[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1
Now that American society is undergoing a profound revolution in the society machinery ^^^ CB: What is the evidence and argument that _society_ is going through a profound revolution in machinery ? What characteristics of today's new machinery make the revolution _profound_ in comparison with the revolutions in machinery in the last 100 years ? Why is American society undergoing this and not the whole world ? If it is the whole world then why not say the whole world ? ___ 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] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1
The new antagonistic form of wealth is capital as a notional (imaginary) value or wealth as valueless production. CB: Is it a new form ? Marx noted ficticious capital. Or is it that a new proportion of total profits and capital is in the fictitious capital sector. ___ 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] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1
Our society is breaking down. This break down is material and ideological. Barrack Obama was called forth as President Obama to "fix what is broken." All the Kings horses and all the Kings men can put our society back together again; at least on the old basis. Herein lays the rub. CB: "Can't" ? ___ 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] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1
Ralph:Yes, this is a crossroads . . . a conjuncture of the election of the first black president and a major crisis of capitalism. Those two facts are interdependent, interrelated, and quite important, but I've yet to see an insightful elucidation of the nature of that importance. Decisive in this is not the election of a black president, but the fact that Cracker America, almost half of the white electorate, voted for McCain and is out for Obama's blood. I saw a documentary last night on HBO: "Right America: Feeling Wronged": a survey of white Americans who hate Obama. These aren't just white people, these are the whitest people you ever saw, the redneck kind that make your blood run cold. The kind not shy about telling you what they think about niggers. Granted, they are dinosaurs, and hopefully they will die out soon, but not soon enough. Now the question is: how will Cracker America react to 'socialist' Obama's handling of the economic crisis? ^^ CB; The racists are a danger, but the important factor in this election is the great mass ofWhite Americans who voted _for_ Obama.That's what is new. The racists have alwaysbeen here. This election was a point of tipping from the racists' majority to an anti-racist majority of the electorate. The racists are a danger. This is a crossroads, a crisis for the American system with, of course, danger and opportunity, massesof Whites with new thinking and openness. Which side are you on ? ___ 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] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1
The characterization of Obama is not very informative. Yes, this is a crossroads . . . a conjuncture of the election of the first black president and a major crisis of capitalism. Those two facts are interdependent, interrelated, and quite important, but I've yet to see an insightful elucidation of the nature of that importance. Decisive in this is not the election of a black president, but the fact that Cracker America, almost half of the white electorate, voted for McCain and is out for Obama's blood. I saw a documentary last night on HBO: "Right America: Feeling Wronged": a survey of white Americans who hate Obama. These aren't just white people, these are the whitest people you ever saw, the redneck kind that make your blood run cold. The kind not shy about telling you what they think about niggers. Granted, they are dinosaurs, and hopefully they will die out soon, but not soon enough. Now the question is: how will Cracker America react to 'socialist' Obama's handling of the economic crisis? -Original Message- >From: waistli...@aol.com >Sent: Feb 26, 2009 8:13 AM >To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu >Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: >The election of Barack Obama 1 > >Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama >By Waistline2 > >Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By Elíades Acosta Matos raises a >question whose answer is "both!" >.. The key to understanding Obama the person and his administration resides in American history itself and this moment of capitalist crisis. Barack Obama is most certainly the chief executive officer of imperial capital but that does not tell anyone very much. Dialectic of Revolution as history. Obama the person is the promise made flesh of our Second Revolutionary War - the Civil War. Written on the banner of our Second Revolutionary War is the p romise, "toward a more perfect union," and then the idea of a nation - not Union, conceived in liberty and justice. The living Obama as symbol, manifest this promise, and is the crossing of the color line in American history. Without understanding this tiny promise, and the crossing of the color line, the behavior of the American peoples and the class intersection that made his election possible makes no(n)-sense. The complexity as the moment, resides in the need for bourgeoisie and revolutionary alike, compelled by the logic of history, to appropriate the same history for diametrically opposed - antagonistic, purposes. ___ 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] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1
Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2 Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By Elíades Acosta Matos raises a question whose answer is "both!" _http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=800&Ite_ (http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=800&Ite) John Foster Dulles, leading Cold War warrior and America’s secretary of state from 1953 to 1959, summed up America’s foreign policy as, "no permanent friends, just permanent interest." This formula also applies to domestic policy. Barack Obama election as President, proves something has changed in American society, according to every political pole and tendency in American society itself. This "something" is bound up with American history; the historic crossing of the color line; political shifts and political realignments world wide and changes in the world wide mode of production demanding policy shift as US imperialism struggles to hold together the unity of productive forces and productive relations world wide. Obama the person and chief executive officer of capital - his symbolic gestures/jesters and rhetoric, are better understood placed in a historical and political context. Our society is breaking down. This break down is material and ideological. Barrack Obama was called forth as President Obama to "fix what is broken." All the Kings horses and all the Kings men can put our society back together again; at least on the old basis. Herein lays the rub. The context and content of the current financial and economic crisis, an intense cyclical crisis of capitalism, is shaped and impacted by the increasing revolution - crisis, in the productive machinery of American society. America is undergoing economic dislocation. This dislocation is a combination of revolution in the productive forces, the emergence of an antagonistic form of wealth and new antagonistic classes, combined with a classical crisis of capital reproduction. The new antagonistic form of wealth is capital as a notional (imaginary) value or wealth as valueless production. Society move in class antagonism. The dialectic of all social revolution is a combination of "contradiction" and "antagonism," with contradiction being replaced by antagonism. This process is slowly but inexorably underway in America, demanding disclosure and then President Obama‘s election place in that context. Contradiction and Antagonism. . The contradiction between the two basic classes holding society together, drives the system - mode of production, through all its quantitative boundaries. The introduction of new productive machinery creates new classes. With the emergence and quantitative expansion of new class(s), the new classes collide in external collision - antagonism, with the existing classes of the old society, founded on the old property relations. Then an epoch of social revolution emerges. The basic class contradiction of feudal society was between the serf and the nobility, with neither being able to overthrow the system of which they constituted. The serfs were not birthed in, or existed as an antagonistic class in in relationship to/with the nobility or the landed property relations, despite its history of repeated violent clashes. Why should not this very same dialectic apply to the two basic classes of capitalist society? At a certain stage of development of the productive forces, contradictions internal to feudal society, driving it through all its quantitative boundary’s were replaced, (not extinguished, but superseded) by an antagonism that appears as the new classes being generated on the basis of the revolution in the productive forces. These new classes were bourgeoisie and proletariat. Feudal society as the landed property relations, did not "just generate" the new classes, but rather a development in the productive machinery of feudal society is the material wherewithal for the emergence of the new classes. Hence, these classes emerging in the womb of the feudal order were birthed in antagonism - not contradiction, with landed property and all its social trappings and privileges. With the growth of industry - capital, segments of the serf as a class, undergoes transformation (metamorphosis), sheds its "serf form," and become modern proletarians. This change in the form of the working class, (from serf to modern proletariat) is the creation of an antagonistic class, or contradiction being replaced - superseded, by antagonism. Now that American society is undergoing a profound revolution in the society machinery the difference between class contradiction and class antagonism, rather than "antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions" is relevant. New classes in their infancy exist in America today in the form of
