Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] YouTube - Chaka Khan's Night in Tunisia
In a message dated 1/20/2011 2:12:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31450@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: YouTube - Chaka Khan's Night in Tunisia _http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3818706/10453353_ (http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3818706/10453353) Reply Unbelievable. I wanted to marry Chaka but she did not know I existed. I love her man and her body . . . of work with Rufus. I get sick to the stomach thinking about Rufus featuring Chaka. I can think of about 20 of her songs. After Steve Wonder got them on the big charts with Tell Me Something Good I was all in. Then she got better. Her rendition of African rhythm and European harmonic structure is American music, which fortunately is no longer just called black music. This is good stuff. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] YouTube - Chaka Khan's Night in Tunisia
In a message dated 1/20/2011 2:45:58 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, waistli...@aol.com writes: In a message dated 1/20/2011 2:12:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31450@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: YouTube - Chaka Khan's Night in Tunisia _http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3818706/10453353_ (http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3818706/10453353) Reply Unbelievable. I wanted to marry Chaka but she did not know I existed. I love her man and her body . . . of work with Rufus. I get sick to the stomach thinking about Rufus featuring Chaka. I can think of about 20 of her songs. After Steve Wonder got them on the big charts with Tell Me Something Good I was all in. Then she got better. Her rendition of African rhythm and European harmonic structure is American music, which fortunately is no longer just called black music. This is good stuff. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The end of the imperialist epoch
In a message dated 1/18/2011 10:04:36 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31450@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Hear , hear, . . . . CB Thanks CB. The intent was a general summary agreeable of the broadest Marxist framework and divergent views of Lenin's meaning of imperialism. The past decade of discussion of neo-liberalism as a regime is akin to saying neo-imperialism. Does today's Latin America represent colonies or neo-colonies of American imperialism? Or political states occupying a certain position within the new financial and military architecture? Colonialism was a specific economic-social-political relation rather than just big states, little states or no state, oppressing peoples and oppressed peoples, etc. A couple of days ago was the 50 anniversary of the assassination of Lumumba and occasion to rethink the question of transition to the neo-colonial state and its subsequent development. The legacy of colonialism is alive and well in the Congo and throughout much of the former colonial world. Yet, this is not ones father's imperialism. II. The investment banker and scholar Henry C.K. Liu, who is more communist than 90% of American Marxists, called today's imperialism neo-imperialism in the context of a decade of writings focused on the new form of finance capital. Liu deploys concepts such as capital as a notional value meaning an imaginary value or lacking the surplus value dimensions that characterized the financial-industrial capital of which Lenin wrote. Liu calls speculative capital speculative finance, buttressed by a new non-banking financial architecture and operating as a notional value in a monetary system of fiat money or rather currency. His premise is that financial architecture is by definition different from economy that is production of products, although the interactive of both must be examined in the concrete. Thus he speaks of monetary policy - not as a thing in itself, but as a distinct political form of rule over the economy. I think. One would have to ask him exactly what he means but his meaning seems crystal clear to me - a decade later, thousands of hours of reading later and shifting through his all of his writings. Liu is a communist with money. I mean communist in the sense of the movement that erupted with the dissolution of primitive communism. Liu calls for a system of sovereign birth credits - entitlement or economic communism in the here and now, allowing the individual a lifetime of socially necessary means of life. Being born with an entitlement as the social contract, means a mode of distribution not requiring a previous or prior contribution of labor as the means for consumption. It is left to society to reorganize itself to meet all it reproduction needs. A freaking banker is more progressive than many of the communists and Marxists. All of this is part of describing the new world we face and practical solutions. Neo-imperialism or neo-finance capital, might be the term we are seeking. Sovereign birth credits or birth rights as the mode of production and specific architecture of economic communism is something to think about. Go figure. Waistline. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The end of the imperialist epoch
Historically, only capitalist countries which have intervened militarily to establish settler colonies or to set up puppet regimes to facilitate the exploitation of these territories by their own corporations and have been characterized as imperialist by Marxists and others. In a message dated 1/14/2011 9:10:59 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, __shmage@pipeline.com_ (mailto:_shm...@pipeline.com) _ writes: Are you saying that China today is not capitalist? That Han settlement in Tibet is not massively sponsored by the Chinese regime? That the Tibet Autonomous Region does not have a puppet government? That Chinese corporations are not heavily present in Tibet? (and were not even talking about Sinkiang!) Comment Obviously the modern Chinese state is not a SETTLER STATE or seeking to secure or maintain a colony established by settlers. Treating imperialism in this era of political domination of speculative finance as a general imperialism defeats the mean of this tread: the end of the imperialist epoch. Qualifying and quantifying the meaning of imperial-colonialism is part of asking the question end of the imperialist epoch. Lenin's Hobson unraveling of modern imperialism of his era was useful because a real imperialism was examined in its economic and political features. Lenin spoke of monopolies, finance capital (financial-industrial capital); hundreds of millions of slaves of a direct colonial system and the fight amongst direct colonizers for a re-division of an already divided world. This fight for spheres of influence was based in the national productive logic of huge multinational state structures. The history of colonialism - at least in general Marxist terms, has meant more than imperial outreach or a lack of rights of those beings colonized. Imperialism of the epoch we are leaving has meant an end to the direct colonial system; the end of neo colonialism and the imperial colonization based on financial-industrial capital. The post WW II period and into the 1980's saw the rise and fall of the colony and neo colonialism as these political forms of rule expressed financial-industrial capital. Vietnam Liberation and unification in 1976 is a world book mark on an epoch that began with our revolution of 1776. This does not mean no one of earth is oppressed and exploited through world bourgeois production relations. Rather, a specific form of imperialism -colonialism, has been superseded. America inaugurated an epochal wave of colonial revolutions that would span two hundred years. We settled our national liberation struggle against the British Empire - with a Slave Oligarchy intact seeking its distinct anti-colonial interest imperialist interest, and then settled the war against the slave system. American finance capital emerged from the Civil War facing a world with colonial states as direct appendage of imperialist state structures preventing its free flow of finance capital beyond Latin America. The First World Imperialist War shook imperialism - the direct colonial system, to its foundations, with the Soviets breaching the political and economic bourgeois imperialist chain. The political basis for imperialist war in the past century, rather than the economic impetus for war under capitalism, (anarchy of production with war production being a profit center) was the fight for colonies or spheres of influence based on colonial possessions. The fight between imperialist states was not over one huge state colonizing another but over the colonies represented by these massive states. This form of imperialism is very much part of the question end of the imperialist epoch. The Second World Imperialist War sounded the death knell of direct colonialism. The defeat of German fascism was the last gasp of a form of finance capital politically dominated by industrial capital seeking to recreate the direct colonial system. For the German state direct colonialism meant revitalization of economic and social life - the thousand year rule, or in lay person terms French wine, Polish hams and Slavic slave women. American finance capital - emerging 50 years before Lenin's Imperialism, sought to recreate the political world leading the charge to wipe direct colonialism from the face the earth. American financial imperialism sought to defeat its enemies and identified them as direct colonizers of the world. It's slogan was national independence and self determination of nations up to and including the formation of separate states. This battering ram against the direct colonial system explains why Uncle Ho armies entered Hanoi at the close of WW II with CIA in tow playing the Star Spangled Banner. Then of course came the policy change and the Cold War. This era of financial-industrial capital -
[Marxism-Thaxis] Lougher: politics of insanity. if words have no meaning what is government?
There is a general rule about the way society treats criminals: place responsibility for antisocial acts on the individual, thus absolving society from blame. The mismatch between society's attitude toward heroes and criminals rests in society's claim of credit on heroes and rejection of responsibility for criminals. A criminal is one who has betrayed societal values by violating a prescribed code of conduct, who is deranged but not legally insane, a deviant, an anomaly, a manifestation of social disease, a virus against the system, a unit malfunction and a personal malfeasance. Adolf Hitler was labeled a madman to protect German culture and fascism, notwithstanding the curious fact that Hitler rose to power in Germany in a discernible sociocultural context. Even organized warfare must be conducted within the limits of regulated behavior. War crimes and crimes against humanity are not tolerated. Yet market fundamentalism argues for wholesale deregulation to allow economic crimes against humanity. Charles Ponzi was deemed an unprincipled conman to insulate unregulated capitalism itself from being revealed as a systemic Ponzi scheme. Capitalism's bad apples: It's the barrel that's rotten; By Henry C K Liu. This article appeared in AToL on August 1, 2002. _http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/DH01Dj01.html_ (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/DH01Dj01.html) Comment The politics of insanity: quickie notes. Twenty people were shot, and six of them died, in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 8, during the attempted assassination of the Democratic Congresswoman. The shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, was captured on the spot and reported to be a psychiatrically disabled person with a recent history of fascination with right-wing rhetoric and abstract thinking posing such questions as: if words have no meaning what is government? The answer is simple: an executive committee for the ruling class. This in turn raises the question of the role of the state as an organization of violence. In politics the answer to a political question is by definition partisan, involving class outlook and ideology. Lougher's question is political. He is no lone gunman expressing an aberration in American society, but an individual that choose a division of labor casting him as assassin of a political representative rather than unarmed Mexican immigrants, seeking economic relief in America. Lougher was very political with his ideas and ideology being shaped in a discernible sociocultural context. Whether Lougher is diagnosed as being a psychiatrically disabled person, - whatever that means according to whom, has not prevented pundits and layperson from contextualizing his actions against a backdrop of economic and political crisis. And political and ideological outlook. Everyone speaks of Lougher in the context of Arizona, meaning Arizona expresses and represents something discernable in the national body politic rather than geographic location. Arizona is Senator John McCain and his presidential bid under the banner of Country (White people) First, and focal point of the fascist anti-immigration movement. Every politically aware person in America understands this. What is not understood is the class sociology of a Lougher and the role he cast in political history. Arizona is in the forefront of the fascist anti-immigration movement. The anti-immigration movement is at the center stage of a political environment shaped by the impact of qualitatively new means of production; the transformation of the state; the militarization of the economy and society; the rapid and accelerating implementation of the legal means to suppress individual dissent and seize control of the government; and the changing character of the social struggle. Where in the past the religious right sought to organize and propagandize in a period when globalization had still not widely affected American society, the anti-immigration movement propagandizes an American people devastated by the effects of advanced globalization, increasingly marginalized economically and politically, and bewildered by the world in which they now live. The medium of anti-immigration has become the means by which a section of the American people is being organized and mobilized as a social base to support the further transformation of the government and society necessary to facilitate the penetration of today's form of global capital in the world's societies, and to prepare for and contain its inevitable effects. Lougher was not immune to real time politics and ideological assault by fascists upon the national body politic. If words have no meaning what is government? strikes me as a constitutionalist argument, harkening back to the passionate pleas of the Slave Oligarchy demanding their constitutionally protect
[Marxism-Thaxis] Bill Fletcher, Jr. Responding to the 'Letter to the Left Establishment'
Letter to the Left Establishment Bill Fletcher, Tom Hayden and The Letter === 1. Responding to the 'Letter to the Left Establishment' regarding Obama By Bill Fletcher, Jr. A so-called Letter to the Left Establishment critical of the Obama administration has been circulating for a few days. The letter is a bit odd because if you do not read it carefully, it appears that the people named in the first paragraph, including yours truly, are actually asking people to sign on. In reality the Letter is a criticism of several individuals who offered varying degrees of support to the candidacy of President Obama in 2008. On the grounds of confusion alone the Letter should be withdrawn and the signatories should request that their names be removed. But what is odder to me is that the Letter has all sorts of implications. The Letter calls upon those named in the first paragraph to criticize the policies of the Obama administration, as if we have not. It implies that we have been silent about major decisions of the Obama administration that have been wrong. It recites a list of decisions, approaches, etc., by the Obama administration as if any of this is new to those of us identified in the first paragraph. None of this is new. And the authors of the Letter should know that. In fact, if they happened to have been in a cave for the last couple of years and did not keep up with the news, they could have Googled the names of most of the people listed in the first paragraph and found that we have been generally outspoken in our criticisms as well as involved in organizing to put pressure on the administration. For these reasons i have been trying to figure out what the intent of the Letter actually is. I am not going to speak for anyone else. In 2008 i reluctantly came to the conclusion that a position of critical support of Obama was the correct stand. Reluctantly because i had a number of concerns about Obama, most of which have been realized. Nevertheless i was impressed by the congealing of forces that i believed had the potential to do something progressive in the political realm irrespective of the actions of Obama-the-individual. I actually still believe that this is possible and not too late. In 2008, i and several others mentioned in the Letter also suggested that if there was no pressure from the Left and progressives on Obama, assuming he was elected, that we would find ourselves in deep trouble. In fact, people used to joke with me immediately before and immediately after the November 2008 election because i would be asked how much of a honeymoon period Obama should receive and my answer was always the same: 24 hours. I insisted, as did many of my colleagues, that we could not, in effect, give Obama any honeymoon period and that pressure had to start from the beginning. We were correct. The Letter reads as if those named in the first paragraph have been sitting on their hands or standing at the gates refusing to permit the masses to pass through and challenge Obama. I am not sure whether the authors are standing in some parallel universe, but in this one i see no evidence of that at all. There are differences, some over tactics while others over strategy, among those named in the first paragraph, but precisely for that reason it is odd that the names would all be thrown together as if someone were actually trying to stir up confusion and promote disinformation. I don't know, but i have actually seen a film much like this before. So, assuming that there is loving intent from the authors--and i am certainly not critical of the signatories--then i would say, i agree with many of the criticisms they have offered of the Obama administration; i have offered many of those criticisms already; i have been active, as have most of my colleagues, in trying to engage liberal and progressive social forces in the need to both combat the political Right as well as put the pressure on the Democrats; and, guess what? I will continue to, and i am assuming that my colleagues will as well. Oh, and while i am at it, one thing that the authors of the Letter did not address was the question of the African American electorate. I don't know about you, but how we handle the question of this administration is particularly dicey when the African American electorate feels, overwhelmingly, that Obama is under an intense racist assault from the political Right (which is, as you know, quite correct). This basic question of the African American electorate and huge portions of the Latino electorate means that our electoral tactics in the coming two years will have to be handled very carefully, even while we put the pressure on this administration and struggle against its defense of warmed over neo-liberalism. It might have been a good idea, and this is only a
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Fate of a Cold War Vestige
On Dec 13, 2010, at 2:07 PM, c b wrote: ...It is something of a law of history that sooner or later all empires must collapse. ^ CB: See _Dialectics of Nature_ by Frederick Engels. _Everything_ has a beginning , middle and end. A mobius strip has none of those aspects. Nothing lasts forever. The universe lasts forever. Shane Mage Reply Nothing lasts forever by definition. Precisely because nothing is temporal to the human senses and exists outside a definite point in human understanding. That is why it is called nothing. Nothing is a concept of the unknown. No one knows and can know how long the universe, as we understand it . . . lasts. Maybe the universe collapses upon itself and become a new manifestation of something. One thing is certain: nothing lasts forever, however one understand nothing. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] James Petras - The Democratic Party Debacle and the Dem...
In a message dated 12/6/2010 12:58:32 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Lack of a Soviet Union contributes to this. The SU was more of the Center-Left's backbone than most of the left realized. Reply So very true. Petras time frame is 30 years and much has changed in 30 years. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Stoop down, baby
In a message dated 12/1/2010 10:02:07 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuYdZMoqD7U_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuYdZMoqD7U) Comment This is my understanding of the proletarian REVOLUTION. WL. Stoop down, baby Let your daddy see Stoop down, baby Let your daddy see You've got something down there, baby Worryin' the hell out of me ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Stoop down, baby
In a message dated 12/1/2010 12:46:59 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, __rdum...@autodidactproject.org_ (mailto:_rdum...@autodidactproject.org) _ (_mailto:rdum...@autodidactproject.org_ (mailto:rdum...@autodidactproject.org) )writes: This is the funniest thing I remember you writing. I'm trying to figure out though which one is the proletariat. I would hate to associate the capitalist class with All That Ass. Comment Somewhere, I have a copy of Merry Christmas Baby by Ollie, former lead singer of the Temptations. One of the greats is on the guitar but I forget their name at the moment. The real proletariat is the one stooping down. OK. Me. . . . man, I have always enjoyed looking up to see bottom. I guess this is beneath the underclass. My cash flow was cool but my mind has always been in poverty and on the bottom brother. Hey . . . I hit 10.5 on the glossary and yes, it is a propaganda tract. I am not an original thinker or writer. Merry Christmas Baby. I always loved the way baby can be non gender and/or gender depending on the specific context and tonal quality of the voice. Victory to the proletariat on the bottom, top, and beneath the underclass. :-) Wl. PS. Ralph has his thang set when you respond to his writing it goes to him as an individual instead of the list. To me that is fucked up. Change your thang brother. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] At The Christmas Ball - the classic
The classic _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcuvlIgSj0Yfeature=related_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcuvlIgSj0Yfeature=related) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] At The Christmas Ball - the classic
This is the real shit. _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stj-zPVW_Hk_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stj-zPVW_Hk) “Everything for Christmas.” And “Love comes with Christmas” _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exmE_FyVFKAfeature=related_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exmE_FyVFKAfeature=related) Then there is the Whispers. Don't do this. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Charles Brown: Merry Christmas Baby Please Come Home F...
Lou Rawls Merry Christmas Baby with the historical big band sound is classic. _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtw3lXjhujk_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtw3lXjhujk) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
In a message dated 11/28/2010 2:27:18 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _jann...@gmail.com_ (mailto:jann...@gmail.com) writes: What you haven't done is make any coherent argument that would convince me that the substance has changed that much during the past 130 years. Of course there are those who have made the quantitative argument but you didn't do that either here. CJ Reply Substance of what? Finance capital remains fianance capital but it is not the financial industrial capital of the time of Lenin. Here's something from 2002. WL. The dangers of derivatives By Henry C K Liu Recession in advanced economies, induced by the oil shock of 1973, pushed transnational banks to find borrowers in developing economies to accommodate petro-dollar recycling. That marked the beginning of finance globalization which, among other trends, replaced foreign aid with foreign loans to developing countries. In the beginning, the petro-dollar recycling was merely to compensate the developing nations for the sudden rise in oil prices. Later, the surplus oil money not absorbed by Western markets was pushed on beguiled Third World governments as petro-dollar loans for development, leading the developing world into a bottomless abyss of foreign debt. Not only was the anticipated growth in the developing world not realized by foreign-debt-driven exports, debt repayment became increasingly punitive on the domestic economies as lender nations adopted anti-inflationary measures by the end of the 1970s. Negotiations between borrowing countries and major international bank creditors were intermediated by International Monetary Fund (IMF) endorsement of structural adjustment (austerity) programs in borrowing countries that spelled reduced government social spending, currency devaluation and export promotion policies that distorted and reversed domestic development. Domestic austerity became the ticket to new foreign loans for servicing old foreign loans, and the servicing of the new loans in turn required more domestic austerity, driving Third World economies toward a downward spiral of accelerating contraction and deeper foreign indebtedness. But the oppressive pressure from the IMF in the 1980s was not anywhere near as severe as that after the financial crises of the 1990s. The financial crises faced by newly industrialized economies (NIEs) in the 1990s were significantly different from the foreign debt crises in the developing countries in the previous decade. Different forms of foreign funds flowed to different recipients in developing countries during the two periods. More importantly, derivatives emerged as an integral part of funds flow in the 1990s. Derivatives played an unprecedented key role in the Asian financial crisis of 1997, alongside the growth of fund flows to Asian NIEs, as part of financial globalization in unregulated global foreign exchange, capital and debt markets. Derivatives facilitate the growth in private fund flows by unbundling the risks associated with financial vehicles, such as bank loans, stocks, bonds and direct physical investment, and reallocating the risks more efficiently by expanding the distribution and the level of aggregate risk. They also facilitate efforts by many financial entities to raise their risk-to-capital ratios to dodge regulatory safeguards, manipulate accounting rules and evade taxation. Foreign exchange forwards and swaps are used to hedge against floating exchange rates as well as to speculate on fixed exchange rate vulnerability, while total return swaps (TRS) are used to capture carry trade profit from interest rate differential between pegged currencies. Structured notes, also known as hybrid instruments, which are the combination of a credit market instrument, such as a bond or note, with a derivative such as an option or futures-like contract, are used to circumvent accounting rules and prudential regulations in order to offer investors higher, though riskier, returns. Viewed at the macroeconomic level, derivatives first make the economy more susceptible to financial crisis and then quicken and deepen the downturn once the crisis begins. Since investors can only be seduced to higher risk by raising the return on higher risk, the quest for high return raises the aggregate risk in the financial system. But investors always demand a profit above their risk exposure which will leave some residual risk unfunded in the financial system. It is in fact a socialization of unfunded risk with a privatization of the incremental commensurate returns. (_http://www.atimes.com/global-econ/DE23Dj01.html_ (http://www.atimes.com/global-econ/DE23Dj01.html) ) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
In a message dated 11/26/2010 8:20:46 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _pegdobb...@gmail.com_ (mailto:pegdobb...@gmail.com) writes: So am I to hope my children are less bamboozled by SW than we by SV? My son tells me Netflix is useful to him and has higher earnings(that's SV, right?) than USS Comrade My intent was not to ignore your question. I am a regular user of Netflix, with specific grips about which movies are regulated to mail and not available for instant play. Their mix of models seems to run behind our technology capacity and the needs of consumers. My comments were meant to be on the level of changes - qualitative, in the meaning of system - finance capital today, rather than during the time of Lenin. Posing this thread as Did Lenin predict implies no fundamental changes in the actual functioning of finance capital. Finance capital once referred to banking capital and earlier merchant capital, in my opinion. I offer as proof of qualitative changes in the functioning of finance capital the rise of a new post 1973 rise - to be exact, of NON BANKING financial architecture. The quality that has changed is the substance of modern finance capital that is outside of and evolves based on detachment from production of surplus value. In my opinion a form of wealth can change qualitatively before the production relations of a society leap forward. The form of wealth of bourgeois society has changed. Wealth as a property of the ruling class has not changed. This happened as the leap - transition, from feudalism to capitalism. The primary form of private property as the feudal relation was land as opposed to ownership of tools or means of production. What began the breakdown of feudalism was the transition in the form of wealth from land - as primary, to gold or movable property. Wealth today is a very super symbolic abstract thing not riveted to gold or any tangible. This is the change. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Marx on the proletariat as ruling class
What did Marx write on the prospect of political and economic transition between capitalist and communist society? Quote The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word 'people' with the word 'state'. Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. (End quote) Taken from Section IV., Critique of the Gotha Program, here presented is Marx definitive statement on the revolutionary dictatorship of the pro letariat. II. Marx does in fact investigate the economic content of transition Between capitalist and communist society . . . a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. He does this is section 1, subtitle: 3. The emancipation of labor demands the promotion of the instruments of labor to the common property of society and the co-operative regulation of the total labor, with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labor. In this section Marx unravels the meaning of economic - not political, transition to communist society based on the state of development of productive forces and the value relations as both existed at the time of this writing. One should read this section for themselves. Critique was written April or early May, 1875 and has in mind the state of development of means of production at the front curve of industrial capital development as opposed to the back of the curve in the colonies and less developed countries, still struggle under political feudalism. III. If one agree with Marx formulation of the political content of the period of transition between capitalist and communist society, which in plain American English is called the organization of the proletariat as ruling class, discourse tend to fall on the issue of the economic content of this transition, which is determined - in my opinion, by the degree of development of means of production and decay of the value relation. Revolution in the means of production and the rise of a technology regime evolving in antagonism with the OLD mode of exchange (DIVISION OF LABOR) - based on commodity equivalents, define the economic content of our current period of transition. The political form of the state remains as Marx stated: a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. What has changed qualitatively, is the durability of the commodity form itself. Waistline ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
In a message dated 11/22/2010 11:29:38 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _jann...@gmail.com_ (mailto:jann...@gmail.com) writes: However, I will point out that a lot of the same things were said about the main players in 1907-8--that they were mysterious, behind-the-scenes people only acting out of self-interest, that what they did was out of control, that because of technological innovation in finance and banking, too much was being done in very little time and it was out of control. Reply Well, what we face as financial crisis is not a banking crisis but a crisis of the new non-banking financial system. These are not the banks of the era of Lenin. If, how and why the financial crisis of today - breaking out in 2007, is qualitatively different from the banking crisis of 1929 or crisis during the era of Lenin's Imperialism seems to be a question. Since we are speaking of finance capital, the issue to my mind is what within finance capital (a quality within and unto itself) has changed? The answer for me is capital as a notional value or capital wealth detached from value; more specifically the production of surplus value. Or, what is the same, world wide capital wealth dominated by institutional architecture outside of and existing in antagonism with the world wide production of value. The new non-banking financial architecture is a new emergent quality within finance capital. In Mr. Liu's writing this new phenomenon- quality, is called notional value meaning an imaginary value relation. Global Post-Crisis Economic Outlook by Henry C.K. Liu, appeared in Asian Times April 14, 2010. Part 2 is Two Different Banking Crises - 1929 and 2007. The series is located here: _http://www.henryckliu.com/page221.html_ (http://www.henryckliu.com/page221.html) Liu's Pathology of Debt, part one and two outlines what is specific and different in our era of finance capital from that of the era of Lenin. _http://www.henryckliu.com/page145.html_ (http://www.henryckliu.com/page145.html) II. The 1929 banking crisis that launched the Great Depression was caused by stressed banks whose highly leveraged retail borrowers were unable to meet margin calls on their stock market losses, resulting in bank runs from panicky depositors who were not protected by government insurance on their deposits. In the 1920s, there were very few traders beside professional technical types. The typical retail investors were long-term investors, trading only infrequently, albeit buying on high margin. They bought mostly to hold based on expectations that prices would rise endlessly. . . . . . By contrast, the two decades of the 1990s and 2000s were decades of the day trader and big time institutional traders. New powerful traders in major investment banking houses overwhelmed old-fashion investment bankers and gained control of these institutions with their high profit performance. They turned the financial industry from a funding service to the economy into a frenzy independent trading machine. (End quote) Global Post-Crisis Economic Outlook. III. The issue of quality can be confusing - in my mind, unless one describe their meaning. Finance capital is part of a totality - quality. The totality is the social relations of bourgeois mode of commodity production or bourgeois private property. Finance capital is a symbolic expression of the wealth created by human labor based on bourgeois property or wage labor. Lenin's Imperialism the last stage of capitalism, was referenced as the benchmark. Marx historical tendency of capital accumulation became supporting actor. Marx outlined cyclical crisis of capital and financial crisis, but something has changed qualitatively . . . in my opinion, within the quality isolated by Lenin as finance-industrial capital. By finance capital Lenin referred to financial-industrial capital indicating the domination of banks as institutions over industrial capital. This is the specific make-up of finance capital for Lenin. In short speak this process is referred to as banks transitioning from being middle men for industrial production (investors), to owners and dominator-investors of industry. The new quality of finance capital - not bourgeois social relations of production, is its detachment from production of surplus value. The banking system of the era of Lenin is qualitatively different from the new financial architecture of today. The new quality is called the system of non-banking financial institutions. These institutions are not banks. That is the different quality within finance capital. Banks of the era of Lenin embody the value relation monetarized. The new non-banking financial institutions are valueless. These financial products do not embody value, only a notion or value as wealth. IV. Later in the same article Mr. Liu writes: The 2007
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
In a message dated 11/22/2010 9:10:31 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: Yes, the word predict is a bit crude, but the direction of capitalism as imperialism = finance capitalism and more and more concentration of wealth (monopoly) fulfills the trends that Lenin made famous. ( Lenin made Hilferding's ideas famous). And the concentration of wealth is in the finance capital sector. On the other hand , Lenin's observation that wealth is increasingly concentrated or monopolization is in a sense a deduction or echo of Marx's observation here; centralization is monopolization: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm s well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 11:24 PM, CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote: Certainly, the possibility of reducing the cost of production and increasing profits by introducing technical improvements operates in the direction of change. But the tendency to stagnation and decay, which is characteristic of monopoly, continues to operate, and in some branches of industry, in some countries, for certain periods of time, it gains the upper hand imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries, amounting, as we have seen, to 100,000-50,000 million francs in securities. Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by ?clipping coupons?, who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness. T And if you read Dickens' last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, you get a narrative that depicts very much the same things. I know people are going to disagree with you and me on this one, but I have to say, you are right to re-iterate Lenin's points here, here and now. It's a tautological argument to say that this time it's different somehow deep down simply because things have changed, or the structures have changed, or the relations have changed. We of all people know history doesn't simply repeat itself. But what some wiseacres need to do is show how in essence, in substance the banking and financial disasters of the 19th and 20th centuries are categorically different not simply because it is this time around and things have changed. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
I agree that concentration and centralization of productive forces grow out of the inherent logic of industrial - electro-mechanical, reproduction. In the Soviet Union concentration and centralization of productive forces created expanding public wealth without centralization and monopolization of a financial regime - oligarchy. When this same internal dynamic of industrial reproduction is based on bourgeois property its shape is centralization and concentration of capital - banking, industrial and finally emergence of a financial oligarchy dominating industry. What is also being reproduced, concentrated and centralized is at all times social relations of production; bourgeois property casting increasing masses proletariat on an expanding scale, as was the case during the time of Marx and Lenin. This historic process, which was not completed during the time of Marx and Lenin is complete, with all areas of the world firmly within the new financial architecture with few exceptions. Much literature is available on why and how the new financial regime is different from the financial regime of the era of Lenin. This of course does not imply the social relations casting the laborers as wage laborers have changed qualitatively. It has not. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
Comment The property aspect of production relations (social relations of production with the property relations within) have NOT changed or what is the same, the wage labor form remains the wage labor form. Bourgeois private property remains bourgeois although this form of wealth is increasingly detached from commodity production and distribution. Lenin's Imperialism is not a story about qualitatively changed property relations within the mode of production, in my opinion. As I understand the book, what is written about is the domination of banking capital over industrial capital and the rise of a financial oligarchy. Lenin did not and could not predict or foresee our state of development of productive forces. His vision was limited to industrial machinery and configuration and a form of capital characteristic of his era. Qualitative changes in the means of production exist, as compared with the era of Marx and Lenin. A mode of production does not change all at one time. First comes a qualitatively different technology and its application to production and then society is compelled to reorganize itself around a new social organization of labor. This happens as change waves, deepening its social consequences in society. As these change waves deepen, society is thrown into greater crisis and strains to leap to a new social organization of labor and sublate the old social relations, including the old property signature. There is a wealth of material available on line outlining the technology advance of the last 60 years. Different opinion exists concerning the significance, degree and depth of our rising new technology regime, as it reproduces itself on an expanding scale. WL ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] shadow banking system
(The Federal Reserve chart is available at _www.ny.frb.org/research/staff_reports/sr458.pdf_ (http://www.ny.frb.org/research/staff_reports/sr458.pdf) ) Road map that opens up shadow banking By Gillian Tett Financial Times November 18 2010 This week, a senior banker friend gave me a poster that had been created by downloading a chart recently produced by economists at the New York Federal Reserve. It was shocking stuff. Entitled The Shadow Banking System, the graphic depicts how money goes round the modern world, particularly (but not exclusively) in the US. At the top lies a smart section labelled the “Traditional Banking System”, in which a simple flow of boxes explains how investors’ funds are deposited with traditional commercial banks, which then transform this into long and short-term loans, and equity. So far, so comprehensible. But most of the poster is dominated by two sections called the “cash” and “synthetic” shadow banking systems, or those “ financial intermediaries that conduct maturity, credit and liquid transformation without access to central bank liquidity or public sector credit guarantees”, as the associated NY Fed working paper says. These flows are so extraordinarily complex that hundreds of boxes create a diagram comparable to the circuit board of a high-tech gadget. Even as poster size, it is difficult to decode. But it should be mandatory reading for bankers, regulators, politicians and investors today. Indeed, they might do well to hang similar posters next to their desks, for at least three reasons. For one thing, this circuit board is a reminder of how clueless most investors, regulators and rating agencies were before 2007 about finance. After all, during the credit boom, there was plenty of research being conducted into the financial world; but I never saw anything remotely comparable to this road map. That was a striking, terrible omission. The Fed now estimates that in early 2008 shadow banking was $20,000bn in size, dwarfing the $11,000bn traditional banking system. And though this shadow system has now shrunk to a “mere” $16,000bn, this remains bigger than traditional banking, at some $13,000bn. Little wonder, then, that so few people immediately appreciated the significance of the seizing up of shadow banking in 2007. But secondly, this poster is also a reminder that many things about the modern financial system remain mysterious – even today. On the edges of the circuit board, the NY Fed economists list all the government programmes that have supported the system since 2007 (and, in effect, replaced shadow banks when they suffered runs). This “shadow, shadow bank system” – as it might be called – looks complex and baffling too. And in practical terms, the sheer breadth and complexity of that box makes it hard to know what will happen if – or when – government aid disappears. Then, there is the current regulatory debate. So far this year, the Financial Stability Board and other international bodies have focused most of their reform attention on issues such as bank capital, and systems of oversight for large, systemically important banks. Next year, though, Mario Draghi, head of the FSB, wants to start discussing the shadow banking world. Many national regulators are keen to do this too as they recognise the danger of looking at regulation just in terms of institutions. After all, the crisis has shown how risky it is to have $16,000bn worth of maturity transformation without any backstop, or clear rules. This week, for example, Adair Turner, head of the Financial Services Authority, the UK regulator, promised more scrutiny. Earlier this year Paul Tucker, deputy UK central bank governor, suggested that it was time to see which parts of the system were benign – or not. The US government is now considering whether to extend the regulatory umbrella to large, non-bank institutions such as Citadel or GE Capital. But whether this desire for a debate turns into sensible reform remains unclear. For getting politicians to focus on the issue may not be easy in 2011. There is already considerable regulatory fatigue. There are also other, more urgent distractions, such as the sovereign debt crises. And shadow banking issues rarely seem “sexy” in political terms, unless they involve hedge funds (which pose less systemic threat than, say, the vast $3,000bn-odd money market fund sector.) So for my money, the best thing the NY Fed could do right now is print thousands of copies of that poster – and dispatch it across the world. I suspect it would be far more persuasive about the need for debate than any number of pious G20 speeches. After all, a key reason why that circuit board became so complex was that bankers were trying to arbitrage the last two sets of Basel rules. If shadow banking continues to be ignored (ie politicians focus just
[Marxism-Thaxis] Homeless - 8,000 live in the Fl. woods
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0V2MdklcAEfeature=related_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0V2MdklcAEfeature=related) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Homeless in America: the real stuff
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZpRcbgMGEgfeature=related_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZpRcbgMGEgfeature=related) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
CB: I think Marx's position is that it is inherent to the logic of the capitalist mode of production, wage-labor/capital property relations, regardless of the technological regime. The computerization of production doesn't change this tendency to concentration of wealth. It accelerates it, with all the computer trading. Comment I agree. I apparently missed an input. Whoever wrote that technology changes the tendency and fact of concentration of production, monopolization; concentration and monopolization of wealth has it all wrong. If anything technology advance accelerate concentration and monopoly within the capitalist mode of commodity production due to bourgeois competition. This competition is also expressed as competition between workers for wages. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
Marx and Engels predicted cyclical crisis of capital, but never predicted when its outbreak would take place after their death. Neither did Lenin. Lenin's been dead for a while and did not predict the financial crisis - of 2008, as it jumped from big financial houses and accelerated crisis in the economy. Nor did Lenin predict the scale and scope of the 2008 credit crisis. Nor did Lenin predict the emergence of a new world wide non-banking financial architecture. Nor did he predict the political domination of financial speculation over the world total social capital or for that matter could see the financial-industrial capital of his era, giving way to a new form of financial domination, in a world no longer characterized as the direct colonial relationship. Feudalism, the direct colonial relation and the ascendency of Fordism characterized the world Lenin lived in. This is not the world we live in today. The financial crisis of today plays itself out in a new environment. The financial houses of today are not the banks of the era of Lenin. On this issue I trend to generally side with Michael Hudson and Henry C.K. Liu description of the new non-banking financial regime. What I specifically agree with is their description of the new post 1970's world wide financial architecture. The post industrial revolution in the means of production, is what is different today from the era of Lenin. What is qualitatively different is a new revolution in means of production compelling society to leap to a new social organization of human labor, based on post industrial means of production. Computers and advanced robotics are to electro-mechanics means of production what the steam engine was to horse power and the water wheel or manufacture. Computerized automation of industrial production has fundamentally challenged capitalism. The process of development has been uneven; cause and effect not immediately revealed; and even now when the transformation of society is evident everywhere, many serious observers of society dismiss the seminal importance of computerized production and advanced robotics. The form of the working class changes with qualitative changes in the tools, instruments and energy source deployed in the process of production. What is NOT new is the property form of the workers called proletariat. The working class, employed and unemployed retains its wage labor form of existence as proletariat, with products retaining their commodity form, even as these commodities are pushed towards zero labor. Zero labor implies below what is required for the workers to reproduce themselves as a class and a world of permanent intractable overcapacity, rather than just cyclical crisis. I agree with Mr. Liu's unraveling of the impact of revolution in the means of production and the emergence of permanent overcapacity as a new environment of crisis of overproduction. What has changed is the underlying technology regime in society, as these mew means of production evolve in antagonism with the old technology regime and the classes corresponding to it. . WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Moral dilemma
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 11:27 AM, _waistli...@aol.com_ (mailto:waistli...@aol.com) wrote: If it was me making the million dollar shot, I would say, lets go to Vegas and get married. Or Ohio. Without a prenuptual agreement ? Comment Yep. A million dollars not what it use to be. Fed taxes on lottery money is about 30% so a million almost instantly becomes $700,000. If there is a 3% state tax . . . $670,000. The various anti-taxes currents amongst a section of the proletariat have a point. A house, furniture, car and a couple of trips to the theater and then the families . . . and hey. . .. $500,000, maybe $450,000. Both of us probably have some kind of debt. If it is a student loan the feds are hitting the money before you get it. It is best to do Vegas or the vacation of your choice real quick, because the money is going to go quicker. Once married divide the $450,000 between each other and try to stay together the first 90 days. At that point we both have say $250,000 or $225,000. If both of us have shitty jobs, we are subject to have no job 36 months from now. A million dollars today will not save one from the proletarian bounce between economic layers. Makes one want to stay on the farm. Wait, I forget. The farm was lost a long time ago. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Moral dilemma
In a message dated 11/19/2010 9:23:39 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Truly ! It is the American working class that has had legitimate gripes about taxes for a long time. The tax revolt of the 70's , California Howard Whathisname and all, hijacked proletarian legitimate tax complaints. Reaganite propaganda misdirected this sentiment among middle incomed workers against low incomed workers, the poor, as anti-Welfare politics. Reply Got that right brother. One cannot find even Marxists talking about welfare, and the immediate need to defend and expand it, outside our geographic area. Really. If one looks through the various socialist, communists and Marxist online press and articles welfare is hardly mentioned and it should be up front along with unlimited unemployment compensation - at least until the economy recovers, which is not going to happen. The restoration of profitability for most corporations will not translate into employment, and this is qualitatively different. The social consequences of revolution in the means of production is talking its toil in the context of a cyclical crisis of capital. Or rather, this cyclical crisis of overproduction is talking its toil in the context of a qualitatively new revolution in the means of production shoving ever widening layers of wage labors out of the market . . . absolutely. Detroit was at the front of the curve and now the social consequences are being felt in all areas of the country. Reagan success was based in painting welfare as a black thing; the ole welfare queen. The unemployment today and housing crisis is so widespread it cannot be painted a black issue. This is favorable to us. The historic color factor is unraveling as the social position of the white workers is destabilized and unraveled in layers. At least we can begin the beginning fight for a class point of view. This narrative is left to you and I, as the enrichment of American history. Yea, you would probably handle a million bucks a lot better than I. I've been pretty stupid with money, women and drink. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] 2011 Contract talks
Link to article Bob King and 2011 _http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AG5XO20101117_ (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AG5XO20101117) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Bob King and 2011 contract talks
Link to article Bob King and 2011 _http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AG5XO20101117_ (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AG5XO20101117) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Moral dilemma
If it was me making the million dollar shot, I would say, lets go to Vegas and get married. Or Ohio. After all, if she invited me on a date, it means their is an interest. WL. In a message dated 11/18/2010 9:29:38 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: When a guy buys tickets for a basketball game and invites his girl to attend, isn't it fair that he gets at least 50% of a million dollar cash prize if his girl drains the free shot from half court? It was his dough that made that shit happen, right? LikeUnlike · Comment * * * o Would you give the girl half the money if she bought you the tickets, you made the shot? This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] critique of the ideology of the Tea Party needed
full: _http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v20ed5art5.html_ (http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v20ed5art5.html) Small Government, Big State: Southern Program Points the Way It is conceivable that fascism could proceed as a movement to defend democracy and a return to the principles of the Constitution, a refrain that is being heard more and more stridently from the South, particularly in the calls for secession and states’ rights, and from the organizers of the Tea Party movement. The calls for small government, less taxation, deregulation, and an anti-union environment characterize the form of rule of the Southern states even as it is paired with accelerating the process of privatization and outright corporate welfare. Like any movement, the Tea Party movement is a mixture of various forces still in motion, with myriad groupings and individuals contending for leadership. There are the entrenched establishment who fund and play a role in organizing, such as, Dick Armey (Freedom Works), Ralph Reed (formerly of the Christian Coalition), Ron Paul and his son Rand (libertarians), Newt Gingrich, and Phil Gingrey, both from Georgia. There are the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs, all of whom compose the ideological shock troops to advance their objectives. And there are a myriad of other organizations, such as, the The Oath Keepers with their roots in the military and prepared to take up arms, the Fair Tax Nation that calls for replacing all taxes with a national sales tax, and anti-immigration nativists who demand that the undocumented be hunted down and deported in the name of national security. They elevate the Constitution to the level of a sacred religious text, with particular emphasis upon the 10th amendment, which supposedly provides for the supremacy of states rights. This was also the basis of the Southern defense of slavery and the framework for the secession and formation of the Confederacy. Today it is utilized to resist federal government stimulus funds, as well as to oppose the establishment of national health insurance. The State is being reshaped to serve the interests of the ruling class in the defense of private property. This is not simply a set of policy choices. In a time in which the mode of production itself is shifting to accommodate the decline of value brought on by laborless production, the State is moving to direct control by the corporations, and privatization and the shrinking of the public sector is a necessary consequence of this process. It is experienced by the masses as the destruction of society itself as we know it. The focus of the American revolution now underway is centered squarely upon the question of the role of government. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] We must dream!
In a message dated 11/8/2010 1:01:24 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, _rdum...@autodidactproject.org_ (mailto:rdum...@autodidactproject.org) writes: The other question in all this is, except for enhancing historical consciousness, what relevance any interpretation of Lenin has for today, and esp. in a radically different type of society such as the USA. I used to say something comparable to we must dream, but now I see only a pipe dream. Comment I second CB yep and the irony of JF forwarded article on the Prince. Funny, I always read Lenin's What Is To Be Done as part of an evolving scenario aimed at combining a political group and explaining how to stay organized and take power under appropriate conditions. And why one cannot allow a political group, under conditions of active revolution to reduce its activity to a support committee of popular demands. Seems to me that's just what happened. I did read the article. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party
In a message dated 11/8/2010 8:20:54 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Tea Party Election Results Diluted in Highly Populated States By Tom Moroney and Terrence Dopp - Nov 5, 2010 Tea Party supporters boasted of their 28 victories in U.S. House races. What the election results also made clear was that their appeal stopped at the border of the most densely-populated states and metropolitan areas. Republican _Carl Paladino_ Comment As I understand the results, the blue dog democrats took the big hit losing 23 or their 54 official caucus members, or 48% of the Democrat party House loses. Michigan governor race was another Democratic Party loss. Rick Snyder (R-MI) 1,879,499 Votes 58% Virg Bernero (D-MI) 1,278,566 Votes 40% And the beat goes on. WL ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ron Glotta's commentaries
In a message dated 8/9/2010 2:03:33 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: In that way, they represent an alternative to my book, The Road to Hell is Not Paved With Good Intentions. I invite the reader/listener to enter the dialogue and join the struggle to change the world. Yours in Struggle, Ronald D. Glotta Comment I have a copy of his book and read it a couple of times, as well as four CD's of commentaries. The first half of Ron's book read as a road map for those interested primarily in electoral politics. The last section examine the world of sports, the Piston's and the Williams sisters. Pretty good stuff. Ron is an expert - intellectually and practically on electoral politics being very much involved in the Vote Communist Campaign of 1974 and 1976, if memory serves correct. He was also involved in the James Johnson case and intense legal struggles which cast the legal profession and lawyers in Detroit as somewhat unique and on the cutting edge of the social movement for half a century. The history of the battles within the legal arena, lawyers in and around Detroit is yet to be written in a concise manner. Would make a fascinating read. You know Crockett, Young, Cockrel, Milton Henry, Detroit 67, New Bethel, desegregating the bench and a host of things you are more familiar with. This dimension of the proletarian movement remains neglected. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ron Glotta's commentaries
In a message dated 8/10/2010 8:57:52 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: In 1946, Crockett along with partners Ernest Goodman, Morton Eden, and Dean A. Robb, co-founded the corporation believed to be the first racially-integrated law firm in the U.S.,[citation needed] Goodman, Crockett, Eden, and Robb, in Detroit, Michigan. The firm, eventually called Goodman, Eden, Millender and Bedrosian, closed in 1998. Reply This is really good stuff. Part of what I call a new narrative, recasting the story of the heartbeat of our proletarian movement of the past century. Much activity was riveted to the gravity well of industrial unionism and located at Local 600. Describing how and why the African American Freedom Movement of the past century could only be expressed on the basis of the proletariat in places like Detroit would make interesting reading. For instance Rosa Parks first airplane ride was to Detroit to speak at Local 600 who paid for this trip in the late 1950s. If memory serves me correct. Did not Crockett and the fellows form the Fair employment and Practice Committee at Local 600? The communists, socialists, revolutionaries of all kinds never surrendered and rolled over, even during the height of the Cold War anti-communist campaign. The House Un American Acidity Committee met its grave diggers in Detroit. I guess your - pardon our, work is cut out. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] I. I. Rubin's Essays on Marx's Theory of Value
In a message dated 8/10/2010 10:34:53 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) : The capitalist economy represents a union of the material-technological process and its social forms, i.e. the totality of production relations among people. The concrete activities of people in the material-technical production process presuppose concrete production relations among them, and vice versa. Comment I would write this different. Part of the new narrative. The capitalist - bourgeois, mode of commodity production represents a union of material-technological building blocks and social forms. The unity of the material-technological building block and the social form arising from this, including the ownership rights or relationship of people to property in the process of production = production relations. The concrete activities of people using a given state of development of means of production and their relationship to property - ownership rights, is the production relations amongst them. The reason is to tilt the equation back to what is fundamental - after we presuppose human beings; the material power of productive forces and their continuous development and evolution. There is the theoretical problem. Does the bourgeois mode of commodity production reach its historical limit based on its internal components, i.e., the wage labor form OR as the result of the emergence of a qualitatively new technology regime? The former states that bourgeois production reaches its historical limited based in cyclical crisis of capital. The latter states that bourgeois production reaches its historical limitation based on entering antagonism with a qualitatively new technology. Or both . . . .:-) Is both movements taking place? WL ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Reform and social revolution: the new narrative - 1
Reform and social revolution: the new narrative Marxism contains a language, a set of words and terms accepted as short cuts. Problems arise with words and terms given different meaning. Reform, concession, social revolution, and reformism are such words. When these terms are detached from the materiality of the object being examined, the shortcut becomes the long way around. The dictionary states that reform is an improvement or amendment of what is wrong. Reform means to restructure. Restructuring changes existing relations between and within classes. These production relations express and correspond to material relations of the economy and ultimately find its center of gravity in the division of labor. Reform is alteration of a material relation within and between classes in connection with means of production. Reform and concession is not the same. Reforms are more durable and cannot be taken away based on political will alone. Something must change within the object, structure of society for reform of the system to unravel. Reforms do not change the property relations. Wrestling greater shares of the social product and expanded political liberties from the state or employer is the content of most social struggle. Concession is yielding to a demand based on political will. Concessions do not alter the structural relations within and between classes. Concessions can be taken away based on political will. The Republic Window and Door workers in Chicago (Local 1110) won a concession package compelling their employer to give them back pay. The settlement totals $1.75 million. It provides the workers with: oEight weeks of pay they are owed under the federal WARN Act, oTwo months of continued health coverage and, oPay for all accrued and unused vacation. Reform as shortcut means change in relations between and within classes, without changing the property relations. The impulse for reform of the system arises from the spontaneous quantitative development of the building blocks of economy: means of production. II. Society is the totality of the relations between classes and groups in a community. The creation and form of wealth depends on the state of development of the productive forces. The means of production develop as incremental quantitative inputs until a qualitative leap is underway. The unity and strife of primary classes defining (re)production is the flesh and blood compelling society to advance through the progressive accumulation of productive forces. As involuntary promoter of industry, the bourgeoisie and privileged ruling classes, economic and political layers in society evolve a stake in keeping the system the same because that is how their wealth, power, privilege and life experiences are realized. As the means of production evolve, a corresponding deepening change and contradictions widens with the static immobile property relations expressed as corporations, political organizations, entrenched self interest of groups of all kinds and their civic structures. As favorable condition emerges the social struggle riveted to primary classes ends with a quantitative leap in the social relations, which brings a reformed society more into correspondence with improved means of production. III. The impulse for reform arises from the spontaneous quantitative development of means of production. The impulse for social revolution arises from the spontaneous qualitative development of means of production. The former merges with the latter only under conditions of leap to a new technology regime, as was the case of the industrial revolution. Our generations have witnessed, lived and recorded the epochal movement of a mode of production and how it reformed itself until all the space - boundaries, in the industrial system was exhausted. At each juncture - (quantitative boundary of our developing industrial production relations), the subjective question of political revolution emerged as an issue for the most farsighted revolutionaries. Henry Ford and the system of Fordism expressed the continuation of the industrial revolution. Henry Ford's factory system accelerated restructuring of production relations and changes the in the form of the working class destroying the structural basis of craft/skilled labor of the historic artisan. Assembly line production restructured the industrial work process driving transition from craft to industrial trade unionism. This motion logic was genuine reform of the system. America assembly line auto production nail the coffin shut on the company town and laid the basis for suburbia; expanded the cement and housing industry and fifty years later resulted in our nationwide Interstate system. There are thousands of incremental changes to society brought about by the Henry ford system. The growth of the industrial union
[Marxism-Thaxis] Dialectic of Reform: reform defined under the industrial epoch
Marxism contains a language, a set of terms accepted as short cuts in describing society and movement. Problems arise with words and terms that mean different things to different folks and groups using this language. Reform and concession is a case in point. When reform - as a logic or society motion, is reduced to subjective dimensions detached from the object being reformed or reform of society structures confusion ensue. Reform - rather than reformism, is a material relation. Reformism is political and ideological. The dictionary states that reform is an improvement or amendment of what is wrong. Reform means to restructure. Restructuring changes something material; the social relations between and within in classes. Social relations express and correspond to material relations of the economy. Reform and concession is not the same. Wrestling greater shares of the social product and expanded political liberties from the state or employer is the content of most social struggle. Concessions do not change the material relations within and between classes. Concessions can be taken based on political will. Reforms are more than less permanent and cannot be taken away based on political will alone. Something must change within the structure of society for a reform of the system to become unraveled. Reforms do not change the property relations. Reform can be defined as change in relations between and within classes, without changing the property relations. The structure of society and the contradiction that is the unity of primary classes as the process of production is the environment - context. Society is the totality of the relations between classes and groups in a community. The creation of wealth depends on the state of development of the productive forces. The form of this wealth and mode of accumulation is the meaning of property relations. The means of production are always developing as incremental quantitative inputs until a qualitative leap is underway. As involuntary promoter of industry, the privileged ruling classes, economic and political layers in society have a stake in keeping the system the same because that is how their wealth, power, privilege and life experiences are realized. As the means of production evolve, a corresponding deepening change and contradictions widens with the static immobile property relations expressed as corporations, organizations and civic structures. As favorable condition emerges the social struggle ends with a quantitative leap in the social relations, which brings a reformed society more into correspondence with improved or new means of production. Our generations have witnessed, lived and recorded the epochal movement of a mode of production and how it reformed itself until all the space in the industrial system was exhausted. At each juncture - quantitative boundary of our developing production relations, the subjective question of revolution emerged as the cutting edge of reform. The impulse for reform arises from the spontaneous development of means of production. Henry Ford's factory system accelerated restructuring of production relations and changes the in the form of the working class destroying the structural basis of craft/skilled labor of the historic artisan. Assembly line production restructured the industrial work process driving transition from craft to industrial trade unionism. This motion logic was genuine reform of the system. Assembly line auto production nail the coffin shut on the company town and laid the basis for suburbia; expanded the cement and housing industry and fifty years later resulted in our nationwide Interstate system. There are thousands of incremental changes to society brought about by the Henry ford system. The growth of the industrial union movement was a subjective/political reform of the system, expressing a material reform as the system passed from one quantitative boundary of growth to another. Reform of the system is a big thing and in all cases gushes forth as based on continuous quantitative growth of a distinct quality defined as state of development of the means of production. As the proletarian masses and labor movement in its totality spontaneously fought to reform the system in their favor, communists fought the revolutionary struggle for reform during every leap between quantitative boundaries of the industrial system. The most recent memory of the reform movement is that of the African American freedom struggles. African Americans have always fought and struggled for freedom and equality. This critical subjective factor of fighting gives shape to the outcome of reform. Yet, we are confronted with a living dynamic screaming for unraveling. No matter how heroic their struggle and sacrifice, they could not gain any freedom as a mass so long as a certain part of the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] James Allen Papers
James Allen was one of the better Marxist propagandist and top notch theoretical on the colonial and national question. To this day I enjoy his contributions. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Corporate media downplays Gulf oil spill
In a message dated 7/30/2010 3:29:53 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: As the comments of Crozier show, commentaries like those appearing in Time and the Washington Post drop any pretense of making an objective investigation. They are following the lead of BP and the Obama administration, which hope they can combine the capping of the well with the capping of any serious examination of what devastation the oil spill has already caused, and may still cause. Comment Great article. The hole in the earth and the oil coming out of it affected me deeply. My grand kids were affected and reacted in horror. I wanted and want people to go to jail for this one, starting with the Board of Director at British Petroleum (BP). Jail all of them and let the legal system work things out. The oil hole that could not be capped for a long time cost to much. The free market system cost to much and British Petroleum (BP) has proven it once again. The corporations failure to use unneeded double and triple safety systems is the real why the proletarian movement called such systems redundant safety. The reason you do not need double lock out on all machinery and triple in some cases is to prevent the accident from happening. The reasons accidents stop happening is always the use of redundant safety systems. Many of us discovered this truth on the job in accidents up to death. Behaving as does most capitalist corporations British Petroleum (BP) cut the corner on safety to save money by not installing the triple redundant safety system with test for each system. Then matters get worse when the information is owned by a corporation and released as they see fit, and then this limited information is controlled by the White House. By the time you have Senate hearing no one has information and everyone is looking stupid. This is why I want more than one person from British Petroleum in jail. If the Obama administration cannot and will not bring these people to justice, then he should be impeached and put in jail. The charge is environmental disaster, at the hands of a corporation administered by a Board of Directors. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] (no subject)
In a message dated 7/27/2010 5:26:49 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, erca...@yahoo.com writes: ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: _http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis_ (http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis) Welcome WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Labor aristocracy
In a message dated 7/22/2010 8:49:59 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) : In Marxist theory, those workers (proletarians) in developed countries who benefit from the superprofits extracted from the impoverished workers of underdeveloped countries form an aristocracy of labor. Comment A careful reading of Lenin reveals he makes distinction between the labor aristocracy and labor lieutenants of the capitalist class. Lenin refers to the latter as the upper strata of the labor aristocracy. There is the labor aristocracy and also labor lieutenants of the capitalist class. The first refers to a historically evolved privileged status of the peoples - all classes, in the imperial centers in relationship to the colonials or rather former colonial world. When these oppressed peoples venture into the imperial centers they are confronted with a social system that trapped them into a political status of second class citizens. The plight of the Korean in Japan, the Irish in England, the Algerian in France, Eastern versus Western Europe and of course the actual history of blacks, browns and Indians in America. There has always been a persistent anti-Chinese political and social policy in America that expresses the evolution of the color factor during the era of bourgeois rule. Two political categories describe the historical evolution of imperial privilege as a lived experience of the colonials and former colonials. Those colonials venturing to the imperial center that is their colonizer are dubbed national minorities. The Algerian in France is a national minority. In England he is a minority. The Irish in England is a national minority and in America a minority. The Korean in Japan is a national minority and in America a minority. It is the status of the majority of citizens of the earth in the imperial centers that prove imperial bribery and privilege. II. The evolution of the old great industrial middle class in America, formed on the basis of automotive production is a thing of our past. This great industrial middle class was not formed on the basis of colonial subjugation. This middle class was formed based on the advance of the technological revolution in the imperial centers under the domination of the capital relation. The imperial centers were historically formed based on conquest, wars of genocide, colonial exploitation and slavery. Like most inquiry, the more one studies the issue the more complex it becomes. What is incontestable is historic privilege and the second class citizenship status of the former colonials in the imperial centers. If one view capital as a world wide unified system of accumulation it is fairly obvious that the proletarian masses in the former colonies and dependent countries receive a much smaller wage for similar and identical work as compared with the workers in the imperial centers. The issue is a systemic relations rather than isolating one part of the workers wage in the imperial centers are a direct result of colonial plunder. II. Jesse Jackson Sr. is a labor lieutenants of the capitalist class. In Europe these labor lieutenants of the capitalist class arose and consolidated based on the social democratic movement. In America there never was a movement of social democracy whose origins are in the overthrow of the feudal order. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] responses to law of value and meaning of proletariat fro...
In a message dated 7/13/2010 9:23:23 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: CB: Ok Isn't class antagonism you describe a conflict between the old division of labor and the new division of labor with the new division of labor arising based on development of new organization of production and new means and instruments of production ? Comment The environment of one things always merge with and acts as the environment of another thing. The conflict between old means of production and new means of production is an issue of transition from old methods and means to new methods and means. This conflict - contradiction between old means and new means, is resolved quantitatively or by development of the new means in stages until the new means of production gain dominance and primacy as the new division of labor. Specifically, each quantitative advance of implementing new means of production - a new quality, brings to an end expansion of production on the old basis and further reconfigure means of production on the new basis. This contradiction between old and new means of production is resolved in stages. Antagonism is not contradiction. Antagonism is a form of resolution of property rather than means of production development. Antagonism IS NOT a form of resolution of a conflict between the old division of labor and the new division of labor with the new division of labor arising based on development. Antagonism or class antagonism arises from property forms NOT instru ments, tools, energy source or means of production. Bourgeoisie and proletariat are property categories that arise based on a division of labor. But the genesis of the antagonism is the long history of private property. Bourgeoisie and proletariat arise in antagonism with the serf form of labor - property, and the serf as a property category evolved in unity and conflict - contradiction, with the nobility. Nobility is a concept of a property relations rather than a description of a certain stage of development of the division of labor. The serf is a concept of property and political status rather than a category of means of production. Beneath the serf form of property is a living human being utilizing a historically evolved collection of means of production expressing a division of labor. Say a wooden plow and then a steel tip plow. This serf is perhaps a plowman but his status as serf means he is a subject as opposed to a citizen because his political status makes him the property of another human being. On the other hand the law of value arises from and has its genesis in the division of labor rather than the form of property. The law of value speaks of equal quantities - magnitudes, of labor being exchangeable with one another. The moment of means of production and social relations (political status) occur simultaneously but there is a difference. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] THE CAPITALISTIC CHARACTER OF MANUFACTURE
In a message dated 7/13/2010 9:23:23 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: SECTION 5 THE CAPITALISTIC CHARACTER OF MANUFACTURE (Note: The title is extremely revealing) An increased number of labourers under the control of one capitalist is the natural starting-point, as well of co-operation generally, as of manufacture in particular. But the division of labour in manufacture makes this increase in the number of workmen a technical necessity. (Note: what makes the increase in the number of workers necessary is not capital as a social power but the technical aspect of division of labor). 1). The minimum number that any given capitalist is bound to employ is here prescribed by the previously established division of labour. On the other hand, the advantages of further division are obtainable only by adding to the number of workmen, and this can be done only by adding multiples of the various detail groups. But an increase in the variable component of the capital employed necessitates an increase in its constant component, too, in the workshops, implements, c., and, in particular, in the raw material, the call for which grows quicker than the number of workmen. The quantity of it consumed in a given time, by a given amount of labour, increases in the same ratio as does the productive power of that labour in consequence of its division. Hence, it is a law, based on the very nature of manufacture, that the minimum amount of capital, which is bound to be in the hands of each capitalist, must keep increasing; in other words, that the transformation into capital of the social means of production and subsistence must keep extending. [39] (Note In the last sentence above Marx speaks of the very nature of manufacture and in the following sentence below he speaks of a form of existence or mode of existence of capital. Or what is the same capital as a mode of accumulation.) 2). In manufacture, as well as in simple co-operation, the collective working organism is a form of existence of capital. The mechanism that is made up of numerous individual detail labourers belongs to the capitalist. Hence, the productive power resulting from a combination of labours appears to be the productive power of capital. Manufacture proper not only subjects the previously independent workman to the discipline and command of capital, but, in addition, creates a hierarchic gradation of the workmen themselves. While simple co-operation leaves the mode of working by the individual for the most part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revolutionises it, and seizes labour-power by its very roots. (Note: I read the above as follows: In manufacture, as well as in simple co-operation, the collective working organism is a form of existence of capital. The mechanism that is made up of numerous individual detail labourers IS OWNED BY the capitalist, BUT THE MECHANISM IS NOT CAPITAL. Hence, the productive power resulting from a combination of labours ONLY appears to be the productive power of capital. THE MECHANISM IS Manufacture proper . . . . WHICH, not only subjects the previously independent workman to the discipline and command of capital, but, in addition, creates a hierarchic gradation of the workmen themselves. While simple co-operation leaves the mode of working by the individual for the most part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revolutionises it, and seizes labour-power by its very roots.) 3). It converts the labourer into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts; just as in the States of La Plata they butcher a whole beast for the sake of his hide or his tallow. Not only is the detail work distributed to the different individuals, but the individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation, [40] and the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which makes man a mere fragment of his own body, becomes realised. [41] If, at first, the workman sells his labour-power to capital, because the material means of producing a commodity fail him, now his very labour-power refuses its services unless it has been sold to capital. Its functions can be exercised only in an environment that exists in the workshop of the capitalist after the sale. By nature unfitted to make anything independently, the manufacturing labourer develops productive activity as a mere appendage of the capitalist’s workshop. [42] As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital. (Note: If, at first, the workman sells his labour-power to capital, because the material means of producing a commodity fail
[Marxism-Thaxis] Antagonism: a better definition (not edited)
Antagonism: Antagonism means the mutual resistance or active opposition of two opposing forces, physical or mental; active opposition to a force. Antagonism is a form of change resolution by annihilation and nullification, rather than harmonious stage by stage sublation. Antagonism as destruction, and nullification is a form of transition to a new mode of production when society is governed based on private property. In an environment of private property, qualitatively new productive forces creates new form of classes as property relations and these new classes come into external conflict with the old social organization of labor based and old classes based in old means of production. In class society, the collision between qualitatively new productive forces and old social relation of production - (the old classes connected to these relations), cannot be resolved based on the struggle of the old classes constituting the old relations of production. Resolution takes place outside - external, the old bond - contradiction, that is the two classes constituting the old system of production. The struggle between serf and nobility cannot be resolved by the serf overthrowing the nobility and establishing a new society of serfs. Resolution takes place by destruction of both serf and nobility as property categories at the hands of new classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. Antagonism, resolution by nullification or destruction of a previously existing unity of classes, (in this case serf and nobility) requires the emergence and development of a new unity of classes external to the old unity that was serf and nobility. The new classes, (bourgeoisie and proletariat) connected to the new means of production, appear as the external agent of destruction and nullification. Resolution is negation by destruction of the two old classes and their property form. Antagonism is not contradiction or a form of contradiction, but rather a form of resolution. Contradiction -(the struggle of old classes against themselves) is replaced (superseded) by antagonism. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism (Marx). ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] responses to law of value and meaning of proletariat fro...
In a message dated 7/12/2010 10:53:56 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: CB: Is the BP oil catastrophe the beginning of the conflict and then antagonism you refer to ? Reply No. The material quoted states: At a certain stage in their development means of production - instruments, machinery and energy sources, come into conflict and then antagonism with the existing social relations and their political expression as political laws of society. Although its roots are remote, capitalism emerged as a system based on the industrial revolution. Capitalism is not the economy but a political regime or mode of accumulation. The economy is made up of two aspects: production and distribution. Upon this base of society arises a political superstructure expressing the nature of the base, and in turn acts back upon that base. The displacement of the universality of the manual labor process by the industrial revolution, as the qualifying character of productive forces, took place though the life activity of new classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat. Industrial implements evolve in conflict and then enter antagonism with the manual labor process, due to private property. It is property or classes as conveyor of property that is the source and genesis of antagonism. Antagonism is not rooted in means of production development. That is, qualitative changes in means of production express the conflict in developing from one kind of social organization of labor to another. At a certain stage in the growing universality of a qualitatively new social organization of labor, antagonism appears as a form of resolution between old classes and new classes. Serf evolves for thousands of years in conflict - (not antagonism) with the nobility as both are riveted to the manual labor process. The appearance of new classes - (bourgeois and proletariat), emerge and evolve in antagonism with serf and nobility. The former express new productive forces and vanquish the latter (expressing old means of production), from history. Society evolves in class antagonism. WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] responses to law of value and meaning of proletariat fro...
In a message dated 7/13/2010 9:23:23 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: CB; Doesn't Marx consider that capitalism _emerges_ in the manufacturing system ? _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch14.htm#S5_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch14.htm#S5) Reply What is Man-U-Facture? It is not handicraft. By stating that capitalism roots are remotes is to say it is a form of private property. Capitalism emerges as part of a long line of private property. All property forms emerged in some kind of system of production and distribution. Capitalism as a property relations or as a mode of accumulation stands and gains universality - as a system, on the basis of the industrial revolution. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Scope and Limits of Theory: Provisional Draft
Test ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] responses to law of value and meaning of proletariat from Marxism list
You are missing the point. Marx never wrote about the future communist society. He wrote about the Paris Commune because it was the inevitable first step in creating such a society. People who are accustomed to thinking in terms of the Civil War in France and State and Revolution spend little time thinking about the future communist society, the abolition of commodity production, etc. Comment Critique of the Gotha Program. Marx. You know, the whole bit about the workers not exchanging their products (labor) and riveting a higher stage of communism to the development of the division of labor in society. Marx spells this out clearer to us today, than our past generations of communists. Part of the task of each generation of Marxists is to try and chart - describe, their specific state of development of the division of labor against what existed when Marx wrote his Gotha Program. The chance of abolishing not merely bourgeois private property but an economic law exists today, that was not technically possible 50 years ago. This is the law of value. Abolishing the law of value was not possible in the past century even under the most optimum theoretical model, including a scenario of world victorious Socialist revolution (although such was not possible, due to objective rather than subjective limitations of class consciousness). Marx formulates historical necessity as the general law of the relationship between a). state of development of means of production + people = productive forces, in unity and strife with b). the social relations of production or the life active of peoples as classes engaging means of production and their relationship to property in the process of production. At a certain stage in their development means of production - instruments, machinery and energy sources, come into conflict and then antagonism with the existing social relations and their political expression as political laws of society. Then a new period of social revolution opens. In the past century agriculture and/as the small producers made abolition of the value relation impossible no matter what theoretical model is presented. This small producer as a class (historically evolved social relation), not individuals, cannot alienate their products - release them, except on the basis of exchange. This impulse does not generate capitalism but rather reproduces the law of value, which in turn continuously reproduces the soil and condition for capitalism. Agriculture was in fact revolutionized world wide beginning at the front curve of industrial revolution during the past century, including in the Soviet Union. Large scale agriculture based on industrial implements was the revolution in agriculture, or roughly the second or maybe the third phase of the industrial revolution depending on ones bookmark of industrialization. Abolishing the law of value during the era of the Paris Commune was out of the question. On another note, workers power is a totally syndicalist conception, in as much as the word proletariat is a property category within Marxism fused with a clear concepts of political power. The proletariat in power begins abolition of their previous property signature based on an existing division of labor and its degree of development; the general economic and political environment domestically and internationally and the cultural development of the proletarian regime. II. I would guess probably by the political power of the proletariat, but what good is that if capitalists are still able to maintain their economic power? For my taste the issue can be formulated more sharply. Under what conditions does the law of value - rather than bourgeois property, begins to lose its force? The law of value manifest an economic law of the exchange of labor equivalents. The law of value in its objective logic and its expression in the minds of ordinary folks can not be abolished by political fiat. Yes, economic laws can act independently of a property form, even when this property form is the only persistent way the economic law can be expressed society wide. The economic law of value and its existence in human society is not depended upon or have its genesis in property but the division of labor in society. The law of capitalist production or more accurately the general law of capital accumulation is set into play based on politics or what is the same, property in its political form. Capital accumulation is a mode of accumulation or reproduction of the property relations defining capital as a social power. Bourgeois property is not an economic law, although it is an environment - property relations, in which economic laws operate. Bourgeois property arises on the basis of and out of private property itself. In the past century it was possible to abolish bourgeois private
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Party of a New New Type
In a message dated 7/5/2010 7:21:31 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: It even included the Leftist Lounge the biggest People's Party of a new type ever, at Bert's Marketplace (my yard). _http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/111370_ (http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/111370) Comment It was beautiful. I forget how beautiful young people are. I was at Bert's Friday evening and my estimate of the crowd was maybe 3 - 4 thousand. Without incident, except for the young women who apparently drank a tad bit to much. We are going to see and feel the social consequences of the Social Forum starting now but certainly over the course of the next few years. Twenty, thirty years down the road, many activists will pin point the Detroit Social Forum as a turning point in their political development. This was a really big thing. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Why a Social Forum? Why Detroit?
This is a really good interview that ought to become part of a package of literature that is a post summary of the Social Forum - Detroit. The scale of this event was massive. each might of the event a couple of comrades and new people we met would gather at my home and go over all the literature passed out at the convention (not each work shop which would have been impossible). The common thread of all the literature was a plea for a new political/organizing center or focal point. The Social Forum Detroit was something new and different. I want to try and describe the Social Forum as a process, while stating the right to revise and clarify my estimate later. This was an anti-capitalist social trend under conditions where the advancing revolution in the means of production has brought the system to crisis on the basis of irreparably breaching the unity of productive forces and the old industrial-capitalist relations of production. Consequently, all classes and segments of classes are involved in attacking the system from different directions with a different vision of how to shape the society of the future. We are part of this living process and have to learn how to fight for our collective vision as socialist, communists and revolutionaries manning the barricades against the increasing fascist political currents seeking consolidation. Under conditions of irreparable breach the struggle for reform is not reformism but the only game in town. Under conditions where the system is passing from one quantitative boundary to the next, the struggle for reform leads to reform of the system and adjustment of relations within and between classes. The last great reform of the system was the Civil Rights Movement and before that the victory of the industrial union form. Concretely this means the form of organizations of the proletariat, that grew up and matured based on reform of the system are in decay and collapse. The Social Forum as a process emerged outside of these old forms of struggle. One of the things some of us are working on in the aftermath of this event is the presentation of our specific vision of the future society and how things work and get paid for. In this sense the Boggs Center represents and presented a plausible vision of cooperation and the collectivist society. We desire to go much further and pinpoint how the new technology regime can be utilized to redeploy labor and reorganize society based on our existing state of development of means of production. Detroit is in fact ground zero and a new narrative on the rise and fall of the industrial working class and the industrial form of social organization would naturally be birthed in Detroit. Obviously, I have personally autographed copies of the pamphlet Detroit for you. The material from Political Affairs with Dave Moore are a part of the booklet. The Marxist Glossary is one years away from production and ultra advanced from the first impressions sent to the list. Rally Comrades for the last fight we face. The Internationale shall be the human race. WL. In a message dated 7/5/2010 8:01:51 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: Politics http://www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=15162 Radical listening Why a Social Forum? Why Detroit? MT Photo: Travis R. Wright The opening march makes its way downtown Tuesday afternoon. MT Photo: Tera Holcomb Clockwise from top left: Adrienne Maree Borwn, Lydia #Wylie-Kellermann, Elena Herrada, Marian Baker, Rich Feldman and Oyatunde Amakisi AUDIO ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The US Social Forum: The Anti-Tea Party Experience
Fletchers summation of the USSF - Detroit, seemed pretty accurate in my experience as a participant, panelist, distributor of People’s Tribune and author of a small booklet: Detroit. The hard numbers on participants range from 15,000 to 20,000 as the result of the computers crashing after 16,000 had registered. This event was a massive undertaking involving hundreds of dedicated people. What struck me most profoundly was the age and gender composition of this gathering. The majority seemed to be under the age of 30 and female. The labor movement in America is female, multi-lingual with its cutting edge merging into brown. The Social Forum - Detroit, expressed the face of the New American Revolution: proletarian revolution. The essence of a new form of the proletariat is its growth in unison with the growth of a new technology regime tossing our existing system into crisis and antagonism. Society cannot go back to the old industrial era where the working class movement was riveted to smoke stack industry and the industrial union form. Nor, can society stand still. The system of capitalism has entered antagonism based on revolution - qualitative changes, in the means of production rather than simply the conflict inherent in consumption capacity of the workers, due to their status as wage laborers. Under conditions of revolutionary change all sections of society began the attack upon the system from different direction in an effort to impose a new vision and purpose on society. The Social Forum embodied all these various tendencies generally from the old historic left wing of the political equation. At least it would seem as such at first glance. I would say that the Social Forum - Detroit, expressed a broad cross section of an anti-fascist ideological and political current. And that the traditional dichotomy of left and right is not useful. WL. In a message dated 7/2/2010 9:27:51 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: The US Social Forum: The Anti-Tea Party Experience The African World The US Social Forum: The Anti-Tea Party Experience By Bill Fletcher, Jr. - BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Black Commentator July 1, 2010 http://www.blackcommentator.com/382/382_aw_anti_tea_party.php ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Back to Marx - part 1
I think that, today, we've come to a turning point in history. People are re-discovering Marx because he provides reserves of critical thought that are still pertinent to the problems of our times, but, of course, that is not enough. The Marxist tradition has not said much on the problems of nations, of the State, of ideology, of the function of symbols in social relations. To that has to be added the problem of ethnic fragmentation the problem of the unheard-of violence that develops within societies. And it is also necessary to develop a response to the challenge constituted by all these anthropological transformations, which tend to turn the popular masses into disconnected consumerist masses, subject to victimization by every demagogy imaginable. Marx could not think of everything or foresee everything! Comment All kinds of doctrines of thought are associated with the Marxist tradition, and this tradition is defined differently, ranging from Gramsci to Mao; from the doctrine of people’s war to Lenin’s conception of a party of a new type, to the latest declaration by the Dali Lama declaring himself favorable to Marxism. What is the revolutionary essence or heart of Karl Marx approach, method and what some refer to as the science of society? Old schools Leninist will swear that the heart of Marxism is the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the transition from industrial capitalism to new economic and political system post bourgeois property. Political and ideological Trotskyism will declare than a concept of permanent revolution is fundamental to understanding Marx. Interestingly, Marx never wrote anything to suggest his approach, method and teachings could be reduced to or measured based on adherence to a political form of the state called the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Trotskyite proposition is unworthy of serious consideration as fundamental to anything Marx wrote. Marx and Engels wrote voluminously outlining their new approach, method and summations. Nowhere in the writings of Marx and Engles will one find anything suggesting they considered the dictatorship of the proletariat a litmus test, or point of departure for their approach, method and historical summation. Although I personally accept as a given the period of transition between industrial capitalism and economic communism to presuppose a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, On the contrary Marx actually writes about his approach, method and summation as a revolutionary way of summarizing the economic and political foundation of society as it passes from one mode of production to the next. Marx and Engles in fact coined new conceptual frameworks to understand the society progression: mode of production, productive forces, means of production, social relations of production, political superstructure, this political doctrine of action is not the essence and heart of the approach, method and summation bearing Marx name. There is no need to guess and postulate concerning the essence of Marx theory. Marx summarizes his new thinking in the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – (this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms ) with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated up until then. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. (1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm _ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm) In standard American English the above is understood to mean: Social revolution comes about as a result of qualitative development of the means of production. An antagonism develops between the new emerging material relations connected to and interactive with the qualitatively new means of production and the old static social organization of labor and property forms expressed as the political relations within the superstructure. Below is presented the entirety of the heart and soul of Marx approach, method and summation by which he created the first general laws establishing a new science: the science of society. Numbering has been added for easy of reading. (Quote) 1). In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. 2). The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] End game: Part 4 on the Communist Internationals
In a message dated 4/18/2010 12:56:29 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, jann...@gmail.com writes: Actually, completely wrong. It came into widespread use after newly opened farmlands were quickly depleted by monocropping and lack of crop rotation. For cotton farming it became absolutely essential and even then didn't prevent the lands from being completely depleted for future cotton crops. After the self-propelled tractor did become popular on small family farms, we actually see a drop in commercial fertilizer use, most likely because of reduced acres in farming as a result of federal programs in the 1930s. Which is not to say that fertilizer use doesn't then skyrocket in the 1950s and after -- it does, because of even more farming. Repluy I stand corrected. Thanks. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] End game: Part 4 on the Communist Internationals
In a message dated 4/16/2010 6:38:05 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, _jann...@gmail.com_ (mailto:jann...@gmail.com) writes: CIs and the UAW. Careful guys, this thread has a huge potential for self-humiliation built into it. Horses enabled the first stages of mechanization of agriculture. Have you ever seen how they still do all those procedures on an Amish farm? To quite an extent mechanized, much of it horse-powered (which reminds me to add horses to that list of animals the human animal has co-evolved with -- wolf-dogs, granary cats and horses). Reply Then how come horses did not change the social organization of labor in agriculture in the time frame indicated? It was the tractor that was the impetus behind the destruction of the sharecropping system in America rather than the horse. Wide spread chemical fertilizers came after the tractor. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] End game: Part 4 on the Communist Internationals
Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing their way of earning a living, they change all their social relations. The hand mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam engine, society with the industrial capitalists There are different ways to understand Marx meaning. One such way is that the steam engine represents and expresses a pivotal moment - new qualitative configuration of applied technology, on whose basis a class of industrial capitalist arises, rather than a concept of the industrial capitalist creating industry. Or the steam engine expresses a decisive juncture in a qualitative development of means of production distinguishing the society of the hand mill and feudal lord from that of the steam engine and industrial capitalist. The steam engine is a moment in an interactive reality, where the environment of one things is simultaneously woven into and provides the environment for other things. Everything is important in reality but some things are more important - fundamental, in the evolution of a new mode of production or the opening of a new quantitative boundary of development. The tractor, its mass production and application to agriculture is symbolic of that which ushered in a quantitative phase in the development of the social organization of agricultural labor. The application of ammonia based fertilizers to agriculture does not best describe the quantitative reconfiguration of agricultural labor world wide. The tractor does because in America its application and deployment caused the destruction of a distinct class form and class relationship driving a definable boundary of development in the organization of agricultural labor. Chemical fertilizers before the tractor and after the tractor embraces different boundaries of development of applied scientific knowledge. The issue being spoken of is how and why things change in the social organization of labor and what is fundamental to such change. Absolutely more things in the totality of the development of means of production than the steam engine gives one a society of industrial capitalists. Electricity and development of this infrastructure is fundamental to the electro mechanical process - an industrial society. Railroads, which caused the decay of the Cowboys and Cowboy herding was part of reconfiguring the actual labor process of bringing this commodity to market. The cowboys and their driving of cattle across America lost their jobs - social function, due to revolution in the means of production. I most certainly agree that land speculation and homesteading opened up huge areas of America but produced no revolution in the social organization of agricultural labor. Speculation in land and homesteading were actual preconditions of the revolution to come, but what was the pivotal moment was revolution in the instruments of production. What broke up the share cropping system in America was the tractor as that, which was fundamental. Not by itself. Nor is this to say the sharecropping system was preordained. The property form could have attained another shape as a land of independent farmers in the South. Here is the bottom line. The Three Communist Internationals arose and decayed in distinct historical period. These period can be distinguished on the basis of the historically specific character of means of production. Further, the industrial form of the union is spent. This means this form of unionism is not only no longer on the upswing but decaying before our very eyes. There are many reasons for this. I choose to locate that which is fundamental to this decay as reorganization of the labor process around a growing new technology regime. A new Communist International cannot be built upon the same basis as that of Marx's First International or the Third International because these worlds and their historically specific configuration of labor - class forms and alignments, no longer exists. No one disputes this but it is devoid of most writings on Chavez call for a new International. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] End game: Part 4 on the Communist Internationals (UAW unions in real time)
End game The political battles waged by Marx and Engels to give the First International an outlook and program independent of all ideology of the propertied classes has been outlined and preserved as part of the Soviet Legacy in Marx and the Trade Unions. Marx and the Trade Unions, by A. Lozovsky (pseudo, Dridzo, Solomon Abranovich) issued by International Publishers dated March 14, 1933 Moscow, captures every fundamental political struggle Marx conducted in the First International. It has been more than twenty years since I have had the occasion and need to restudy this wonderful text. Issued under the rising curve of Soviet power, this text contains all the historical and theoretical errors of the period in which it was issued. This period can be called the era of Marxism-Leninism. A historical era is historical precisely because no one in the era can discern their error. This is so because the social process has not attained a degree of development to bring froth the new distinct features of the entire process. Specifically, the means of production does not move in contradiction with the relations of production but rather antagonism. The contradiction that is means of production and relations of production is the internal drive and impulse establishing the self movement of society as development of the mode of production. The mode of production is driven through successive quantitative boundaries of development. The quality that is being developed quantitatively was industrialism. Today, the industrial revolution has given way to the post industrial revolution and a new quality of means of production. The appearance of this new quality of productive forces brings to antagonism - not contradiction, the society founded on industrialism. The historical error is the conception of the class struggle of the proletariat as contradiction. The bourgeoisie and proletariat are birthed in contradiction as the unity of a production relations or social relations of production. These new classes - bourgeoisie and proletariat, are simultaneously birthed in antagonism with feudalism and all the old classes (old production relations) marking feudalism as distinct property relation or the landed property relations, or a specific social system (mode of production). Under the feudal system the serf could not overthrow the nobility because together them constituted the building blocks of the mode of production. What was and is required to displace a mode of production, is a qualitative development of means of production, creating new classes and new relations of production. Capitalist/industrial society, as a mode of production is no different in its historical evolution as a mode of production. During the various boundaries of development of the industrial system and capitalism the proletariat at the front of the curve of development did not and could not overthrow capital in the advanced countries until the means of production began evolution in antagonism with the relations of production. At the back of the curve of industrial development it was possible to impose a communist regime on society during the leap from agriculture to industry. Such was the case with the Russian October Revolution. This distinct law was not formulated and articulated until the mid and late 1980’s by a small section of the American communist movement. Reality Check The decay of industrial unionism is no where more striking than in the state of Michigan and the historic Detroit nexus of automotive production. The practical activity of the proletarian movement in America demanded a revisiting of this text. The post industrial revolution is the environment and context for the decay of industrial trade unionism in the same way that the rising industrial revolution was the context for the decay of craft unionism as the cutting edge of the early trade union movement. What is different today is that the struggle of the workers is spontaneously leaping outside the boundary of the trade union movement. A glance at the membership numbers of the auto workers union is instructive. (Note: These figures are for total membership rather than auto workers only. Air plane workers and agricultural implement workers are included in the early years. After the 1980 service workers are included. A real break down of all the numbers and category of workers would be revealing. At this point I do not have such information. There are roughly 90 - 100, 000 active UAW auto workers. And falling.) UAW Average Annual Dues Paying Membership 1936 through 2008 1936 27,058 1976 1,358,364 1937 231,8941977 1,440,988 1938 144,097 1978 1,499,425 1939 155,845 1979 1,527,858 1940 246,038 1980
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Part 1 on the Communist Internationals
In a message dated 4/12/2010 5:53:09 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, _editor_revdem@ indiatimes. com_ (_mailto:editor_ (mailto:editor) _ _rev...@indiatime_ (mailto:rev...@indiatime) s.com) writes: Speech by Mátyás Rákosi, General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party at the Meeting of the Central Committee, 17 May 1946 Date: 05/17/1946 Source: Archives of the Institute for Political History (AIPH), Budapest, 274. f. 2/34 Description: Speech by Mátyás Rákosi, General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party at the Meeting of the Central Committee, 17 May 1946. “When we arranged the third International, I remember the trouble we went to show that we wanted a centralized, strong International with executive powers, similar to how Marx imagined the International in 1864, and not just the sorting office and so on that the second International became before the First World War. And this was the catastrophe of the third International. Because instead of every country looking separately for the conditions for revolution, and not trying the impossible task of centralizing and directing the whole movement, it directed it from the center. The result was that the parties gave up independent politics, continually looked in the direction of the center, and waited for its instructions. This view led the comrades to announce the discontinuation of the third International. And afterwards, now that the International has been discontinued, the parties are coming forth one after the other to say how the existence of the International limited their progress, e.g. most recently we heard from our Yugoslav comrades how much such a central institution held them back, which, unaware of local conditions, sometimes demanded quite the opposite of what they needed. So such an International can no longer be established. On the contrary, the International should be such that it does not hinder the progress of individual parties, that it provides a means for individual parties to execute the tasks leading to the liberation of the proletariat, bearing local circumstances in mind. I should immediately say that as far as this is concerned, the new International cannot be compared to the previous ones. This will not be an organizing body; its task will be to compose, to help in making objections, to communicate the good or bad experiences of one country's communist party to that of another country, that they should learn from their neighbors' experiences and losses. This will undoubtedly be very useful, as not just us, but communist parties the world over are beginning to feel that without the exchange of experiences and objections they cannot produce adequate plans on international questions.” Comment 64 years after Rakosi speech for the formation of a new Communist International, one “unrepentant Marxist” and moderator of Marxism List echo’s the same sentiment in a lengthy six part series on the Four Communists Internationals. (quote) “In this, the third installment of a series of articles on attempts to build workers or socialist internationals, I am going to discuss the Comintern but within a narrow historical and geographical framework, namely the German revolution of the early 1920s. It will be my goal, as it was in an article written about 10 years ago titled The Comintern and German Communism, to debunk the notion of a wise and efficacious Comintern. As opposed to mainstream Trotskyist opinion, I do not view the Comintern prior to Stalin’s rise to power as a model to emulate. Looking back in particular at the role of Lenin and Trotsky, not to speak of outright rascals like Karl Radek and Bela Kun, the only conclusion that sensible people can be left with is that the German Communist Party would have been much better off if the Comintern had simply left it alone. (end quote) A Marxist unraveling of any social process involves a couple of things, namely approach and method. Although approach and method of inquiry becomes a uniform outlook for Marxists, the young comrades familiarizing themselves with Marx method are to understand that it is obligatory to always place things in their environment and context. Before attempting to capture the dialectic of the self movement of a thing, anything, the environment which is acting upon the context of class struggle, organization and the individual has to be described because it is the environment and its intimate interactive connection with living processes that sets the condition for development, change and the leap from one qualitative stage to the next. What is fundamental in the environment that everyone loves to call “the class struggle” is the material power of productive forces and their ceaseless changes. By productive forces is meant “means of production” + human beings. “Means of production” are in turn “productive forces
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Riddle of Antagonism: (still at work)
I CB: The new _quality_ in the productive forces is their greater and greater socialization of the laborers. Notice Marx refers to The shifts from steam to oil as a main fuel, or the shift to electricity, or the shift to computers and new forms of communication and transportation all allow greater numbers of workers working in cooperation, over larger areas. Reply WL: The new quality in means of production are exclusively their technological component. This new quality in turn is expressed as the growth of the division of labor in society, which in turn reorders the social organization of labor. The new quality in means of production manifesting the industrial revolution begins with the steam engine and passes to the electro-mechanical process, as this process negates manufacture. That is the new quality. Computers and advanced robotics are not quantitative develops of the steam engine or the internal combustion engine. Computers and advanced robotics evolve as the negation of industrial implements, which had previously negated the manufacturing process. This negation does not take place all at one time, but at a much rapid rate than the previous qualitative change in the means of production, ie, the industrial revolution. ** II. CB: It is the _centralization_ or monopoly ownership of means of production and the increasing socialization of the organization of labor that is the key antagonism. The question might be asked how more specifically is centralized ownership in antagonism with socialized labor. Part is the answer is :come to Detroit and see (smile) ^ Reply WL: Centralization or monopoly ownership of means of production combines two separate movements to = socialization of the organization of labor. Monopoly ownership of means of production is the same old bourgeois property relations. Monopoly capitalism is not qualitatively different from non-monopoly capitalism from the standpoint of the property relations. The difference is on the quantitative side of the quantity/quality scale. Antagonism arises EXCLUSVIELY from private property, not means of production or their socialization. What arises from means of production or their socialization is contradiction. Centralized ownership IS NOT in antagonism with socialized labor. Centralized ownership under the bourgeois mode of production means further concentration of capital as a social power. Bourgeois private property contains the germ of antagonism because it is private property, not because of a monopoly stage. Bourgeois private property is birthed in antagonism with feudal property. Bourgeois private property evolves in contradiction with the socializations of labor, as this socialization express the further development of the means of production. At a certain stage in the development of the material power of productive forces, the bourgeois private property relations enter into antagonism with the new productive forces. With the post industrial revolution well underway the qualitatively new productive forces evolve in antagonism with bourgeois private property. III. Negation as a model describing process development is not the same as antagonism. Yet, a movement of antagonism presupposes that something has been or is being negated. I understand Marx historical tendency of capitalist accumulation to be a model of negation and the negation of the negation. The germ of antagonism is present due to private property, rather than the evolution of centralization of production. That is centralization of productive forces expresses the ever developing division of labor in society, which during the epoch of the bourgeoisie takes place on the basis of bourgeois private property. Development - change, is driven by contradiction internal to that which is the focus of investigation. In this example centralization of production, called centralization of ownership is the object of investigation. Monopoly ownership does not exist in antagonism with socialized labor. In fact we communist demand monopoly ownership of means of production by the working class. IV. CB: How about it is the antagonism between the increasingly privatized (to the point of monopoly) mode of _appropriation_ , that is form of ownership or property, and the socialized mode of production ( the organization of production , not new technologies or machines) that generates the change to socialism from capitalism ? ( See penultimate chapter of _Capital_ you quoted earlier). Here is part of it: Reply WL. I subscribe to a different point of view. Bourgeois private property, as a historically evolved social relations of production, enters into antagonism with qualitatively new means of production, rather than technology. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list
[Marxism-Thaxis] test
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] WL's glossary--a suggestion
In a message dated 3/23/2010 7:36:28 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, jann...@gmail.com writes: Why don't we put up the latest version of this at googledocs and collaborate, 'wiki-style', on it? Then it could be published as a blog or wiki. Might prove after all that has been said that this list's regulars can work together on something? Discussing it over an old-fashioned list like this probably won't get very far. CJ Reply I can agree with this but on March 31. I jumped the gun badly.. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] glossary--a suggestion
In a message dated 3/24/2010 7:58:16 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: Saw Marsha at Bert's and said I bet you know Waistline. She said definitely. Comment Check this out: _http://marshamusic.wordpress.com/_ (http://marshamusic.wordpress.com/) Marsha is extremely articulate and a genuine autodidactic. She was the first women President of the Bakers Union a proletarian to the core.. Her family history is profound. She was also a founding member of the old League of Revolutionary Black Workers and my first girl friend in life. We joined the movement together, with her being all of 14 and I had just turned 16, meeting her in High School. This was like, 42 years ago. At age 15 she was garmented a full ride at several universities including one in England. Instead she joined the movement. Check out her page. And yes, she writes about 4000% better than I. Literally, together we know everyone in Detroit, given the actual history and logic of the working class movement there. Together, if circumstances allow it, we could write or outline a living history of an important sector of the communist movement since 1919. No one else in basically America, can write about the core of the history of the American industrial proletariat - at least from say 1950, with much living history outside the crew in Detroit. Such a history is urgently needed. The problem is that we are being over run by real events and real activity. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Objective Subjective reform to revolution
In a message dated 3/24/2010 8:53:21 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: Tell 'em Dave Moore was a Marxist-Leninist. CB Reply The Dave Moore interviews in Political Affairs are magnificent. No one has really told the real story of the organization of Ford. Moore was a communist of a different mode. He is the man Reuther could not defeat. A new generation will want to hear and gladly listen to our version of history. Basically, there is no one else left. The old ideological groups have faded with not even a remote connection to anything living within the proletariat. The dogmatic M-L's of the 60's, 70's and 80's, have been run over and passed by history. The various Trotskyist ideological groups and thinker long ago went through their evolution and are revealed for what they always was: a grouping of white middle class intellectuals, content to spew hate upon the world. This is not to condemn any individual. It is what the fuck it is. As long as we do what is in front of us, we are going to make out very well and achieve a principled unity concerning every important action of the proletariat. Movements are never driven by theory, but rather by ideas and ideology. These old groups of the past possess ideology absolutely hostile to the proletariat and they cannot merge with any sector of the class. Honestly. On another list one of the M-L's wrote an article about health care and posed the issue fight for universal health care or against capitalism. Reform or revolution. How in God's name can one fight against capitalism or the capitalist system? On that note the next installment is called Reform to Revolution. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] 7.0 - correction
Antagonism as a form of resolution means it is not a form of resolution of contradiction. It is a form of resolution of property as this property form enters into contradiction with qualitatively changing productive forces. That is to say the contradiction is between productive forces and relations of production, in a class society. Resolution of this contradiction is negation by destruction of the previous existing relations of production and property forms. This form of resolution is not simply sublating. correction Antagonism as a form of resolution means it is not a form of resolution of contradiction, as the basic classes underlying a mode of production. It is a form of resolution of property as this property form enters into contradiction with qualitatively changing productive forces. That is to say the contradiction is between productive forces and relations of production, in a class society. Resolution of this contradiction is negation by destruction of the previous existing relations of production and property forms. This form of resolution is not simply sublating. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] an·tag·o·nist
In a message dated 3/24/2010 9:34:31 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: CB: Well, a contradiction is sort of ripe to be superceded (sorry Althusser) when it is an antagonism. So, in this sense it is more _ready_ for resolution than a non-antagonistic contradiction. But in its state of antagonism it is not resolved, it is still in contradiction, sharp contradiction. Another problem with this is that it is using antagonism in contradiction (ha) with the its standard, let alone Marxist, dictionary definition. Comment The presumption is that non-antagonistic and antagonistic contradiction is a misunderstanding of society transition form one mode of production to another; a historical error. Sorry Soviet Textbook. Sorry Chairman Mao. Sorry old school Marxists. Contradiction or rather contradiction in internal to a process - quality, is just that, no more no less. Each stage in the development of contradiction, prepares the basis for its further development and resolution. The problem is that the bourgeoisie evolve as a contradiction and are birthed in antagonism with the feudal order and its underlying contradictions. Fpr CB Antagonism: 7.0 Antagonism is the basis of destruction and a form of transition to a new mode of production. It is a form of resolution of relations of production property as these relations enters into collision with qualitatively changing productive forces. That is to say the conflict between qualitatively new productive forces and old relations of production in a class society, cannot be resolved based on the struggle between the two classes constituting the old relations of production. Resolution takes place outside - external, the contradiction of the two classes constituting old relations of production. Resolution is negation by destruction of the two old classes and their property form.. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism.(Marx). (see Dialectics: quantity, quality, the antagonistic element.) This email was cleaned by emailStripper. I believe the above is much more accurate, but who can understand it except those studied in Marxism. Which defeats the purpose of a glossary and converts it into a dictionary of Marxist Thought. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] an·tag·o·nist Sorry Charlie , Just nailed it down
7.5 Antagonism: Antagonism is the basis of destruction and a form of transition to a new mode of production. It is a form of resolution of relations of production that have entered into collision with qualitatively changing productive forces. (see productive forces) In class society, the collision between qualitatively new productive forces and old relations of production, cannot be resolved based on the struggle between the two classes constituting the old relations of production. Resolution takes place outside - external, the contradiction that is the two classes constituting old relations of production. The external agent is the new classes connected to the new means of production. Resolution is negation by destruction of the two old classes and their property form.. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism.(Marx). (see Dialectics: quantity, quality, the antagonistic element.) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] To Socialism! How?
In a message dated 3/23/2010 11:03:24 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: CB; Strategy deals with the wide, the biggest context, the general. Strategy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy Comment I prefer Stalin's definition and both articles on Strategy and hold he defines its field of operations. Really. Probably will use his definition with some tweeks if there is an index called strategy and tactics. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Negation of the negation: let try this out
In a message dated 3/23/2010 11:30:53 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, rdum...@autodidactproject.org writes: I'll have to see what else has been written on negation of negation that is usable. Engels' use of concept in dialectics of nature is total confusion and nonsense. I believe that Stalin omitted negation of negation and others approved of this. Reply The Soviet Textbook of Marxist Philosophy devotes an entire chapter to this called : The Law of the Negation of the Negation. In this is quoted almost all of the Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation. negation emerges as a moment in the conflict of oppositions . . . blah blah Don't get me wrong I think the text is alright for 1937 and as what happens to most writings on dialectics, beam outdated the moment it was read. Negation of negation was included for to reasons: Marx and Engels presents this proposition and there is going to be a dozen source notes to their writings. Two, I got scared it would become a source of a needless ass kicking. No matter how good or bad the end product, no one that has matured in the Marxist movement is going to like it. 5,000 proletarians, predominately white, who are going to be introduced to Marxism are going to be fucking blown away. Why else would a Marxist glossary begin with abolition and then precede to the American Revolution? If it was easy there would be scores of Marxist glossaries in America. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] To Socialism! How?
In a message dated 3/23/2010 11:36:40 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: CB; What are more of the specifics of Stalin's approach ? Reply Check out his articles in the 1920's on strategy and tactic of Russian communist and Concerning the question of strategy and tactics. I think strategy and tactics will be left alone and opt out for the concept of line of march. The fear is that in 3 to five years we will be beyond this is the real life process. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Objective Subjective (object and subject)::
Objective Subjective (object and subject):: object refers to everything outside the human mind or the subject as human. Reality, say a tree, an automobile or the sun has an objective existence outside the human mind or the life of the human mind, not requiring or owning its existence to the mind. Marxism contends that social system - capitalism, and things existing outside the mind have an objective existence and contains objective laws of operations. Things exist in reality as objects unto themselves, interwoven into the fabric of reality, but independent of the ‘observer’ or subject and their subjective understanding at a given moment. In recognition of the inherent subjective limitations of the individual human mind, we say keep an open mind. None of this is meant to imply we do not react upon things in our environment as they in turn react upon us. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Objective Subjective (object and subject)::
In a message dated 3/23/2010 1:01:54 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: CB: Lenin defines materialism as the belief in the existence of objective reality, objective reality being defined as you do above. Reply This mans go. This glossary is being produced under the name Retried Workers Educational Forum, but this could change based solely on what is marketable. Everyone's contribution is going to be noted without question. Have not touched base with you since coming back in October because I have been on jam. Looks like Mack I and Mack Ii engine plant will be closed. :Less than 200 workers in both plants. Expansion at Jefferson planned. Sterling Assembly got a new lease on life. Ford is of course making money. The Ford workers rejected their contract and things are to come. UAW Constitutional Convention in June. New President to be elected. CBTU Convention coming up. Not for me but my brother will attend. Maybe some new life can be breathed into TULC; they just remodeled the joint. Lots of thangs happening including closing 44 schools in Detroit! 27,000 energy cut off. New deaths every week. A new section of workers entering the struggle. We have to tell the truth and something more than black and white unite and fight. We are class brothers ands sisters. I love this shit. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Objective Subjective (object and subject)::
In a message dated 3/23/2010 1:28:37 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: CB: My buddy, Bob King. Comment Bob's cool and at this point see himself as a one time president. He has invited all and anyone to come forth with new proposition on what to do in the fight for the life of the trade union movement. This includes the Reds and especially the Reds because no one else is in motion. Life is funny. Life is funny and the connections are historical for the working class. Bob King did his apprenticeship under my dad. Yep. We have watched his career from day one. Brother retired with 40 years seniority and 15 as an International Representative of the UAW, so as a collective you and I know everyone. The inexorable loop of life asserts itself. it is our time, right now. And our fight for the unity of a real class in real time is going to rewrite our history. This shits more exiting than a one man band. The fear of Bob King is this: Will he be to intellectual to lead the union along another path. This is a real fear not to be belittled. The only reason the historically reactionary mutherfuckers - I don't reason books but know everyone in my district and what they want and need can be defeated is the depths of the economic crisis at this defining moment - as Obama puts things. We are roughly at 1920 at a higher lever. What is different is that the communists forces are not predominately foreign born as was the case in 1919. This is in the context of 343,000 auto workers of whom 70 - 75% were native born. Yet, by 1923 the first auto workers union had been formed. What did they do and how did they do this? This was under conditions of the Palmer Raids ad witch hunts. I reject the specific Leninist form and not political Leninism. Now is the time to be bold. Let us march on til victory is won Proletarians Unite. WL ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Objective Subjective (object and subject):: correction
In a message dated 3/23/2010 1:44:07 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, waistli...@aol.com writes: Let us march on til victory is won Proletarians Unite. Correction Let us march on til victory is one! Proletarians Unite. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Role of the individual in history:
Role of the individual in history: Individuals have roles in life big and small. The concept of the “role of the individual” defines the place of the individual within the objective, material processes going on in the world, a country, their community and identifies his or her active role in the change process. The individuals whose particular character offers what is required of a given stage or moment of history, or in a particular situation, moves the situation and history forward, influences the form it takes, and offers the context for the masses to play their part more fully in making history. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Objective Subjective (object and subject)::
In a message dated 3/23/2010 2:11:41 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: CB: Dave Moore: Carry on Reply Yep, that the flavor. You know more than you think. We simply have a different place in a division of labor. The things I cannot do I go on line and ask for help. What is needed is a federation of revolutionaries. No one has to surrender their particular ideological and theory bent. Fuck calling things a Popular Front or a united Front. If you do not do work in the electoral arena, then shut the fuck up. Accept the reports of comrade who are involved in this work and then form an opinion. In Detroit we have always discovered the means and ways to flow together and this includes the Trotskyist crew. I never hated on Debs Hall or the SWP work. I do have a very strong opinion, but it is not relevant in real work. Adhere to your group. So what! That is the point of a federation. We take Lenin the wrong way, although he has been dead for a very long time. And yes, Dave Moore is part of a production line of literature in progress. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] To Socialism! How?
In a message dated 3/22/2010 8:13:42 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: Strategy deals with the qualitative turns in the balance of forces that it is necessary to seek and the class and social forces and political trends and social movements that can be won for that qualitative turn, and the main opponent in relation to that turn. Tactics deals with the most useful issues, demands, forms of struggle and forms of organization to achieve the alignment of class and social forces, in the first place, necessary to win the strategic objective or qualitative turn in the balance of forces. Comment Here a definition of strategy I will not be using. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Class antagonism as class struggle: the dialectic (OK Ra...
In a message dated 3/19/2010 1:00:03 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: 5). At a certain stage of their development, 6). the material productive forces of society 7). come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – (this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms ) with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated up until then. 8). From forms of development of the productive forces 9). these relations turn into their fetters. 10). Then begins an epoch of social revolution.. (1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm) ^^^ CB: I don't see the word antagonism in what you quote. Reply Nor is the word contradiction present in the above. At its root the presentation in the glossary under construction, pivots on a different articulation of quaintly, quality and the emergence of a new quality. I did send you rough draft 6.0. I most certainly expect and accept the huge ass kicking I am going to get from taking the lead on this project. It is better to present something that is 30% right and 70% wrong than to surrender the emerging leaders to the bourgeoisie and do nothing. Another comrade is working on Marx and Engles on The Trade Unions with all the essential quotes already complied. The need grew out of the work, with retired workers being set into motion and embarking on a path of struggle that confronts the government as the employer. To the point. The question of antagonism required detective work and tracking down the clues. I do absolutely agree antagonism is bound up with irreconcilable. Not so with contradiction, whose resolution is understood as a synthesis . Irreconcilable demotes destruction rather than synthesis. Lenin left a huge clue in his critique of Bukharin, that puzzled me for 20 years. Here is what Lenin wrote concerning B's presentation of resolution of contractions and somehow their dying out under socialism. Quite wrong. Antagonism and contradiction are by no means the same. Under socialism the first will vanish, the second will remain. In exactly what does the antagonism consist and why does it disappear? . Marx provides another clue in the CM. “The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few. The antagonism is bound up with private property or the property form of class. I am aware a section of Marxism defines class as property. I do not. Class is most certainly a conduit of a property relations but I am clearly not a craft workers of the period of manufacture, before capitalism formed itself as a society mode of production. The material productive forces come into conflict with the existing relations of production. The antagonism is expressed as the new classes created by the qualitative development of the productive forces under the impact of property. Bourgeoisie and proletariat are birthed in irresistibility - antagonism with the system of feudalism and its underlying means of production. With the advance of socialism antagonism disappears in the meaning of hostile classes being generated by qualitative changes in the means of production. The material productive forces will still develop in contradiction with the more than less static relations of production. I forget the exact quote but Marx said it is only in the logic of things that society would seize to develop as political revolution. For me the issue became understanding why it was impossible for the serf to overthrow feudalism. A mode of production cannot be overthrow by the classes that constitute it. Cannot happen. Something else must happen - change in society. In the case of feudalism it was the emergence of new classes existing and evolving as the development of the means of production. The serf existed in contradiction with the nobility. Not antagonism. The bourgeois as a new class existed in antagonism with the nobility. The problem is that anyone can make anything a contradiction, which is some of Rosa L. criticism, but she has lived in her own head to much and not consulted and studied with enough comrades. This of course is a contested issue but no one can prove to me the bourgeois and proletariat existed in contradiction with the nobility and serf. To present the picture as such is to take a mesh of classes with no connection as the actual process of production and make them a unity. At any
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ralph: Class antagonism ... the dialectic (OK Ralph) .
I have not looked at Bottomore's dictionary since giving it away in 2004. I will run to the bookstore and locate a copy and look at it. Anyone that publishes a Marxist glossary enters into extreme controversy with every single segment of the Marxist current. The most difficult aspect of the project is staying on focus. The focus is a real audience and creating an organizing tool that is educational. There are comrades better equipped for many reasons to take the lead on this project and all have refused. The reason is a desire to produce a glossary that sounds like how the American proletariat think things out in real time. For instance the American proletariat does not react to the word “mediate” or “interpenetration.” Trade Unions mediate relations between their members and their employers. Trade Unions were initially organized to protect the wages and conditions of labor from pressure of their members employers for profits. Because of the lost ground of union over the past 30 years “mediate” becomes a concept meaning union enhance wages and this experience has not been true for almost twenty years. The need for the glossary arose in the course of holding classes - educationals, with first a group of young people and recruiting a few older - retired workers, pushed into action over health care. Let me give a real time example of the conceptual problem of the American mind. Here is the agreed upon basic description of dialectical materialism: Dialectal materialism: Dialectal materialism is an approach and method to the study of a real world in constant change. A materialist approach begin with the real material world. The world is knowable and our knowledge of its laws develops - evolves, from a lower to a higher level. Society contains laws of development moving society from a lower to a higher level. Change in society is based on development of the productive forces and social relations of production. The constant changes and interaction between productive forces and social relations prevents us from knowing everything at any particular moment. But that is no excuse for not accepting and learning about what is real. On the contrary, it inspires a serious Marxist to constantly study. The materialist approach is combined with the dialectical method, treating all phenomena in nature and society as dialectical. The basic laws of materialist dialectics are: This had to be rewritten The reaction to the term dialectical materialism was fascinating and mind boggling. Everyone would demand to know its meaning and treated the term with hostility. We reversed the words and all the hostile reactions disappeared. The second line was changed and the terms “real material world” was reduced to “material world.” The reason is that people reacted to real material world with the ideology “what is real to you might not be real to me,” meaning experience. Ralph, I was fucked up because “ real world” was meant to deliver a concept of a world existing outside the individual human body, mind and sense perception. People already understand the world is real, but experienced individually. Soon as the formulation was changed a different the concept of dialectical materialism was better understood. Here is the rewrite: Dialectal materialism: (materialist dialectics) Materialist dialectics is an approach and method to the study of a real world in constant change. A materialist approach begin with the material world. The world is knowable and our knowledge of its laws grows from a lower to a higher level. Society is knowable, containing economic laws moving society from a lower to a higher level. Change in society is based on development of the productive forces. Its constant change prevents us from knowing everything at any particular moment. But that is no excuse for not accepting and learning about what is real. On the contrary, it inspires a serious Marxist to constantly study. The materialist approach is combined with the dialectical method, treating all things in nature and society as dialectical. The basic laws of materialist dialectics are: OK Every understood materialist dialectics in a common way. No one understood what it meant but there was a common reaction seeking clarification. Then we had to create a clear picture of the difference between democracy and political liberty. You say “political liberty” and the white proletarians react positively but not the blacks and browns. Blacks and browns react to the word democracy with the identical emotional intensity as the white proletarians. It was like shit. A Marxist glossary cannot be a small Marxist dictionary of terms but must be a historical narrative of the American ideology and experience viewed through a Marxist lens. “Marxist lens” produced a different reaction from “Marxist standpoint” of “Marxist point of
[Marxism-Thaxis] Contradiction, Antagonism, Dialectal materialism: (materialist dialectics)
Antagonism: Antagonism is the basis of destruction and transformation to a new quality. (see Dialectics: quantity, quality, the antagonistic element.) Contradiction: a conception of development and motion as internally necessary self movement of conflicting opposites. The unity and struggle of opposites means contradiction internal to a quality or internal contradiction. Internal contradiction rather than clash between things. (see dialectical materialism) Dialectics, quantity, quality, the antagonistic element. Quality (in the sense we are using it) is a process. The sum total of the stages of development (quantity) of the process is the process. Thus, there cannot be a separation between quantity and quality. Every quantity is qualitative. Since life is specific, every quality is expressed quantitatively. Growth, or motion, takes place in definite and indispensable stages. A change of environment exacerbates internal contradictions. Each stage grows out of the preceding one and connects to it. Each stage has its set of internal contradictions that describe its motion inside the general qualitative contradiction that covers the process. Therefore, each stage of growth is both inner connected and interconnected. In Dialectics of Nature, Engels gives examples of the transformation from one quality to another. All qualitative differences in nature rest on differences of chemical composition or on different quantities or forms of motion (energy) or, as is almost always the case, on both. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alternation of the body concerned. [emphasis added]. An increase of intensity and change in the form of contradiction marks each stage of quantitative development. The final stages of contradiction create the conditions for the introduction of antagonism. Contradiction is the action of speaking against or in opposition to an action, proposal; gainsaying; opposition. (see contradiction). Antagonism, on the other hand, is the mutual resistance or active opposition of two opposing forces, physical or mental; active opposition to a force. Contradiction does not grow into antagonism. Antagonism replaces contradiction. Internal contradiction is the basis of development and growth. Antagonism is the basis of destruction and transformation to a new quality. _http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf_ (http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf) Dialectal materialism: (materialist dialectics) Materialist dialectics is an approach and method to the study of a real world in constant change. A materialist approach begin with the material world. The world is knowable and our knowledge of its laws grows from a lower to a higher level. Society is knowable, containing economic laws moving society from a lower to a higher level. Change in society is based on development of the productive forces. Its constant change prevents us from knowing everything at any particular moment. But that is no excuse for not accepting and learning about what is real. On the contrary, it inspires a serious Marxist to constantly study. The materialist approach is combined with the dialectical method, treating all things in nature and society as dialectical. The basic laws of materialist dialectics are: 1) Nature is an integrated whole, connected and interactive. 2) Nature is in a state of constant change: development, disintegration, dying away and rebirth. 3) Internal contradiction, the basis of development, is inherent in all things. 4) Changes are from lower to higher order and occur as negations or annulment. 5) Qualitative changes begin with the quantitative introduction of a new quality into the quantitative development of the old. Qualitative changes occur as leaps. 6) Quantitative changes are definite and indispensable. Dialectics begins with clearly delineated concepts and asks the question. what is society and of what does it consist. Society has so many parts, individuals and interactions that one can get lost in trying to understand everything at the same time. Thus, the question is posed; what is fundamental in society? The way we produce, the way production is distributed (relations of production) and the state of development of productive forces in society are fundamental to any society. From looking at what is fundamental a thesis and antithesis is formed. The thesis, in this instance would be the productive forces because it is the most stable and indispensable part holding society together. The antithesis would be the relations of production or the way people are organized to work and distribute what is produced. When looking at the thesis and antithesis together we discover that
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ralph: Class antagonism ... the dialectic (OK Ralph) .
According to Marx, the social contradiction which can only be resolved by revolution is that between the forces of production and the relations of production. The most common Marxist interpretation of this assertion is that forces of production means capital (sometimes our latter day Marxists implicitly limit this to technology, so that the full development of the forces of production is interpreted solely as the presence of advanced, highly productive machinery) while relations of production means the system of production, appropriation, and exchange. In reality, Marx meant something quite different. Forces of production includes both capital and labor, while relations of production includes capitalists and workers. Thus the proletariat is an essential of both sides of the antagonism—on one side as the creator of use value, on the other as wage laborer. The contradiction is therefore internal and essential to the working class itself, and cannot be resolved externally. STO's political line—in particular our understanding of the role of white skin privilege—is based on this recognition of the conflict internal to the proletariat. _http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/howtothink.html_ (http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/howtothink.html) Comment I do not means to be overly harsh but I find the above just plain old silly and nonsense. By antagonism is apparently meant a bad contradiction which requires fighting or someone getting hurt to overthrow a class. Locating capital and labor within productive forces, denies they are historical, predating capitalist and proletariat. Thus the proletariat is an essential of both sides of the antagonism—on one side as the creator of use value, on the other as wage laborer. The contradiction is therefore internal and essential to the working class itself, and cannot be resolved externally. What in God’s name does this mesh of nonsense mean? The capitalist as personification of capital and the proletariat as personification of the commodity form of labor power in the market are not products of the productive forces but rather, a creation of a long history of the evolution of private property. I do recognize the above material is dated. I do not do white skin privilege stuff in articulating degrees of bribery of the Anglo American people relative to blacks, browns, Asians in our history. The intent of the glossary is not to write in dialectics or dialectically but to present basic Marxist concepts as we understand how the American mind thinks things out. The narratives strive to induce a desire in the individual to do their own study of Marx. Here are a couple more terms. Relations of production: (social relations of production, production relations) : Marx's use of the concept of relations of production: In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. (1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) Relations of production refer to the connection, interactivity within and between classes at a given stage of development of productive forces. In real life relations of production are interactive with productive forces, one becoming the environment of operations for the other. Capitalist relations of production consist of a labor force with no means of support other than their ability to work, and capitalists who own land, raw materials, tools, or the condition of labor as their private property. The capitalist class buys labor power and owns what is produced for sale. Relations of production are the operating economic laws defining the relationship of people to property in the process of production. A modern use of relations of production and productive forces in a writing: Society is formed on the basis of the unity of productive forces and production relations. Productive relations are the laws defining property and the relationship of people to property in the process of production. The constant, spontaneous development of the productive forces eventually disrupts this unity An epoch of social revolution begins to creates new relations of production that reflect the level of, and are compatible with, the newly developed productive forces. Means of production: Means of production are the non-human resources required for the production of goods. These means include land, raw materials, tools, machinery, energy source, money/capital and embody the technology shape and character of these productive forces. Means of production is a concept of the non-human physical things outside of the human. Productive forces are means of production plus the human.(see productive forces) Productive
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] [marxistphilosophy] Historical-Critical Dictionary of Ma...
Quality and Quantity and Contradiction. Stalin argues that qualitative changes occur not accidentally but as the natural result of an accumulation of imperceptible and gradual quantitative changes.11 We should note that this is only one aspect of this category of dialectical logic. It is the more commonsensical side of the problem. The more difficult question is how, concretely, do different quantities of the same thing change the quality of it, or why is it that a phenomenon is something other than its constituent parts taken separately. For instance, a thousand soldiers fighting together on a battlefield constitute qualitatively something different from a thousand fighting separately. Common sense tells us it is concentration that makes the difference. Yet a thousand soldiers fighting separately, scattered throughout the countryside, can sometimes be more effective than a thousand in concentration. As we can see, it is an aspect of dialectics that is not only complex, but forces us to recognize the unity of the two sides. Yet in Stalin the quality quantity process becomes more one of causality. Small incremental changes in abstract quantity create large qualitative leaps. There is no room for how these new qualities affect the quantity. There is no appreciation of the reciprocal relation of the philosophy of praxis (Marxism — ed.) quality is also connected to quantity and this connection is perhaps its most fertile contribution. Comment I am in overdrive conditioned to do 12 hours work with a couple of break and a lunch period. The above is why I hate and remain anti-philosophy. We are not going to hide behind philosophic concepts and mumbo jumbo.. Allow me to get the heart of the issue of Quality and Quantity and Contradiction. Here is the question posed by the author: The more difficult question is how, concretely, do different quantities of the same thing change the quality of it, or why is it that a phenomenon is something other than its constituent parts taken separately. In this authors critique of Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism he adopts the exact same underlying thinking of Stalin and presents the same conclusion in different words. The question how concretely do different quantities of the same thing change the quality of it, means you have not solved the equation. This is the wrong question. Here is the equation: the introduction of a new quality, - incrementally or quantitatively, into an existing process (quality/quantity), begins the quantitatively change - alteration, of the old quality. At a certain stage in the accumulation of the new quality, the old process or old quality begins the process of breaking down, and is forces to leap to a new qualitative definition. How this takes place is pretty easy for the workers to grasp. Once you introduce a new quality into a process and it begins quantitative expansion or receives more inputs or additions of the new quality, the process halts development and expansion on the old basis. This is so because the process now evolves and develops with the new quality within it. In society, specifically a historically distinct social system (mode of production), more of the same or a quantitative increase of the same thing cannot produce a qualitative leap or compel society to change qualitatively. The industrial revolution, inaugurated by the steam engine, was a new quality that brought the expansion of manufacturing to an end as it grew quantitatively on the old basis of the old technology. Not all at what time, but all the related clusters of technology associated with the underlying principles of the steam engine came into play quantitatively.. Now the process of quantitative injection of a new quality - the steam engine and related cluster of technology ( the mechanical flywheel, and electro-mechanical transfer bars and levers that Marx spends an inordinate amount of time writing about in Capital 1 dealing with machinery) contains its own law of development or dialectic. That is to say, the quantitative growth and expansion of the new quality - that has been injected into the old process - quality, meets resistance in the old means of production. This is so because the ld process - quality, is in fact a different quality and configured based on different principles of operation. The path of the quantitative growth and evolution of the new quality is a distinct process within itself that is interesting and exciting but carries us away from the main point. We have discussed this on this list as the law of emergence. A quantitative increase does not lead to qualitative change as such. This is how it is explained to the workers. To change something you make take something away or add something new to a process or situation. The reason why is because a process is really a coherent
[Marxism-Thaxis] Class antagonism as class struggle: the dialectic (OK Ralph)
Class antagonism as class struggle: the dialectic : (exposition) The decay of feudalism and transition to capitalism shows two distinct form of change: class struggle as contradiction and class struggle as antagonism. I. Localized manual labor with the serf working the land for the nobility provided the economic based for feudalism. The primary form of wealth is landed property. The political and social structures were based on monarchy or the King and Queen as ruler with their courts of civil servants and in Europe the Church as a powerful land owner. II. The serf struggled in contradiction - not antagonism, with the landowner and nobility. The slow introduction of manufacturing meant the introduction of new tools and a new division of labor in society. These new productive forces created the growth of towns of people separating them from thousands of years living off the land, previously trapped in the ritual culture and custom of feudal society. Trade created and enlarged the towns. The struggle of the towns and towns people for cheap food from the countryside, against privately own trade routed cutting across land controlled by lords, for a market for their goods was a sharp clash of classes or the struggle of the towns and countryside. The rising bourgeoisie represented the town and the feudalist the countryside. This kind of class struggle expressed the antagonism between new classes and old classes. III. Feudal relations, contradictory to the manual labor of the serf striving to better his family life, faced a new danger - antagonism, in the towns and the process of large scale mechanization possible with the steam engine. Feudal society was founded on manual labor and was overthrown by new social forces - classes, created by mechanical labor. The way this overthrow took place was a sharp struggle involving all the classes of the old and new society with the new classes of modern worker and capitalist fighting for revolutionary change or a qualitatively different kind of society. In dialectics connections - interactivity, are a special kind of relations between and within things. Marxists search out and unravel these connections to describe and understand the self movement of what is being examined. Through the landed property relations the serf and his labor was connected with nobility as land owners. This interactive relationship as the point of production defines feudalism. Not so with the rising merchant capitalist and proletariat. The merchant capitalist and rising capitalists, as a class, shares no connection or interactive relations with the nobility or serf as the unity of capitalist commodity production. The proletariat as a class, shares no connection or interactive relations with the nobility or serf as the unity of commodity production. Rather, capitalists and proletarians constituted a new unity of production; a new production relation operating within feudal society but outside the property relations of feudalism There is a connection between all the old and new classes but not interactivity as the production process. This connection as the evolving market where things are brought and sold. The nobility purchases and consumes products created outside the landed property relations or that the serf does not create. Thus, these class exist and intermingle external to one another. The struggle of the new classes against the old was that of external collision within a dying social order. This form of class collision - struggle, express class antagonism. IV. Contradictions of the old society - the struggle between serf and nobility, were superseded by antagonism, or superseded by the external collision of new classes unable to fit into the old system, and the social revolution way underway. The struggle of the serf against the nobility did not disappear but found a new channel of support and assistance from the new classes in antagonism with the nobility and the landed property relations. Society moves in class antagonism. Marx sums up this entire historical process as : We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
[Marxism-Thaxis] Ralph: Class antagonism ... the dialectic (OK Ralph) .
Comrade Ralph: A new Marxist glossary is being prepared. The last Marxist Glossary receiving large distribution in America was L. Harry Gould’s 1943 Glossary of Marxist Terms. A larger second edition was published in 1946 called Marxist Glossary and reprinted in the 1970’s by Proletarian Publishers. Us. Things are heating up and small circles are forming everywhere. Most of the younger people and older workers are 100% unfamiliar with Marxism or any Marxist concepts. A new glossary is needed. I vowed to do such a glossary ten years ago in a discussion on Marxism list. The problem was being unable to find an audience. Since Obama's election things have heated up dramatically and the material from ten years ago, and most certainly that of the old Soviet era is totally inadequate. I have taken the lead on writing a Marxist glossary but it is part of a collective effort amongst a core of comrades. However an outside view is needed. By this I mean outside our meetings in Detroit. A fundamental draft will be prepared by the March 30, 2010 deadline. I would love to send you the entire glossary no later than March 30, and or discuss terms on line in the open. I do wish to send you the entire glossary off line through. Why? Because of your uncompromising critical and informed point of view. Ralph we might not find this in our lifetime but I assure you no one is rolling over or going out like a bunch of mutherfucking suckers. Right or wrong (and we already know what are going to be historically in error) we are dedicated to opening the new era of proletarian onslaught in the flesh. The bourgeoisie is not going to take everything away from us and we stand around like simpletons talking about where are the people. The people been in motion and this is the kind of shit we live for. Victory of death. Proletarian Unite. WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Class antagonism as class struggle: the dialectic (OK Ra...
In a message dated 3/19/2010 9:16:57 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: I. Localized manual labor with the serf working the land for the nobility provided the economic based for feudalism. The primary form of wealth is landed property. The political and social structures were based on monarchy or the King and Queen as ruler with their courts of civil servants and in Europe the Church as a powerful land owner. ^ CB: The institution of the monarchy marks the transition from feudalism to capitalism. During feudalism proper the secular section of the ruling class is feudal lords ruling feudal manors , self-contained local economic units The nation , with national monarchs, is a bourgeois formation, rooted in a national , capitalist economy. Reply Thanks, but I am not sure what this means for a description of class antagonism and its emergence within the feudal system. More over for two groups of people who have zero understanding of the Marxist approach. Will gladly send you the entire draft by the end of the month. Actually, the draft can be sent today, but the problem is that all the words and terms have not been completed. Further, work takes place on this project everyday with meetings three times a week, squeezed between classes. A draft sent today would be different from the draft being prepared for Monday. Then there is a total of four sections to the glossary. Section one is word and term definitions with narrative. In section one for instance there are four different indexes for the word class. Class, class strata, class as the shape of property and class as a concrete form of labor in different historical eras. Interestingly, the words Trotskyism and Stalinism are not in the text. Nor is there a critique or criticism of the CPUSA or any other group for that matter. More interesting is Section one beings with the American Revolutionary War. Yep. Section Two summarizes all the communist international organizations from the First to th Fourth. Section 3 is Expositions deploying many of the terms in section one Section 4 is literally Marxist catch phrases. Sutff like the philosophers have only interpreted the world in so many ways, the point if to change it. At this writing there is 40 individual pages 4 and 1/4 by 5 and 1/2 or an 6 by eleven sheet folded. We top out at 50. The problem is the rapid transitions in the writings and construction. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Class antagonism as class struggle: the dialectic (OK Ra...
In a message dated 3/19/2010 10:20:08 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: Is the difference between antagonism and contradiction that antagonism is irreconcilable, but contradiction is reconcilable ? There were some other new classes in the new bourgeois system besides the bourgeoisie and the proletariat - slaves and colonial subjects. The new forces and relations of production in antagonism with the feudal order included colonialism and slavery as well as wage-labor/capital. Marx says that colonialism and slavery were the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. Reply 1. The concept of antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions is not put forth in the glossary, with no disrespect meant to the Soviet Textbook of Marist Philosophy or Mao’s writings on Contradiction. Antagonism is not contradiction. Antagonism is a form of resolution of the contradiction between more than less static relations of production and mobile productive forces. Here is how Marx writes this: 5). At a certain stage of their development, 6). the material productive forces of society 7). come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – (this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms ) with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated up until then. 8). From forms of development of the productive forces 9). these relations turn into their fetters. 10). Then begins an epoch of social revolution.. (1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm) Antagonism is how a society rent with class contradiction, leaps to a qualitative new mode of production. The form of resolution takes place as the wiping out, destruction or liquidation of the old classes connected to the old means of production. The serf form of servitude, as a property relations - landed property, and founded on hand labor and early manufacturing, is liquidated from history on the basis of a development of new productive forces and new social relations that correspond to the new means of production. 2). Agree with the second part of the issue. The problem of a glossary is isolating what is fundamental. Thus, an index called fundamentality is part of the glossary. Then there is an index titled primitive accumulation. I swear I am going to send you the draft before it is completed and professionally edited. If you know a professional editor, preferably a comrade let me know and they can be paid a stipend. Forces of destruction is not an index although included in crisis of capital as overproduction and the destruction of commodities and means of production. Charles, swear to God gonna holla before the month is out but been on jam. Yet, no way we could leave out primitive accumulation of capital. Again, this is written for folks with zero understanding of anything remotely Marx. But they are flocking to any center of gravity with new thinking that express what they see and feel. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Speaking of the disaffected...
In a message dated 3/1/2010 8:20:44 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: CB: This doesn't seem to me to be hating on the CP. You are just saying some that is a fact. 1949-1955 is a period of most intense McCarthyism and criminalization of the CP Reply CB I try not to be a hater. There is another aspect of the CPUSA equation which I have spoken about in the past. That is the location of their cadre in heavy industry and the inability of any group to shift their forces to a new front of struggle. Let me be clear. When the Negro peoples movement of that period broke out, the bulk of the militants were located in heavy industry and specifically the trade union movement. This is no crime. No organization could demand its members quite their jobs and go to the new front of social struggle. Especially, when the members were under attack by the government. Today is different. There is a core of retired workers who can shift to any front of struggle because they are not tied to an employer. You are perhaps the youngest amongst us and you are not young. :-) WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Speaking of the disaffected...
In a message dated 2/28/2010 2:36:15 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, _farmela...@juno.com_ (mailto:farmela...@juno.com) writes: He wasn't really even a little capitalist, he was a wananbe at most. In reality, he was just another contract programmer, and as such, lacked the security and benefits that unionized blue collar workers used to enjoy. I agree that it is fucked up to see exploited workers cling so relentlessly to a petit bourgeois consciousness. Reply Perhaps, I was to harsh on this fellow. I did read his letter of protest and it was fairly obvious be was being crushed by big capital. Before returning to Detroit I did live in Texas for a while between Austin and Houston. It was Austin this fellow relocated to discover rates for his business 1/3 of that in California. It is true that for all of my life - up until now, I have had security and benefits of the better paid union workers. My fear is that the Marxist of our generation - no matter what our differences in perspective and ideology, will miss this juncture of history as the CPUSA missed the period of roughly 1949 - 1955 and leadership of the impending social activism will pass into the anti-communist so-called left. Here, I do not speak as a knee jerk hater of the CPUSA. I am not. If there are say 10,000 Marxist in America and we commit to wining over and teaching on a regular basis just 10 people for this year's goal that is 100,000 people who can make an impact. My personal goal is 36 or three a month. At this point it matters little what organization people are involved with. If we get two people who get two more people and open our homes to many of the youth, we win. All of us were won over to the idea of fighting injustice and then Marxism by someone else who spoke up. Yes? WL. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] demonstration at UAW headquarters Detroit
Monday 03/01/10 9 am - CAR CARAVAN TO SOLIDARITY HOUSE from UAW Local 22 has been cancelled. Please go directly to Solidarity House, 8000 E. Jefferson, Detroit, MI 48214 for 10 am Demonstration for Single Payer Health Care. Monday 03/01/10 9 am – MEETING WITH REPRESENTATIVE OF UAW PRESIDENT GETTELFINGER. A committee of the Retirees For Single Payer Health Care will be meeting with UAW Administrative Assistant Gary Mason at Solidarity House, 8000 E Jefferson, Detroit, MI 48214. Monday 03/01/10 10 am - DEMONSTRATION FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE at Solidarity House, 8000 E. Jefferson, Detroit, MI 48214. LEAFLET ATTACHED. Monday 03/01/10 1 pm - RETIREES FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE meeting at UAW Local 22, 4300 Michigan Ave, Detroit, MI 48210. National Health Care Speakers Program – Al Benchich, past President of UAW Local 909. Coffee and donuts served. LEAFLET ATTACHED. Friday-Sunday 03/05/10 - 03/07/10 – LABOR CAMPAIGN FOR SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE National Conference at the National Labor College in the Washington, D.C. area. LEAFLET ATTACHED. Monday 03/08/10 1 pm - RETIREES FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE meeting at UAW Local 22, 4300 Michigan Ave, Detroit, MI 48210. National Health Care Speakers Program – Maureen Taylor, State Chairperson for the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. Coffee and donuts served. LEAFLET ATTACHED. Monday 03/15/10 1 pm - RETIREES FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE meeting at UAW Local 22, 4300 Michigan Ave, Detroit, MI 48210. National Health Care Speakers Program – Olivia Boykins, Congressman Conyers subject matter expert in Michigan for the United States National Health Care Act HR 676. Coffee and donuts served. LEAFLET ATTACHED. Monday 03/22/10 1 pm - RETIREES FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE meeting at UAW Local 22, 4300 Michigan Ave, Detroit, MI 48210. National Health Care Speakers Program – Marjorie Mitchell, Executive Director of Michigan Universal Health Care Network (MichUHCAN). Coffee and donuts served. LEAFLET ATTACHED. Please attend any or all of these National Health Care activities and bring a friend. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Not everybody is on the same page
In a message dated 2/23/2010 10:12:22 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, _jann...@gmail.com_ (mailto:jann...@gmail.com) writes: Until health care is seen as a basic right of citizenship (or residence), the government can always deny it to this or that part of the population. These workers will go down fighting for something they think they deserve, not what they think Americans or human beings deserve. Even if they win in their struggle, 40-80 million Americans have already lost. CJ Comment I have not been detained enough in describing the actual struggle and process as it took place. RETIREES FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE has as its core Conyers health care bill 676, which proposes to provide health care for everyone in the United States of North America. Our union - UAW, has passively stated in its documents at every Constitutional Convention, its desire for such a system of national health care in America. This call for a system of national health care is perhaps twenty years old. The problem arises because there is never any union activity to realize this goal. I do not want to get lost in all the details but the system of health care for auto workers, was owned and controlled by the auto companies as profits centers. For instance the largest system of hospitals in Detroit remains the Henry Ford hospital to this very day. Thus, there has not been a historic impulse arising from within the organized autoworkers for a all inclusive health care system as an answer to autoworkers health care concerns. When retirees lost our company sponsored eye and dental coverage and as the company pushed to detach retirees from company sponsored health care, retired workers sought to combine together to retain their traditional heath care coverage. This process of combining together is in its first phase and began with four, maybe six people. These older workers retain a sense of organization, militancy and connections with the historic communist current as a part of their age and generations inheritance. What was a hand full of people in six months became meetings of 30 - 40 people, with presidents of Local Union retirees groups meeting. Ten months ago resistance to passing out our literature was faced at various local union meeting in around the city. Some union leaders sought to shout us down in union meetings or prohibit us from disturbing literature in the meetings, although we were polite and respectful and always asked. Then the threat came, which we face and replied we are fuckng armed and can start dying right fucking now. As the crisis deepened and an interest in the new VEBA plans rose we became popular and all was forgiven about our anti-union attitude. The word slowly spread that some of us were meeting on Monday’s at Local 22. People started showing up. We started taking part in all meeting and protest for national health care and began a running education on the health care crisis. The point trying to be made in the same page article by Sam Webb is how to fight things out in real time and why it is impossible to fight on the level of fighting a system. Condemning Obama and the Obama administration is an act of futility and nothing more than sectarianism in the context of actually trying to organize small groups of people to express their struggle for survival. The struggle of the workers - proletarian, always passes through phases embodying how individuals and the collective mind perceives its rights. This perception of rights is shaped by and a product of the era of the bourgeoisie. The struggle of the proletariat in all countries is in fact a struggle over shares of the social products, services and for greater political liberty. As a general rule most strike struggle - not all, go down in defeat but one must fight or die. What is different about this new emerging fight is the perception by these older workers that their struggle is that of a class. Yes, this perception is still fuzzy, but the retired workers combining under the banner of a single payer system means transcending the narrow bound of my individual needs. We are in for exciting and glorious times. Lt us march on til victory is one/won. WL ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Not everybody is on same page
In a message dated 2/22/2010 12:48:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: Not everybody is on same page by: Sam Webb February 18 2010 tags: communists, strategy and tactics Let me begin with the obvious: the left (organized and unorganized) has seldom been of one mind. Differences over aims, strategy, tactics, programmatic demands, forms of struggle, etc. have been commonplace. This moment is no different. In fact, I would argue that two distinct and competing trends have taken shape in the course of the first year of the Obama presidency. Comment Same page? Actually, a tiny segment of sectarian Marxist writers - perhaps numbering two - three hundred virtual personalities, are not only on a different page but in an entirely different book. The issue is not so much ones attitude towards the Obama administration, but ones conception of reality. Where one might charge Webb with “to much reality” and/or an incorrect view of actual political relations between Democrats and Republicans and their relationship with the voters, the sectarian Marxists are well, sectarian and trapped in the reproduction of their own sectarianism. Since the founding of the American communist movement, it has been proven to be impossible to fight the quality called the bourgeois mode of commodity production or capitalism, or “the two party system,” or the administration. It doesn't mater what the administration. The communist movement grew during periods of social upheaval, fighting on the basis of real issues dear to the hearts and minds of the proletarian masses. This was most certainly true during the period of the fight for unions; then industrial trade unions and the great struggles for Civil Rights, defining the last period of social upheaval. One cannot fight within a social system on the level of the system’s existence. The social system is a quality. The quality is capitalism. The political quality is the government and its ruling party's. Opposing Obama as a bourgeois representative means next to nothing. If one cannot fight the quality defined as capitalism, then common sense demands that one must fight and deal on the quantitative level, with specific stages of development and locating what is unique and important to the actual phase of the social process one is living. It is useless to charge anyone associated with Marxism for failing to recognize that the American state and government is an instrument of the capitalist class, serves bourgeois property, and Obama is simultaneously the head of state and government as president. One has to fight on a quantitative level. Not because I say so, but because there is no “other game in town,” except the various fronts of struggle for survival taking place. The unique skills of communists as organizers are need at every front of struggle. For instance, in Detroit a struggle is brewing involving auto workers and retired autoworkers with the state and government, because General Motors and Chrysler are more than less owned by the government. This quantitative level means a struggle over full nationalization of auto is on the agenda. Not as a cure all but as a form of immediate combat where a section of proletarians can discover how to fight for their interest as a class. We can introduce this issue not because it sound clever, but because two of the companies are partially nationalized already. This means new ideas can be injected into society attached to a living social process. Not because I say so but because the government owns Chrysler and General Motors rather than individual employers. Ford is not on the governments dime so a somewhat different form of struggle is unfolding there, with a massive rejection of the contract last year. The Chrysler and General Motors workers have no contract fight they can reject as such. That is to say, the fight is with the government. This is an entirely new and different game. Another such struggle is brewing over national health care. On the quantitative level this means these same workers in Detroit, retired workers at General Motors and Chrysler, recently had their health care package restructured and detached from the company. A VEBA has been established that as it exist is set to run out of money in as little as 36 months. VEBA went into effect January 1, 2010 and out of pocket payments has risen at a monthly rate of roughly 30% for the past two months. When VEBA was sold to the autoworkers its was stated the fund would last roughly 80 years with an annual rate increase of no more than 3%. Health care arises as a material issue in a context where the government owns Chrysler and General Motors. The struggle of these workers for health care is with the government rather than an employer such as is the case with Ford. Unable to get anything from their previous
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Speaking of the disaffected...
I read this guys suicide letter and here is what he wrote in part. Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks. Then came the L.A. depression of the early 1990s. Our leaders decided that they didn't need the all of those extra Air Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that. The result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized Texas SL fiasco. However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government funds to shore up their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement. Years later, after weathering a divorce and the constant struggle trying to build some momentum with my business, I find myself once again beginning to finally pick up some speed. Then came the .COM bust and the 911 nightmare. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I've never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages... and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and doesn't give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich buddies. Comment I asked myself, why would a human being work a 100 hour week voluntarily? Seven days 12 hours a day is only 72 hours. Add another 28 hours and one has no family life and ultimately no wife or children one can maintain a relationship with. Here is a man that earnestly believed that capitalism could work for him and it did work pretty good in the post WW II period. Things stated going to hell a very long time ago for the proletariat majority. New layers of American society is being ruined. The real proletariat in America thinks out things very different, and their spontaneous drift to the right barely leads to terrorist acts on this level. Massive economic ruin does generate an initial response of increased family abuse, bouts of rage and individual suicide. Then depending on the ability of communist to impact the movement with a sense of purpose, the implosive subsides and becomes an outer explosion of activity. I feel no sympathy for this man who drives an airplane into a building because he is angry with the system. Did he own the plane? This angry man thought thinks out as a little capitalist, rather than proletarians still clinging to bourgeois views. No human in their right mind, voluntarily works 100 hours a week, unless they earnestly believe that at some point they they can make it and retired in peace and wealth. This pursuit of wealth and making it was once called the American dream. Our bomber terrorist woke up to the American nightmare, millions having been living for a couple of decades. Real time America on February 19, 2010 is in a profound crisis. 150 million Americans feel stress over layoffs and paying their bills on a consistent basis. Over 60 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. A record 20 million Americans qualified for unemployment insurance benefits last year, causing 27 states to run out of funds, with seven more also expected to go into the red within the next few months. In total, 40 state programs are expected to go broke. When you factor in all these uncounted workers -- involuntary part-time and discouraged workers -- the unemployment rate rises from 9.7 percent to over 20 percent. In total, we now have over 30 million U.S. citizens who are unemployed or underemployed. With a prison population of 2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated than any other nation in the world -- the per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000. The prison industry is thriving and expecting major growth over the next few years. A recent report from the Hartford Advocate titled Incarceration Nation revealed that a new prison opens every week somewhere in America. Over five million U.S. families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million U.S. families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25 percent of current mortgages underwater. 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32 percent increase from 2008. As bankruptcies continue to skyrocket, medical bankruptcies are responsible for over 60 percent of them, and over 75 percent of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health care insurance. Over 50 million people who need to use food stamps to eat, and a stunning 50 percent of U.S. children will
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Speaking of the disaffected...
In a message dated 2/19/2010 1:57:51 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, rdum...@autodidactproject.org writes: While other people are just as fucked up in their own ways, white people of this type have a peculiarly apolitical view of their own victimization. They can't see their situation as anything more than an individual problem, as lone individuals being abused by the system, as individuals who can only act alone, and who are victimized by bad people running a system that is supposed to work but who have betrayed something they thought they were part of and was supposed to be functioning properly. Comment I think you hit the nail on the head with a carpenter's skill. The unionized workers, white in particular, facing impending ruin have a somewhat different instinct and orientation. These workers who I interact with are very angry and gave Obama his edge in the election. They are also universally scared of the system but distrustful and harbor very different illusions. They generally have not lived under generations of reactionary bourgeois democracy with its extreme police violence and in areas like the deep South have been on the non-receiving end of generations of historic fascist terror. In places where the black areas of town merge into the white proletarian neighborhoods their is a profound impulse for unity. The specific problem is that these workers have a way of thinking things out. We - meaning the generation of communists who are basically seniors, need a way to speak with these workers on the basis of how they think things out in real time as the velocity of crisis increase and as they awareness is in flux. These workers who constituted the margin of victory for Obama can swing either way in the actual social struggle. I am not seriously concerned about the so-called Tea bagger and fanatics, who are divorced from the masses of proletarians without regard to color. I am concerned about establishing a polarity that serves as a gravity well for the so-called political middle, as it exists in flux. The crisis has kicked the economic legs from up under the political middle as this section of the working class is hurled forcefully into the lowest section of the proletariat. The fragments of the remaining left are incapable of any dialogue with the proletarian masses. We are making headway, really, but the resistance and fear is incredible. Ralph, we have arrived in the undiscovered country. Strategy and ideology of the past is useless. We need to make perhaps 10,000 new mistakes. The pace and consolidation of Fascism in America is going to depend upon our ability to really influence and win people over to thinking different. The edifice of race has been cracked forever. Even the bourgeoisie is caught flatfooted. We might get really lucky. Hopefully we will not have to experience what the former Soviet proletariat had to endure.Our analysis is that there will be no recovery only restoration of profitability on the governments dime. Things are getting interesting. WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
In a message dated 2/18/2010 12:20:49 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: As the meeting ended, Carolyn L. Whaley, 76, held up her copy of the Constitution. She carries it everywhere, she explained, and she was prepared to lay down her life to protect it from the likes of Mr. Obama. “I would not hesitate,” she said, perfectly calm. more at _http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html) Comment Very reactionary political current reminiscent of the ideological bent of the pro slavery forces during the lead up to the Civil War in America. The slave oligarchy and the Southern elite claimed to stand on the side of the Constitution, and they did. That the Constitution legalized and protected slavery meant its defense supported slavery. No real difference today. These people are very angry and believe they can recast bourgeois private property in their favor. They are horribly mistaken. Perhaps, Texas needs to be given back to Mexico. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The new narrative: History recast and the rise of a new proletarian movement
(speaking of trade unions as a percentage of the employed workers) As Mark Rickling replied on the LBO list: You'd call 36% 'very small' and 'trivial'? To which I added: Right - and it was as much a qualitative as a quantitative issue for the socialist movement. Marx and Engels and their revolutionary and reformist followers correctly adjudged the unionized workers, strategically concentrated in the key sectors of the economy, as the only social force capable of leading a struggle against capitalism and reorganizing production on the basis of need rather than profit. The centrality of the organized working class was integral to Marxism in both theory and practice. When the anticipated proletarian revolution did not materialize in the most developed capitalist countries, Western new leftists like Carrol sought to substitute students, blacks, women, and other insurgent groups as agents of change. But none of these diffuse and transient constituencies, which were generally allied to labour, had anything remotely resembling the concentrated numbers, financial resources, economic power, political influence and more generalized social objectives of the trade union movement during the long period of it's rise. They still don't, even thought the unions are but a shadow of what they once were. ___ Comment The above was taken from Pen-L. Marx referred to the conflict of the productive forces with the relations of production. He makes it clear that the spontaneous advance of the forces of production increasingly comes into conflict with the more than less static production relations as the basis of the revolutionary process. Marx and Engels believed that the concentration of the proletariat brought about by giant industry would set the stage for the socialist revolution. Where does Marx assign the workers in trade unions the change agent of bourgeois private property? (quote) “the unionized workers, strategically concentrated in the key sectors of the economy, as the only social force capable of leading a struggle against capitalism and reorganizing production on the basis of need rather than profit.” (end quote) The proposition above is plain old fashion syndicalism attributed to Marx. The industrial form of trade unions had not yet arisen and consolidated at the time of the Communist Manifesto (1848). In fact the decisive battles for the industrial union form would not be fought out for another 70 years. I am not aware where Marx or Engels declared the craft form of unionism as the vehicle through which the definitive battles of the proletariat against bourgeoisie would evolve. The second paragraph contradicts the American experience. The idea that blacks were allied to labor begs the question, “what is labor” and “what are the blacks” existing external to this labor requiring an alliance? Blacks have always been an intimate part of the labor movement no different than Italians, Irish or Slavic laborers. Labor movement means a group of people or class that sells its labor ability for wages. All those individuals in our society that must sell their labor ability for wages constitute the totality of the labor movement. The concept of organized labor and then labor existing external to blacks and women means that in America the labor movement was basically white. This is not true, although the CIO did in fact emerge as the fighter for organizing the unskilled white workers under the industrial union form. The Civil Rights Movement was a form of struggle of the blacks embracing all classes amongst blacks against segregation. Within the organized labor movement or current, blacks fought for equality as a mass of unskilled laborers - in the main, and this fight was not very different, in its essence than that of other laborers. The form of the fight was the color question because that was the index for segregation. The alliances between civil rights organizations and unions, say Walter Reuther marching with Dr. King, is not a black/labor alliance, but a manifestation of blacks within the UAW fighting for equality across the board including within the UAW. Actually, Reuther had stated at an early UAW Constitutional Convention that of the tens of thousands of blacks in the union not one was qualified to be on the Executive Board of the Union. What changed the direction of the UAW was the 1967 Rebellion in Detroit. The union was compelled to open up for blacks who had majorities in various departments and even entire plants. Homer Jolly Sr. led the wave of newly elected black local union presidents in 1968 at Local 51. Local 51 is my home local of which I have been member in good standing for 40 years. I m not aware of any significant Northern union activity supporting efforts in the South to desegregate and most certainly
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Wiki Lenin
In a message dated 2/16/2010 12:12:08 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, _rdum...@autodidactproject.org_ (mailto:rdum...@autodidactproject.org) writes: There is remarkable objectivity about the Red Terror, an object of controversy in the discussion of this entry. Oddly, though, there is less controversy over the article than I would have expected, from either those who hate Lenin or those whol still feel the need to lie on behalf of the USSR. Comment It is still pretty hard to discuss anything Soviet. Mention health care or education and one is charged with denying Soviet reality. Mention developing an industrial infrastructure without a stock market or class of capitalist owning the material factors of production and one is charged with denying the existence of the gulag. Mention the gulag and one is charged with minimizing the stranglehold of the party on social life. Mention anything Soviet and one is charged with all kinds of crimes and sins against humanity. Ralph, you fit somewhat into this mix. When I mention the Soviet Textbook of Marxist Philosophy as a bench mark you see red and go ballistic. Why, I am not sure. I do not crap - shit, on history. Nor do I ever feel a compulsion to justify what happened as history. Take away slavery and many of us cease to exist. One can criticize their judges 24/7. I answer history's questions and event with a how and then a why based on the how. Some approach the issue with why and then how. Some on the left and right, bourgeois and communist, deny the evolution of the terrorist legal and extra legal aspects of the state power took place directly under Lenin's command. On one list Soviet Legacy I basically mentioned all the key points in the Lenin entry - (although I had gotten the source material decades ago), and was charged with relying upon material from Robert Conquest. Really, and interestingly this charged was leveled by a Marxist of a Trotskyist heritage. The Stalin regime evolved and expanded this terroristic organization of state power. Nothing scares me Ralph, other than my own weaknesses and inability to prepare the next generation at the velocity they are demanding new information. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] African-American History Month Program (2)
II. The first American Revolution of 1776 inaugurated the epoch of wars for national liberation as a form of history. Following on its heels was the Haitian Revolution and Bolivar. The wars of national liberation predate the doctrine of proletarian revolution and as a form of history transformation would run another two hundred years closing out - as a history changing current, with the victory of the Vietnamese Revolution and unification in 1976. Slavery in America distorted everything the war of national liberation claimed as its goal. The historic polarity between national liberation movements and imperialism was the basis for groups - nations, oppressed peoples, the oppressed gender, becoming aware of themselves, their conditions and fighting it out. This historic polarity as a form of history, was a driver of the transition from society anchored in the agrarian revolution to a new kind of society anchored in the industrial revolution. The color factor was an insurmountable obstacle to the unity of the fighting section of our working class. This is no longer the case. In the formation of capital the form of history was driven by New World conquest and enslaving the African. New World colonization and African slavery gave impetus to navigation, science and industry. An enormous world wide ideological superstructure arose to justify and protect colonization of the world’s colored peoples. In America this ideology of destruction and enslavement arose on the basis of genocide of the American Indian and later the plantation system of slavery. Not all at one time but white supremacy arose and acquired a seemingly life of it‘s own. African Americans tended to be looked upon and treated at best as if they were on the periphery of our country’s history. Their being marginalized throughout most of our history reinforces this view. Nevertheless, any serious inquiry into our history will show that the control, manipulation and exploitation of the African American was at the heart of every major and most minor decisions of the state prior to the Civil War, and a good many of them after. The control of the African American has been the political means by which the entire working class has been controlled and prevented from reforming the system, more in their favor. Each reform of the system strengthened the hand of capital. Fortunately, history - as evolution and development of the productive forces of a society, steps into the social process in such a way as to unravel and shatter previously existing forms of the social contract and a given historic form of control of the working class. It is always appropriative to mention the catalyst for change in society. In the past century the invention and deployment of the tractor and mechanization of agriculture, had far reaching social consequences for America. Not all at one time but inexorably. Mechanization freed eleven million sharecroppers from the land and cast them as a mobile labor forces seeking employment wherever it could be found. Society change has a logic. When something fundamental to an existing economic relations and specific way labor is organized changes, everything dependent upon that, which was fundamental must in turn change. Not all at one time but a change wave is unleashed that must run its course. In the process of the change wave revolutionaries fight for change to benefit the proletarian masses the most. The tractor changed the organization of agricultural production and brought down the sharecropper system as one of the primary mode of the social organization of labor in the South. Millions of people were “kicked out of” a social position called sharecropping. Of these eleven million sharecroppers - a distinct class formation in America, the majority were white, with five million being black. The lesson for revolutionaries is the dynamics of the destruction of a class and/or form of class. The form of a class changes under the impact of the technological advance. Qualitative changes in the productive forces creates qualitative changes in the form of class and property. The industrial revolution is a case in point. The serfs became manufacturing workers and with the advance of the industrial revolution industrial workers on the scale of history. Bourgeois property cast this industrial workers as a wage worker or proletariat. Technology creates the content versus the “property form” of class called industrial, as surely as the advance of technology created a class of software workers. The content of a class can undergo change, in front of and without changing the property form that cast a particular form of worker proletariat. Freeing five million black people from the land, in the context of an economic upswing, called into question segregation. Were two factories to be built one
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] African-American History Month Program (4 5)
V. I want to try to be clear to avoid misunderstanding about what legal segregation actually meant. For 50 years - between 1920 and 1970, Detroit had an extra legal curfew imposed on the black where they had to be off the streets at sun down or risk being jailed and shot. It was extra legal because no laws existed on the books but the “curfew law existed in fact” and was enforced by the police and understood by every level of local government. Exceptions were made for workers on the night shift and weekends when traveling to entertainment events. Literally, if you stood on the corner talking, the police would drive up, roll down the window and say, “give me that corner.” This was a warning to disperse or be “beat down.” An elaborate system of communications developed where you were informed the police were 2 blocks away and closing in fast, allowing one to take to the alley ways. Black power is what it was, as the demand for entry into the political system. In this sense the struggle of the blacks was no different than the struggle of the Irish, Italian or any other “national group“ that becomes large enough in a jurisdiction to take control of the “machine.” The color factor complicated the struggle of the blacks, meaning all the various groupings dominating the “city machine” had to be fought because their unity was based on the isolation and exclusion of the blacks. Black Power meant black political power or the politics of combating, inheriting and taking over the “city machine” in the North and the local political jurisdictions in the South enforcing fascist segregation. Thus, the path of the fight could only take place on the basis of the post legal Jim Crow segregated voting market, because white voters as a general rule could not and would not elect a black. The refusal of whites to elect blacks during this period cannot be causally spoken of as “just” racism without qualification. Beneath the color factor is “the city machine factor,“ or the system of spoils and payoffs in every American city. Jobs in the police force and all levels of governments and city services are at stake. Awarding contracts for city services involves more than the actual workers hired and require the system of lawyers, accountants and land speculators every time a new road is built or a new housing development is proposed. This system evolved before blacks entered the industrial class and is based on nationality or the immigrant status of waves of European immigrants. The Irish had to built up their mass in a jurisdiction as did the Italian and Polish to grab hold of the city machine. Pretty much the same with the blacks + the color factor. The demand for black police officers was an exceptionally brutal and violent struggle in Detroit and Cleveland. This was a period of desegregation that birthed the “Black Guardians” within police departments in the major cities. The Black Guardian were black police officers literally forced to fight the semi-fascist polices of their local police departments. More often than not, the Black Guardians played an exemplar role in protecting the social movement from fascist attacks by segments of the police department. This was certainly the case in Detroit. The point is that at a certain stage in the change process the structures of control become paralyzed and at odds with itself. An example of this I experienced was the case of protesting at Cooly High school in Detroit and not the one in Chicago named after the movie. In the process of the demonstration a police care literally ran into a mass of people injuring many. The police pull out their guns to shoot us. The Black Guardian on the scene pulled out their gun and aimed them at the heads of the other officers and told them if they fired one shot they would shoot them. This happened because our struggle was just. Then there was the tip off to many of us that the police were in the process of preparing to raid the Black Panther office and kill them. This tip off allowed people to go to the Panthers office along with the press to halt the attack. We are poised to experience a new form of the social movement and need to be mindful of how things happen. At the end of the day the majority of the people of our country are going to line up with the proletarian revolution because it is just. Control of the police force also involves management of crime and drugs and who gets paid. The city machine and police get paid through various sources, including crime. In Detroit the struggle within the union and on the factory floor was electoral and extra legal, frequently erupting in gun play. This struggle is often misunderstood. The struggle of the lowest paid unskilled is always sharp and violent as these workers press to control the internal union organization in opposition to the skilled trades. The
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] African-American History Month Program (4 5)
In a message dated 2/17/2010 11:15:47 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, _rdum...@autodidactproject.org_ (mailto:rdum...@autodidactproject.org) writes: Like your presentation, but as usual, I wonder about your projections for the future: The destitute proletariat will tackle questions for itself when it learns it has no other recourse. Where are the signs that this is happening? I see fascist mass movements as a likelier outcome. Reply Brother, we have been in a bad way for a very long time. The trade union movement is about 7.3% of the working class and this means their historical control over the labor movement can be broken. This control derives from the fact of the union movement being organized. An organized force will always dominate an unorganized mass. We - I mean we and if the shoe does not apply let it fly, have been under fascist and semi fascist conditions forever. One prison a week gets built in America and as the end game these prisons are meant to house white Americans that are proletariat. I am to old to speak in niceties. The fastest growing prison population - still under the radar, is white women. I know this from living in Florida and my wife working in the penal system. Is fascism inevitable as a social consequence? Yes. How long and the velocity of change is in question. America is a huge country and it is going to be very difficult to clamp down on the proletariat masses as in Germany. Germany can fit into Texas. We have a host of material and historical factors in our favor. We can make a difference in real time. The new proletarian movement has not yet expressed its voice and features. On the sale of American history we are at where the CPUSA was in say 1949. No group of individual have every completed the leap from one boundary to the next and maintained their revolutionary outlook. We will complete the leap or die. Period. Let us march on, Til victory is won/one. WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] African-American History Month Program (3)
III. The Obama Presidency Real time America on February 16, 2010 is in a profound crisis. 150 million Americans feel stress over layoffs and paying their bills on time. Over 60 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. A record 20 million Americans qualified for unemployment insurance benefits last year, causing 27 states to run out of funds, with seven more also expected to go into the red within the next few months. In total, 40 state programs are expected to go broke. When you factor in all these uncounted workers -- involuntary part-time and discouraged workers -- the unemployment rate rises from 9.7 percent to over 20 percent. In total, we now have over 30 million U.S. citizens who are unemployed or underemployed. With a prison population of 2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated than any other nation in the world -- the per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000. The prison industry is thriving and expecting major growth over the next few years. A recent report from the Hartford Advocate titled Incarceration Nation revealed that a new prison opens every week somewhere in America. Over five million U.S. families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million U.S. families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25 percent of current mortgages underwater. 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32 percent increase from 2008. As bankruptcies continue to skyrocket, medical bankruptcies are responsible for over 60 percent of them, and over 75 percent of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health care insurance. Over 50 million people who need to use food stamps to eat, and a stunning 50 percent of U.S. children will use food stamps to eat at some point in their childhoods. Approximately 20,000 people are added to this total every day. In 2009, one out of five U.S. households didn't have enough money to buy food. In households with children, this number rose to 24 percent, as the hunger rate among U.S. citizens has now reached an all-time high. A foreign audience need a context to understand these figures. The American government defines poverty for a family of four at $32,000 a year. 60% of the American working class makes $14 an hour which equals $29,120.00 based on working 52 weeks a year. Government statistics place 60% of Americans below the poverty level before the outbreak of the 2008 crisis. The rate and velocity of the crisis means the spontaneous tendency of the workers to swing to the right, expressed in the demand for restoration of the social contract, must be tackled by American communist with propaganda that fits who these workers, at this moment, think things out. The working class and proletariat always has to show itself that it knows what it knows and then express this knowing by voting with their feet. ,Obama’s election is a game changer, far more important than the scores of black appointees under Bush W. administration. Obama was not appointed, but anointed and elected by an important voting section of the working class. Obama completes a task Colin Powell was poised to tackle, but blocked by the historically fascist Southern political establishment. The Southern base of the Republican Party favored Bush the second as “hit man” to realign America ’s domestic and international politics. Obama has something in common with Colin Powell. Nether arose out of the Civil Rights organizations, as did Jesse Jackson Sr. What all have in common is that they were made possible by desegregation and the Black Power Movement that emerged from the Civil Rights Movement. The election of Obama further fixes what everyone understood was the supreme irony of our history: the color factor. The election of a black as president is a big thing, important as a benchmark of how far we have traveled in the post Jim Crow era. Defeating John McCain’s “America First Campaign” momentarily fractured the Southern political establishment, as it is expressed in the Republican party. The ideology of Southern reaction is outright fascism. The breach by a section of the voting Northern workers with the Southern political establishment propelled Obama into office. Workers in the heart of the industrial centers of the Midwest or the “Rust bowl“ were an important gravity well in effecting the breach and electing Obama. Their movement rippled throughout the country, giving Obama the decisive edge. These workers have been and are being economically ruined. The Obama campaign momentarily captured the sentiment of this section of workers cast adrift from the Reagan Revolution and its legacy. The tendency of these workers is to spontaneously drift to the right as the first impulse to achieving a mass
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Wiki Lenin
In a message dated 2/16/2010 5:52:44 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: When I made corrections in the Coleman Young article, they put back in what was up before my corrections. When I wrote to the person who seemed to be one of the moderators for that particular wiki-biography, I never heard back. Comment I have made a couple of corrections to Vikki which was rejected UNTIL I cited other source material. One correction was on the 1967 Detroit rebellion. In my opinion one is going to encounter barriers dealing with anything Detroit. This Lenin things is more complicated and becomes even more complicated because sectarian groups have competing interest in Lenin. For instance where the article on Lenin speaks of his attitude about what is required for a communist state, one could correct this by citing Lenin writings articulating his concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat rather than a communist state. I did find the following assertion curesou to say the least: Even when the health of Lenin began to flag in 1921, it is unclear why his comrades did not seek out more ways to reduce the strain on him, whereas other communist leaders such as Trotsky would routinely take time off and engage in recreation. When Lenin was examined by doctors in March 1922, no evidence of nervous or other pathology was found, but in light of the strong headaches he was experiencing, as well as evidence of over-exhaustion, it was recommended that he take time off to recover. The first sentence is meant to say exactly what? Then if I had to name Lenin most celebrated writings it would probable differ from everyone else celebrated writings. Go figure. WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
