Re: M-TH: Vote for Karl Marx!
At 08:35 19/12/99 -0500, Andy Lehrer wrote: (please forward) http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/millennium/default.stm The BBC is conducting an internet poll to determine "the man of the millenium" (last month Indira Gandhi was chosen woman of the millenium). Anyone anywhere can have one vote for each e-mail address. Karl won the September "Thinker of the Millennium" vote, got tons of publicity, and he stands a real chance now - so VOTE NOW! Here are the standings thus far: 1. Mahatma Gandhi 2. Leonardo da Vinci 3. Nelson Mandela 4. Sir Isaac Newton 5. Albert Einstein 6. Martin Luther King 7. Jesus Christ 8. Sir Winston Churchill 9. Charles Darwin 10. Karl Marx As you can see, our man Karl is trailing in tenth spot. Help boost Karl to first (we did it once before with the Thinker of the Millenium poll in September) by voting at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/millennium/default.stm 1. Mahatma Gandhi 2. Leonardo da Vinci 3. Jesus Christ 4. Nelson Mandela 5. Sir Isaac Newton 6. Albert Einstein 7. Martin Luther King 8. Sir Winston Churchill 9. Charles Darwin 10. Karl Marx I see the only change on the final result above was that Jesus Christ moved up from 7th to 3rd place demoting Nelson Mandela. Well at least our man beat Adam Smith, and Darwin was a materialist and Mandela and Martin Luther King are democrats, and da Vinci and Einstein were eccentric scientists. As for Jesus, he was rather arkward too, but I would have thought he should have been disqualified as far as human beings of this millenium are concerned. So perhaps Marx was ninth. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: On which the sun never sets
BBC person of the millennium results: 1. Mahatma Gandhi Black (sort of) subject of British Empire (unwilling, jailed) 2. Leonardo da Vinci 3. Jesus ChristPalestinian leader, not tolerated in Roman Empire 4. Nelson Mandela Black subject of British Empire (unwilling, jailed) 5. Sir Isaac Newtonsubject of British Empire (willing -- Sir Isaac) 6. Albert Einstein German Jew, refugee at pleasure of US Empire 7. Martin Luther King Black, not tolerated in US Empire 8. Sir Winston Churchill subject of the British Empire (willing but pickled) 9. Charles Darwin subject of the British Empire (embarrassing, no Sir Charles) 10. Karl Marx German Jew, refugee at pleasure of British Empire Which leaves Leonardo looking very much the odd man out. Embarrassing bunch of trouble-makers, seems to me. Four out of ten had the pleasure of embarrassing the British Empire (five if Churchill is considered as an embarrassment, which he should be). Two religious leaders (four if you count Gandhi and Mandela). Four political leaders (five if you count King). Four intellectual giants (five counting Leonardo) One artistic giant. Ten sets of balls (let's give Jesus the benefit of the doubt, eh?). Five mainly twentieth century. Two nineteenth century. One seventeenth century. One mainly fifteenth century. One eleventh century (minus ten!) Pity the poor kids who think they might have something to learn by studying the lives of Jesus, Gandhi, King, Churchill or Mandela. What's amazing is the presence of Einstein, Darwin and Marx on the list despite the devout-religious piety of it all. Gandhi the man of the millennium! It is to puke. And such a long film they made of it -- and the seats in the Novi Sad cinema where I saw it with Lil were *hard* (unlike her...). Leonardo at number two worries me a bit -- what on earth has Readers Digest been saying about the man? But perhaps Jesus at no 3 says it all. All the bigots in the world with access to a computer voted for their guy although he was God not human, and although he was the standard marking the start of the first millennium, and the vote was for the second. Still, what's a thousand years between friends? Now here's something to sink your teeth into. Imagine if you will what the fuck of the millennium must have been like... Sweet dreams, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Gramsci on the State
Chris B writes: Gut revulsion at opportunist political leaders seems to combine with a reading of Lenin's polemics against opportunism to create a view that the bourgeois state can never have a progressive aspect, nor can government policies be a terrain of struggle. It is a controversial area, but the following extract from the entry on Gramsci in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought by Anne Showstack Sassoon, (volume ed. by Tom Bottomore. Blackwell, Second Edition 1991) - may clarify the arguments. [snip] * This is a reference to page 263 of "Selections from the Prison Notebooks" 1971, Lawrence and Wishart: "the general notion of the State includes elements which need to be referred back to the notion of civil society (in the sense that one might say that State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected with the armour of coercion). In a doctrine of a State which conceives the latter as tendentially capable of withering away and of being subsumed into regulated society, the argument is a fundamental one. It is possible to imagine the coercive element of the State withering away by degrees, as ever-more conspicuous elements of regulated society (or ethical State or civil society) make their appearance." 1932 This makes things pretty clear, I think. The first sentence talks about "the general notion of the State", that is one valid for any state regardless of the class character of the ruling class that organizes it to protect its interests in the mode of production involved. The second sentence goes on to refer to "a doctrine of a State which conceives the latter as tendentially capable of withering away", as if the withering away was part of the earlier "general notion of the State". Given Gramsci's reputation as a Marxist, it might be thought that he was referring to Marx's notion of the State. But Marx made it very clear that in his view the State would only be able to wither away once the conflicting interests of the classes in the capitalist mode of production (ie the bourgeoisie and the proletariat) had been resolved by a revolution in the mode of production so that these classes are removed from the battlefield of history and replaced by a society of freely associated producers, neither wage-slaves nor capitalists but equal in law and in practice in their access to the forces of production and in the sharing of the wealth they produce. As long as society is riven by class struggle, that is as long as capital and labour-power confront each other as polar opposites, ie as long as they exist as capital and labour-power/wage-labour, there is no way the State can wither away. It's obvious from the remark quoted that Gramsci ignores this and is completely reformist in his general perspective. Which of course is why he's such a favourite with academic liberals who like to coquette with a dash of Marxist red in their dinner jacket lapels. To sum up, first a *workers* State, then eventually, with the consolidation of socialism and the construction of communism, a withering away. Before that, no withering away, and in the transitional period while workers revolutions create workers states but don't gain control of the world economy, the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat, ie a very strong state to defend the gains of the workers against imperialist invasions and other hostile pressures. The class character of the state is therefore all-important for Marxists (but obviously not for Gramsci and his followers). And the State should not be confused with the regime, either -- as the State Capitalists do, confusing a workers state under a counter-revolutionary, bureaucratic regime (Stalinism) with a theoretically impossible chimaera such as a bureaucratic state etc. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Re: CLARIFY THE HISTORY OF CLASS STRUGGLE IN FINLAND!
Many thanks to Jari-Pekka for his clarifications. And for the knowledge that there are some Trotksyists in Finland -- rare birds indeed. Rare birds we are but hopefully soon as we beging to publish our own papers and translate Trotsky's writings we will get more support. I'm looking forward to those articles -- I'd be delighted to see them as early as possible (I read Finnish) so if Jari-Pekka is willing to mail me them I'd be really grateful. Those articles are still in very begining because I haven't had time to write them as I just end my high school and now I go to army. But I will send them to you as soon as possible. I'm also writing article against Cliff's "state capitalism" theory and it has higher priority than those other articles. When my head is clearer, I'm looking forward to continuing this discussion on the choices facing the Finnish workers movement after 1917. I'm very interested to continue this discussion. I hope that there are some posibility to read my email in the army but I'm not sure about that. Anyone wanting to get the emotional feel of probably most Finns in relation to the Second World War would do well to read Unknown Soldier, the novel by Vaino Linna. He wrote a big trilogy covering the civil war up to and after the Second World War too. I agree with you. Those books of Väinö Linna give pretty good feeling about Finnish history. Comradely; Jari-Pekka Raitamaa, MO-IWC http://www.marxistworker.org/fi/ --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
