remember writing some of them. But I can see from your interest in this topic that there may be leads or suggestions that you might find worthwhile. Cheers, Kevin _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Erdogan’s imperial play comes undone
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Not sure why John Reimann's addition to this thread is a separate thread (since the subject is the same). I agree with Patrick Bond that sub-imperialism is an extremely useful concept, though I think that Callinicos used it far too broadly (Vietnam? really?), but perhaps Patrick's own criteria are somewhat restrictive. I basically agree with John Reimann that" Whatever term one wishes to use, all capitalist states are driven by the same forces that drive the most powerful. How could it be otherwise? And that means that where they can, they will economically, politically and militarily dominate another state." However, John seems to be saying that this makes them all "imperialist", without a separate sub-imperialist category. Seems to me that it is useful to distinguish between capitalist countries whose reach is global and those much less powerful states whose reach is regional. That the first group also, by and large, correspond to other aspects we have traditionally thought of as evidence of imperialism - eg being highly advanced capitalist economies that dominate the world market in other, less direct ways (trade etc) - is also a relevant distinction. This allows us to understand that the US and China, for example, may be engaged in economic rivalry, but that the quasi-conflict between the US and Iran is unlikely to be caused by "competition"; whereas the Saudi-Iranian rivalry is. However, the mistake is to draw sweeping, rigid, undialectical conclusions from all this, of the kind that since x country is sub-imperialist, if there is a military clash with country y, which is imperialist, we must always "support", whatever that means, country x, regardless of the actual context. So, for example, when the Australian DSP supported Australian intervention in East Timor in 1999, I guess we were "lucky" that Indonesia decided to not shoot back - because based on this kind of dogma, we would have had to "support" a sub-imperialist (or ... "oppressed" ...) Indonesia against imperialist Australia. Even though the point of Indonesia doing that would have been to complete its massacre of the east Timorese. Which would have been nuts. In the case of Syria, the theory of sub-imperialism in no way goes against supporting (however critically) Turkey's glorious attack on Assad's genocide equipment last week. After all, sub-imperialist Turkey was confronting the vassal of Russian imperialism, which is not involved at arms length, but a direct, large-scale belligerent. So that actually fits the dogma well (unless one has decided that Russia is not imperialist). BUT - and if I shock, perhaps that's partly the aim - I think it would have been correct to support Turkey doing what it just did in 2002, 2003, 2004, early 2005 - ie, before the Russian intervention. I said so on FB years ago, received a lot of shock, and made sure I never withdrew or capitulated to the crowd. So glad it finally happened (though of course, as expected from Turkey, it was not sustained and was only a step towards a deal). On Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 4:28 PM Chris Slee via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > > I don't agree that "...Erdogan is defending the remnants of the Syrian > democratic revolution". > > Within Idlib province, the democratic revolution had largely been > destroyed by reactionary groups, some of which are backed by Turkey, even > before Assad's recent offensive. > > For example, one of the centres of the revolution was the town of Saraqib. > But democratic forces there came under attack from a series of reactionary > groups, and eventually had to leave the town. A February 10 article on the > Guardian website quotes a democratic activist, Odai al-Hussein, who said: > > "We wanted a free Syria for all Syrians but they [the reactionary groups] > wanted an Islamic state. We continued against all the odds: we challenged > the [Assad] regime, Ahrar al-Sham, Islamic State and al-Nusra. In the end > the jihadists took over, but we left our city with dignity knowing how much > we endured to keep Saraqib free". > > I am sure there are still people struggling for democracy in Idlib, but I > don't think Turkey will help them. It will repress them in the areas it > controls. > > The democratic revolution survives in north-eastern Syria, under very > difficult circumstances. > But Turkey,
[Marxism] The Unlikely Life of a Socialist Activist Resonates a Century Later
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * (new thread because I can't figure out how to trim excess content) I read the new bio of Rose Pastor Stokes and unfortunately it says almost nothing about her prominent role in the CP. See discussion and mentions of her time in the CP in Bryan Palmer's Cannon bio; in John Riddell's united front book; in Mari Jo Buhle's Women and American Socialism; and references in each of them about her. She was a leader of the Goose Caucus (the undergrounders), and in that capacity a delegate to the fourth Comintern congress. (She was active in the debate there about African-Americans, in which Claude McKay took part; I'm looking for details.) She was also central to the debate about whether and how to build CP-led neighborhood-based women's groups. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Biden will be worse for ME than Sanders, including Syria
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Omar Sabbour on Facebook: For what it's worth, I think Biden will be worse for ME than Sanders, including Syria. Though I also have my doubts that Bernie's 'non intervention' there will actually be applied; he's not nearly as radical as many seem to think, but at least he's less likely to escalate the war on terror, and will have colder relations with shitty regimes. Biden, meanwhile, will probably be Obama 2.0 - abandonment of democratic movements. retaining relations with shitty regimes, and escalating the war on terror - and possibly worse. EDIT: I was kinda wary and have generally avoided waddling into this debate, a) because I wouldn't actually advocate a vote for Sanders or Biden, even though I think the former would be potentially less harmful (read below to know why), and b) because tbh it's based on a lot of hypotheticals that are difficult to predict. The reality really comes to the fact that Sanders isn't nearly as 'anti imperialist' as some believe he is (voted for 1st gulf war, afghanistan, fight against isis) while Biden conversely isn't really that much of a liberal 'democracy-promoting' interventionist either. When you factor in that US presidents don't really have full control over foreign policy than differences can be exaggerated. but then again, if one of those hypotheticals arise that i mentioned some of these small differences may have bigger divergences in policy (for instance, if a certain new war on terror theatre breaks out, while both sanders and biden admins may partake, the latter would probably be more vigorous about it, thus the small difference can mean many lives), so perhaps it's not an altogether moot conversation. So this is a more detailed comment in response to how I think Sanders would be, possibly, on balance, a less shitty option. "should've written colder relations with *certain* shitty regimes i guess. he would also normalise with iran, but tbh so probably would biden. what would sanders have done if he was in obama's place during Syria/ISIS? well tbh, if we are operating on assumption that there is even a small influence the president can have in these situations, i think it would've actually been marginally less likely for a Sanders administration to have supported the pro-Iran militias in Iraq that Biden did because of their horrific human rights record. but anyway, yeah, relations with certain other shitty regimes would also improve under sanders. but i don't think there'd be a huge difference in their foreign policies ultimately, which in many areas are preset. both will likely continue war on terror. so you look for the small things i guess, wherein sanders is a more consistent critic of human rights abuses then biden (who said mubarak wasn't a dictator, called rebels extremists, etc.) and would adopt a less aggressive bombing campaign say if such a scenario arose (like Obama relative to Trump) i suppose the point is that there is chances that situations arise (especially within context of war on terror) where biden will simply be more forceful in his shitty policies, and US support of shitty regimes will continue to be a norm - which I don't think is counterbalanced by some notion that Sanders will massively rehabilitate shitty regimes to the same extent. in the case of syria, again, i've not seen anything saying sanders will 'establish diplomatic relations with assad'. i don't really buy this notion that sanders is unaware of what assad is. i think he basically adopts a nationalist america first policy (i.e. can withdraw from 'regime change wars' but not quite from the war on terror). so if the question is about 'willing to engage with regime' (this needs to be unpacked), well biden's already been part of an administration that engaged with assad, and actually worked to prevent its downfall. still shitty undoubtedly that sanders said yes, which is partly why i wouldn't advocate voting for him. i wouldn't even had he not said that anyway, solidarity isn't a one way street and he burned that when he went on years ago about 'regime change' in Syria being the problem. i don't see much likely difference except biden probably bombing harder if such a need ever arises, including in places like idlib. you should also keep in mind that biden will likely be hard on turkey, and will try and undermine them and by extension opposition probably more than sanders (who'd probably keep things about the same). I actually think if there was a Biden administration today, US would be backing Russia up significantly more vigorously than Obama admin did Putin in 2016 with Aleppo, and
Re: [Marxism] Idlib: Putin-Erdoğan Deal is a Sell-Out of the Syrian Revolution!
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * This sell-out deal was almost as predictable as night becoming day. That may sound overblown, given the massive Turkish counterroffensive several days ago that destroyed so much Assadist genocide-equipment and shot down a bunch of warplanes. But it was very, very noticeable while this was happening that it was essentially being facilitated by Moscow - the same Moscow that had just killed 36 Turkish troops, which provoked Erdogan's revenge on Assad (instead of on Russian forces). Demonstrating to both who was in charge was important for Moscow to hammer through this deal. As for Erdogan, well blowing hot and cold like that is what he does, but it was clear he wanted a deal, via Moscow, that preserved the northern part of Idlib province - now that Assad has conquered most of the revolutionary towns - as a Turkish-controlled giant refugee camp, to prevent further refugee influx into Turkey. While the SDF/Kurdish leadership may have entertained some thoughts of aiding Assad against Idlib in exchange for Assad helping them push Turkish occupation forces out of Afrin, the actual result will come as a cruel blow to these illusions. Just as the deal was being signed, Assad declared that the “Kurdish issue” does not exist in his country, calling it “illusive and a lie”. He also claimed that Kurds living in northern areas are originally from Turkey. https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/050320201. This is in the context of rumours that the Russian-Turkish agreement may include secret provisions for Putin to look the other way if Turkey occupies Kobani. While tactical choices might be made ehre and there, ultimately a strengthened regime is their worst enemy too. On Sat, Mar 7, 2020 at 12:04 AM RKOB via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > > > https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/idlib-putin-erdogan-deal-is-sell-out-of-syrian-revolution/ > > -- > Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG > (Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net) > www.rkob.net > ak...@rkob.net > Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314 > > > > -- > Diese E-Mail wurde von Avast Antivirus-Software auf Viren geprüft. > https://www.avast.com/antivirus > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/mkaradjis%40gmail.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] What the 1619 Project Really Means
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * (Messer-Kruse told me he was working on this article.) Chronicle of Higher Education What the 1619 Project Really Means Its liberal and conservative critics both miss the point. By Timothy Messer-Kruse March 05, 2020 PREMIUM On the 400th anniversary of the landing and sale of the first Africans in Virginia, The New York Times published a series of essays — the "1619 Project" — by journalists and scholars on the meaning of slavery to America. Its purpose was "to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative." Oddly, this gesture toward questioning the national hymn of progress provoked a loud protest from both liberal and conservative academics. Nikole Hannah-Jones, a correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, begins her introductory essay by approaching slavery and racism through her own family’s stories, and then describes the much-overlooked centrality of slavery to the economic rise of the United States. Hannah-Jones and the other essayists frame America as a nation born in the protection of slavery whose basic institutions are constructed on a racist logic. "Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country, as does the belief, so well-articulated by Lincoln, that black people are the obstacle to national unity," Hannah-Jones wrote in what became the most criticized sentence in the collection. Five distinguished historians of early America, Sean Wilentz and James McPherson of Princeton, Gordon Wood of Brown, Victoria Bynum of Texas State, and James Oakes of the City University of New York Graduate Center, responded by penning a protest letter to The New York Times. Although, they said, they applauded the 1619 Project’s goal of foregrounding the history of slavery and racism in American history, they took issue with what they alleged were "factual errors" and with an interpretation they claimed was a "displacement of historical understanding by ideology." While the 1619 Project ranged across a large swath of the American experience, including redlining, mass incarceration, the history of racist medicine, the white appropriation of black music, and the emergence of historically black colleges, the five historians’ letter focused obsessively on the project’s reinterpretations of the American Revolution and the abolitionist movement. With a certainty rarely found among historians, they write: "The project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain ‘in order to ensure slavery would continue.’ This is not true … every statement offered by the project to validate it is false." Additionally, they call the 1619 Project’s assertion that African Americans have largely had to struggle for their rights by themselves a "distortion." The signatories to the letter demanded the "removal of these mistakes from any materials destined for use in schools, as well as in all further publications." It just so happens that the objections center on the exclusion of white activists. In point of fact, beyond the initial misspelling of the patriot Samuel Bryan’s name and the incorrect statement that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776 (it was only approved as a final draft that day) — errors that the Times quickly corrected — all the complaints made by this gang of historians were not really about errors of fact but about matters of interpretation. As Alex Lichtenstein, editor of the American Historical Review, noted, most of what these critics called factual errors were "more a matter of emphasis" than "correct or incorrect interpretation." Underneath the complaints about historical inaccuracies and exaggerations lies a deeper concern about the meaning of the American story. Wilentz, for instance, is so invested in understanding the birth of America as the progressive unfolding of Enlightenment ideals that he has proposed that the slave-owning authors of the Constitution consciously laid the groundwork for later abolitionism by excluding from the great charter the phrase "property in slaves" that would have precluded emancipation. Others seem to fear the crumbling of the clay feet of heroes such as Abraham Lincoln in an era when few agree on which national idols to celebrate. All five of the signatories to the letter criticizing the 1619 Project are of the generation of scholars that rewrote history "from the ground up." They were influenced by the social history that turned away from the stories of great white men and master narratives of culture. Post-civil-rights-era
[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-Empire]: Cho on Hope, 'Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Īlkhānate of Iran'
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Best 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: March 6, 2020 at 8:28:48 AM EST > To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org > Cc: H-Net Staff > Subject: H-Net Review [H-Empire]: Cho on Hope, 'Power, Politics, and > Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Īlkhānate of Iran' > Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org > > Michael Hope. Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire > and the Īlkhānate of Iran. Oxford Oxford University Press, 2016. > Illustrations. 272 pp. $94.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-876859-3. > > Reviewed by Wonhee Cho (The Academy of Korean Studies) > Published on H-Empire (March, 2020) > Commissioned by Gemma Masson > > Writing political history in the twenty-first century is challenging. > A monograph consisting of unfamiliar names, tied to convoluted > political events spanning over a century would be a hard sell to a > publisher, let alone appeal to a broad audience. Thus, it is no > wonder that political history has become an unpopular subfield in > history, and it has been--according to the publisher's home page for > the book under review--almost fifty years since the last publication > of a "complete history of the Īlkhānate in English."[1] Michael > Hope's Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the > Īlkhānate of Iran fills in this gap with a unique perspective that > inspires a new approach to writing political history. > > Hope's monograph provides a consistent, overarching, and > though-provoking theme to explain the critical political events > during this era. As the title reads, it covers the political > authority of Chinggis Khan; examines the reigns of Ögödei Qa'an, > Güyüg Khan, and Möngke Qa'an (the "early Mongol Empire, > 1227-1259"); and then narrows the focus to the khans of the > Īlkhānate (1258-1335). The final chapter examines how the legacies > of Chinggis Khan and the Īlkhānate continued to the era of Temür > Gürken (1336-1405, better known as Tamerlane in English-language > scholarship). > > To guide the reader through this long and complicated period, Hope > offers an interpretation centered on two competing systems of > political authority that he has respectively labeled as "the > collegial" and "the patrimonial." Building on the Weberian concept of > "the routinization of charisma," Hope adopts a sociological approach > to examine how a temporary political entity based on a single > individual transitioned toward a more permanent state. According to > Hope, the collegial school, mostly consisting of the extended family > of Chinggis Khan and senior commanders, emphasized how the Mongol > Empire and the following Īlkhānate should be ruled more > collectively with authority shared among the high-ranking officials, > especially the military commanders. In contrast, the followers of the > patrimonial school considered that the authority of the empire > belonged to the direct descendants of the founder and emphasized a > more centralized imperial rule around a single qa'an/khan. > > This contrast, which may be rather particular, oddly specific, and > seemingly unfamiliar to historians of the Mongol Empire, works > surprisingly well in explaining the political history of the early > Mongol Empire and their rule over Iran. For example, the famous > Persian vizier Rashid al-Din praised Chinggis Khan's immediate > successor, Ögödei Qa'an, for actively demonstrating his generosity > to his Mongol companions. Rashid's praise, among many other examples, > highlights the collegial rule that defined the era of Ögödei Qa'an. > Conversely, Möngke Qa'an's succession occurred through a "coup" > where the collective will of the Mongol princes and military > officials failed to play an essential rule through the _quriltai_ or > the council of notables. The centralization policies of Möngke, what > Thomas Allsen famously compared to the "modern concept of total war," > exemplifies the weakened role of the collegial rule, as well as the > rise of a new claim of patrimonial authority by Möngke Qa'an > (chapter 2). In spite of being the younger brother of Möngke Qa'an, > Hülegü failed to follow his brother's model as the circumstances > around the newly formed Īlkhānate prevented the formation of a more > centralized rule. Instead, the various princes and military leaders > who constituted the joint Iran expedition forces reinstated a > collegial rule, emphasizing their shared governance where the > military commanders effectively decided
[Marxism] Idlib: Putin-Erdoğan Deal is a Sell-Out of the Syrian Revolution!
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/idlib-putin-erdogan-deal-is-sell-out-of-syrian-revolution/ -- Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG (Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net) www.rkob.net ak...@rkob.net Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314 -- Diese E-Mail wurde von Avast Antivirus-Software auf Viren geprüft. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
