[Marxism] On that Birth of a Nation thread: Eugene V. Debs denounces it in no uncertain terms...

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https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1916/160108-debs-birthofanation.pdf

For a person in 1916, Debs nails it.

To be published in Volume 4 of our 6 Volume collection of Deb's writings.
Volume 2 is now out.

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Re: [Marxism] Loaded: A Disarming History of the 2nd Amendment by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - Review - YouTube

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Terrible. I heard her give the same talk at the Zinn Book Fair a few years
ago. She completely dismisses the movements for *equality* and argues  that
all such rights are for good 'ol boys and can't apply to Blacks or working
class people. Her whole argument is bad history and is in a-historical.
Sadly.

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[Marxism] Morning musings,

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Anthony's musings hit something I've been hearing on a very low level
emanating from NY. His point 12: Criminal prosecution of ex-president Trump
by the NY State Attorney General and various local NYC DAs. This doesn't
surround his Presidency whatsoever. What I see is the launching of many
State level investigations into the Trump Organization from his commercial
constitutions business to sexual harassment charges simply gangster like
activities. So long as it is state crimes, not Federal ones, it wouldn't
matter if there were even a GOP President.

Also, should Biden win (more likely than both the VP and President Stupid
getting C-19 and dying with Pelosi getting the Presidency for a few short
months), there will be ZERO Federal prosecution of anything he did as
President, no matter how blatant. It just won't happen due to politics.

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[Marxism] Planet of the Anti-Humanists

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For some reason Louis is *under* emphasizing my support for nuclear. I'm a
*much bigger* supporter of nuclear than Leigh Philips is! Not "...just like
Leigh Phillips" but far more active. Leigh takes the correct point of view,
of course, but I have a background in energy production that Leigh doesn't
have. Wondering just who Louis is trying to be "transparent" for...? LOL.

David
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[Marxism] Planet of the Anti-Humanists

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If it is from Leigh then it is overall accurate and should be read by all
Socialists, along with known "modernist" caveats like his (their)
endorsement of natural gas a "bridging technology" (expressed in a limited
way in this review). I'd like to see someone challenge Leigh's *actual*
science critiques of the film.

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Re: [Marxism] Rosa Luxemburg on present-day sects

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Interesting. Rosa herself was not about the sectarian squabbles herself.
She exhibited the same straitjacket nonsense she accuses the PPS of. The
latter of which had a far bigger and wide ranging discussion as one sort of
issues. If you tried to raise the issue of an independent Poland, you'd be
out on your ass quick enough from her group. Moreover, when the Iskraists
and others were trying to form an All-Russian (which included Poland)
workers party (this became the RSDWP) she infamously kept her sect out of
this important formation to remain isolated from the working class she
claimed to be part of. Just say'n she was not about sectarianism herself...

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[Marxism] Michael Moore's New Film

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The film shows the fraud of the faux-clean renewable energy industry (you
know, the 'clean energy' producers like GE and other big fossil fuel
companies that are riding the coat tails of renewable energy mandates). It
will definitely get some folks upset. About time.

David
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Re: [Marxism] Bernie Sanders Ending Presidential Run

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I'll add a few pennies to this discussion.

If Sanders were able to win the primaries and get a majority of votes he
would be the DP nominee. If Trump could do it in the GOP, though there are
greater obstacles to this in the DP, it could be done  in the DP and there
was nothing the DNC or Clintonites could of done about it.

The fact is that few Sanders supporters understood the polling, even AFTER
he won Nevada and the establishment of the professional caste inside the DP
were preaching doom and gloom, which pointed to him having about *half* the
support he did in 2016. This was true from the very beginning. At no point
was he ever going to have enough delegates to win an outright majority if
one looks at the polls on a state-by-state basis. He never really breached
27% even in the states he won. Anything short of an outright majority of
delegates meant super delegates were in play. Everyone knew this, except,
it seems, Sanders activist supporters. The support was simply *never there*.

Of course the DP establishment finally go their act together behind Biden.
So what? That it is politics...and was based on the fact the *voters* in
large part who supported the other "moderate" Democrats (whatever that
means) were, ergo, in the MAJORITY and thus Biden could be the only winner
in this contest. Even if Warren had endorsed him or not run at all, the
results, I believe, would be pretty much the same.

The bigger question now is what are all these activists going to do now?
Will DSA grow? Will it move more independently? Will there be a big
desertion of Bernieistas to the Green Party? Will most just campaign for
Biden because Trump is so much worse (in their view)?

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Re: [Marxism] Formatting

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I want to thank my old internet acquaintance Kari Kumar for his
*professional* input. I think his sort response was of the highest educated
guess I've seen that was equally as concise and understandable. Thanks
again.

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Re: [Marxism] Sanders's "turnout" strategy not working

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Steve R. wrote: "A substantial portion of Sanders supporters in 2016 did
not vote for Clinton, basically abstaining. A fact the Democrat leadership
frequently trumpets."

Yes, but...

The far more important point never made (usually, it's made on CNN talking
heads once in a while) is that it was "Clinton supporters", that is the
Black and working class base that voted for Obama 2 times that didn't show
up to vote in *enough* numbers in a few districts in Wisconsin and Michagan
that put Trump in the WH: not "Sanders supporters". So the Dems leadership
doesn't learn. Every poll *after* those elections in 2016 showed Sanders
beating Trump *especially* on those two states. Who are the assholes now?

Of course Sanders didn't face a media red-baiting campaign then either, or
not as much as one as we see today. Red-baiting *does* work, don't think it
won't. It will likely be enough to swing those states in favor of Trump
last time to remain so this time.

My only point is that these are the primary elections. The general election
will be completely different.

David W.
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[Marxism] Paywalls and how to get around them (The Atlantic)

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Folks,
if you use Firefox (a far superior browser to Chrome IMO) you can get
around almost all paywalls. When you seen a link, such as the one from The
Atlantic just posted below, in Firefox, "save as a pocket". Give it a name.
Go the pocket page and then open it up. The Washington post on occasion has
given me problems. Firefox takes a quick shot of the page before the
paywall popup window opens and prevents you from reading what is there.
This method simply eliminates the popup window.

David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] 2020 - Sanders Takes Top Spot In Dem | Quinnipiac University Connecticut

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My comments were not about the "meaning" of Sanders campaign. It was about
his placement in the national poll conducted by Quinnipiac. it is
meaningless. There are dozens of polls conducted since the Fall of last
year that show Sander's beating Trump in a straight up head to head
election. Why not comment on this. This hasn't changed an iota. Secondly,
this is a about the other party of Wall St. Personally, the fact that
Sanders says he is a socialist (again, by the result of a misunderstanding)
is...nice but it is not what I've been waiting for all my life, John. I
look forward to the working class actually moving in the direction of
independent working class *power* and not some sort of electoralist reform
inside the capitalist party. Back at you with your sectarian mud slinging,
John.

David W.
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Re: [Marxism] 2020 - Sanders Takes Top Spot In Dem | Quinnipiac University Connecticut

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I've already noticed Sander's supporters going crazy on this. It's one poll
folks. What is the big deal? It is so early in this party primary campaign
season that nothing significant can really be derived from any of these
polls so early on. The Quinnipiac poll has Sanders leading nationally. But
no poll shows him with more than 27%. That means among Democratic Party
votes, 73% vote, literally, for someone else. The polls in the last 30 days
show Biden still winning the nomination. The NBC poll last week by "5pts".
The Morning Consult poll from the week before has Biden winning by "4pts."
It really is a muchado about nothing.

DW
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[Marxism] [pen-l] Project 1619 and its detractors | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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Louis, I hate when a missed polemical opportunity goes to waste. You wrote
in your piece on Counter Punch: "In his history of American Trotskyism

, Wolforth wrote off what most people on the left regarded as a promising
development..." I would of inserted, since the aim of the essay is in large
part an necessary swipe at the wsws types, that this position against Black
Nationalism written by Wolforth, WAS the ideological basis for his
supporters to attack Project 1916, the wsws, the direct decedent of
Wolforth's own organization.

David
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Re: [Marxism] Why I Don't Have a Mobile Phone - CounterPunch.org

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[response to MM, I see...interestingly that is my similar objections to
GMO...not that they do a shred of harm but all production of them and the
legal framework for all of them is anti-human and anti-farmer.]

In response to Louis' 2015 article from a Jordanian medical magazine, the
article is highly flawed. It *starts out* with a gigantic assumption bias:
that EMF are dangerous. It bases this on 6 or 7 studies from Arab medical
sources and ignores the huge amount of literature that contradicts these
studies. Well before 2015 these studies were refuted. Additionally they
cited several studies that purport to show harm this way:

"Reports on exposure to electromagnetic radiation of
900 MHz from mobile phones showed that it could induce
lipid peroxidation in human erythrocytes (Moustafa et
al., 2001), in female and male rabbits (Güler et al., 2012)
and in the hippocampus and brain cortex of rats as well as
oxidative stress and histopathological changes in the rats’
endometrium (Ilhan et al., 2004; Ferrari, 2012), induces a
transient alteration of epidermal homoeostasis"

Yes, and not a single study that shows the *same* effect in humans! This is
one of the problems with animal studies...they are not humans. The thing
bones of a rabbit or rat's scull is paper thin compared to that of a
humans. Moreover, and more importantly, the *same* studies have been
conducted on humans for *decades* with nary any sort of harm. We have
*billions* of humans who use cell phones every day, even a majority of
their waking hours, from which to do studies but *these* are never cited by
those authors of this "study".

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Re: [Marxism] Why I Don't Have a Mobile Phone - CounterPunch.org

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An absolutely garbage article. There simply is no evidence whatsosever that
any radio frequencies do damage to anyone for any reason at the low levels
of a cell phone. MM is going light on this :).  But he did pin it
correctly: it is based on rumor and paranoia. I will say there is in fact
"nothing to worry about". We have 3 decades of high frequency *omni
directional* cell phone usage, wi-fi and other frequencies hitting us. Too
many studies have show nothing, absolutely nothing, to effect humans,
especially as compared with societies without wifi and without cell phones
(the phones themselves and the cell towers). We have had  a decade of smart
meters which also send out in an omni directional (meaning the energy
transmitted decreases exponentially the further one is from it). More
interestingly, studies of life long ham radio operators...who for 5 decades
or long would sit for hours a few feet away from their very high wattage
(often 300 watts or more) also show zero signs of effects. The "metabolic
rift" between the Left and science continues to widen I fear...

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Re: [Marxism] Are belching cows really driving climate change?

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John,
I have been active student (courses and all that) of soil fertility for
almost 3 years now. I've learned about 20% of what I think I may need to
know. It is a highly complex issue. I've written on some of this as well
and posted links here. Others are "getting into science of soil fertility"
as well. Knowing how our food is produced, a we can *change* the way it is
produced, is part and parcel of both climate activism and the science of
geology, agronomy and soil.

I think the question is poised wrong. It is not "grasslands vs forests" at
all. Everyone I know loves to have new forests planted. Even the far right
is into forest conservation if it' doesn't mean we can't ever cut down a
tree. Forests do indeed sequester lots of carbon. I won't even attempt to
give a flip answer on the question of the indigenous genocide against
native peoples as cause for "Little Ice Age" of the mid to late 18th
Century. I haven't a clue.

No, the issue of "grasslands" (pastures, steppes, sahels, prairies and so
on) is not really an issue. The only real issue fpr the "land question" is
over  climate change with regards to standard commercial farming practices
vs regenerative agricultural practices. Few would dispute the value of
forests. It does come down to the soil. That is a good place to start in
studying this. One can read authors like David Montgomey's (the geologist
and soil scientist, not the labor historian) two books on the subject:
"Dirt" and more recently "“Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to
Life". Both are good reads and one learns a helluvalot on soil, the climate
and agriculture.

I poised the question this way, commercial vs regenerative agriculture
because that is largely how we can, *dynamically*, change the soil
fertility, reverse the nitrogen glut into the water and oceans, and
sequester enough carbon to also effect positively the climate. Trees do it
even better but we need to grow food too, dirive some sort of economic
intercourse between farmers, urban workers and the land ("healing the
metabolic rift between our species and nature") Just planting forests
(which actually require lots of maintenance actually, and water...see our
forest fires out here where I live) won't hack it, IMO though, again, it is
very wrong to counterpoise the two systems: forests and regenerative
agriculture. They easily work in harmony with each other.

It also doesn't require us to give up eating meat, I might add, which is
why political vegans are quite upset about regen agriculture since it
relies heavily on integrating animal husbandry with such farming practices
where practical. (zing!)

David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Open Letter In Support Of Trans Labour Members

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John, just on the issue of "ME, a man" commenting on this. I'm asked to
comment on it all the time. Secondly, far more importantly the majority of
such businesses, where I am, are women owned or couples owned. This could
not happen without initiating it or their buy in. If there was opposition
by women to non-gender wash rooms, we would of heard it by now. Not a peep.
I live in a highly feminist city, gay city, and transcity: San Francisco.
Thirdly, they are and never were 'safe spaces'. This sort of nonsense (IMO)
about bathrooms being safes paces because men are not "allowed" in do in
fact make it quite UN-safe because it allows women to have half as many
people there to stop an assault (as you acknowledged they take place there
anyway, law or now law). The fact is that there are thousands of rapes
committed in "women only spaces" because rapists violate the law and don't
care about it (did you know that many places have no laws concerning this
whatsoever? That this is based on cultural customs and not legal statute?).
We would of course have to disagree with this about assaults being more
likely in gender neutral bathrooms. This issue has, btw, zero to do with
excluding transwomen from such spaces as they are, for all intents and
purposes, women (fortunately the dystopian idea of genetic checks haven't
made it feasible to exclude transwomen. Now such access just has to be
legitimized in law).

An example I stumbled across in Mexico City about 10 years ago was that
there are women only cars on the Mexico City subway. I was shocked (simply
because it was so unexpected by me and my friend I was traveling with). We
were stopped by an armed (with an assault rifle) women cop who told us only
women "beyond this point". It seems this was instituted on the demand of
women who organized for this because of the epidemic of groping by men on
the subway over years. Women have the choice of using this or the main set
of integrated cars. This was totally supportable. Again, however, the issue
of transwomen (who look like women and is key to this particular issue) are
of course able to use this car since no one, the women on the car, the cops
guarding it, and the potential molesters can't tell who is trans and who is
not). But those on this list, some, would argue that transwomen shouldn't
use such facility as in the Mexican subway system because "genetically they
are men and that is what counts". And this goes to the heart of this
discussion.

I defend women only spaces when in fact they are a function of women (cis
or trans) organizing to do so. This includes of course transwomen who ARE
transwomen and not just men who say they want to transition. This last
issue is a huge one and goes to the self-identity issue that has caused so
much fanfare and hatred.

BTW...I attended the ISO Socialism Conference, the one in 2017 that had
over 2,000 attending and they made all rest/wash rooms gender neutral.
There were no problems reported. Of course a socialist conference such as
that obviously is not at all representative of society at large.

What I see, *politically* the hot potato is not what you and I are politely
discussing. Rather, it is over the issue of "self-ID". This is what is
hugely complicated and often transcends the basic civil rights issues, or
perhaps "subsumes it" as a better expression. I would like to see more
information on this (this has to do with things like transathletes, locker
rooms and other issues where it is *only* the self-identificiation that
makes someone transgender and how to handle this in society. It is this
issue above all else that has caused the heat, "de platforming" and so on.


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Re: [Marxism] Open Letter In Support Of Trans Labour Members

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 [So...this is my first tippytoe into this debate, something I've avoided
as it is impossible to have a calm rational debate about this, it seems, at
least on the left. Ergo, my own ignorance around these questions will
remain as such since no one can discuss it with me or others who are trying
to figure it all out.--David W.]

John wrote the following:  "
So concern about trans women having unfettered access to women's spaces is
patently *not* about transphobia, but about male violence - exactly the
reason such female only spaces were established in the first place."


Yeah...no it wasn't and it's both historically and anthropologically so
much BS to say that. Original womens' only spaces were established
*totally* as a function in prudery of class society. MOST primitive
societies untouched by Christianity, Abrahamic religions more generally,
"Western society" had no such thing as "womens spaces". People pissed,
shit, washed, and did all manner of human social intercourse without
regards to any sort of gender. Where I live in the Bay Area womens
washrooms are going away replaced by non-gender specific ones in public.
GOOD. Like the single non-gender bathroom and washrooms we find at small
businesses (and that have always been found there) separating out washrooms
and bathrooms was a function of KEEPING women separate from men for the
obvious religious/cultural reasons and had zero to do with women spaces as
"safe spaces".

I've always felt the washroom/bathroom (as opposed to the changing room or
locker room...a related but quite different issue) was a silly argument in
terms of transwomen (or for transmen) who, for all appearances, are the sex
they identify and whose outward appearance is what they choose...as wholly
irrelevant to the trans rights issue anyway as trans people for centuries
have used bathroom of their choice and no one is the wiser. Only the right
wing has ever raised this as something to go after trans folks for. They
lose every time in these arguments for that very reason. I believe in safe
spaces for women *when they chose to assert this*. The issue is trickier
when we are talking what substantiates a trans person and what is "merely"
*just* a self-declaration of same. THAT is a huge issue (locker rooms --
also a prudery issue I should add -- and women's sports). I'll await more
discussion on those if it comes up.
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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Re: Controversy over anti-Zionist student protest at Bard College

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Louis, your thought on this?

On Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 4:02 PM Louis Proyect via Marxism <
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[Marxism] Class Struggle is Still the Issue

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/10/14/class-struggle-is-still-the-issue
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Re: [Marxism] PG electricity shutdown in N. California

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OK, fine. B-. :)

On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 12:07 PM John Reimann via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

>
> Finally, when I was in school, I always considered it beneath me to contest
> a grade since I hated both school and the grading system. But in this case,
> I must do so. Not a C-, but I will accept a B- (maybe even C+).
>
> John Reimann
> --
> *“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
> Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
> Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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Re: [Marxism] PG electricity shutdown in N. California

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Andy, unfortunately, while the union is key in keeping job numbers up, thus
their defense of tree trimmers and the unionized tree trimming companies,
it generally is very right wing. There is agreement that neither the union
nor the company will attack each other in public or oppose the demands of
either party when discussions over rate increases, public power proposals
and so on come up in the State. Thus, the union deploys its staff to lobby
to support rate increases even as the company and union bargain for a new
contract every 3 or 4 years. One will never find the union attacking the
Company in public unless a Company action directly negatively effects the
membership.

With the spate of proposals for *Municipalization* in San Francisco and
other communities, the union mobilizes resources to oppose it, like they
did in 2000 when two similar proposals for a buy out of the grid occurred
in SF.  I see no change in this class collaboration.

Understand, Local members are paid far in excess of similar employees at
Public Power entities like SMUD or the DWP in LA. There is likely no
question that had the proposals gone through in 2000, which I worked for as
it happens, ex-PG and now public power workers would of taken  a big hit
eventually. Of course that would depend as well on the dynamic of fighting
to maintain high wages and could of been taken up by other SF employees to
raise standards to what the PG contract had in it. It is hard to tell
what would of happened.

Additionally there was an "institutional" prerogative against this as
public employees are not part of the NLRA and thus representation if 100%
based on City laws, in this case the San Francisco, or State, Charter. With
2000 employees in SF it would of meant the possible loss of these 2000
employees to other unions already established in City.

Lastly, to give you an idea of my unions collaborationist perspectives, in
the 90s I went to a pre-negotiation union conference for all shop stewards.
The Assistant Union manager got up and first thing he does is "do you want
to negotiate or do you want to strike?". Amazingly every one bought into
this nonsense except for a few socialists and ex-socialists who were there.
The unions *brags* about never having gone on strike. That is what we were
up against and what rank and file militants are still up against.

David Walters

On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 7:44 AM Andrew Pollack via Marxism <
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>
> Would like to hear more about the union's position and activities, as well
> as of communities.
> This is important not only for energy workers and consumers but for climate
> change activism as well -- i.e. if we are to get past the (hugely
> impressive) street rallies the question of worker/community control will
> have to be posed at specific strategic sites.
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Re: [Marxism] PG electricity shutdown in N. California

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 [First, John's usually well written essays on topical subjects I think
gets a C- this time. I don't understand his snarky attitude toward these
black outs and previous fires. Maybe his means something else but it
doesn't appear so.]

This was a totally the fault of PG, my former employer. PG admits it
has only accomplished 31% of the required PUC mandated tree trimming. This
story is an old one going back to the mid-1980s when the Company started
scaling back tree trimming operations and diverting funding for other
Corporate expenses. Tree trimming is mandated by state regulations. The
company can send tree trimmers in with chain saws to cut down or trim back
trees that have branches that could hit power lines in neighborhoods. They
can removed dead trees around the easements for their transmission lines.
PG has failed to do this. We have had higher wind situations 20 and 30
years ago which did not cause any fires whatsoever.

Yes, the number of actually fully dead trees has, because of climate change
caused droughts increased. But this was seen before it happened and the
Company should of started to take care of this problem at least 5 years ago
when we were in a drought situation. My union, IBEW Local 1245 reported
regularly throughout the 80s, 90s and 2000s on the *failure* of PG to
abide by it's mandate. The new PUC regs now allow PG to turn off the
power to millions of people instead of mandating what they should do and
*were paid to do* which is to upgrade their transmission and distribution
network, replace poles that are too old and are in danger of falling, and
trimming back the vegetation through out it's 20,000 miles of wires.

David Walters
IBEW 1245, Ret.

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Re: [Marxism] ‘Joker’ Continues Warner Bros. and DC Comics Attack on Left | Washington Babylon

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Completely disagree with the analysis. He misses the whole point of the
film which is really about mental illness and the Reaganeske cutting public
services for the mentally ill. Is is about the decay and failure of the
capitalist system and the alienation that ensues from this. It is about an
anti-rich insurrectionary mood among the masses who *rebel* against the
treatment of working people. It is not even aimed at the "rich" since
unlike some other films of this genre, try to portray them as sympathetic
victims of mob mentality. This film is *totally sypathedic* to the mob
mentality and via the Black character Zazie Beetz who lives in the same
building as a single mom is totally with the violence against the system.
Silverstein's review is a weak and quite pathetic projection of someone on
the left who clearly didn't see the same film I did.

David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Saving the Planet Without Self-Loathing

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I think he is correct generally about human's relationship of nature but he
has underplayed the destructive part of that relationship. I'd even say he
is somewhat flip about it while acknowledging it at the same time. He also
has forest vs grasslands wrong by excluding the role of grass eaters as the
*key* element in keeping a balance between forest and grasslands *and*
building the soil.

David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Bernie Sanders Is in Trouble - POLITICO Magazine - Actually We Are in trouble

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Andrew, it's not about organizing actively for a political candidate at
all...that is crass electoralism that really has little to do with radical
oganizing at all, IMHO. It is about organizing our class around all their
struggles, including basic things like unions. That the center of this
should be elections is really pointing people in the wrong direction. I'm
all for having an electoral component of any organizing campaign, but the
former should be in support of the latter.

David Walters

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Re: [Marxism] Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory - CounterPunch.org

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 Michael, this, actually, is my *favorite* conspiracy. The assumption is
that the outline of the aircraft, wings and all, should be visible somehow
in the hole that remained. In reality the "hardest part" of any plane is
not the fuselage and certainly not the lightly built wings. In fact it is
the compressor shaft/turbine blade of the engines that do the most
penetrating. Everything else just crumples up a like an aluminum can
crushed on a busy street. The body *does* penetrate in the process of
coming apart on impact.

David
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Re: [Marxism] The Johnson County War | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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I thought this an excellent review. In fact I'd say it was the most
*interesting* one he's done in a while. Like Louis and some others, I
actively promoted the film among SWPers when the film was released.

A flaw in the review is the lack of any mention of the ensemble cast: From
wiki: " Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff
Bridges, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Joseph Cotten, Geoffrey
Lewis, David Mansfield, Richard Masur, Terry O'Quinn, Mickey Rourke, Willem
Dafoe and Nicholas Woodeson,the last two in their first film roles." It IS
worth pointing this out, IMHO.

It should of been noted that this film essentially sank United Artists as
it lost 10s of millions of dollars. It is estimated that in today's dollars
that it would of meant a loss of $140 million!

My father, a theater director, tv stage manager and aspiring film director,
noted to me that the film was amazingly disjointed with a convoluted plot
that never tied it together. I didn't go back and re-read the critics of
the time's take down of the film but now it makes sense given how much the
film was cut down.

David Walters

On Fri, Sep 27, 2019 at 7:27 AM Louis Proyect via Marxism <
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>
> While channel surfing the other night, I was intrigued to see “Heaven’s
> Gate” playing on Showtime, Michael Cimino’s 1980 revisionist Western
> that many critics viewed as both a Marxist tract in the vein of Luchino
> Visconti and the greatest flop in Hollywood history. That the two views
> could be the most common refrains about the film tells you a lot about
> the spurious characterization of Tinseltown as “leftist”.
>
> In a fascinating account of the film’s Hindenburg-like crash, “Final
> Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate, the Film that
> Sank United Artists”, Stephen Bach describes how in his view a talented
> egomaniac brought down a legendary film studio that was launched by
> Charlie Chaplin and others to guarantee artistic independence. None of
> UA’s forefathers could have imagined that a Marxist-inspired film might
> be its undoing.
>
> I saw “Heaven’s Gate” when it first came out in 1980 and made a case for
> it among my Trotskyist comrades who had little interest in films except
> for the usual Saturday night entertainment. “Heaven’s Gate” was a
> cinematic tour de force but hardly entertaining. It was a grim study of
> how class power in Johnson County, Wyoming ensured the victory of
> wealthy ranchers over small landowners who benefited from the Homestead
> Act of 1862 that was designed to build support for the Republican Party
> against Democratic Party plutocrats. Ironically, when the Johnson County
> War broke out in 1892, the Democrats were the party of the poor farmer
> with their presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan taking up their
> cause. All the big ranchers in Wyoming were rock-ribbed Republicans,
> just as they are today in most cases.
>
> full: https://louisproyect.org/2019/09/27/the-johnson-county-war/
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Re: [Marxism] China to invest in Iranian oil industry

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The most interesting aspect of this is th $280 billion they say they are
going to invest...and not use USD. Iran has of course been trying to do
this for more than a decade. They even have an "oil exchange" where bidding
on outgoing Iranian oil can be done in other currencies. There are not
takers the building is basically empty. The Russians and Chinese have done
more than this amount also not in USD. I'm not what this portends as China
holds a trillion more in USD in cash and bonds...and in the past they have
demanded that the US maintain the value of these financial entities so they
don't lose out. Yet China is willing to risk this doing this deal with
Iran. Watch the currency markets if this actually happens.

David
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Re: [Marxism] [Discussion] Left of Europe, by Ashley Smith | Harper's Magazine

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Davidson clearly stands for Brexit. His arguments are quite clear. His
analysis is a clearly Marxist one. People here who oppose Brexit will be
very disappointed. A worthwhile contribution to the "EU" discussion.

David W.
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Re: [Marxism] A Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Under Socialism

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Ah, I see now. I suppose so. The entire anti-economodernist vegan community
appears to be pushing this lab-grown meat. I'm going to try it tomorrow
since I finally found a place that sells it. It is completely the wrong
direction to go in but it's not going away, I suspect. Sure...I can see
that statement as ecomodernist. What's the politically correct position
Louis on lab-grown meat (from soy beans mostly). I'm not against GM crops
except how they are used under capitalism. I'm all for the R under
regulations. The fad against them, and that's what it is, a fad, is not
based on much sound science in terms of health. GM itself is not a problem,
but it certainly is the way it's used (such as described in that excellent
article you posted yesterday on soy industry).

David
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Re: [Marxism] A Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Under Socialism

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Ecomodernist??? Me thinks our vaunted Moderator is eating too much fast
food. From the article:

"A more equitable and democratic food system would also have to transform
the modern factory-farming and meat industries, known for their cruelty

to workers and animals alike, as well as for wreaking havoc on the climate.
Up to 57 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions stem

from the global food system, and the International Panel on Climate Change
has warned

that industrialized countries must reduce greenhouse emissions by up to 40
percent below 1990 levels to avoid
 climate devastation."

Hardly "econmodernist". The article is an attack on the fast food
industry's labor standards. "Ecomodernism" can now be used by anyone to
mean anything. Ugh. The review  in Jacobin is ok to good. I think he should
of spent some time on the issue of animal cruelty more and issues with "Big
Agriculture" since fast foods play such an important role in the
Imperialist commodity markets for things like soy beans. Also, he's wrong
about Popeyes. Everyone know In-and-Out Burger is the preimier "best" fast
food in the US!

David Walters
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[Marxism] Sacred groves, sacrifice zones and soy production: globalization, intensification and neo-nature in South America | Global Public Affairs

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Thanks to Louis for posting this. It's heavy reading and long but well
worth it for those interested in the Imperialist results of the
"agro-industrial complex" as it relates to the mono-crop of Soy.
Fascinating read. It's kind of a survey of different research papers and it
encourages people to read the literature. I think the flat out commendation
of GM soy is not explained except in terms of the specifics of how it's
been employed. Which is pretty bad. There is a LOT of research, obviously,
in to GM soy which it seems the author doesn't know too much about outside
the specific kind used in Latin America that allows for massive use of
Round Up. But that is another subject. Overall this is quite good. The
authors endorse agro-ecological approaches to growing soy (which isn't
generally condemned only how it is used in the Imperialist market place and
what it's effects are socially on the land in South America). Well worth
the read.

David
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Re: [Marxism] Furr

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 I don't disagree at all with the criticism's most people have of Furr. I
know him personally. We meet about once a year in the Bay Area. What I
would ask Furr is the same thing he uses to convict the entire Bolshevik
Central Committee of: where is the evidence Tokarev was "coerced"? A fair
enough question.

Furr will make huge leaps of logic. For example, while it was revealed in
1981 or so that Trotsky lied before the Dewey Commission when asked about
having contacts in the USSR (for obvious reasons) in the *reveled*
communications via his son, Leon Sedov, there is zero damning him. In fact
it's more inquisitive by Trotsky about the positions of the many
Oppositionist groups that went through a revival in 1932. It's clear from
what I've read that Trotsky didn't really have clue about what was going on
in "his" underground. This 1932 reproachment by various Opposition groups
when found out about it by Stalin, is the source of Stalin's paranoia about
being overthrown. Keep in mind that this is years before Trotsky considered
the Bureaucracy "counter-revolutionary through and through and needed to be
overthrown" (1936/37).

At any rate Furr loves to say "and of course Trotsky was a liar
thefore...". A huh. Secondly, one of things that Broue admitted too was the
removal of a document he found when given permission to view the Trotsky
archives at Harvard. Without knowing whatsoever what the document was about
he concludes Trotsky guilty of malfeasance. It is very much a method of
Furr.

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Re: [Marxism] Furr

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[I've been hearing very informally from others that Furr's book is not half
bad on the massacre. I'll leave it at that. I have a copy and will
eventually read it as I did a few of his other volume that are more drek
like]

The USSR never admitted to anything about the Massacre. It has always
denied it. There is a split among the current crop of right wing
nationalists in Russian academia over Katyn. The contradictions are that
among these anti-communists is to praise Stalin or condemn him. Thus, the
anti-communist wing wanted to admit to Soviet responsibility for Katyn and
a more nationalist wing wanted to deny it and blame the Germans (the
official Soviet position). Obviously neither "wing" of anti-communist
academics can be trusted.

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Re: [Marxism] Hidden history: The Nazi-Soviet pact which Russia now tries to deny

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I don't have a dog in this fight but I'm unconvinced by any side in this.
For example the citation in wiki Dayne provided actually is from "Institute
of National Remembrance", the Holocaust denying arm for the
ultra-nationalist Polish state that has been attempting to revise Polish
history to make all Poles look like flaming Unitarian liberals. Note, too,
that the "Beria order" doesn't exist on paper and even this "Institute"
fails to provide a single reference to back this up. Scholars that have
sought to blame the USSR usually, as I understand it, come from very strong
anti-communist backgrounds who seek to sow any trouble in Russian history
at the feet of communists. Not to say they are wrong, of course, but rather
there is real issue with documentation that points to too MANY culprits in
what happened there. So much of this history is blinded by ideological bias
I wouldn't support one side or the other.

David Walters
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[Marxism] NPR: Is Grass-Fed Beef Really Better For The Planet? Here's The Science

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For the environmentally minded carnivore, meat poses a culinary conundrum.
Producing it requires a great deal of land and water resources, and
ruminants such as cows and sheep are responsible for half of all greenhouse
gas emissions associated with agriculture, according to the World Resources
Institute.

That's why many researchers are now calling for the world to cut back on
its meat consumption
.
But some advocates say there is a way to eat meat that's better for the
planet and better for the animals: grass-fed beef.

But is grass-fed beef really greener than feedlot-finished beef? Let's
parse the science.

*What's the difference between grass-fed and feedlot beef? *

Feedlot calves begin their lives on pasture with the cow that produced
them. They're weaned after six to nine months, then grazed a bit more on
pasture. They're then "finished" for about 120 days on high-energy corn and
other grains in a feedlot, gaining weight fast and creating that
fat-marbled beef that consumers like. At about 14 to 18 months of age, they
are sent to slaughter. (One downside of the feedlot system, as we've
reported
,
is that a diet of corn can lead to liver abscesses in cattle, which is why
animals who eat it receive antibiotics as part of their feed.)

FULL:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is-grass-fed-beef-really-better-for-the-planet-heres-the-science
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Re: [Marxism] The Downside of Jeffrey Epstein’s Suicide: “I was looking to the Epstein case with a lot of hope. Hope for a fair outcome, hope the victims would finally get justice.” | Washington Babyl

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Most of you are quite ignorant in terms of what Epstein was going to face.
There was about zero threat of "...trade testimony for a lifetime sentence
in solitary, and
squeal like a pig on the stand about all his collaborators," What an
idiotic statement. One "trades testimony" to *avoid* lifetime sentence in
solitary. There was zero chance he would ever be in solidarity. He would of
traded testimony so he can be placed in a 'country club' setting in upstate
NY in a *minimum* security prison. "Go to trial and refuse to testify, get
put into general population, and
be either shanked quickly or, more likely, violently raped in the shower
every day for the rest of his life at Rikers". Rikers is not a state prison
but a jail where people get sentenced too. The population there are
*awaiting* trial for the most part. Generally, though not always, people
are sentenced to *prison* for violent crimes go to one type of prison,
white collar prisoners to others less severe places.

I don't care if he committed suicide or was offed by the guards or someone
else. What ever happened to this rich fuck of a rapist is old news now and
we should move on.

David Walters
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[Marxism] The 9% Lie: Industrial Food and Climate Change - CounterPunch.org

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I'm glad the article was posted. Clearly there *has* been increase in
awareness about regenerative agriculture though I think it's a lot lower
than the "22% of the population" the writer states in his essay. It is not
being talked about much on the left specifically or the population more
generally but it has increased in the last year a bit, I think. If you take
the largest internet and network and newspaper resources and run a search
for the term "regenerative agriculture" it shows up barely at all. So there
is that...

Secondly, despite his silly missives about "100% renewable energy" and
other myths, the essay was overall very good. I have no doubt he's read
material written by Allan Savory, heard David Montgomery speak and read
various leftist comments and essays by folks like Dave Riley, Elena Garcia
and myself on this topic. He makes an error I wanted to point out though.
He wrote "If regenerative food, farming and land use – which is essentially
moving to the next stage of organic farming,* free-range livestock* grazing
and eco-system restoration...". He made this common mistake. Holistic
cattle management, that is as he correctly wrote above this "Grazing and
pasturing animals on grass, and more specifically using a planned
multi-paddock rotation system" is the **opposite** of "free range grazing".
Free range grazing is what has destroyed land throughout the Sahel in
Africa and in the western states of the U.S. Everything about regenerative
agriculture is about *planning*, and mob-grazing. Before European
settlement, animals did NOT "free range". They were constantly on the move.
Constantly being herded by natures herders: wolves, cougars, coyotes, and
all manner of predator, including nomadic human groups. The idea of a
"happy cow" in nature is oxymoronic to the extreme. All ruminants generally
lived in a constant state of semi-stress in *nature*.

Lastly, on the "9%" of GHG emissions. I didn't even realize "Big Ag" had
come up with this number. Defining what the "agricultural industry" is, is
not easy. I tend to agree with the author that this industry's contribution
to GHG emissions much higher, probably 30% or more but I'd be guessing. The
problem is the lack of data in terms of breaking down what he writes about:
food processing, fossil fuels used for tractors and farm equipment, trucks
to bring food to the processors and then the processed food to market. Andy
of this that is used in broader categories such as "industry" and
"transportation" then has to be deducted from those categories.  Not to
mention chemical inputs onto the soil and plants and determining how much
of THAT goes into the atmosphere. That is why the numbers vary so much.
Just do a google search for "how much does agriculture contribute to
greenhouse gas emissions?". There is no question that Big Ag wants to keep
that number in the single digits for obvious reasons. I doubt anyone really
believes it.

David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Agriculture: The Worst Mistake Humans Ever Made

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Thanks to Dave Riley (a comrade from the FB group "Soil Alliance") for
setting or beginning to set the record straight. His point *"Soil
disturbance through the invention and use of the plough has to be seen as a
key mistake"* hit's the nail on the head and the fact that this is only
really noted by agro-anthropologists (anthropologists and historians with a
strong understanding of agricultural techniques). Agriculture was a *great
and wonderful* advancement over hunter-gathering.

[I should point out here that Marshal Sahlins has been thoroughly diced and
taken down by many anthropologists. There *is* a debate on Shalin's
anthropological projections. He by no means represents any sort of
consensus].

When talking to agronomists who look back at ancient societies of all sorts
(including the most prevalent for thousands of years in the New World,
those that engaged in both hunting and gathering AND agriculture) it is
indeed *how* early agricultural societies farmed, not that they farmed at
all. Most of the agronomists who study this do indeed point out that the
plow was the key instrument that causes all sorts of problems primarily
being that of soil infertility and soil runoff. By exposing soils to the
sun, one kills off the bacteria and fungi that completes the symbiotic
relationship between the sun, soil, plants as cover crops, domesticated
animals, and humans. Many would argue that this is the single biggest
blight on humanity when it started farming.

David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Agriculture: The Worst Mistake Humans Ever Made

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*The Original Affluent Society*

* by Marshall Sahlins*

* Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other
group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original
affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the
people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are
affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man
slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient
means is a tragedy of modern times. *

* full: http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
*


How does one even to such nonsense? Hunter gatherers "in which all people's
material wants were easily satisfied"what sort of fantasy is this?
Gawwwddd

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Re: [Marxism] Agriculture: The Worst Mistake Humans Ever Made

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What utter nonsense. What's clear to me is not only does this dilettante's
glorification of the misery of hunter-gather societies representing a total
falsification of the anthropological evidence he simply is ignorant of what
agriculture is and how it was practiced and what the *actual* problems were
with early agriculture (and practiced to this day). There ARE problems with
agriculture from the very beginning but Diamond misses the entire point.
Yuck.

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Re: [Marxism] Orwell versus Hitler: Not That Much Difference | Washington Babylon

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Gives new meaning to term "Stalinist hack". Such a-historical crap. Trying
to blame Orwell as the progenitor of original sin. This pathetic waste of
band-width fails utterly to deal with a single fact on Homage to Catalonia!
Not ONE!!! The problem with the author is that he refuses to assign the
blame for anti-Communism where it belongs: with the Stalinists who
sabotaged the workers revolution in Spain during the Civil War, murdered
revolutionaries and Spanish (and international) Stalinists' utter contempt
for workers self organization and revolutionary direction...which they
openly opposed. Of course Orwell became an anti-communist...the lying sack
of shit who wrote this screed should looking in the fucking mirror.

David Walters
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[Marxism] [UCE] Great David Montgomery podcast on restoring soil fertility (including the necessary element: cattle).

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*https://tinyurl.com/y4evy2gl *

Montgomery gives a good discussion on how to restore soil fertility and end
erosion. He takes on the vegan argument that we all have to stop eating
meat in order to effect climate change for the positive. It's only a small
part of his discussion but it's worth listening to.

David Walters
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[Marxism] What will be left when we’re gone? Bones, plastic, and radioactive waste. | Grist

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The comments below are the article are better than the article itself.
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[Marxism] David Montgomery on soil health

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Thanks to Louis who brought my attention to David Montgomery's focus on
soil health.  I've been listening and watching some of his YouTube videos,
one in particular, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj7zl_Ae5_Y which sums
up his overall perspective (a 1 hour talk given to ranchers and farmers in
N. Dakota). Though I read a book of his a few years ago he sort fell out of
focus for me in the last few years. The post here brought him back into a
clearer view about the problems of modern agriculture. It is quite worth
studying his books and, his POV on on farming.

Books include:

Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life
The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health 1st
Edition
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization

=
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Re: [Marxism] Regenerative Agriculture Podcast: A Geological Perspective On Regenerative Agriculture with David Montgomery

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Another excellent contribution on his podcast site is with the N. Dakota
rancher Gabe Brown, mentioned in the David Montgomery podcast. Much of it
focuses on how he integrated and used cattle to restore his soil.

Gabe Brown is a clear, collected, and inspired voice for regenerative
agriculture, having implemented and seen great changes on his family's
ranch in North Dakota over time. In fact, Gabe’s A-Horizon (topsoil) is 27
in, and the soils on surrounding farms only have 4-6 in of topsoil!

Gabe is the author of the recently published and highly-acclaimed book, Dirt
To Soil
,
from Chelsea Green. I highly recommend reading this truly inspiring and
informative book.

see: http://regenerativeagriculturepodcast.com/from-dirt-to-soil



On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 11:07 AM DW  wrote:

> There are a million things to take away from this fascinating pod cast. I
> think Louis for posting this because it covers the full gambit of what is
> regenerative agriculture and its implications for an amazing array of
> issues, of which climate change is the biggest issue. Take aways from this:
>
> The vegan lifestyle is not one that will help the soil.
> That the use of cattle is intrinsic to increasing the organic
> matter/carbon on the soil.
> Reason that have nothing to do directly with human health of the effects
> of glyopostate/Round Up but with the health of soil.
> The diversity in cover crops and cash crops is extremenly important.
>
> One of the things I like about his talk is that we still don't a lot of
> things about soil, human health and animal health.
>
> A truly worthwhile approach that doesn't make the cow the enemy of the
> planet. It's about HOW the cows are raised and used.
>
>
> David
>
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[Marxism] Regenerative Agriculture Podcast: A Geological Perspective On Regenerative Agriculture with David Montgomery

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There are a million things to take away from this fascinating pod cast. I
think Louis for posting this because it covers the full gambit of what is
regenerative agriculture and its implications for an amazing array of
issues, of which climate change is the biggest issue. Take aways from this:

The vegan lifestyle is not one that will help the soil.
That the use of cattle is intrinsic to increasing the organic matter/carbon
on the soil.
Reason that have nothing to do directly with human health of the effects of
glyopostate/Round Up but with the health of soil.
The diversity in cover crops and cash crops is extremenly important.

One of the things I like about his talk is that we still don't a lot of
things about soil, human health and animal health.

A truly worthwhile approach that doesn't make the cow the enemy of the
planet. It's about HOW the cows are raised and used.


David
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Re: [Marxism] How Carbon Farming Can Help Stop Climate Change in Its Tracks | The Nation

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Thanks for posting this. It's exactly what I've been writing about for the
last 2 years. It is truly an *excellent* survey of the problems and goes
back to something I agree with: it's all about the soil. And, the author
doesn't make the enemy out to be the cow, but rather how cows are raised. I
urge people to take this to heart. What IS interesting is that thousands
and even 10s of thousands of farmers and ranchers are investing in these
holistic methods which includes, above all else, the *intensive* use of
animal husbandry.

One of the less known but very important aspects of this also is addressed
by pointing out the problem of "plowing" or tilling, which leaves the soil
bare and exposed to the elements, most notably sunlight which kills the
soil. This is why more and more farmers are adopting the holistic approach
of cover cropping and no-till planting. Prevents run-offs and preserves the
soil. Nature has already done the R on this: it likes to "armor" its soil
and always attempts to cover it up. We need to expand mimicking nature in
this way.

The story doesn't, unfortunately, include a lot of details of the methods
of regenerative agriculture though they begin to touch on. Laying out the
opponents of this toward the end of the article was clearly stated: the
fossil fuel industry and agricultural-industrial complex or "Big Ag".

'nuff said. Read the article.

David Walters
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[Marxism] https://truthout.org/articles/a-green-new-deal-must-prioritize-regenerative-agriculture/

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an excellent overview. I fully support the views of this article and have
written a more extensive essay that dovetails with it here:
https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/10/10/developing-a-marxist-approach-to-global-agriculture-a-primer-on-the-role-of-animals-in-maintaining-soil-health/

I've visited the Marin Carbon Farming Project as well. The author leaves
out the most important aspect of this and other similar projects:
regenerative agriculture is based on the use of animal husbandry,
specifically mob grazing of cattle, to sequester the carbon. The Marin
project does a kind of "free range" but it works similarly.

David
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[Marxism] CIA polices weapons entry to Syria as spooks invade Turkey

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The article appears to be behind a pay wall.

I've argued that the concept of regime change in Syria was given lie
because of these bans on MANPADS (surface to air missiles) and other
heavier weapons...and the fact that the US could easily have destroyed the
Syrian armed forces in about a week, at least enough for an early victory
by the rebels.

However, the CIA did, through Qatar or S. Arabia, provide many Tow II
anti-tank weapons, which disabled around 18 Syrian T-55 and T-72 tanks
(most of which were returned to service) in 2016. There are youtube videos
of this available. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvVd1e8Gwug ], I can't
remember what year this was. But...the Syrian Army has one of the largest
armored equipped armies on the entire planet with close to 5,000 armored
vehicles with at least 3000 of that being heavy tanks (mostly T-55s, now
obsolete but fine for urban warfare it seems). But total number of TOW
anti-tank missiles are much higher according to this recent article:
https://www.newsweek.com/us-military-targeted-own-missiles-middle-eeast-1277293
It seems that there were over 1000 TOW missile launchers given to the
rebels in Syria. So the US via it's Arab state allies provided the
missiles. But...

The problem then really lies in the obvious lack of anything else such as
command and control, access to satellite intelligence, MANPADS and even
heavy machine guns to down helicopters and Russian fighter jets. Zip. Zero.
There ARE YouTube vids of rebels using MANPADS to shoot down choppers and
jets early on in the civil war but these were all taken from the Syrian
arsenal by deserting Syrian troops. They are clearly Igla surface to air
missiles being used by the rebels.

So it goes again to motivation of by the US to supply some, but not enough,
heavy defensive and offensive weapons by the CIA/NATO/EU.

David
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Re: [Marxism] The Reason Renewables Can't Power Modern Civilization Is Because They Were Never Meant To

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Shellenberger's article is excellent and spot on. People should read it. So
a few things...

On Britain: there are only about 8GWs of installed capacity right now
anyway, of coal. Thanks to both natural gas and nuclear, coal is on it' way
out regardless of what happens elsewhere in terms of new generation in the
country. I really want folks to take a look at the "Electricity Map" to see
real-time carbon footprint of each country or region. It is very
enlightening:
https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country=false=true=false=GB


Secondly, MM is absolutely correct. The key difference this last week was
natural gas. Natural gas and wind/solar go together perfectly since all
countries with wind and solar need some sort of back up for the make up of
generation daily depending on the time of day and the weather. And all this
made possible by...fracking.

The UK is the one country in western Europe with a large and influential
anti-nuclear/pro-wind/solar lobby. They *do* have a strong wind lobby but
it's not organized politically as it is in other countries. The UK has
decided to build around 8KWs of new nuclear. This might eliminate the need
to repeat the failure in Germany.

Shellenberger has an excellent series on Germany and it's failed "
*Energiewende*" policy.

David
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[Marxism] fwd: Ecosocialism: Dystopian and Scientific

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Since this was the topic it seems of the last two posts attempting to
counter the Huber article, here is the article.

David

Ecosocialism: Dystopian and Scientific

An effective ecosocialist politics can't just focus on dire threats to
scare us into action. It must also convince people that a better future is
possible.
*by* Matt Huber - Winter 2019


Climate change is bleak – coastal sea level rise, millions of climate
refugees and whole sections of the planet too hot for human life. Thus, for
good reason, ecosocialist politics often emphasizes a “dystopian” vision of
a future if capitalism is not replaced. The main mode of critique is laying
out what the science is telling us about current ecological collapse and
the projected worsening of planetary conditions (not just climate but mass
extinction, nitrogen dead zones etc.). However, part of socialist strategy
is also about convincing the mass of workers that a *better* future is
possible. Ecosocialist politics usually projects a dystopian future we must
avoid, rather than an emancipatory future worth fighting for.

Recently my local socialist reading group happened to be reading Friedrich
Engels’s classic *Socialism: Utopian and Scientific*
. For
Engels, a “scientific” socialism must be grounded in an analysis of what
kind of socialist society is possible given historical and material
conditions. Engels emphasized utopian socialists imagine an ideal society
“invented out of one’s brain”, but failed to articulate how socialism could
be realistically built out of the present. I make a similar claim in this
essay. The dystopian vision of the future among much of the green left
prevents it from explaining how socialism can be built out of the material
conditions that confront us. Ecosocialists often make impressive use of
natural science to project a dystopian future, but this is not the
“science” Engels called for (his “science” is better described as *historical
materialism*).

FULL:
https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/winter-2019/ecosocialism-dystopian-and-scientific/
.
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[Marxism] Libya: Defend Tripoli! Defeat Haftar!

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I found this article to be in a state of total denial about the role of
NATO in overthrowing the dictatorship. As if they played no role at all!
Wow. What BS. It's highly likely that the original Benghazi rebellion would
of been wiped out had it not been for French/NATO bombardment and
destruction of Qaddafi's armor division. NATO also played an essential role
in providing intelligence to the troops closing in on Qaddafi's convoy out
of Tripoli and also, as it happens, destroyed most of that convoy. I'm
don't believe that this was a question of no agency by the Libyan masses
but to deny the role of NATO is to deny reality.
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[Marxism] [UCE] Eric Blanc responds to Post on Kautsky

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Why Kautsky Was Right (and Why You Should Care)


Karl Kautsky’s vision for winning democratic socialism is more radical, and
more relevant, than most leftists care to admit.

With the recent upsurge in democratic socialism in the United States and
the United Kingdom, a new generation of radicals is searching for a viable
strategy to overcome capitalism. So it’s not surprising that a debate has
broken out over the relevance of Karl Kautsky, the world’s preeminent
Marxist theorist from the late 1880s through 1914.

This might seem like an obscure historical dispute, but it’s not. As the
recent *Jacobin* contributions by James Muldoon and Charlie Post
demonstrate, assessing Kautsky’s politics informs how today’s socialists
respond to a central strategic question: How can class rule be overcome in
a capitalist democracy?

Unfortunately, Muldoon

and Post

focus their articles on Kautsky’s approach

to the German Revolution

of 1918–19, confusing the discussion by failing to sufficiently distinguish
between Kautsky’s long-standing radicalism and his late-in-life turn

toward the political center.


Full:* http://tinyurl.com/y4pzn353 *
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Re: [Marxism] Yes, a Planned Economy Can Actually Work

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Louis descends into his crotchety old deflection mode here. The issue
of *planning
*and the almost universally failed attempts under "real existing socialism"
to make it work is essential to analyze or you shouldn't call yourself a
socialist. The totally misused term of *productivism* is further nonsense
since Marx was that, quite so in fact, despite all the protestations from
the editors and writers at Monthly Review. And *expansion* of the
productive forces can really only mean one thing, now matter how much green
spray paint you put on it. A "missreading" my ass. What sophism! No matter,
this is the the *rift *created between science and the Left since the days
of the Vietnam War. I have no doubt that Louis will be defending
anti-vaxxers next...at least that would consistent. [Oddly, Trotsky's
infatuation will all things science based was a good thing, not a bad
thing, and this was no less true for science in the first 10 years of the
Russian Revolution. Louis might want to look around because the ENTIRE left
was pro-nuclear energy until this rift occurred into the 1970s. But that is
another story...]

If one has followed Andy Pollack's writings on this subject (and this book
he reviewed has yet to review himself!) is about the tools that can be used
for central planning a communist society based on the *metaphor* of what
has already been shown to occur with extremely large, essentially
logistics-to-retail industry created by the working class and owned and
driven by Imperialism. In case you were wondering it has nothing to do with
Louis' deflection over one of the author's views toward..."geoengineering"
(seriously?) or "productivism". Andy has written *extensively* on this
question here on this list years ago when he brought to our attention the
technological transition that allowed, say, a Toyota plant in Oakland to
maintain almost zero inventory with parts being manufactured globally "just
on time" via the advent of "business-to-business" software aka, "B2B".
This dovetails neatly with Joe Allen's own articles on Logistics and why
socialists should organize inside this industry (trains, trucks, airlines,
shipping) as the key "choke point" of modern day Imperialism. Joe, who was
an ISOer and retired Teamster activist when he wrote this, is now a member
of DSA. The article is here:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/logistics-industry-organizing-labor/
probably the best article I've read in the last 15 years written from a
truly Marxist perspective. Another excellent article is by Kim Moody and
two other writers "Seizing the Choke Points":
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/10/choke-points-logistics-industry-organizing-unions
.

These articles are congruent with and are strongly supported by the book
the review article [*Yes, a Planned Economy Can Actually] *in *Jacobin* by
Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski, wrote about:  *The People’s Republic of
Walmart**: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation
for Socialism. *For those actually interested in pondering the issues of
actual socialist organization of the economy, both the review article and
the book are worth the read. Right-on to editors of *Jacobin *for ignoring
the peanut gallery cat-calls and drunken responses found here far too
often. Again, prior to the 1960s the "Left" broadly speaking was quite
pro-science and wrote and discussed it. Now? We got Louis and Jill Stein.

David Walters
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[Marxism] Gas wars part one: let’s be honest about Germany’s growing dependence on fossil gas

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With the ink barely dry on Germany’s Coal Commission report recommending a
phase out by 2038, the oil and gas industry is breaking out the champagne.
While environmentalists criticize the plan’s particulars, the other side is
celebrating the slaying of their strongest competitor. And they’re
translating that joy into furious lobbying aimed at ensuring that
renewables don’t fill the majority of the void as coal plants are shuttered.

*Gas infrastructure set to expand in all directions*


With the environmental community and media otherwise focused on the
Commission’s report, in late January Chancellor Angel Merkel (CDU)
addressed the 49th Annual World Economic Meeting and let the cat out of the
proverbial bag: “if we phase out coal and nuclear energy, then we have to
be honest and tell people that we’ll need more natural gas.”


Calling the growing tug-of-war over where that future gas supply comes from
“a bit over the top,” she reassured the gathered industry executives and
politicians that gas will “play a greater role for another few decades.
We’re thus expanding infrastructure in all directions.”


Merkel’s candor and bluntness might be rather shocking for those more
accustomed to her usual opaque pronouncements. But the fact that coal’s
demise was really just a smokescreen for a gas play shouldn’t be a surprise
for anyone who has followed the US’ rapid transition from
billion-ton-a-year-coal-burner to the world’s largest oil and gas producer.
As new technologies came into play, beginning in 2005, fracking companies there
covertly funded the nascent

“Beyond Coal” movement, directly or indirectly, while ensuring the media
labeled fossil gas as a natural bridge fuel to renewables.

FULL:
https://energytransition.org/2019/03/gas-wars-part-one-lets-be-honest-about-germanys-growing-dependence-on-fossil-gas/?fbclid=IwAR04RqdNFvp-cYl8mn9QIqpP_X-LsDRDG0QhaDcK_xRjB5txzOEY9Wzi7po
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Re: [Marxism] Climate Politics after the Yellow Vests | Colin Kinniburgh | Dissent Magazine

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A strange article because nowhere in the article does it actually discuss
the carbon foot print of France! If you look at the electricitymap.com site
and click on France, you will see it has a carbon footprint about 8 times
lower than that of renewable energy heavy Germany. It is among the lowest 3
in Europe (hydro heavy Norway and hydro/nuclear heavy Sweden). They could
de better by phasing out natural gas, which is about 10% of their grid at
various times. But that would piss off the Green Party as they are heavily
invested politically in gas as the back up for the increased renewables the
gov't has committed to increases, against France's massive nuclear grid
(and the basis for their low GHG footprint). The best thing immediatly
would be for an incentive program to deploy more electric vehicles at this
point.

David
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[Marxism] Debs project update

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https://debsproject.org/2019/03/16/debs-and-berger-part-ways-19-06/

Happy Saturday!

Time for another installment of the Debs blog. This week we take a look at
the polarizing Victor L. Berger — the second most popular leader in the
Socialist Party of America during its early years based on voting results,
I parenthetically note — his socialist newspaper empire, his views on the
American Federation of Labor.

Then I make use of quantitative analysis of Gene Debs’s journalism to
demonstrate that he and Berger made a political break in 1906, ostensibly
over the Industrial Workers of the World, despite the lack of surviving
documentary evidence to bolster this supposition.

(Don’t worry, no math, no t-tests — I’m just gonna stick my neck out there
and presume as axiomatic that a decline from 44% of EVD’s output being
first published by Berger in 1903 to 0% in 1906 and 1907 is statistically
significant!)

Yeah, I know, it’s long and it’s esoteric.
Tim Davenport

https://debsproject.org/2019/03/16/debs-and-berger-part-ways-19-06/
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[Marxism] Regenerative agriculture finds solid backing as decades of success show renewal

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"He began adopting regenerative practices in 1999, increasing the amount of
native vegetation and tree coverage on his property from just 3 per cent to
20 per cent.

"He believes trees and native grasses are fundamentally important to
farming because they capture carbon from the atmosphere and their
deep-rooted systems recycle nutrients from the soil.

"The other key change he made was to switch from a "set stocking" rate to
planning grazing according to what the landscape could support.

"He has a mob of more than 300 cattle, many with calves at foot, and he
grazes them in small areas, leaving most of the farm free of animals so it
can recover.

"We've got over 100 paddocks and [the cattle] are gradually moving around
the place through all those paddocks.

"If conditions are dry he destocks.

"I guess in the past, we were trying to run fixed enterprises in an
incredibly variable climate and you can do that, but a lot of the time
you're going to be spending a lot of money [on feed]," Mr Marsh said.

"I started fencing off one paddock on our property and the grasses came
back. Even with the minimal amount of rain that we've had it was really
encouraging," Ms Kimpton said."

Full: *https://tinyurl.com/yxfrl3zt *
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[Marxism] Debs Project update

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https://debsproject.org/2019/03/09/debs-on-the-road-in-1905-19-05/

"I was planning on writing this week about the Berger Affair of 1904-05, an
interesting albeit arcane bit of Socialist Party history, or maybe about
the founding convention of the IWW.

However, as luck would have it — and let there be no mistake, these blogs
are driven as much by serendipity as design — I wound up going in an
entirely different direction, leaving those big topics for another day.

Instead we will further examine Debs pursuing his career as a traveling
orator in 1905."

The official deadline for *Eugene V. Debs Selected Works: Volume 4* is
October 15, 2019. I’m setting a soft deadline of August 1 to finish the
document compilation phase of the project. This means there are now *20*
more Saturdays after today to get the core content section of the book
assembled, with a limit for publication of approximately 260,000 words.

   - *“The Earth for All”* (Jan. 14, 1905) — 1,221 words
   - *“New Industrial Union to Be Organized”* (June 22, 1905) — 2,349 words
   - *“The Misrepresentation and Lies of the Capitalist Press”* (early July
   1905) — 703 words
   - *“Now for Action”* (July 27, 1905) — 630 words
   -
*“You Have a Higher Mission: Labor Day Speech in Knoxville, Tennessee” *(Sept.
   4, 1905) — 3,970 words
   - *“Working Class Unity: A Labor Day Message”* (Sept. 9, 1905) — 1,379
   words
   - *“I Would Consider the Nomination a Command: Interview with the
   Cherrydale Daily Republican”* (Oct. 5, 1905) — 605 words
   - *“The Growth of Socialism”* (Oct. 11, 1905) — 4,253 words
   - *“Discourse on Liberty: Excerpt from a Speech at Leavenworth, Kansas”*
   (Oct. 12, 1905) — 308 words

Word count: *58,269 * in the can + *15,418* this week +/- amendments = *73,687
*words total.



David Walters will be running all of this material up on *Marxists Internet
Archive * in coming days.

To find it, please visit the *Eugene V. Debs Internet Archive
*
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Re: [Marxism] The Prophet Perverted,

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I think John O'Brian's response to this was *statically* accurate. That is
implying something is wrong with being "effeminate". IT's noted once here
in the review:

"In the series, Leon Trotsky is repeatedly cast as neurotic, effeminate,
egotistical, and full of contempt for common folk."

While I agree with John about this, the fact is that the series does do
this and that it is done because the Russian masses would identify with the
slanders against Trotsky's character as being "negative". In this sense the
review was 100% correct and I'm glad the reviewer for Jacobin noted it.

David
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[Marxism] Fwd: Debs project...back in the saddle. Volume 1 due out on Feb 22.

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[Volume 1, *Building Solidarity on the Tracks, 1877-1892, *is due out in 10
days, Feb. 19 from Haymarket. Volume 2, The Selected Works of Eugene V.
Debs Volume, t*he Rise and Fall of the ARU, (1892-1896*) will be out in
August or September of this year and Volume 3, *Path to a Socialist Party,
1897-1904*) we think will be out by January of next year.--DW]

This marks the beginning of the third year of the Debs project.

By now I have the preparation cycle pretty well figured out, kicking off
research the first week of February and getting into final compilation and
writing mode around the first of August.

As I write this I am in a weird place with the project — Volume 1 (*Building
Solidarity on the Tracks, 1877-1892*) is still at the printer; Volume 2 (*The
Rise and Fall of the ARU, 1892-1896*) is heading for indexing; Volume 3 (*Path
to a Socialist Party, 1897-1904*) has an introduction that is still being
futzed with… Now here I am simultaneously ready to kick off research and
article transcription for the fourth volume, tentatively titled *Red Union,
Red Paper, Red Train, 1905-1910.*

It seems a little bit scattered having four 750-page books happening at
once, eh?



*Gene Debs the Subject of New Documentary Film: *Other aspects of the
political story [in the film] are overdrawn or wrong, including an
over-association of Debs with the Industrial Workers of the World (to the
extent of ignoring his endorsement of the anti-syndicalist reaction in the
Socialist Party in 1913), a complete failure to mention or explain his 1916
Congressional run, as well as howling errors such as calling defrocked
Socialist Congressman Victor L. Berger a pro-WWI “jingoist,” pronouncing
the name of Debs’ French-Alsatian father Jean as “JEEN,” and misspelling
and mispronouncing the name of Attorney General Harry Daugherty as
“Daughtery.” Such errors should not happen in a documentary of this scale.

Full: https://debsproject.org/2019/02/09/back-in-the-harness-19-01/
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[Marxism] Debs project...back in the saddle. Volume 1 due out on Feb 22.

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[Volume 1, *Building Solidarity on the Tracks, 1877-1892, *is due out in 10
days, Feb. 19 from Haymarket. Volume 2, The Selected Works of Eugene V.
Debs Volume, t*he Rise and Fall of the ARU, (1892-1896*) will be out in
August or September of this year and Volume 3, *Path to a Socialist Party,
1897-1904*) we think will be out by January of next year.--DW]

This marks the beginning of the third year of the Debs project.

By now I have the preparation cycle pretty well figured out, kicking off
research the first week of February and getting into final compilation and
writing mode around the first of August.

As I write this I am in a weird place with the project — Volume 1 (*Building
Solidarity on the Tracks, 1877-1892*) is still at the printer; Volume 2 (*The
Rise and Fall of the ARU, 1892-1896*) is heading for indexing; Volume 3 (*Path
to a Socialist Party, 1897-1904*) has an introduction that is still being
futzed with… Now here I am simultaneously ready to kick off research and
article transcription for the fourth volume, tentatively titled *Red Union,
Red Paper, Red Train, 1905-1910.*

It seems a little bit scattered having four 750-page books happening at
once, eh?



*Gene Debs the Subject of New Documentary Film: *Other aspects of the
political story [in the film] are overdrawn or wrong, including an
over-association of Debs with the Industrial Workers of the World (to the
extent of ignoring his endorsement of the anti-syndicalist reaction in the
Socialist Party in 1913), a complete failure to mention or explain his 1916
Congressional run, as well as howling errors such as calling defrocked
Socialist Congressman Victor L. Berger a pro-WWI “jingoist,” pronouncing
the name of Debs’ French-Alsatian father Jean as “JEEN,” and misspelling
and mispronouncing the name of Attorney General Harry Daugherty as
“Daughtery.” Such errors should not happen in a documentary of this scale.

Full: https://debsproject.org/2019/02/09/back-in-the-harness-19-01/
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Re: [Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Report from Venezuela,

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Sorting through all this confusion on groups.

1. Marea Socialista was a wing of the PSUV lead by near-USFI supporters
(NPA-France, SA/Solidarity-US). They split years ago from the PSUV where
they had been a tendency and are in opposition to the PSUV and the right
wing.

2. PSL. No relation the US Marcyite group, with the same name. This group
is affiliated to the "UIT-CI" which is one of the main still remaining
"Morenoist" tendencies in Latin America today. There are *several* of these
Morenoist and ex-Morenoist currents. All have representation in Venezuela
and, Mexico among other countries. PSL is "notorious" because Orlando
Chiriono, leading dissident unionist and militant, who some years ago,
split with other independent Chavista trade unionists to unite with the
"AFL-CIA" Venezuela Federation of Workers against Chavez. They are VERY
anti-gov't. This group has a small representation in the US in the form of
a few individuals.

3. Left Voice has no relations whatsoever with this above noted group in
Venezuela. Left Voice is associated with the "non-Morenoist" and early
split from the original Morenoist international, the LIT-CI, to form the
PTS, now the largest Trotskyist group in Argentina today (or in the Western
Hemisphere for that matter). The international current THIS group is
affiliated with is called the FT-CI or Trotskyist Faction-Fourth
International. It's affiliate in Venezuela is the Workers League for
Socialism. Here is a translation of what this group has to say about
Venezuela:
*https://tinyurl.com/yau9u4mo *

David
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[Marxism] fwd: A Participant’s Comments on “The War at Home” by Robin David

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A Participant’s Comments on

“The War at Home”

by Robin David

December 2018



As I remember it, when I originally saw “The War at Home,” made in 1979 by
Glenn Silber, my first reaction was that I was glad to see a generally
positive documentary about the Vietnam antiwar movement, especially one
centered at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where I was a student
and politically active between 1961 and 1969.  I also remember being quite
critical.  I’m in the movie confronting Massachusetts Democratic Senator Teddy
Kennedy, although not named.

I, of course, assumed it was a film about the antiwar movement at UW in
Madison.  I am not alone.  Netflix describes the movie as, “ ‘The War at
Home,” this documentary vividly chronicles the Vietnam War protest
movement….”  IMDb, the internet movie reviewer says, “Interviews with
people involved with and leading the Madison, Wisconsin area resistance to
the Vietnam war.”  Seeing the movie several times recently, it is clear to
me that the film maker, Glen Silber, is not so sure.  That made the
contradictions and confusions in the movie much more understandable.

Starting in 1963, Silber takes us through the ‘60s virtually year by year.
He starts with the impact of the civil right movement on those who would
become antiwar activists, an accurate connection, and includes events
around the Mifflin Street Coop and the ensuing police riot.  He later tries
to connect the Black led student strike for demands for Black studies and
greater opportunities for Black students back to the antiwar movement which
is more of a stretch.  In reality, the Black movement had been evolving on
its own trajectory and the strike at UW was directly inspired by the Black
student strike at San Francisco State College (now University).  Silber
wanted to make a movie about the social explosion of the ‘60s, rather than
about the antiwar movement.  The film, though, is dominated by the Vietnam
war and the movement against it because to make a movie of any honesty it
couldn’t be otherwise.

The irony of his dilemma is expressed by Hank Haslach.  Hank is the main
interviewee in the film so it is reasonable to take what he says as
speaking for the film maker.  Hank says soon after he came to Madison, he
became aware of the Vietnam war but he joined SDS because it wasn’t just an
antiwar organization.  It was for a more sweeping and general change.  He
later goes on to say that he and SDS didn’t think the war was the main
issue they should be organizing around.  The film only shows how wrong both
he and its director are.  It is ironic that the only two things Hank claims
credit for having a major hand in, the DOW sit-in and the occupation of the
administration building were totally focused around the war.

I’m not going to go on any further about the general cultural and political
explosion of the ‘60s.  Since the film is, in fact, dominated by the war
and the antiwar movement and Silber so badly presents it, I want to focus
on that.  The kindest thing I can say is that movie seriously misrepresents
the dynamic of that movement in general and especially as it unfolded in
Madison.  Some might see it as the revenge of those whose strategy and
tactics for the movement was largely rejected to rewrite that history.

Madison has a radical tradition that goes back, unbroken, to at least the
1930s.  It was one of the very first centers of the anti-Vietnam War
Movement embodied in the Committee to the Vietnam War (CEWV).  Throughout
this period, it was the main antiwar organization on the UW campus,
although Silber chooses never to mention it.

The three central factors in ending the war were, first and foremost, the
refusal on the Vietnamese people to be defeated; second, the eventual
refusal of the troops to fight; third the antiwar movement.
The antiwar movement became a powerful force because it involved hundreds
of thousands united around what became the central demand to “Bring the GIs
Home Now!”  This slogan embodied three important concepts.  First, the only
real way to end the war was to get out, now.  Second, the best way to
“support our boys” was to bring them home, now.  Third, the only way to
insure Vietnamese self-determination was to end U.S. intervention, now.
Hundreds of thousands of antiwar activists embraced these ideas to
different degrees based on their own understanding.

The movement was able to grow to have such numbers, to have such power and
clearly represent a majority opinion because its dominant strategy was to
build mass demonstrations that were legal, peaceful expressions of people’s
First Amendment rights.  That allowed the average person to feel safe and

[Marxism] Coming soon: The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs, Vol. I: Building Solidarity on the Tracks, 1877–1892

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Due out on January 22:

An extensive compilation of articles, speeches, press statements, and open
letters by American socialist Eugene V. Debs, this book is the first in a
five volume series that assembles much of Debs’s work for the first time in
a single place. The collection makes readily accessible approximately 150
documents by one of the pivotal figures in the labor movement. Illuminating
nineteenth century working-class history, particularly the complex and
shifting situation in the transportation industry, this volume provides a
basis for deeper understanding of Debs and his role later during the glory
days of the Socialist Party of America.

Order from:
*Amazon or Haymarket:  https://tinyurl.com/y9u4ela9
 or
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1246-the-selected-works-of-eugene-v-debs-vol-i
*

*Tim Davenport and myself have worked on this project for almost 3 years.
The entire collection will be 6 volumes. About 98% of Deb's writings in
these volumes have never been published before. The first 2 volumes deal
with EVD's politics and union perspectives well before he became a
socialist. [Any royalties go the Marxists Internet Archive.]*


*David Walters*
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Re: [Marxism] Declining US military superiority

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John, you didn't really read what I wrote: "The purpose of the Chinese and
Russian militaries, leaving aside nuclear WMD, is to defend their homelands
and a *limited* regional influence/domination."

I did NOT write what you said I did here: "David Walters cites the lack of
Chinese and Russian military bases outside of their immediate region as
evidence that their military is for self defense purposes only. "only"???
What "only"??? What I wrote still stands: their military deployments and
development internally is to defend their homelands and LIMITED regional
influence *AND* domination. I cited the example of Syria and Crimea as an
example of this. (the latter two do no follow investments). No one,
including me, argues that the Russian intervention in Syria was for self
defense of Russia.

Your citing of the Chinese involvement in the much delayed and hopefully
stymied Canal Project in Nicaragua is...quite open and not hidden. You
write like it's some kind of revelation. It's not a secret in Nicaragua or
anywhere for that matter. The Chinese papers were touting this a few years
ago. This is generally true for all of Chinese overseas STATE investments
that I'm aware of (I haven no idea about non-state Chinese investments or
they carry them out). But you write "As is inevitable, these investments
are also tied in with interference in the domestic politics of the
countries where the investments lie." Really? Do tell. The reason I want to
know is that I would like more exploration of the "no strings attached"
investment policies of the Chinese state (guiding both state and private
enterprises in their overseas investment patterns).

As you noted one of the talked about issues is asset staking and the
Chinese take over of the port in Colombo. This has arisen again under the
still being built port in Pakistan. Chinese investments in Pakistan I
believe are more than ALL the combined investments in Africa and other
parts of Asia. It is a big issue (the South China Morning Post, a
conservative daily of record published in Hong Kong covers this extensively
if you need to know) but it is not like as you write either "the classic
"debt trap" that US finance capital has used so often" .Yeah...no, it's
not. There is absolutley nothing "classic" about what the Chinese are
doing. What US capital does, that is transnational capital, is to demand
the state targeted for the infrastructure project roll back all state
subsidies, cut payments for health care, education, transportation and
anything that could suck up capital for "useless labor". The Imperialists
when selling such debt to developing countries do in fact include asset
forfeiture...so they can then cut it up the assets and sell them to recover
their costs. The Chinese, state nor private, appear to have ever done that
at all. Their investments are not for immediate return...which IS part and
parcel of every Imperialist bank loan ever made, bar none, even under
'favorable terms'. So this is more complex than just placing an
"Imperialist" label next to Chinese investment and expect everyone to
assume, as you clearly do, it's the "same" as traditional Imperialist
investments. It's not, not even close. For that matter, Imperilism doen't
even invest in infastructure anymore though they still demand roll backs in
state owned enterprises, reform of labor codes, public health, etc as I
noted above The Chinese do not do this, John. Why don't they?

Secondly, your breathless "...I've read, the port has very little
commercial potential, so what is the aim of the development of the port?
Isn't it likely that it will be used as a naval base? And we know that
China is advancing its naval
development in general." "likely"? Maybe not at all? One can write anything
I suppose but it is not necessarily logical either. Chinese navel assets
already have right of call at 3 dozens Asia/South Asian/African ports.
Again their only BASE  is in Djibouti. Maybe they will, maybe they wont
demand that this base turn into a navy base for them of the Sri Lankan
gov't. I just don't see a shred of evidence they will because they haven't
anywhere else that I'm aware of.

I think there are many nuances to Chinese State capitalism and they don't
fit neatly into previous cookie cutter molds. I recommend people explore
these nuances.

David
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Re: [Marxism] Declining US military superiority

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I have no issues with the article's main thesis but it's a really
impossible task to do comparisons. The purpose of the Chinese and Russian
militaries, leaving aside nuclear WMD, is to defend their homelands and a
*limited* regional influence/domination.  It is not to protect/police
Imperialist interests internationally. The number of troops each side has
is wholly irrelevant to this question because they are only so good as each
countries ability to project those troops to foreign shores. The Russians
have done in a very narrowly focused area where they can concentrate their
very limited navy and air force power. That is in Syria and, if one wants,
the Crimea. The Chinese have exactly one foreign shores military base, and
that's Djibouti near the outlet of the Suez Canal (around 700 yards from
the US base there it seems).

That the Chinese and Russian have fighters as or more advanced than the US
is also irrelevant as they can't really support an overseas defensive or
preemptive attack on US forces. They simply don't have enough and by enough
I don't mean jets, I mean the logistics to support such an effort.
Conversely in a war with China the US simply has no logistics, to "invade"
mainland Asia. It can really done because the Chinese defensive capability
based on their own land, would be near impossible to overcome.

So we'd have to look at real world scenarios instead of comparing the
military gonads of each state. The only real world conflict I can see
arising is over the Chinese claim to the entire South Chinese Sea (SCS).
The U.S. is legally/technically correct that the Chinese claim...a claim
first elucidated by the Chinese Imperial Court in the 18th or 19th
Centuries I think...is an artificial claim that violates the sovereignty of
every country bordering the sea. The Chinese have no tried to enforce this
notion to my knowledge except rhetorically. No country in the world has
asked the Chinese regime to sale through it with their merchant vessels
(and by this I mean all the bordering countries AND S. Korea and Japan who
use it).

Secondly, the SCS countries are all taking the *opposite* position the
belligerent US is taking. Instead of trying to force the issue, these
nations are *negotiating* with the Chinese over economic and military
limits, etc. But the US does have the strongest navy in the world and
outnumbers the Chinese  in both tonnage and capability by a factor of 10 to
1 or more (the 'number' of ships is about even but that's only true when
you compare small ships of the Chinese to the larger ones the US has). At
any rate, no country in the region, even Japan, really wants the US to
force this issue.

David
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[Marxism] From the junk science files: "probiotics"

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From: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/probiotics/

The Wall Street Journal has an assessment of probiotics in the Jan 13, 2009
issue entitled “Bug Crazy: Assessing the Benefits of Probiotics.
” For some reason
when I wander around the hospital on rounds people show me articles such as
this and ask, so whatcha think about this? Probiotics are interesting. They
are live bacteria given to treat and prevent diseases. It is one of those
overlap areas for scientific medicine and so called alternative medicine.
There are good clinical trials to suggest areas where these agents are of
benefit, but other aspects of their use are blown out of proportion for the
real or imagined benefit probiotics may provide. Much of alternative
medicine where it overlaps with real medicine is the art of making
therapeutic mountains out of clinical molehills. The Wall Street Journal
article is the kind of reporting that drives. Me. Nuts. It drives me nuts
because the reporting acts as if the underlying assumptions of the
therapies are true. Start with the second sentence.

Many medical experts believe that consuming healthy bacteria, called
probiotics, improves the body’s overall balance of good versus bad
micro-organisms, boosting general health.

Many? What is many? A few loudmouths like me? A consensus? Experts in what?
What is a “healthy bacteria”? Are the bacteria healthy? Or does it make you
healthy? Then the last part of sentence, “improves the body’s overall
balance of good versus bad micro-organisms, boosting general health.” What
the does that mean? Already there is the assumption, unchallenged, that
there is an issue in people between good and bad bacteria that is affecting
health. And which people? Which bacteria? Under what circumstances? The
importance of understanding which patient populations may benefit from an
intervention is key. My mind was boggled when they mentioned that there
were 241 products released last year containing probiotics. Someone is
getting a good balance of good income versus bad income, boosting some bank
accounts’ health. Before we move on to the rest of the article, let’s talk
about the colon and the bacteria that live there.


FULL: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/probiotics/
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[Marxism] Garden Earth: A fixed meat ration is not the path to sustainable food systems

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Gunnar Rundgren nails it:

"The environmental impact of the food chain is too high. The main driver of
destruction is the globalized fossil fuel economy and industrial
agriculture of plants and animals. Once we redesign agriculture into
sustainable and regenerative systems where land, people and food are
“re-coupled”, diets will be diverse and adapted to the local ecological
conditions, population densities, etc. The notion of some kind of globally
averaged diet is flawed. The share of animal products in peoples’ diets
will vary from very high to very low depending on the conditions, in the
same way it has always done. "


FULL paper here:

https://gardenearth.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-fixed-meat-ration-is-not-path-to.html?fbclid=IwAR3T_qz3WB8vEAINgp_BMmCo25X7r_W3m9tjUAZlX3wzSbaO4D4Qe36qlIs



David Walters
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[Marxism] Impeach

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What a waste of political effort. I actually don't disagree with what Jacob
states for the most part, however, he really failed to make the *legal*
case of impeachment. ["Abuse of power" is hardly impeachable unless it a
specific "high crime" really.] But more importantly this is a total
*distraction* from what needs to be done which is developing opposition to
Trump *and* Pence POLICIES. Impeaching Trump is irrelevant IMO. The
policies will continue, *perhaps worse!* under a Pence Presidency.

David
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Re: [Marxism] Why We’re Taking a Hard Look at Nuclear Power Plant Closures (Union of Concerned Scientists reverses position on nuclear)

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Ah...a link from 2012 that says zip about the UCS change of position. Ok


David
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[Marxism] Why We’re Taking a Hard Look at Nuclear Power Plant Closures (Union of Concerned Scientists reverses position on nuclear)

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Some times people wake up and realize their long held positions, when faced
with evidence to the contrary, were wrong.
--David Walters
Why We’re Taking a Hard Look at Nuclear Power Plant Closures

A new UCS report, *The Nuclear Power Dilemma: Declining Profits, Plant
Closures, and the Threat of Rising Carbon Emissions
*, indicates that more than 22
percent of total US nuclear capacity is unprofitable or scheduled to close
over the next five to 10 years. The report also indicates that without new
policies, the electricity generated by these and other marginally economic
nuclear plants is likely to be replaced in large part with natural
gas-fired generation (although this will vary from plant to plant). If this
occurs, cumulative carbon emissions in the electric sector could increase
by up to 6 percent between 2018 and 2035.

Full:
https://blog.ucsusa.org/ken-kimmell/ucs-nuclear-power-global-warming-report
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Re: [Marxism] How to (do) ranching right

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Bill,
 John doesn't know where John is going, how could you possibly know?

Seriously, both my article and the video (you didn't watch it either, I
note) were addressing primarily soil fertility. As an aspect of this is the
sequestration of carbon on the soil. As the number of ruminants (cows,
sheep, deer, bison, etc) in the world is only about the same or some more
than it was 400 years ago, clearly the amount of methane burped off by such
animals (yes, mostly from their mouths, not flatulence from their asses)
was "digested" and metabolized by the ecosystem without much problem (the
"life" of methane is about half that of CO2 in the atmosphere). But the CO2
levels were far less, or about half, of what they are today. Methane is
absorbed by *healthy* soil, Bill. It is consumed by methanotrophs, a kind
of bacteria most of which exists in the soil...if the soil hasn't be
poisoned by exposure to the sun and killed off chemically by the
insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and pesticides farmers seem to employ
(and cut large checks too the big ag chemical companies for their
privilege) . Oh...and chemically produced nitrogen fertilizer.

The science on the *rate* at which methanotroph absorption and breakdown
(they basically derive all their energy and carbon from methane) takes
place is something that is relatively knew. I don't know the rates of
absorption (% of absorption per total emission of methane per animal). I
simply don't have that number. But if the amount of CO2 is absorbed (as per
the video and other sources) is as high as claimed, it doesn't matter how
much methane is output per head of cattle. The amount of carbon
sequestration is so high that it off sets the methane production.

But none of that occurs with the way we farm, and the way meat is produced
now. And that is my point...YOUR point is at least valid.

David
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Re: [Marxism] How to (do) ranching right

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John,
 That cattle raised in CAFO style of farming is a contributor and a big one
to climate change is not in doubt. If you listened to the video it's right
there. Which is the POINT of the video. It's now that cows produce GHG
emissions or not, it is how they are raised with a focus on the soil. Your
link dump is irrelevant to the discussion since not a single link actually
addresses the issue of carbon sequestration in the soil. None of them which
is unfortunate. And, I should note, did you...who flippantly and arrogantly
dumped your links on the list without a single answer to the points raised
in the video. You simply don't know what you are talking about.

Secondly, one of the sponsors if "Belcompo" a local ranching and purveyor
of meat raised as show in the video. It in not simply a "meat company" with
images of Harris Ranch and the large CAFO owners that come to mind. All
ranchers and farmers, like Belcompo, are *small business*, bar none.
However, this form of restorative agriculture is directly *counterpoised*
to that factory form of agriculture and you ought to pay attention to this
and the other issues around soil that you are so oblivious too but
seemingly have no interest to learn about. Here is an essay I penned a few
weeks ago on this issue to further enlighten you. Good luck with your diet.

https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/10/10/developing-a-marxist-approach-to-global-agriculture-a-primer-on-the-role-of-animals-in-maintaining-soil-health/

David
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[Marxism] How to ranching right

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“A Regenerative Secret” is a powerful mini-documentary that breaks the
thinking that cows are the problem. Contrasting the catastrophe of the
current cattle industry with the hopeful and inspiring paradigm of
Regenerative Ranching. This emerging form of ranching is not only restoring
ecosystems but also reversing global warming and helping ranchers across
the world become more prosperous.


https://kisstheground.com/regenerativesecret/?fbclid=IwAR0c-Y-tBFN56l2y0miBDOHVYAwNe7FlvQtFtOvl-19Fv27IWWnYNF7RFPc
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[Marxism] ‘This is Not a Doomsday Talk’: Allan Savory’s address to the Savory Institute International Conference

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griculture is the key to everything; without which we cannot have a church,
university, business, company – or even an economy, city or explore space.
It is the very foundation upon which all human endeavour rests but we treat
it as simply dirt.

Agriculture is the production of food and fibre from the world’s land and
waters. It is not just crop production as many believe. Fisheries,
forestry, wildlife and more are agriculture.

While agriculture made all we enjoy today -including our cell phones,
comfortable cars and television – possible, it has also already destroyed
many civilizations in all regions – both green and brown – in the NASA
picture above.

Agriculture today is producing far more eroding soil than food. We need to
produce every year about half a ton of food per person. We are achieving
this by producing 4 tons of eroding soil per person every year according to
soil scientists. I believe these figures are largely from croplands. If we
include the vast desertifying lands the figure could well be 8 to 10 tons
or more of destroyed soil for every human alive today. And we expect the
population to rise toward 10 billion.
*FULL: https://tinyurl.com/yceb7k2p *
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Re: [Marxism] ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is Marxist Fantasy Porn

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Sort of right up my alley here, Dennis. Thanks. In fact my family and I do
watch "Top Chef" and, personally, the amazingly shot "Chef's Table" where
one only hears the Chef's dialogue and not the producer's questions. Eater
is my favorite YouTube channel. It is the best, IMHO, food media one can
watch. The essay on the Eater blog was amazingly cogent, and accurate.
Thank you for linking...

David
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[Marxism] Developing a Marxist approach to global agriculture

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“*All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only
of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil…. Capitalist production,
therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of
the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original
sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.”*

*—*Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter on “Machinery and Large-Scale
Industry”


Issues and terms covered in this essay, in part:

   -

   adaptive multi-paddock grazing
   -

   mob-grazing
   -

   intensive rotational grazing
   -

   holistic management
   -

   regenerative/restorative agriculture
   -

   no till farming
   -

   cover cropping
   -

   agro-ecology


These are all terms that are overlapping concepts dealing with *mimicking
nature* to restore the land, grow food and ending the negative effects of
climate change due to factory farming  [technically called “Concentrated
Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs].




FULL:
https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/10/10/developing-a-marxist-approach-to-global-agriculture-a-primer-on-the-role-of-animals-in-maintaining-soil-health/
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Re: [Marxism] Attn. WA. Post Subscribers

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So...my subs to both the WP and the NYT ran out quite a long time ago. The
way to get around this, and for any popular newspaper that charges to see
their stuff, is to use news.google.com. Many papers and newsources
syndicate the articles from both newspapers and present it for free. You
just have to find the right one. You post the exact title into the google
search engine and there you have it.

D.
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[Marxism] MEXICO: No to the Signing of the New “Free Trade” Agreement with the United States -- Open Letter to Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Legislators of MORENA

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*Open Letter to Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Legislators of MORENA*:

*- No to the signing of the new “Free Trade” agreement with the United
States[1],*

*- For the recovery of Mexico's national sovereignty,*

*- For the renationalization of Mexico's energy resources,*

*- For the repeal of the counter-reform of Mexico's public education
system,*

*- Respect the mandate of July 1!*

We, the undersigned, hereby express our opposition to the new “Free Trade”
agreement with the United States that has been signed by the current
government of Enrique Peña Nieto and Donald Trump.[1] We call on you to
reject this agreement and to push for its rejection by the Congress of the
Union.

The negotiations of this new U.S.-Mexico Trade Agreement were conducted in
near secrecy. Little is known by the population about the new terms of the
proposed agreement. But from the information that the media have leaked, it
very much appears that this new treaty is nothing more than the deepening
of the policies implemented over more than two decades under NAFTA.

We are concerned that this new treaty will serve to further open up our
economy for the sole benefit of the large U.S. transnational corporations,
with an even greater subordination of our government to the dictates of
U.S. foreign policy and its measures of internal security and migration.
These have already been expressed in the construction of the Wall of Shame
on the northern border, the militarization of our country, and the
separation of families.

NAFTA has only brought to our country the bankruptcy of our countryside,
the loss of our food sovereignty, the destruction of our national
productive capacity, the overexploitation of the labor force, and a sharp
increase in the cost of living. The implementation of the Energy
Counter-Reform law has also led to the loss of our energy sovereignty.

All the counter-reforms that have been imposed in recent decades by what
you, Mr. López Obrador, call the "mafia of power" are the direct result of
the demands for greater deregulation, liberalization, and privatization
contained in the NAFTA treaty. The "reforms" to the retirement systems and
pensions; the successive "reforms" to Articles 3, 27, and 123 of Mexico's
Constitution; and the labor and educational "reforms" are all the
by-products of this treaty. In fact, NAFTA became the true Constitution of
our country, one that was never debated or endorsed by the people, but was
imposed on them.

Donald Trump betted on reaching an agreement with the weakest negotiator  —
Mexico  — in order to blackmail the Canadian government with an established
treaty. The government of Peña Nieto and its negotiator, Luis Videgaray,
have lent themselves to this maneuver. For us, the undersigned, it is
worrisome that members of the new incoming administration have participated
in the trade talks and have endorsed what was negotiated.

Mr. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, deputies and senators from MORENA:

Full: *https://tinyurl.com/ydhfnsah *
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[Marxism] Anthoney Bourdains last words to his audiance

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The best essay/review I've read on the final episodes of Anthony Bourdain's
"Parts Unknown". His last episode was with comedian and writers, W. Kamau
Bell which took place in Kenya. The essay says in part:

"Who gets to tell the stories? This is a question asked often. The answer
in this case, for better or worse, is I do. At least this time I do,"
Bourdain says in his final narration. "I do my best. I look. I listen. But
in the end I know. It's my story, not Kumau's, not Kenya's or Kenyans.
Those stories are yet to be heard."


"Those words, his last to us, are almost chilling to hear, knowing what we
know now. And they also offer something of a challenge. For 17 years, he
told the stories. Who will tell them now?"

Full:
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a23342650/anthony-bourdain-parts-unknown-season-12-premiere-episode-review/
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Re: [Marxism] Hurricane Florence and 9.7 Million Pigs

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Of course I agree about CAFOs! I wrote about this just a few months ago
(around the issue of "agroecology") on this very topic here in this forum,
Louis. I usually never disagree with the *descriptions* of what passes for
animal husbandry in the US and Brazil and other countries, it's the narrow,
self-serving half-truths about this that disgust me. As if there is no
other way to raise animals; as if the only solution is stop (choose your
poison) eating them, breeding them, 'exploiting' them, etc. This is why
such lifestyle politics is so deranged and even reactionary.

David
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Re: [Marxism] Hurricane Florence and 9.7 Million Pigs

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I find the author of this article rather pretentious and basically awful. I
should of stopped reading after this disgusting analogy where she wrote
"The first is a Facebook post I saw last July: “People will give up straws
to save fish, but they won’t stop eating fish to save fish.” In other
words, the individual fish don’t matter, only “fish” do...". What an
asshole. That fish provides 2.5 billion people of the world with most of
their protein, and 90% of these in poor developing countries seems
irrelevant to her. It's only about the suffering of the little
fishes...Typical narrow minded PRIVILEGED vegan fools.


David
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[Marxism] BRAZIL: Statement on the Decision to Ban Lula from Running for President

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*BRAZIL: Statement on the Decision to Ban Lula from Running for President*



On September 11, 2018, Luis Inacio (Lula) da Silva and the National
Executive Committee of the Workers Party (PT) decided to replace Lula's
candidacy for president with that of his vice-presidential running mate —
Fernando Haddad, former PT mayor of Sao Paulo — in accordance with the
heinous directive of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).



What Trump, the financial markets, the coup government of Michel Temer, and
the institutions that promoted the coup have done is that, “they have
banned the Brazilian people from voting freely,” to quote from Lula’s
September 11 Open Letter to the Brazilian People.



This ban has a political content, as Lula goes on to explain, accusingly:
All the forces linked to the coup do not want to change the “grim reality
of the country.” They do not want to take on the banksters, who are
swimming in profits, or the Big Business tycoons, who, after having imposed
the so-called “labor reform” law, are exploring every which way to deepen
their exploitation of the working class and to further their looting of the
public services through such measures as EC-95.



This latter measure — aka the Expenditure Ceiling Act — is a Constitutional
amendment that would freeze all public spending for the next 20 years and
turn over the titles to current public entities to the speculators.



There is no way to avoid insisting upon, and repeating, this simple truth:
A presidential election without Lula is a fraudulent election.



The National Executive Committee of the PT, by a unanimous vote, and Lula
himself have now affirmed their belief that with Haddad replacing Lula as
the party’s presidential candidate, the PT will still be able to win the
election, overcoming all the obstacles posed by the fraud. To be honest, we
don't see the logic behind this affirmation. What was the purpose of the
coup organizers in banning Lula from running from office if not to prevent
the PT from returning to the helm of government? How can one believe that
they will let Haddad win?



Lula wrote: “You surely know by now that the courts have banned me from
running for the Presidency of the Republic. Actually, they have banned the
Brazilian people from voting freely to change the grim reality of our
country.”



The coup organizers will do everything to prevent the PT's victory. The
most they will accept is our participation in this election to legitimize
the fraud in the eyes of the people — a fraud, again, whose aim is to
continue and deepen the attacks on our basic rights, the privatization of
our public enterprises and services, the “reform” / destruction of our
pensions and social security, and the heightening of the exploitation of
the majority of the Brazilian people.



If there is anyone fueling the candidacy of ultra-rightwing presidential
candidate Jair Bolsonaro it’s the people who organized the coup and are now
preventing the Brazilian people from exercising their right to a free vote.
The overwhelming majority of the Brazilian people want to vote for Lula.
Everyone knows that with Lula in the race, Bolsonaro would not have the
slightest chance of winning.



The organizers of the coup and the fraud — including the highest command of
the military — will manipulate, scam, blackmail, threaten military
intervention, and more, to prevent a victory by Haddad.



This will leave the political space for PDT presidential candidate Ciro
Gomes — who promised he would place the pension funds on the financial
markets in his own particular version of a “pension reform” — to contest
Lula's scattered votes.



As we have affirmed and reaffirmed in previous statements, for us, "An
election without Lula is fraud." The PT leadership should not have replaced
Lula; it should have taken the demand for free and democratic elections to
the streets.



Having said that, in light of the decision by Lula and the National
Executive Committee of the PT to replace Lula with Haddad, what we are
seeing now is that the majority of the PT militants and a large portion of
the PT voters have embraced the fight for Haddad for President.



That is why we will go through the experience of the campaign to elect
Haddad, calling to Vote 13 [the ballot line – tr. Note], alongside each PT
candidate and each PT supporter, reserving our right to continue denouncing
the fraud.



We join the Call to Vote 13 on the first round of the presidential election
[on October 7], and on the second round [on October 28]. The vote for the
PT is a useful vote.



Only a PT government, supported by the aspirations and mobilizations of the
workers and all the 

[Marxism] More on soil fertility and carbon sequestration

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I have been commenting more and more on the issue of climate change,
agriculture & grazing, and carbon sequestration (which is part of the
climate change discussion AND healthy soil). Because of my last comments
here I got 3 invitations to expand my comments on various socialist blogs.
I got a few "nasties" from some militant vegans as well (though these
stemmed from Facebook postings as one might expect).

Anyway, as part of my own limited education on this I saw a link to an
article by a PhD. agronomist and soil fertility expert Dr. Christine Jones
from Australia on the leftist pro-rural folks/farming FB group, The Soil
Alliance ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/soilalliance/ ). I have heard
Dr. Jones speak on a lot of YouTube videos previously in the last year as
everyone into soil fertility and restorative agriculture recommends her
highly. But I never read anything by her, being the lazy person I am I just
watched the videos. But Dave Riley posted the following essay to the Soil
Alliance page. I thought it was singularly the best explanation of the
relationship between proper agricultural methods of farming and CO2
sequestration I've ever read. If only because it not that long and highly
educational for the non-ag person like me but because it covers everything
from a scientific and engineering POV of why this question may be the
biggest technological tool to fight climate change as part of any program
to seriously fight against climate change, providing a living for anyone
who applies these techniques and restores our soil to what they once were
it there is.  So it gets my ringing endorsement. If you are interested in
how agricultural can sequester carbon while growing more food for our
species in an eco-firendly way, you should read this essay. I left some
comments on the FB page I linked to above if you are interested at all in
specifics aspects I thought were not given enough space in Dr. Jone's essay.

http://ecofarmingdaily.com/soil-restoration-5-core-principles/

--David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Green and Pleasant Land

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A great review of a great set of books. The bottom line: it's all about the
soil...

David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Grappling With the Racism of the DSA’s Founders

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Andrew Stewart wrote in his Counter Punch article:

"By contrast, the Debs-era Socialist Party never ascended higher than state
legislatures ..."

Meyer London, SPA candidate sat in Congress from 1915 to 1923. Victor
Berger was elected a Socialist candidate from 1911-1929. And then there
were numerous Minnesota Farmer-Labor candidates and American Labor Party
candidates.

David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Zimbabwe elections

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Well...Louis suggested "Well-meaning Trotskyist comrades who castigate the
Sandinistas for not carrying out permanent revolution should remind
themselves of the full dimensions of Trotsky's theory." Indeed...but it the
theory didn't stop in 1907, now did it? Reading what Louis wrote it's as if
Trotsky only designated his theory for Tsarist Russia. Indeed...when he
wrote it. But after the debacle in China, and along with this Draft
Criticism of the Communist International he and his movement applied
universally. That is the "full dimensions of Trotsky's theory".

Leaving that aside is if it's applied to Nicaragua, this means...what
exactly? Not seizing power? Limiting, even against the wishes of the rural
masses and urban workers further nationalizations? What would be the point
then of the FSLN coming to power if only to topple the hated dictatorship?
In fact, the self-limitations imposed by the FSLN worked out well, huh?
Plus, Louis, you make it out to seem as if nothing else was going on the
region...like El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. I am not arguing had, as A.
Sandino suggested..."only the workers and peasants can go all the way"
...that the results wouldn't of been any different. Though we never would
know had they, the FSLN, lead the masses to just that, that an even deeper
radicalization would not have shifted the entirety of Central America
working masses to consider socialist solutions. Revolutions happen when
it's least expected, afterall.

David Walters
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[Marxism] The Coming Worm Apocalypse Should Terrify You,

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Well...there are areas of the wheat and farm belt that haven't had a single
earth worm in over 70s years. This isn't new, it is in fact quite an old
story. Chemical nitrogen fertilizer will burn worms to death. After
destroying all the *mycorrhiza* fungi and other micro organism and reducing
the organic matter to about 1% or less...the worms die off. However...it
should be noted that with the exception of *Eisenia fetida* and the *Lumbricus
terrestris* most earth worms are really an 'invasive species' imported from
Europe and Africa. Overall they are positive and the number of earthworms
in the soil is indicative of soil health, that is, great amounts of organic
matter in the soil. They are like canneries in the coal mine...when one
ceases to see them in a spade of soil, you know you have problems. Worms
represent sort of the final processing of the decomposition of dung and
plant litter on the ground. Sometimes before, sometimes after decomp has
set in. Along with dung beetles there are hundreds of species of worms.

On the other hand, while worms have a symbiotic relationship with most
species of plants in grass lands and on the edge of forests...they are very
detrimental to forests. In some places in the northern plains, Minnesota
and Wisconsin, you can see signs that say "keep your earthworms away!".
Why? Because North American forests evolved without them, at all.
Earthworms actually pull leaves and other forest floor litter into their
dens and can deny the trees the need nutrition. The book is still out on
this and it's being studies but the consensus is slowly developing that
invasive earth worm species are detrimental to forest health.

David
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Re: [Marxism] Falling demand for milk puts the future of Sullivan dairy farms at risk

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Health food fads? Education that drinking cow's milk really isn't that
healthy for humans? that 1/3 of the world is lactose intolerant? It's odd
because cheese consumption has actually gone up.


David
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Re: [Marxism] Building for a Socialist Brexit

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What John doesn't understand...and is in denial about...is the E.U. itself
as if it represents something "better" for the working class in Britain or
any of the member states of the E.U. The fact that it is precisely the E.U.
and all the fiscal agreements for the past 25 years that is THE tool by
which austerity is argued for, predicated on and deployed. As I pointed out
when we had a public debate on this last year in Berkeley to oppose Brexit
meant support for this Imperialist institution. John appears to see the
E.U. as nothing more than free-immigration statute and...a victory
of...what? Working class internationalism? There is zero analysis of the
role the E.U. plays in the European wide undermining of labor codes,
privatization and austerity. He is completely blind side by the very real
anti-immigrant perspective of many working class voters. But he knows as
well that the vote itself was far more complicated than that.

David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Free trade or protectionism? – the Keynesian dilemma | Michael Roberts Blog

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I think it's a good description of Keynes evolution on the subject of
protectionism and free trade. He ends  with the last word on the subject by
Engels where he writes:

"*“the question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely within the
bounds of the present system of capitalist production, and has, therefore,
no direct interest for us socialists who want to do away with that system.
Whether you try the Protectionist or the Free Trade will make no difference
in the end.”*

Quite honestly this a useless position Engels takes. It's akin to some
groups that argue that the national question can only be resolved by
working class unity for socialism which can *then* deal with the issue. No,
the workers movement needs to take positions on these questions and offer
immediate and transitional perspectives that in fact reject both the Free
Trade argument and the Protectionist one.

What is ignored...and I will add that along with some other questions (like
US expansion into Mexico) the "tilt" of Marx and Engels is toward Free
Trade as they spend most of their meager writings on this important subject
attacking tariffs. It is one of the weakest areas of Marx's writings, IMO,
and this is compounded by being totally Euro-centric in their examinations
of the issues. Ignore or out of ignorance, was any examination of the use
of the tariff in *developing* economies like the United States, whose
record growth (built of course along the colonial and post revolutionary
accumulation of capital from the slave trade) was based solely on the
Hamilitonian/Federalist tariff imposed on the early U.S. by Congress.  This
spurred the development of, as Hamilton called them "our native
manufacturies" by basically keeping most British and French goods out and
provided enough money to run the Federal government.

But the real problem is not looking at tarrifs and their more modern
sibling, direct quotas on manufactured commodities, in the dynamic sense.
It's one thing to oppose tarrifs for the obvious reasons of inflationary
pressures and as a form of exporting one nations unemployment to other
countries, but it's another thing entirely to call for their removal (as
advocates of Free Trade do) after the economies of the countries in
question have adapted to strong tarrif legislation. Socialist might oppose
the *removal* of tariffs and quotas if it means the wholesale destruction
of a nations manufacturing sector, and thus the proletariat in that section.

The problem with Robert's blog is that he doesn't recognize (nor did
Marx)...that it is not just "trade" as a function of Free Trade but also of
what he notes as the cause for massive unemployment and whole destruction
of segments of industry and that is capital delocalization for purposes of
reducing the cost of labor in a product to boost profits (or maintain
them). These are *always* part of so-call Free Trade agreements. Only the
most naive observer would not understand that NAFTA was more than a trade
agreement but involved wholesale removal of subsidies to poor farmers in
Mexico, privatization of the ports, fiscalization of the economy, and, most
importantly, the removal of barriers to US capital wanting to invest in
Mexico.  The sort of artificial segmentation of the discussions around
"Free Trade" usually ignore this. And why, some groups on the left, took
neutral positions back in the Clinton years over the question of NAFTA (and
Europe as well!). . . ultimately siding with those wanting to impose NAFTA
on the people of all 3 countries in North America.

David Walters
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[Marxism] The origin of the Debs Project...

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Quite the fascinating read...personal reflections by Tim Davenport, the
literary force behind the Debs Selected Works project. We are half-way
through the collecting/editing project for Volume 3. Ergo, 2 1/2 volumes to
go. Volume 1 will published this fall by Haymarket. Volume 2 early next
year. And so onnone of the material will have ever been published in
any collection of Deb's writings. In this sense if one were to add the 6
volumes we will complete to the Letters of Eugene V. Debs: 3 Volume Set
(Edited by J. Robert Constantine) there will be a total of 9 volumes of his
writings.
---David Walters

Tim's perspective:

Two decades ago my best friend from college and I went out to lunch in
Corvallis. We had both recently turned 35 and that served as the occasion —
half of the biblical “three score and ten.” I don’t precisely remember a
single word that we said to one another during the 90 minutes or so we were
together, but I do remember it as a very reflective discussion that we had
at what felt like “halftime” of our lives.

Time had flown. There were good memories and good stories and others that
were less happy — but it was somehow deeply satisfying to take accounts and
to acknowledge mortality. The relative shortness of the first half of life
emphasized the value of time and served as a source of focus for activity
in the second.

I now find myself feeling the same sort of mixture of pensiveness and
optimism about the *Debs Selected Works* project today as the calendar
ticks down on the arduous document compilation phase for the third of six
volumes. Halftime approaches.

•  •  •  •  •

*Origin of the Debs Project*

I didn’t wake up one morning and decide that I wanted to spend five years
doing a comprehensive Debs writings project. Far from it — this little
obsession is the end product of a long process.


FULL: https://debsproject.org/2018/07/07/halftime-18-23/
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[Marxism] With Pollution On The Rise, Will Europe Resist Germany's Dirty War On Nuclear Power? | Michael Shellenburge | Forbes

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With Pollution On The Rise, Will Europe Resist Germany's Dirty War On
Nuclear Power?
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, French Prime Minister Emmanuel
Macron, and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel

Over the last few years, Germany has taken actions that have damaged its
reputation as an environmental leader. Its emissions
have
flatlined, thanks to its replacement of nuclear power with fossil fuels
.
It recently bulldozed an ancient forest
,
village
,
and church

in order to mine for the coal underneath. And, as one of the most
coal-dependent nations in Europe, Germany exports deadly air pollution
 to
its neighbors.

Now, heedless of its negative environmental impact, and in the grip of a
darkly romantic national ideology, Germany is on the march to raze nuclear
plants all across Europe. “Germany has decided to phase out nuclear power,”
the nation’s new environment minister said before visiting Belgium

last month. “We would like to see our neighbouring countries following our
example.”

That’s putting it mildly. In truth, Germany’s approach has been to pressure
nations

 to close nuclear plants and end nuclear programs — at a potentially great
cost to their citizens and the natural environment. They have done so
by fear-mongering about foreign nuclear plants, threatening to cut off
German nuclear fuel supplies to foreign plants in Belgium and France that
they claim are dangerous, divesting from foreign nuclear companies, and by
proposing to amend the 1957 Euratom treaty to reduce state support for
nuclear power.

Whether or not these actions will have a direct impact — most nuclear
plants, for example, can buy fuel from other suppliers — they put pressure
on nuclear-operating nations to bend to demands made by Germany, the
largest economic and political power in Europe, to phase out nuclear and
phase in renewables, even when it means maintaining or increasing
dependence on fossil fuels.

Full:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/26/with-pollution-on-the-rise-will-europe-finally-resist-germanys-dirty-war-on-nuclear-power/#38f17af36769
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Re: [Marxism] Bringing Farming Back to Nature

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I think it's a generally good "news item" written on the op-ed page of the
NYT. Bittman above all else is a food critique. He tends to delve into
areas he is not an expert in and gets his foot in his mouth because of it.
However, IMO, he is fairly good on this issue and, it is food related, even
if it's about how to grow food and not cook or eat it. Still pretty good.

There was a recent article on climateandcapitalism.com with a link posted
here I think. Titled "Why avoiding meat and dairy won’t save the planet"
the link again, is here:
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2018/06/26/why-avoiding-meat-and-dairy-wont-save-the-planet/
and this will give a far better, science-based explanation of what the
Bittman editorial is trying to say.

"Agroecology" is on term among many others that seek to use the millions of
yeas of R nature has already done to return our soil, our food, and our
ties to how we raise our food back on an even footing. Among the other
terms, used more extensively in N. America than it is in Asia or Africa are
"Holistic Agricultural Management" (developed over the last 50 years by
Allan Savory), Restorative Agriculture, Permaculture, Regenerative
Agriculture, etc etc..

They all have a few things in common though their approaches are often very
different. The *common* thread is the us of animal husbandry to provide the
needed link between restoring the depleted organic matter (carbon,
specifically) and fertility by managed intensive rotational grazing of
rudiments (sheep, cattle, and to a lesser extent, pigs, goats and
chickens). This "mob grazing" mimics nature by forcing animals to herd
closer, eat a more diverse mix of grasses, leaving their dung in more
usable (by nature) area, and by *not* eating plants all the way down to the
roots but leaving enough to stimulate more growth.

The Asian variety of Agroecology doesn't rely on this as much or at all but
employs somewhat different, but also holistic methods. Another common area
is the use of cover crops to keep the soil "armored" against the sun, the
sun that dries out soil immediately when it is exposed but does even more
harm by destroying the necessary bacteria in the soil that can actually
*create* top soil and increase the organic matter in the soil. The last
commonality is the elimination of the plow...a 7,000 year or older device
that may of been the bane of advanced civilization collapse by destroying
the soil by turning it over. What all the above methods have in common is
the technique (catching on very quickly among farmers in the U.S.) is
"no-till" agriculture where ground is never plowed by, instead, "drilled"
with a small disk to allow a seed to be dropped in thus keeping the
integrity of the soil.

All these methods of non-commerical/factory farming end up *sequestering*
GHG emissions instead of increasing them.

David
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Re: [Marxism] A Brief History of People Using Romans 13 to Justify White Supremacy

[DW via Marxism]

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No, it is not Verse 13 that is used to justify slavery. Rarely, anyway. The
Old Testament, more generally, is the handbook for all sorts of moral
thuggery. The justification of slavery by white supremacists is easy as the
Bible endorses out outright and not in the oblique phrases of *Apostle
Paul, Chapter 13, Verses 1-3*.

They asked who could question the Word of God when it said, "slaves, obey
your earthly masters with fear and trembling" (Ephesians 6:5), or "tell
slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every
respect" (Titus 2:9). Do we need to be more explicit??? Seriously?

The Bible is a *handbook* for owning slaves with numerous rules and
regulations. The "Holiness Code" of the old anti-sex bigot, Leviticus was
quite clear: It (Leviticus 25:44-46 on up) explicitly allows participation
in the slave trade, with non-Israelite residents who had been sold into
slavery being regarded as a type of property that could be inherited.

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, there was no commandment that said
"no person shall own another person". Just...wasn't...there...

Conservative, alt-right, pro-slavery white supremacists are far more
correct with regards to the moral preciseness and interpretations of the
Bible than the liberal and "progressive" Christians who have to spin the
entire grotesqueness to make the Bible look like a book of love and
liberation. The Conservatives are correct.
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Re: [Marxism] Deciphering the Nicaraguan Student Uprising | NACLA

[DW via Marxism]

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I'd also use caution with the validity of Nexus as well...not overly
reliable with regards to the Nicaraguan press. This has never been about
day-to-day police actions...it started with the pension reform. There
hasn't been that much political activity in the streets whatsoever for
quite a long time, something the gov't there is quite content with.
Demonstrations are daily occurrence now or so say my family there,
spreading about different cities of the interior.

David
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