From jannuzi at gmail.com Sun Feb 1 00:20:54 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 16:20:54 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Unemployment Message-ID: >>The radical economist who taught me used the rule of thumb that the real unemployment rate is about double what the BLS reports.CB<< That's what I said on LBO T some years ago, and wow did a certain individual throw a steaming hot hissy fit over that. Who is your radical economist who taught you? CJ From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sun Feb 1 11:29:04 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 10:29:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Unemployment Message-ID: <58227.20045.qm@web180104.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> >>The radical economist who taught me used the rule of thumb that the real unemployment rate is about double what the BLS reports.CB<< That's what I said on LBO T some years ago, and wow did a certain individual throw a steaming hot hissy fit over that. Who is your radical economist who taught you? CJ^^^^^CB: Greg Tarpinian and others From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sun Feb 1 12:19:01 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 11:19:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Revolt in in the Air Message-ID: <576312.62350.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Revolt in in the Air Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/31/global-recession-europe-protests From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sun Feb 1 14:41:43 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 13:41:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Alain Badiou Message-ID: <694926.17868.qm@web180104.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ? http://www.lacan.com/article/?page_id=125 On Communism Alain Badiou in Lib?ration ? ? Don?t you think that there is a proper compromise between the unabashed capitalism of Sarkozy and your antiquated radical line? Having begun its journey four centuries ago, capitalism, even unbridled, is much older and archaic that all the radical lines that one opposes to it. Let us cease considering that liberalism, fashionable in the 1840s, embodies modernity and reform. It is Communism which is a new idea in Europe. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 06:29:51 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 05:29:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets Message-ID: <694155.19683.qm@web180110.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets In pictures: credit crunch protests in Europe Ian Traynor, Europe editor The Guardian, Saturday 31 January 2009 Article history Arcellor Mittal workers demonstrate during a protest march in Marseille. Photograph: Jean-paul Pelissier/Reuters France paralysed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris-strewn battle?eld. The Hungarian currency sinks to its lowest level ever against the euro, as the unemployment ?gure rises. Greek farmers block the road into Bulgaria in protest at low prices for their produce. New ?gures from the biggest bank in the Baltic show that the three post-Soviet states there face the biggest recessions in Europe. It's a snapshot of a single day ? yesterday ? in a Europe sinking into the bleakest of times. But while the outlook may be dark in the big wealthy democracies of western Europe, it is in the young, poor, vulnerable states of central and eastern Europe that the trauma of crash, slump and meltdown looks graver. Exactly 20 years ago, in serial revolutionary rejoicing, they ditched communism to put their faith in a capitalism now in crisis and by which they feel betrayed. The result has been the biggest protests across the former communist bloc since the days of people power. Europe's time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are trembling. Revolt is in the air. Athens Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old middle-class boy going to a party in a rough neighbourhood on a December Saturday, was the first fatality of Europe's season of strife. Shot dead by a policeman, the boy's killing lit a bonfire of unrest in the city unmatched since the 1970s. There are many wellsprings of the serial protests rolling across Europe. In Athens, it was students and young people who suddenly mobilised to turn parts of the city into no-go areas. They were sick of the lack of jobs and prospects, the failings of the education system and seized with pessimism over their future. This week it was the farmers' turn, rolling their tractors out to block the motorways, main road and border crossings across the Balkans to try to obtain better procurement prices for their produce. Riga The old Baltic trading city had seen nothing like it since the happy days of kicking out the Russians and overthrowing communism two decades ago. More than 10,000 people converged on the 13th-century cathedral to show the Latvian government what they thought of its efforts at containing the economic crisis. The peaceful protest morphed into a late-night rampage as a minority headed for the parliament, battled with riot police and trashed parts of the old city. The following day there were similar scenes in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital next door. After Iceland, Latvia looks like the most vulnerable country to be hammered by the financial and economic crisis. The EU and IMF have already mounted a ?7.5bn (?6.6bn) rescue plan but the outlook is the worst in Europe. The biggest bank in the Baltic, Swedbank of Sweden, yesterday predicted a slump this year in Latvia of a whopping 10%, more than double the previous projections. It added that the economy of Estonia would shrink by 7% and of Lithuania by 4.5%. The Latvian central bank's governor went on national television this week to pronounce the economy "clinically dead. We have only three or four minutes to resuscitate it". Paris Burned-out cars, masked youths, smashed shop windows, and more than a million striking workers. The scenes from France are familiar, but not so familiar to President Nicolas Sarkozy, confronting the first big wave of industrial unrest of his time in the Elys?e Palace. Sarkozy has spent most of his time in office trying to fix the world's problems, with less attention devoted to the home front. From Gaza to Georgia, Russia to Washington, Sarkozy has been a man in a hurry to mediate in trouble spots and grab the credit for peacemaking. France, meanwhile, is moving into recession and unemployment is going up. The latest jobless figures were to have been released yesterday, but were held back, apparently for fear of inflaming the protests. Budapest A balance of payments crisis last autumn, heavy indebtedness and a disastrous budget made Hungary the first European candidate for an international rescue. The $26bn (?18bn) IMF-led bail-out shows scant sign of working. Industrial output is at its lowest for 16 years, the national currency - the forint - sank to a record low against the euro yesterday and the government also announced another round of spending cuts yesterday. So far the streets have been relatively quiet. The Hungarian misery highlights a key difference between eastern and western Europe. While the UK, Germany, France and others plough hundreds of billions into public spending, tax cuts, bank bailouts and guarantees to industry, the east Europeans (plus Iceland and Ireland) are broke, ordering budget cuts, tax rises, and pleading for international help to shore up their economies. The austerity and the soaring costs of repaying bank loans and mortgages taken out in hard foreign currencies (euro, yen and dollar) are fuelling the misery. Kiev The east European upheavals of 1989 hit Ukraine late, maturing into the Orange Revolution on the streets of Kiev only five years ago. The fresh start promised by President Viktor Yushchenko has, though, dissolved into messy, corrupt, and brutal political infighting, with the economy, growing strongly a few years ago, going into freefall. Three weeks of gas wars with Russia this month ended in defeat and will cost Ukraine dearly. The national currency, at less than half the value of six months ago, is akin to the fate of Iceland's wrecked krona. Ukrainians have been buying dollars by the billion. In November the IMF waded in with the first payments in a $16bn rescue package. The vicious power struggles between Yushchenko and the prime minister, Yuliya Tymoshenko, are consuming the ruling elite's energy, paralysing government and leaving the economy dysfunctional. Russia is doing its best to keep things that way. Reykjavik Proud of its status as one of the world's most developed, most productive and most equal societies, Iceland is in the throes of what is, by its staid standards, a revolution. Riot police in Reykjavik, the coolest of capitals. Building bonfires in front of the world's oldest parliament. The yoghurt flying at the free market men who have run the country for decades and brought it to its knees. An openly gay prime minister takes over today as head of a caretaker government. The neocon right has been ditched. The hard left Greens are, at least for the moment, the most popular party in the small Arctic state with a population the size of Bradford. The IMF's bailout teams have moved in with $11bn. The national currency, the krona, appears to be finished. Iceland is a test case of how one of the most successful societies on the globe suddenly failed From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 09:19:30 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 08:19:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?utf-8?q?It=E2=80=99s_Not_Going_to_Be_OK?= Message-ID: <875826.40813.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> It?s Not Going to Be OK http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090202_its_not_going_to_be_ok/ Posted on Feb 2, 2009 By Chris Hedges The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. The street protests, strikes and riots that have rattled France, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Iceland will descend on us. It is only a matter of time. And not much time. When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability. At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. And poverty and despair will sweep across the landscape like a plague. This is the bleak future. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with a trillion or two trillion dollars in bailout money. Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed. How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up out of the slime in moments of crisis to offer fantastic visions? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent? We won?t have to wait long to find out. There are a few isolated individuals who saw it coming. The political philosophers Sheldon S. Wolin, John Ralston Saul and Andrew Bacevich, as well as writers such as Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, David Korten and Naomi Klein, along with activists such as Bill McKibben and Ralph Nader, rang the alarm bells. They were largely ignored or ridiculed. Our corporate media and corporate universities proved, when we needed them most, intellectually and morally useless. Wolin, who taught political philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley and at Princeton, in his book ?Democracy Incorporated? uses the phrase inverted totalitarianism to describe our system of power. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism and the Constitution while cynically manipulating internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens, but they must raise staggering amounts of corporate funds to compete. They are beholden to armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington or state capitals who write the legislation. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion or diverts us with trivia and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. ?Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,? Wolin writes. ?Economics dominates politics?and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.? I reached Wolin, 86, by phone at his home about 25 miles north of San Francisco. He was a bombardier in the South Pacific during World War II and went to Harvard after the war to get his doctorate. Wolin has written classics such as ?Politics and Vision? and ?Tocqueville Between Two Worlds.? His newest book is one of the most important and prescient critiques to date of the American political system. He is also the author of a series of remarkable essays on Augustine of Hippo, Richard Hooker, David Hume, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Max Weber, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and John Dewey. His voice, however, has faded from public awareness because, as he told me, ?it is harder and harder for people like me to get a public hearing.? He said that publications, such as The New York Review of Books, which often published his work a couple of decades ago, lost interest in his critiques of American capitalism, his warnings about the subversion of democratic institutions and the emergence of the corporate state. He does not hold out much hope for Obama. ?The basic systems are going to stay in place; they are too powerful to be challenged,? Wolin told me when I asked him about the new Obama administration. ?This is shown by the financial bailout. It does not bother with the structure at all. I don?t think Obama can take on the kind of military establishment we have developed. This is not to say that I do not admire him. He is probably the most intelligent president we have had in decades. I think he is well meaning, but he inherits a system of constraints that make it very difficult to take on these major power configurations. I do not think he has the appetite for it in any ideological sense. The corporate structure is not going to be challenged. There has not been a word from him that would suggest an attempt to rethink the American imperium.? Wolin argues that a failure to dismantle our vast and overextended imperial projects, coupled with the economic collapse, is likely to result in inverted totalitarianism. He said that without ?radical and drastic remedies? the response to mounting discontent and social unrest will probably lead to greater state control and repression. There will be, he warned, a huge ?expansion of government power.? ?Our political culture has remained unhelpful in fostering a democratic consciousness,? he said. ?The political system and its operatives will not be constrained by popular discontent or uprisings.? Wolin writes that in inverted totalitarianism consumer goods and a comfortable standard of living, along with a vast entertainment industry that provides spectacles and diversions, keep the citizenry politically passive. I asked if the economic collapse and the steady decline in our standard of living might not, in fact, trigger classical totalitarianism. Could widespread frustration and poverty lead the working and middle classes to place their faith in demagogues, especially those from the Christian right? ?I think that?s perfectly possible,? he answered. ?That was the experience of the 1930s. There wasn?t just FDR. There was Huey Long and Father Coughlin. There were even more extreme movements including the Klan. The extent to which those forces can be fed by the downturn and bleakness is a very real danger. It could become classical totalitarianism.? He said the widespread political passivity is dangerous. It is often exploited by demagogues who pose as saviors and offer dreams of glory and salvation. He warned that ?the apoliticalness, even anti-politicalness, will be very powerful elements in taking us towards a radically dictatorial direction. It testifies to how thin the commitment to democracy is in the present circumstances. Democracy is not ascendant. It is not dominant. It is beleaguered. The extent to which young people have been drawn away from public concerns and given this extraordinary range of diversions makes it very likely they could then rally to a demagogue.? Wolin lamented that the corporate state has successfully blocked any real debate about alternative forms of power. Corporations determine who gets heard and who does not, he said. And those who critique corporate power are given no place in the national dialogue. ?In the 1930s there were all kinds of alternative understandings, from socialism to more extensive governmental involvement,? he said. ?There was a range of different approaches. But what I am struck by now is the narrow range within which palliatives are being modeled. We are supposed to work with the financial system. So the people who helped create this system are put in charge of the solution. There has to be some major effort to think outside the box.? ?The puzzle to me is the lack of social unrest,? Wolin said when I asked why we have not yet seen rioting or protests. He said he worried that popular protests will be dismissed and ignored by the corporate media. This, he said, is what happened when tens of thousands protested the war in Iraq. This will permit the state to ruthlessly suppress local protests, as happened during the Democratic and Republic conventions. Anti-war protests in the 1960s gained momentum from their ability to spread across the country, he noted. This, he said, may not happen this time. ?The ways they can isolate protests and prevent it from [becoming] a contagion are formidable,? he said. ?My greatest fear is that the Obama administration will achieve relatively little in terms of structural change,? he added. ?They may at best keep the system going. But there is a growing pessimism. Every day we hear how much longer the recession will continue. They are already talking about beyond next year. The economic difficulties are more profound than we had guessed and because of globalization more difficult to deal with. I wish the political establishment, the parties and leadership, would become more aware of the depths of the problem. They can?t keep throwing money at this. They have to begin structural changes that involve a very different approach from a market economy. I don?t think this will happen.? ?I keep asking why and how and when this country became so conservative,? he went on. ?This country once prided itself on its experimentation and flexibility. It has become rigid. It is probably the most conservative of all the advanced countries.? The American left, he said, has crumbled. It sold out to a bankrupt Democratic Party, abandoned the working class and has no ability to organize. Unions are a spent force. The universities are mills for corporate employees. The press churns out info-entertainment or fatuous pundits. The left, he said, no longer has the capacity to be a counterweight to the corporate state. He said that if an extreme right gains momentum there will probably be very little organized resistance. ?The left is amorphous,? he said. ?I despair over the left. Left parties may be small in number in Europe but they are a coherent organization that keeps going. Here, except for Nader?s efforts, we don?t have that. We have a few voices here, a magazine there, and that?s about it. It goes nowhere From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 15:15:39 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 14:15:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?utf-8?q?What_are_the_CPUSA=E2=80=99s_views_on_?= =?utf-8?q?the_USSR=3F?= Message-ID: <371541.20733.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> What are the CPUSA?s views on the USSR? The subject of the USSR is a complex one. There was certainly an insufficiently developed democracy, but to dismiss over 70 years of their history developing socialism as completely undemocratic is a gross oversimplification. They practiced forms of economic democracy and worker involvement unknown in this country. They offered citizens many essential benefits that the drive to capitalism has destroyed. When the "solution" is worse than the problem, it is not a solution. Capitalism has made life for the vast majority in the former Soviet Union and other former socialist countries much worse. All indicators of social health are deteriorating, such as the sharp rise in infant mortality, the decrease in longevity rates, levels of malnutrition and starvation, decreasing health care for most of the population, inadequate and overwhelmed social security and welfare programs. The problems they faced would have had a better chance of being solved by more socialism, not less! I recommend six books to help deepen your knowledge of the accomplishments and shortcomings of the Soviet Union: Heroic Struggle, Bitter Defeat by Bhaman Azad from International Publishers, 2000, Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti from City Light Publishers. These are both valuable contributions to the discussion of what happened in the Soviet Union, why, and how that connects to the history of Soviet policies. About issues of human rights and socialist development in the Soviet Union, see Human Rights in the Soviet Union by Albert Szymanski, Zed Books, 1984. An earlier book of his, Is the Red Flag Still Flying, included an afterward that is a (very incomplete) start at an historical materialist analysis of Stalin?s role. (Symanski was an economist and a Maoist who set out to prove the Maoist thesis of "capitalist restoration" in the Soviet Union, but on examining the statistics and realities, came to the conclusion that the Maoists were wrong, that the Soviet Union was still primarily run in the interests of the working class. He used statistics and facts as reported by right-wing academicians, arguing that facts as reported by anti-communists could be used to prove progressive points with greater believability by anti-communist readers.) Soviet Women ( Ramparts Press, 1975) and Soviet But Not Russian (Ramparts Press, 1985) by William Mandel and The Siberians by Farley Mowat are useful responses to the barrage of anti-communism directed at the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. (Note that for writing this particular book, Farley Mowat was barred from entering the United States in the 1980s! He wrote a short funny book about his experiences. The U. S. State Department finally backed down, at which time Mowat refused to enter! Other world-famous authors have been refused entry into the U.S. as "undesirable aliens," including Nobel Literature Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.) http://www.cpusa.org/article/static/511/#question27 ? From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 15:36:21 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 14:36:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?utf-8?q?Ghana=3A_Voters_also_go_for_=E2=80=98c?= =?utf-8?q?hange_they_can_believe_in=E2=80=99?= Message-ID: <864635.97817.qm@web180102.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ? Author: Dennis Laumann People's Weekly World Newspaper, 02/02/09 12:12 ? On Jan. 7, John Evan Ata Mills was sworn in as the new President of Ghana, the third since the country became a multiparty democracy in 1992. Mills and his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), swept elections last month, deemed free and fair by observers, and which solidified Ghana?s reputation as an African ?success story.? As importantly, Ghanaian voters repudiated neo-liberalism by booting out of office a right-wing party closely tied to George W. Bush?s administration. A lawyer and former Vice President of Ghana, Mills calls himself a ?social democrat? and embraces the politics and legacy of Kwame Nkrumah, the Marxist who led Ghana?s anti-colonial struggle and its first government after independence in 1957. Nkrumah, who advocated industrialization, social welfare programs, and solidarity with oppressed peoples, was ousted in a 1966 coup many believe was orchestrated by the CIA. The outgoing New Patriotic Party (NPP), which ruled Ghana during the two presidential terms of John Kufuor, traces its lineage to the reactionary clique which overthrew Nkrumah. The NPP presided over the privatization of state assets including natural resources, the main revenue earner for most underdeveloped countries, after voluntarily agreeing to Ghana?s designation as a ?Highly Indebted Poor Country? by the International Monetary Fund/World Bank. Bush considered Kufuor one of his closest friends and the NPP returned the compliment by naming a planned highway in the Ghanaian capital of Accra after the disgraced American president. The Kufuor administration was so eager to please its ally in Washington that it hinted Ghana might be willing to host the headquarters of the infamous U.S. Africa Command (Africom) before a resounding public rejection of that idea forced a retreat. While close relations with Bush?s regime may have been sufficient to alienate Ghanaian voters, the corruption and ineptitude of the NPP government coupled with the further impoverishment of ordinary Ghanaians turned public opinion against the ruling party. Over the past eight years, even though foreign-owned department stores and imported luxury cars were offered as evidence of prosperity by so-called development experts, the reality of ?free market? economics was manifest in the multitude of homeless children hawking goods and begging on the streets of Accra. A final nail in the coffin of the NPP was the significant increase in crime linked to Ghana?s recent emergence as one of the major trans-shipment points of South American drugs to Europe. All of this economic and social deterioration occurred under the watch of the NPP, a party cultivated and supported since at least the early 1990s by the U.S. government and one which came to power promising ?development in freedom.? The hypocrisy of their rhetoric and that Ghana is blessed with abundant mineral and agricultural resources, and a soon to be exploited reserve of off-shore oil, led many ordinary Ghanaians to demand more state intervention to alleviate their suffering. Newly-elected President Mills, affectionately known as ?the Prof,? has promised to address people?s hardships by dedicating more state resources to health, education and poverty-eradication programs. The NDC has a history of delivering its promises, as Ghana became one of the most stable and relatively prosperous African nations under the leadership of the founder of the party, former President J. J. Rawlings. Mills served as vice-president during Rawlings? second term, the constitutionally-mandated maximum for a Ghanaian head of state. Although Mills won last month?s presidential run-off election only with a razor-thin 50.23 percent of the vote, that figure is misleading. He defeated his NPP rival in seven out of the ten regions of Ghana, representing nearly all of the ethnic groups in the remarkably diverse nation. Support for the NPP?s candidate was limited to his home and two ethnically-related regions, leading many commentators to conclude that the party has reverted to its ?tribal? base while the NDC, in the tradition of Nkrumah and his Convention People?s Party, has re-claimed its position as the mass, national party of Ghana. Indeed, the NDC?s power base is amongst the urban poor and farmers in rural areas and who represent the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians. The NPP seemed stunned by its defeat and acted as a sore loser, claiming its opponents committed fraud, allegations dismissed by the Election Commission since no evidence was offered. In fact, the only documented cases of rigging took place in the areas where the NPP candidate was victorious. Despite the competitiveness and bitterness of the election season, Mills is determined to move forward and like Obama promises to bring people together to confront the many challenges facing his country. "I will be president for all Ghanaians, whether they voted for me or not. I'll heal wounds and strive to ensure unity,? Mills declared at his swearing-in ceremony. And, again like his American counterpart, Mills? first priority is to undo many of the last-minute, retrogressive measures enacted by his right-wing predecessor, such as a scandalous end-of-service benefits package for Kufuor which would cost the nation millions of dollars. Indeed, the parallels between Mills and Obama were cultivated by Ghanaians who embraced hope and change as enthusiastically as the tens of millions of Americans who joined together to push their country in a new direction. A popular button worn by celebrants at Mills? inauguration, photographed by news reporters and reprinted in newspapers around the world, features images of Mills and Obama beneath the words ?God?s chosen presidents.? From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 16:45:10 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 15:45:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] White workers make history, proletarian internationalist formula Message-ID: <431721.8186.qm@web180104.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The history made in O's election was not made by ?Obama, and it was not made by Black people.? ?It was made by the masses ( although minority) of White working people who voted for? Obama.? The majority of white people did not vote for Obama, but the minority who voted for him was critical ?to victory. More White people voted for Obama than Black people. There were appeals to ?racism made by the Republicans and rightwingers in the election. The sufficiently large White vote for Obama amounts to a historic repudiation of this racism , and the larger racist legacy of American history. If Obama had lost, I would have been attributing it to racism. Since he won, I have got to say "it" was anti-racism. The division of the US working class by racism ?is the main division of it. The history in the election of Obama is especially that masses ?of White working class people voted for a Black candidate for President. Glory to the White ?American anti-racist spirit and sentiment. John Brown's soul is marching on ! ? Charles From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 17:01:28 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 16:01:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Anti-Racism in U.S. History The First Two Hundred Years Message-ID: <509717.81433.qm@web180112.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Anti-Racism in U.S. History The First Two Hundred Years (Click to Enlarge) Herbert Aptheker Book Code: ARU/ ISBN: 0-313-28199-8 ISBN-13: 978-0-313-28199-0 DOI: 10.1336/0313281998 264 pages, notes Greenwood Press Publication: 2/28/1992 List Price: $126.95 (UK Sterling Price: ?70.00) Availability: Media Type: Hardcover Also Available: Paperback Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 Subjects: History ? American History (General) Multicultural Studies ? Black Studies Series Title: Contributions in American History Series Number: 143 Awards: Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, 1992 Reviews: Historians, Aptheker argues, have frequently noted but rarely developed the point that throughout the two centuries of North American racial slavery, substantial numbers of whites rejected racist rationales for the "peculiar institution" and displayed a remarkable degree of interracial egalitarianism. Marshaling a large quantity of documentary evidence, Aptheker seeks to draw attention to the pervasiveness of what he calls "anti-racism" in Euro-American culture. The definition of racism in use here is a narrow one--what historians usually describe as "ideological" racism: systematic, pseudoscientific theories of inherent racial inferiority. Consequently, it is easy to concede Aptheker's point yet to wonder that so many white Americans lived comfortably with "societal" racism: de facto black inferiority based on established status relationships. It seems to have been the latter, after all, that had the greatest impact on the actual life opportunities for African Americans in American society. All levels. ?Choice Aptheker's usual care and exhaustive knowledge of primary and secondary sources are evident and impressive. ?The Historian Now Aptheker offers another readjustment of our intellectual and moral sights. This present volume on the first two hundred years of "anti-racism" in the United States ends with the American Civil War, but another volume is promised, which will take the story into the early twentieth century. This book presents a great deal of evidence that shows racism met considerable opposition in this country for many years. ?American Historical Review The preeminent Marxist historian of the African American experience has produced another major work that will provoke debate and stimulate reevaluation; this time of the character and extent of anti-racism in the nation's history. Herbert Aptheker has written an important and wise book which resonates with impressive scholarship and an impassioned affirmation that racism can be fought and eradicated, that black and white unity can be battled for and won. ?Science & Society This book breaks fresh ground in comprehensively and systematically exploring a theme that has hitherto been ignored or received fragmentary attention. ?Journal of American History This book is especially valuable for the large number of instances where whites sided with blacks, sometimes including outright revolts. Herbert Aptheker has himself rendered us all a great service by restoring the record of racial solidarity, justice, understanding and a common culture in America. This is a record that should be known and taught in all our schools and colleges throughout the country. ?People's Culture Description: Many books, both popular and scholarly, have examined racism in the United States, but this unique volume is the first to examine the existence of anti-racism in the first two hundred years of U.S. history. Herbert Aptheker challenges the view that racism was universally accepted by whites. His book thoroughly debunks the myth that white people never cared about the plight of African-Americans until just before the outbreak of the Civil War. Covering the period from the 1600s through the 1860s, Aptheker begins with a short introduction and a questioning of racism's pervasiveness, taking examples of anti-racism from the literature. He then devotes sections to sexual relations, racism and anti-racism, to joint struggles to reject racism, and to a discussion of Gr?goire, Banneker, and Jeffersonianism. Next he considers "inferiority" as viewed by poets, preachers, and teachers and by entrepreneuers, seamen, and cowboys. After a consideration of the Quakers, he turns his attention to the American and French revolutions and racism and to the Republic's early years and racism. Aptheker then devotes several sections to Abolitionism and concludes the work with the "the Crisis Decade," the Civil War, Emancipation, and anti-racism. This book by a well-known scholar in the field will be of interest to all concerned with U.S. history and African American history. Table of Contents: Introduction Anti-Racism: Denial and Distortion Questioning Racism's Pervasiveness Anti-Racism's Presence: Examples from the Literature Sexual Relations Rejecting Racism by Joint Struggle Gr?goire, Banneker, and Jeffersonianism "Inferiority" and Poets, Preachers, and Teachers "Inferiority" and Entrepreneurs, Seamen, and Cowboys From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 17:16:37 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 16:16:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Autoworkers dodge the bullet for now... Message-ID: <884013.95880.qm@web180101.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Autoworkers dodge the bullet for now... The government loans to the US auto industry give autoworkers a brief breathing spell. Still the Bush White House "terms" for the loans are a rightwing, Republican slap at the union. The Bush conditions on the loans try and make the auto companies cut wages and benefit for UAW workers to the levels of non-union auto plants. Those kind of terms will further aggravate the overall economic situation. When workers can't even afford to buy the products they make, the cycle of layoffs and shutdowns accelerates. We still need to build solidarity and with and for the autoworkers. Demand that they take no pay and benefit cuts. Demand that the union gets full representation on the boards of GM and Chrysler in exchange for the loans. And keep up the pressure for the Employee Free Choice Act. Raising all autoworkers to the wage and benefit standards of UAW workers will help the economy by putting more spending power in the hands of people who need it and who will spend money on goods and services that will help stimulate the economy. In these emergency times we also need to consider bigger changes to preserve the jobs of autoworkers and the millions of other workers who supply the industry. We need to consider democratic public ownership. http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/1007/1/150/ ? ? End the Auto Crisis: Build Mass Transit Public Ownership to Save Jobs and the Environment st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } Union auto workers are fighting for their lives. For us the fight to defend the United Auto Workers union (UAW) and its members is immediate. It is estimated that over three million jobs are linked to the jobs at GM, Ford and Chrysler: including workers in parts supply, dealerships, steel, rubber, and many other supporting industries. Bankruptcy would have devastating effects on communities where these workers live. Whole regions rely on their purchasing power and the loss of taxes for local and state governments would cause an even bigger crisis. Bankruptcy will also destroy the pensions and healthcare for millions of retirees. We join with labor and all its allies in demanding immediate action by the federal government to guarantee the loans needed to save these jobs. We are actively engaged in the growing fight to build solidarity and support for the burning demands of the workers and their union. Even if/when bridge loans are given to the Big Three, the companies have announced there will be further plant closings and say they will permanently shed tens of thousands of their workforce. They do this while continuing to move production out of the country. GM has manufacturing operations in 32 countries around the world. And while the auto companies complain about competition from lower wage countries, they in turn threaten workers in Mexico, Thailand, South America and elsewhere to accept low wages as a condition of work. Everything unions have fought for throughout our history is being challenged. Republican senators are demanding that unionized workers tear-up their union contracts and work for non-union rates. A forced bankruptcy would destroy the contracts of the UAW. Automotive jobs have been a pathway to a better life for all working people and their loss would hit African American and Latino workers particularly hard. Black workers in particular are more concentrated in auto than other industries. To solve the economic crisis we need to put more money, not less, into the hands of working people. Republican attempts to force the UAW to take cuts will increase the wage gap; it is a continuation of Republican trickledown economics that voters rejected in the November election. These are the same economic policies that created the present economic crisis. It would lower the purchasing power of auto workers and would create a downward wage pressure on all workers If we agree that the auto industry is too important to fail, both in terms of our nation?s transportation needs and the need to move away from reliance on fossil fuels, then it is too important to be left in the hands of the CEO?s. And at the same time, given the overall economic crisis and the underlying failures of unbridled corporate greed and mismanagement, it is the time to look at more basic solutions also. Demands for public and government oversight raise the issue of democratic public ownership of the domestic auto industry. The United States government could buy all the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. The worth of the companies is less than the aid they want from taxpayers. If the public provides the capital, why do decisions remain in private hands? Representatives from the unions, from engineers employed in the industry, from government, and the communities and states where the plants are located, are best able to make the key decisions. Representatives from management itself should have input but not control. We have an economic crisis, but we also have a crisis of the environment and the two are interlinked. We face global catastrophe and the profits before nature philosophy of the auto executives is a major roadblock for building a ?green,? sustainable industry. Cities all over the country are looking at the need for mass transit: from rail to subways, and buses. Public demand for environment friendly cars is also growing. We should demand that unemployed auto workers in Detroit and Michigan are put to work building all of the above. Public ownership can work! From our postal service, to social security, to our public school system, Medicare, police, fire, and military, public ownership has been successful. In the early 70?s the government took over a rail system in crisis, fixed it and then years later sold it to private owners at a profit. The changes needed in our infrastructure to build and sustain the environmentally friendly cars of the future will require public money so why should the ownership of the companies remain in private hands? In addition: * We need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to spur union organizing and to increase the wages and buying power of working people. * We need National Health care, pass HR 676 ? health care is a human right and it should be removed as a bargaining chip. * We need an international minimum wage to stop the whipsawing of workers from one country to another. * We need a law to stop tax breaks for companies that outsourcing our jobs. * We need to get behind President Barack Obama?s economic stimulus and public works jobs program. ? From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 17:42:25 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 16:42:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Concept of "Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg Message-ID: <515668.40697.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The Concept of "Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg By Gary Tedman http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/8042/1/359/ 1-28-09, I think we should not expect Marxism to produce a scientific (correct) theory of art, which would be like a Marxist theory of biology attempting to replace Darwinism. Instead, the theory must come from within the realms of art and be "internal" to that gamut of practices. Of course, Marxism has an input to make on this subject, and, in the absence of a universally accepted theory, it is obliged to take a position on art, to pick a side, so to speak. It is also obliged to champion those theories of art it thinks are the most progressive and scientific. I am not convinced that Marxism has done this in the past at all times. The Marxists Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin and Clement Greenberg have, I would argue, produced the most progressive theories of art, sometimes almost as an aside to their more pressing concerns. This essay critiques their contributions and also seeks to amalgamate them into a new and radical whole. It will help us to start this investigation by thinking of visual art as visual philosophy. Art, if it is not simply decorative, entertainment, or utilitarian, communicates deep and fundamental ideas, just like philosophy. I realize, of course, that ?What is philosophy?? is no easy question. The Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-1990) has, however, made it an easier one for us. For Althusser, philosophy is class struggle in the field of theory. It battles over the status of the sciences. Thus, the practice of science is distinguished from the practice of ideology. Art, however, differs from philosophy in that, while philosophy (at least as commonly understood) deals with the rational via writing, art specializes in ?feelings,? taking feeling to mean both emotion and sensory perception, using its materials in subtle ways to affect the senses. Linking art and philosophy in this way has the benefit of revealing a hitherto hidden aspect of art: As Althusser said, all philosophy interpellates us as subjects. The same can be said about art. ?Interpellation" is a concept Althusser developed in his theory of ideology. For Althusser, ideology (even a system of false ideas such as bourgeois ideology) participates in the ongoing reproduction of the already existing social conditions of production. "As any child knows," Althusser said, all societies must reproduce themselves. Ideology is necessary in order to reproduce the "right kind" of human subject with the "right kind" of "mentality" for functioning properly in capitalist society. The bourgeois state has organized modern education to manage this task, a task which once had been the function of religious institutions. Part of this reproduction process is the ?interpellation of the subject.? Althusser?s example is the French police way of hailing: ?Hey you there!? Such hailing functions so that the subject recognizes he or she really is a "responsible individual" subject to ideology. For Althusser, the ruling philosophy always interpellates subjects, it always has a particular "world view," and it hails its subjects to recognize its authority. However, all interpellation by the state must be "materialized." It can never just consist of "pure ideas" floating from one brain to another. It must therefore exist in actual practice. We "act out" ideology, or to put it another way, because practice always comes before theory, ideology legitimizes practices that already exist (e.g., ideology legitimated the Iraq war after the war had already been started). But, as Althusser said, bourgeois philosophy ?lives by its denegation," the promise of an objective knowledge of what philosophy is, as a practice, which is offered by Marxism, is always denegated, or disavowed, by bourgeois philosophers, who assert that such knowledge is impossible. This denial of status is crucial to the ruling ideology. The bourgeois world view, for example, sees itself as just because it is universal, which means beyond all partisan positions. Because of this it may/can be forceful, resort to violence, etc. The professional art teacher is similarly obliged to deny real knowledge of their practice. The phrase "there's no accounting for taste" is one of the unwritten commandments of modern art education. This reflects the bourgeois notion that art (ultimately) cannot "be scientific" or subjected to scientific analysis. In this, the ruling philosophy has decided what science and art is, but at the same time (absurdly) it holds there can be no definite (scientific) knowledge of it. It also asserts this of its own practice of philosophy. According to the ruling philosophy, we cannot know what philosophy does, as a practice. All of this is a function of the classical "bifurcation thesis," the great separation of the humanities from the sciences, which runs through all modern western education. The bifurcation thesis functions on the basis of the common ideology; it is simply asserted (unproven) by that ideology. The theorist who in the modern period really began to pick apart this assertion in relation to art was Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), especially in his essay "The Author as Producer." While, for Althusser, ideology takes part in social reproduction by creating "suitably subjected subjects," this was a process largely envisaged as taking place in domain ideology. Even though he describes ideology as existing in material practices, these practices are defined by Althusser with an emphasis on the ideological. Benjamin takes over aesthetically where Althusser leaves off ideologically by considering the material (aesthetic) form of the interpellation, i.e. the sensual mediation of the idea. Certainly, Althusser did this too when he wrote (relatively briefly) about art, Brecht, and the theatre, against the aesthetic of "myths and drugs," as he put it, but Benjamin is a more detailed and, I suggest, gets us further. Benjamin, at the time of his writing, was bemoaning the rise of Neo-Kantian philosophical aesthetics (as opposed to Marxian materialism), and demonstrated its revival in the practice of contemporary leftist art. He put forward his theory against positions that he felt were then, in the 1930s, dominant, "Activism" and the "New Objectivity" (Neue Sachlichkeit). Activism promoted a classless notion of "common sense" and defended, according to Benjamin, the "indefinable attitude" of "men of mind," referring to their placing all of the emphasis on a metaphysical notion of content understood as entirely separate from the process of language use. Benjamin opposed the Lukacsian theory of art, and any dramaturgy that based its principles on a notion of tragedy which perceived the dramatic hero as the proponent of will in a conflict between two mutually exclusive ethical demands. He criticized, on this basis, those whom he saw as undergoing a revolutionary development only in terms of mentality, without at the same time being able to think through the question of their own work, its technique, and its relationship to the means of production. He thought that these movements functioned (however revolutionary they may have seemed) in a counter-revolutionary way as long as artists experienced solidarity with the proletariat only in the mind, and not as material producers. Instead of asking what the position of an artwork was vis-?-vis the production relations of its time ? does it underwrite these relations, is it reactionary, or does it aspire to overthrow them? ? Benjamin said we should rather ask the question: What is the artwork's position within the relations of production? He argued that this way of looking at art would make artistic products accessible to immediate materialist social analysis, the concept of technique being the dialectical starting-point from which the "sterile dichotomy" of form and content could be overcome. For Benjamin, this was a better way to determine the relationship between an artwork's political tendency and its quality. If a correct political tendency in a work of art includes its literary (artistic) quality, then its literary (artistic) tendency should consist in a progressive development of technique. His example is Brecht's "art of thinking inside other people's heads." (We should note here that, according to Warren Montag, Althusser also came to this conclusion at one point ). Benjamin argues that Brecht's method allowed the process of drama to become transparent to the spectator: that in order to make the sensory transactions accountable, Brecht had developed just such a "productive aesthetic" ? for example, the well known "alienation effect" (not to be confused with Marx's concept of alienation) was a sensual technique of this aesthetic. However Benjamin seems to diverge from this theory when we come to his far more influential essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (Harrison, 2005). This difference is worth examining because of the latter essay?s standing in the field of art and art history/criticism. In this essay, Benjamin has been interpreted as saying that the new capitalist production relations and the new forces of artistic production within it, such as photography and film, overcome the above-mentioned limitations by (we must presume) the fact of their mass reproducibility ? because mass reproduction removes the so-called "aura" of the traditional work of art. Of course, Benjamin's concept of "aura" is usually taken as referring to a politically undesirable thing by the left, given that it can imply a precious, unique, "elitist" quality, but the background of his thesis derives here from a particular, and relatively traditional, view of art history. It has often been stated in the literature that previously art was religious and that it is only now with modern production that it has become political. Benjamin seems to legitimate this view in his "Work of Art? essay of a radical shift from the previous conditions of art production. I submit, however, using as an example Althusser's theory of how modern education as part of the ideological state apparatus (which deals with the reproduction of ideas) emerged from a feudal background. Althusser contends that art, although definitely located in religious culture, was even in its feudal past political, not least because religion itself was a political force responsible for the maintenance of class order. The change in the mode of production does not alter this aspect. Put bluntly, Benjamin does not seem to acknowledge this function of religious art, and therefore makes the modern condition of art too radically distinct from past class relations. One consequence of this is that his idea that the art of the past did not have a mass audience (as the art of modern reproduction does) is overstressed. In fact, art produced by the old guild system could often be seen by large audiences and even be paraded in the streets. Also, its method of production was often not individual but workshop-based, so that many artists, including apprentices, would work on a single painting. This is not so dissimilar from, say, today's film production, but, ironically perhaps, today's celebrity artists are actually less likely to work together this way. Benjamin?s position also assumes that art needs a mass audience immediately to have a "mass effect," a position which ought not to be simply taken for granted. Great works of art may achieve their mass effect instead by permeating culture slowly, but nevertheless more thoroughly than lesser works, in the passage of time. There are of course many examples of this that we can experience right now in the museums, and this is, of course, a tacit acknowledgment that art has this exact function, in time. Benjamin's other key idea in "The Work of Art? essay, that traditional art has an aura because of its provenance as a unique object in time, may perhaps be considered a progressive, material, aura. By progressive I mean that provenance is always involves a material object being subject to the unique moment in which it was materially constructed, as well as with the material processes that affect it in its subsequent history ? all of which are aspects revealed by the object (when studied closely). Thus, even if a work of art is reproduced exactly, it is difficult to fake provenance. Time cannot be repeated. Additional resources: Podcast #91 - The Road to Peace PA Editors Blog Pass the Recovery & Reinvestment Act Super Bowl, Steelers, Rooney and Obama The Super Bowl Subscribe to this Feed If this interpretation is correct, the sharp contrast, which is often implied, between the new "anti-aura" and the feudal tradition with its religious "pro-aura," is erroneous. All "good works of art," considered as such within the framework of the new capitalist production relations at the close of the feudal period, tended to be newly defined in terms of a "reactionary" aura whatever their technical means. This was, we must assume, because of the new bourgeois humanist ideology and the new practices (exploitation, expropriation, wage slavery) it validated for that/the new ruling class. There was perhaps only a relatively slow shift in terms of the aura, just as the Reformation was a process that represented a slow shift in religious sensibility. Today there are merely different institutions (aesthetic state apparatuses), such as schools, museums, and galleries, for art. And it was and is not something unique to the new technologies promoted in and through these institutions to act against aura. The simple fact of being inherently reproducible is no guarantor against reactionary aura. Indeed we must point out that photography and film today do not generally (exceptions exist of course) go against aura; in fact, they are invariably treated as having the most intense aura of all artworks. The aura they do have, however, is not exclusively found in the uniqueness of the material object itself (the "original film," although there is of course the "director's cut"), but is also due to the uniqueness of the author "showing up" in the work (a la "auteur theory"). But this is little different from the same attitude as in regard to a "traditional" painting (although certainly the traditional Christian attitude towards the artwork may have been actually less directly associating religious values with the individual artist?s particular genius). We can now accept that if the aura of the traditional work of art was once related to its religious context, this was because it was meant to impress the illiterate and had a hypnoidal function (that is, if there was no subversion of this by the artist), adding to the special atmosphere of the church/temple. For example, traditional stained glass windows in typical European churches provided Christian narratives using light; this was their "special effect." Is this hypnoidal effect, this aura, something that modern mass reproducible artworks lack? Hardly. Today, film and video are perhaps the most hypnoidal of all media, given that, to induce this state in a subject, the classic ruse is to use a "fixed moving point," such as the typical glowing TV/video image. Today we have Microsoft Windows taking the place of the old stained glass windows. As "windows," we see they still glow with an "inner light." The only difference is we now invariably have these little "temples" at home, where they can more easily probe us and know our "preferences." In a sense, they watch us far more closely than Big Brother ever could in Orwell?s ?1984?; they are the new temple and oracle rolled into one. Thus we can see that there are at least two kinds of aura, and two ways we can treat this concept-term. Iona Singh has shown how the apparent aura of great works of art by Vermeer ("Vermeer, Materialism, and the Transcendental in Art," in Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 16 no. 3) is in fact its superior physical/sensual properties, made by an artist with great skill with materials, and it is this 'sensual aura' that is actually misrepresented by bourgeois critics who wish to salvage these great works for their 'normal' hypnoidal aura. Yet, at the same time, we see that there are traditional artworks that do have aura in precisely the negative sense, in that they use their technical means almost solely for purposes of heightening illusion at the service of mystical ideas. So, while an original traditional artwork (say, a painting) may have aura due to its unique provenance and its expert technical qualities, the new media also has this same aura, and also its own provenance as a material object. It cannot avoid this because there is always the original (even with mass reproduction and even with the Internet). Hence today, art film and photography have just as much, or as little, aura as traditional paintings by old masters, and in terms of artistic technique have the potential to hide the sensual-material transactions between the spectator and the artwork to a far greater extent because of the greater technical possibilities that exist today for illusion. Benjamin's 'The Work of Art? essay has often been taken as the modern left?s justification for many recent kinds of 'new technological' but still narrative art, art that, in effect, still suffers from the same problems his other, more radical, essay attacked (this seems to be a peculiar contradiction in Benjamin's work). Today, mere use of new technology plus a loosely critical narrative, destined to find sympathy with a liberal outlook, is perhaps the equivalent to Benjamin?s "new objectivity." Ironically, however, because of the way Benjamin legitimates its use, this narrative technique becomes the ground on which today's progressive art invariably avoids the scientific question. For Benjamin, it seems to enough to be progressively tendentious and to use new technology, which then stands for "new technique." Although I have no wish to single out any artist, the contemporary work of Bill Viola comes to mind here, with his use of large video plasma screens showing figurative and highly illusionary, emotional, narrative artworks. His exhibition ?The Passions? at the National Gallery London (22-10-03 to 04-01-04) was in a darkened room and the entire effect was hypnoidal. Such emotionalist art always verges on being sophisticated kitsch. It has all the attributes of kitsch: it is highly illusionistic, sentimental and reliant on fancy new technology; but while I criticize, we should also note that Viola is a very professional artist and has genuine expertise, which it would be a mistake to dismiss as simply "low." In his famous defense of ?high? modern abstract art against the forces of populist kitsch, ?Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939), Clement Greenberg wondered how we could possibly account for "high art" alongside "low" culture, given they are so different. In his essay, Greenberg deals with a problem that Benjamin (in the essays I have mentioned above) only approaches indirectly: the accusation of elitism against advanced art technique, or in other words against avant-garde art. Certainly, it can be inferred that Benjamin?s concept of the diminishing of aura by mass reproduction is simultaneously an attack on elitism. For the Marxian Clement Greenberg of 1939, his understanding of the new US abstract expressionist avant-garde arose from: ?a superior consciousness of history ??more precisely, the appearance of a new kind of criticism of society, an historical criticism ?which made it possible.? This "consciousness of history" (according to this particular essay) somehow or other affected artists, who were even unaware of it, as it apparently just floated in on the breeze of the Zeitgeist. In terms of Benjamin?s productive aesthetic, we can see how na?ve Greenberg?s "spiritual" view actually is, how it is really a repetition of the position that Benjamin was against. Yet, peculiarly, it is used to defend just the kind of technique and quality Benjamin was arguing for (at least in ?The Author as Producer?). Greenberg?s stance clearly stems from a Marxist, but still rather humanist and consequently Hegelian, understanding of art and ideology, in which art is reduced to ideology and ideology is really ?Spirit? dressed as class struggle. Thus, for Greenberg, the state's education of the artist makes no appearance and everything is a question of mental and narrated allegiance, hovering at a distance above economic facts, but occasionally dipping into them to justify certain opinions. Greenberg essentially writes about art from a position assumed to be beyond scientific accountability, that is, from the traditional perspective of the arts/science bifurcation. He is in art, so he accordingly feels little obligation to provide evidence to the same degree as would be necessary in scientific discourse. Here it is only required to be convincing in the "humanities-art way": to be erudite, to be well-referenced, and to be a bit radical. Consequently his Marxism functions not to demand any scientific advance in art theory, but as an externally applied politics, i.e., more a posture than a position. In order to save the avant-garde and high art, with its special aura, even from the Soviets and their fellow travelers, whom he saw as aesthetically entwined in old-fashioned realism. Greenberg is thus obliged to distinguish between avant-garde art and "lowbrow" kitsch. But he had to do this without breaking the bourgeois taboo against ?accounting for taste.? Therefore his theory is ultimately only able to infer the existence of undefined "special people" who have the capacity to "divine" the difference between "high" and "low." This notion of "special people" is also applied to the artists he championed. Thus, although Greenberg champions avant-garde abstract artists, his is not the more rational avant-garde aesthetic of, for example, the Soviet Constructivists (e.g. Malevich, Popova, Rodchenko and Rozanova), or that of Mondrian, but a mystical one that suited his denegation of exact knowledge better. This was undoubtedly an aesthetic which still owed a great debt to the European and Soviet avant-garde in formal terms, but also, I argue, had hypnoidal aspects that could more readily support a mystical narrative. The works of the Abstract Expressionists are technically impressive and formally radical and were, I think (though I will not argue that here), superior to the then official Soviet art (whose existence, I believe, contributed to the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union), and had ditched certain "dangerous" Brechtian elements of the kind for which Benjamin argued. To conclude, I maintain that in the new (US) context the techniques of avant-garde art were relatively defused to make them more amenable to their new social context, yet they still functioned in a progressive way (internally to the US, while externally they became a reactionary symbol representing the radicalism of the "free world"). Greenberg, Benjamin and Althusser were writing against the same historical backdrop, the October Revolution and the rise of the artistic avant-garde, particularly the Soviet avant-garde, and its influence, and the lasting effects of World War II, including the legacies of Nazism, Stalinism and cult of personality. It seems to me that Benjamin and Althusser were struggling to free themselves from the vestiges of humanism in how Marxism was interpreted, and that they realized the question of art was somehow central to this project. They did not entirely succeed. Indeed, they both retreat, after making some bold advances at certain stages in their writings (Althusser, for instance, towards the end of his essay on the Piccolo Teatro), to a slightly more conservative position on the question of art. I suggest this was because they came up against the dominant world view that Greenberg aptly voiced and for which he was lionized. Greenberg?s theoretical bequest, however, is much weaker than either Benjamin or Althusser, because he does not really offer any new concepts of art for us to work with. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 17:56:26 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 16:56:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The End of Neo-Liberalism and Bush's Last Scam: How Racism Sparked the Financial Crisis Message-ID: <917921.60612.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The End of Neo-Liberalism and Bush's Last Scam: How Racism Sparked the Financial Crisis By Joe Sims http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/8033/1/359/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With the collapse of several banks and insurance companies, the near bankruptcy of Detroit automakers, a 50 percent drop in world stock exchanges and an almost complete arrest of credit markets, an economic era has ended. It seems almost an understatement to say that capitalism has entered a new stage of a protracted systemic crisis. The crisis of the economy is at once a crisis in ideology. After 30 years of worship at the shrine of the free market, Reaganomics and other branches of conservative and neo-conservative thought seem bankrupt and thoroughly discredited if not dead ? and not only right-wing schools. Deregulation, privatization, intense financial speculation on debt, the scaling back if not elimination of government social spending, in a word, ?neo-liberalism? has reached its extreme limit almost bursting state-monopoly capitalism?s seams and triggering a worldwide financial meltdown. Many causes have been attributed to the turmoil. Among the main contenders: ?financialization? or the capitalism-on-crack of the bond markets and banks, a crisis of overproduction (too many goods chasing too few dollars), and a weak ?real? economy due to insufficient allocation of surplus capital to productive investment. Some point to objective processes, others stress mistaken policy decisions. Clearly all were to one degree or another at play. Caution is in order, however. Objective economic processes, mistaken fiscal policies or even chance economic accidents, taken together or alone do not sufficiently explain the impetus behind the ongoing calamity. Also at work was the pernicious influence of institutionalized racism. In fact racist lending practices may have triggered the global financial collapse. Slouching Toward Collapse The origins of how the unraveling began is to be found in capitalism?s attempt to resolve ongoing crises. In fact, the neo-liberal model itself arose in response to attempts in advanced capitalist countries to maintain profits and find new markets. Faced in the 1970s with a declining rate of profit, a fractured world economy divided into ?socialist? and capitalist camps, structural and fiscal crises along with spiraling inflation, capitalism?s generals undertook a re-forging of economic policy in the form of a wholesale assault on the edifice of the New Deal. Keynesianism had run into wall ? at least from the point of view of big capital ? and policy was now modulated to fit the maximum profit categorical imperatives of the new period. International trade pacts were formed, unions were rolled backed or held in check and fiscal policy was loosened as a new ?post-industrial? service-oriented economy emerged. At the center of this process was a huge transfer of wealth to the super rich, accomplished by means of tax cuts and a huge leap in labor productivity, as the corporate class acquired an even greater share of the surplus. For a period, neo-liberal economic policy seemed to work, lending the appearance of stability with low unemployment, relative labor peace and mild inflation, causing some to wonder if capitalism had become crisis free. Finance capital began to play an increasingly dominant role. Stressing this aspect CPUSA Chair Sam Webb writes: ?what is different in this period of financialization is that the production of debt and accompanying speculative excesses and bubbles were not simply passing moments at the end of a cyclical upswing, but essential to ginning up and sustaining investment and especially consumer demand in every phase of the cycle. When at times confronted with cyclical episodes of economic instability amid the bursting of speculative bubbles, monetarist solutions were seen as a panacea. Strengthening money supply from monopoly capital?s point of view may have helped but in contradictory ways as wages, particularly after the recession of 2001, remained stagnant or declined. At key moments in the cycle, crisis emerged. With worker compensation nearly frozen, where was the purchasing power necessary to keep the circulation process moving? Resolving this problem was a chief preoccupation of bankers, CEOs and bureaucratic policy-makers alike. Indeed, a study of productivity and wages over the last quarter century reveals the acuteness of the problem. From the mid-1970s on, driven by speed-up and new technology, productivity increased dramatically, particularly after 2000. Pay however, remained stagnant. Tracing patterns of pay and productivity, labor-affiliated commentator Jonathan Tasini noted: If the lines [productivity and wages] had continued to track closely together as they did prior to the 1970s, the minimum wage would be more than $19 an hour. The minimum wage!!! (emphasis in the original). So, in short: people had no money coming in in their paychecks so they were forced to pay for their lives through credit ? either plastic or drawing down equity from their homes. John Bellamy Foster and Harry Magdoff in an important article in Monthly Review, entitled Financial Implosion and Stagnation, also mention the equation of productivity and wages: This reflected the fact that real wages of private nonagricultural workers in the United States (in 1982 dollars) peaked in 1972 at $8.99 per hour, and by 2006 had fallen to $8.24 (equivalent to the real hourly wage rate in 1967), despite the enormous growth in productivity and profits over the past few decades. Debt accumulation was key. Speculative bubbles (in information technology and housing) became a driving force in overcoming each new crisis point. Low long-term interest rates had allowed large numbers of people to purchase homes. With rising home prices, experiencing growing debt ? and lured by an intensive marketing campaign in the ?90s by Citicorp and others ? families took out second mortgages en masse. ?Until the early ?90s,? commented Robert Brenner at the November 2008 Berlin symposium organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, ?Bubblenomics allowed people to get wealthy they thought on paper. One hundred percent of wealth is driven by borrowing and consumption, borrowing and residential investments.? Desperately Seeking Higher Profits Capitalism hit another wall, however. During the boom, purchase costs rose quickly pricing new buyers out of the market. Standard mortgages plummeted. In addition, low long-term interest rates meant low profit returns for investors. New problems emerged. In these circumstances confronted with the need to maintain profit rates and find new markets in conditions of declining wages, bankers deliberately devised loan strategies with hidden fees and ballooning interest rates that would greatly elevate the rate of return, targeting unsuspecting and ill informed consumers. Under the ideological guise of George W. Bush?s ?Ownership Society? credit would be extended to potential homeowners with low incomes and allegedly marginal or bad credit ? the subprime crisis was born. The proliferation of subprime loans can be traced to the aftermath of the dot-com bubble. After the bubble burst, speculators turned to the housing market. As Yale economist Robert Shiller asked in 2005, ?Once stocks fell, real estate became the primary outlet for the speculative frenzy that the stock market had unleashed. Where else could plungers apply their newly acquired trading talents?? As it turned out, the supply-sider?s solution to the precipitous decline in technology stocks achieved a momentary short-term fix, but carried within it seeds of a more profound and destructive practices. The editor?s of the German magazine, Der Spiegel, in a recent article spelling the displacement of US capital, argued that ?once again, Greenspan flooded the economy with money and, yet again, Wall Street started looking for a new market for its growth machine. This time it discovered the American homeowner, convincing him to take out mortgages at favorable terms, even when there was practically no collateral.? Capital then flooded the housing market as real estate became a national corporate mania. "These days, the only thing that comes close to real estate as a national obsession is poker,? commented Shiller. Brenner suggested that this mania peaked in 2003: ?Mortgage origination (house purchases) peaks in 2003 ? but the economy expanded through 2007, after which there is a decline.? He continued, ?Normal mortgages, called conforming mortgages in which people have to have a certain income and put up certain collateral or down payment ? plummeted in 2003 and 2004.? ?What saved the day? Just when the conforming mortgages were falling non-conforming mortgages, subprime or ?alt A? or ?liars loans? take over in driving the bubble.? The Federal Reserve, as suggested by Der Spigel, was directly responsible. Brenner confirmed this thesis; ?Subprime mortgages,? he said, ?became so possible, because Greenspan came in again and reduced short term interest rates to one percent in 2003, the lowest of the postwar period in the face of this problem, which meant that for two years real short term interest rates were below 0. And he did that because subprime mortgages are governed by variable interest rates.? In article at Portfolio.com entitled "The End of Wall Street's Boom," writer Michael Lewis also emphasized the role of the new niche market: ?More generally, the subprime market tapped a tranche of the American public that did not typically have anything to do with Wall Street. Lenders were making loans to people who, based on their credit ratings, were less creditworthy than 71 percent of the population.? The growth of this niche market was spectacular. In 2000 there was between $60 and $130 billion invested in subprime mortgages. By 2005 the amount had grown to $605 billion. This increase was largely attributable to Wall Street banks, conniving with lower level mortgage companies to devise schemes to make huge sums of money by placing side bets on bad loans likely to default. They did so knowingly creating ?exotic financial instruments? and then short selling the market. Lewis described with precision the means by which the process was begun ? short selling the market ? and uncovers just how deep finance capital?s complicity ran. ?The big Wall Street firms," Lewis argued, "had just made it possible to short even the tiniest and most obscure subprime-mortgage-backed bond by creating, in effect, a market of side bets.? PA Editors Blog Pass the Recovery & Reinvestment Act Super Bowl, Steelers, Rooney and Obama The Super Bowl Lewis, himself the author of a best selling whistle-blowing 1980s expose of Wall Street, Liar?s Poker, interviewed some of the key players in the subprime swindle, including a hedge fund?s primary trader, one Steve Eisman, who realized what the big investment houses were doing and profited handsomely from it. Lewis described Eisman as "perplexed in particular about why Wall Street firms would be coming to him and asking him to sell short.? The answer: profits. So profit hungry were the Wall Street traders that they pushed these new mechanisms to their farthest limit, creatively manipulating what Marx called fictitious capital. Lewis noted: In fact, there was no mortgage at all. ?They weren?t satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn?t afford,? Eisman says. ?They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That?s why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that?s when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, this is allowed?? Not only did banks and investment firms create this phony capital, there was ruling class complicity all down the line, a complicity that included in addition to the Republican standard bearers, Democratic centrists like former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, then an executive of the recently bailed out Citigroup. The beginning of the end came in 2006, according to the editors of Monthly Review: ?The housing bubble began to deflate in early 2006 at the same time that the Fed was raising interest rates in an attempt to contain inflation. The result was a collapse of the housing sector and mortgage-backed securities.? Frantic efforts to throw more money at the problem, so often criticized by the Republican right when applied to social programs, proved of no avail. Foster and Magdoff write that the new chief US financial officer, ever the student of Greenspan and Friedman opened Fort Knox: Confronted with a major financial crisis beginning in 2007, Bernanke as Fed chairman put the printing press into full operation, flooding the nation and the world with dollars, and soon found to his dismay that he had been ?pushing on a string.? No amount of liquidity infusions were able to overcome the insolvency in which financial institutions were mired. Looking back even conservative New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman claimed disgust in a recent op-ed entitled ?All Fall Down.? Doling out blame Friedman believes responsibility begins with People who had no business buying a home, with nothing down and nothing to pay for two years; people who had no business pushing such mortgages, but made fortunes doing so; people who had no business bundling those loans into securities and selling them to third parties, as if they were AAA bonds, but made fortunes doing so; people who had no business rating those loans as AAA, but made fortunes doing so; and people who had no business buying those bonds and putting them on their balance sheets so they could earn a little better yield, but made fortunes doing so. Imagine the audacity of comparing working-class families to Wall Street titans! Everyone else was getting paid: the mortgage brokers whose fees increased the bigger the sale with no penalty to themselves; the banks who then bundled the loans up and sold them to other financial institutions around the world again seemingly with no losses; the rating agencies who allowed it to happen. Only working families were left holding the bag. Friedman, quoting Lewis, revealed Wall Street?s unabashed cynicism: ?Eisman knew that subprime lenders could be disreputable. What he underestimated was the total unabashed complicity of the upper class of American capitalism... ?We always asked the same question,? says Eisman. ?Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I?d always get the same reaction. It was a smirk.?" Eisman himself is unsparing in his criticism: ?That Wall Street has gone down because of this is justice,? he says. ?They fucked people. They built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who was having a crisis of conscience.? Race and the Housing Bubble As it turned out, a disproportionate number of the people they "fucked" were African American and Latino families. Perhaps this explains at least in part why no Wall Street insiders had qualms about their activities or why in recent weeks the issue seems to have almost disappeared from discourse on the economic recession. Attention to this highly important issue was given in 2008 when the Urban League, the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus made it the centerpiece of their annual conferences. As the fall election campaign swung into high gear, however, save for oblique references by the Republican candidate, John McCain, concerning the ?mismanagement? of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and more caustic comments by demagogues like Ann Coulter blaming Black and Latino families for the meltdown, the electoral discourse at the height of crisis largely stayed away from what may have been conceived as a racially charged issue. Still, as the main civil rights organizations charged in the summer of 2008, the racist origins of the subprime mess are difficult to ignore. A cursory glance at some of the statistical highlights provides ample evidence. An excellent study authored by United For a Fair Economy entitled "Foreclosed? suggests several indicators, chief among them the disproportionate numbers of people of color holding subprime loans: over 50 percent of all mortgages held by African Americans fall into this category. The figure is 40 percent for Latinos. These percentages have grave economic implications: ?Given that people of color are a disproportionate number of the subprime borrowers, and that this group?s assets are mostly concentrated in homeownership, the current foreclosure crisis can be considered the greatest loss of wealth for communities and individuals of color in modern US history.? Black and Latinos will lose between $164 and $213 billion for loans taken during the past eight years. The disproportionate numbers of Blacks and Latinos with subprime loans, while suggestive serves as only partial explanation. The central question is what caused it? Were the higher relative percentages merely the casual result of ongoing poverty or was a more causal underlying factor at play? Bush administration policy provides important clues. Subprime loans were allegedly established and encouraged as part of government and corporate efforts to provide support for struggling working-class families troubled with bad credit histories. Truth be told, former President Bush himself pushed the program, believing it would create ?stakeholders? in an ?Ownership Society? and expand meager Blacks and Latino support for the Republican Party. In the view of the New York Times, the Bush ?pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent ? and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors.? Indeed, ?the business interests of some of his biggest donors? goes to heart of the matter. While the subprime program was supposedly targeted at those with bad credit, and given that a large percentage of minorities fill this category because of poverty, it would seem disproportionality might be a normal outcome of a well-intentioned program?s attempt to redress historic wrongs. Good intentions, however, was not point. At stake were big business interests. A strong case can be made that banks deliberately connived to target minority buyers in order to push profit margins, knowing full well (from their own risk assessment calculations) that the loans could not be repaid. Not only were the banks betting on the defaults, but, in fact, were pressuring prospective Black and Latino borrowers to take out such loans, leading the unwitting customers like so many sheep to a financial slaughter house. Brenner nailed it: But who would ever lend to them? Who would lend to them is as follows: we talked about that fall in long term interest rates, this is greater for borrowers, but if you are a lender or investor you are in deep trouble because return on investment is really low. And investors are in deep crisis and here is where subprime loans bailed them out. Subprime mortgages because they are so risky pay high interest rates and became the basis for financial assets that allowed investor to appear to get high rates of return. Homeownership, as it turns out, was not the major objective of the lenders. Despite rhetoric promoting an ownership society, only a fraction of loans were awarded to first-time homebuyers. And pubic officials were well aware of this even before the financial meltdown became full blown. In the summer of 2007, in a speech before the Brookings Institute as the credit markets began to seize up, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) charged that: According to the chief national bank examiner for the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, only 11 percent of subprime loans went to first-time buyers last year. The vast majorities were refinancing that caused borrowers to owe more on their homes under the guise that they were saving money. Too many of these borrowers were talked into refinancing their homes to gain additional cash for things like medical bills. sponsored ad Lewis, quoting Eisman in the Portfolio.com article, revealed what went on in a case very close to home: Next, the baby nurse he?d hired back in 1997 to take care of his newborn twin daughters phoned him. ?She was this lovely woman from Jamaica,? he says. ?One day she calls me and says she and her sister own five townhouses in Queens. I said, ?How did that happen??? It happened because after they bought the first one and its value rose, the lenders came and suggested they refinance and take out $250,000, which they used to buy another one. Then the price of that one rose too, and they repeated the experiment. ?By the time they were done,? Eisman says, ?they owned five of them, the market was falling, and they couldn?t make any of the payments.? Nor was bad credit the primary factor for distributing the loans, a myth conveniently circulated and repeated to this day. Schumer again rebutted the notion, quoting none other than the Wall Street Journal: Based on the Journal?s analysis of borrowers? credit scores, 55 percent of subprime borrowers had credit scores worthy of a prime, conventional mortgage in 2005. By the end of last year, that percentage rose to over 61 percent according to their study. While some will have damaged their credit in the interim, it?s clear that many subprime borrowers have the financial foundation for sustainable homeownership, but may have been tricked into unaffordable loans by unscrupulous brokers. Thus, working-class Black and Latino families, over half if not 60 percent of whom were eligible for conventional loans, burdened by several years of stagnant and falling wages during a jobless recovery were led by mortgage companies in clear and blatant cases of predatory racially inspired lending. The racial overtones are evident in this swindle are evident. But what made the loans predatory? The United For a Fair Economy study provides the following criteria: One factor is their marketing and sales to inappropriate customers. Another is pre-payment penalties. Seventy percent of subprime loans had such penalties. A third element was Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMS), which often carried unexplained ballooning interest rates that increase payments by as much as one-third. A majority of subprimes were ARMS. Yet another condition was the exclusion of tax and insurance costs when estimating the monthly payment for a potential home-buyer. And finally the encouragement of ordinary borrowers to take interest-only loans, where in the initial year or two only the interest is paid on, after which the principal rates kick in raising the cost dramatically. The Bush administration was not only complicit in these practices, but may have helped mastermind them. ?The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations,? according to the New York Times. ?And corporate America, eyeing a lucrative market, delivered in ways Mr. Bush might not have expected, with a proliferation of too-good-to-be-true teaser rates and interest-only loans that were sold to investors in a loosely regulated environment.? Might not expected? In actual fact, the Bush team aggressively tore up regulations, intimidated and fired reluctant administrators, litigated against states bucking their authority, taking cases even to the Supreme Court. The Times continues: As for Mr. Bush?s banking regulators, they once brandished a chain saw over a 9,000-page pile of regulations as they promised to ease burdens on the industry. When states tried to use consumer protection laws to crack down on predatory lending, the comptroller of the currency blocked the effort, asserting that states had no authority over national banks. The administration won that fight in the Supreme Court. When they held a majority, congressional Republicans, too, were deeply involved in the act on behalf of finance capital, threatening and winning a fight to clarify loan terms. In this regard, the Times reported, ?The president did push rules aimed at forcing lenders to more clearly explain loan terms. But the White House shelved them in 2004, after industry-friendly members of Congress threatened to block confirmation of his new housing secretary.? Why the bullying, arm bending and other no-holds barred tactics? The answer lies in the necessity of staying competitive and the imperative to achieve maximum corporate profits to do so ? on a global scale. Der Spiegel quoted a German banker: ?'We need a 25-percent return,' or else his bank would not be 'competitive internationally,' Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann said, thereby establishing a benchmark that would soon apply not just to banks but also to automobile makers, machine builders and steel companies.? Knowns and Unknowns As is now well known, this drive to stay competitive contributed mightily to the undoing of many of the economies in the developed capitalist countries. Reduced consumption in the US, Japan and Western Europe, is resulting in slowdowns throughout the globe. In addition, as is also widely known the racist toxic loans born in the US were also exported abroad, precipitating banks runs and others shock waves to the world financial system and crippling pension funds and even local governments in several countries. Where it will end remains unknown. Most bourgeois economists are of the opinion that the economic crisis will grow worse before it gets better. Economist Nouriel Roubini an early predictor of the financial chaos argues a short term a meltdown has been averted but is pessimistic about prospects for an early recovery, predicting instead a long-term bottoming out of the economy. He writes: But the worst is still ahead of us. In the next few months, the macroeconomic news and earnings/profits reports from around the world will be much worse than expected, putting further downward pressure on prices of risky assets, because equity analysts are still deluding themselves that the economic contraction will be mild and short. Marxists thinkers Magdoff and Foster put things differently: ?The prognosis then is that the economy, even after the immediate devaluation crisis is stabilized, will at best be characterized for some time by minimal growth, and by high unemployment, underemployment, and excess capacity.? Roubini contends that the current system-wide situation was not caused by the subprime scandal but triggered by it, pointing to bubbles in other areas as well, including commercial mortgages, credit cards and students loans. In addition he contends: ?these pathologies were not confined to the US. There were housing bubbles in many other countries, fueled by excessive cheap lending that did not reflect underlying risks. There was also a commodity bubble and a private equity and hedge funds bubble.? Magdoff and Foster on the other hand, point to long-term tendencies in the economy toward stagnation and pose financialization, debt and consumer spending financed by it as a consequence of the underlying weakness of growth. They write: ?Since financialization can be viewed as the response of capital to the stagnation tendency in the real economy, a crisis of financialization inevitably means a resurfacing of the underlying stagnation endemic to the advanced capitalist economy.? Whether faulty subprime mortgages caused the great financial instability or simply triggered the deepening of an already existing problem, one thing is sure: its racist origins are undeniable. What Marxist theoreticians like Henry Winston and William L. Patterson called the ?Achilles heel? of US capitalism ? racism ? has once again made itself felt and sending shock waves around the world, helping close one chapter in the class and democratic struggle and opening up another. Magdoff and Foster also employ the Achilles heel metaphor, albeit with a slightly different emphasis. This growth of consumption, based in the expansion of household debt, was to prove to be the Achilles heel of the economy. The housing bubble was based on a sharp increase in household mortgage-based debt, while real wages had been essentially frozen for decades. The resulting defaults among marginal new owners led to a fall in house prices. This led to an ever increasing number of owners owing more on their houses than they were worth, creating more defaults and a further fall in house prices. Banks seeking to bolster their balance sheets began to hold back on new extensions of credit card debt. Consumption fell, jobs were lost, capital spending was put off and a downward spiral of unknown duration began. As the struggle around the recovery package begins, it must be pointed out what are termed ?marginal new owners? were largely Black and Latino working-class families trying to make ends meet, targeted by Wall Street financiers. Recovery cannot be achieved without an economic package that bail out these homeowners beginning with a moratorium on foreclosures. At the heart of the collapse of the financial system and the economic recession lies the unparalleled greed of the banks coupled with the declining wages of poor working people exacerbated by a racist social division of labor. The solution to problem may well continue to lie in the repayment in full of a centuries-old debt. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, capitalism?s promissory note is still marked, ?Insufficient Funds.? --Joe Sims is the publisher of Political Affairs. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 18:29:22 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 17:29:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Iraq Communists Campaign With Vigor Message-ID: <479242.72126.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Iraq Communists Campaign With Vigor from THE LOS ANGELES TIMES [FYI] The Communist Party doesn't have much of a chance in elections Saturday, but its candidates see an opportunity to woo voters unhappy with sectarian politics and wary of freewheeling capitalism. By Tina Susman and Raheem Salman January 28, 2009 Reporting from Baghdad -- "Comrade, come in," the man said, ushering a visitor into the lobby of Iraqi Communist Party headquarters. Across the busy intersection, a banner stretched across a newly renovated building promised the imminent opening of American fast-food restaurants, including "Kentacky Fried Chicken." Throughout the capital, portraits of Imam Hussein were omnipresent, reminders of a Shiite Muslim pilgrimage commemorating his death in AD 680. In a nation where religious parties dominate and many people dream of a wealthy life in the West, it's not easy being a Communist. But that doesn't seem to worry the enthusiastic comrades buzzing about the party's sprawling four-story headquarters. After decades on the sidelines or behind bars, they are banking on disenchantment with the religious parties now in power, and a wariness of freewheeling Western capitalism, to lift their fortunes in provincial elections Saturday. "In the past five years, the people have begun to understand that these political parties failed to achieve what people were hoping for," said Abdul Munim Jabber Hadi, wearing a blood-red tie and gray suit as he prepared to go out campaigning Sunday. Hadi is one of 27 Communist Party candidates vying for seats on Baghdad's 57-member provincial council. He is not expecting most of his fellow Communists to prove victorious. The party won two seats on the council four years ago in the last provincial elections, and the 275-member national parliament has two Communists. So it will take time to build power, explained Hadi, an exuberant man with a thick gray mustache. "We're in the process of building the new Iraqi state," he continued, as he sipped tea and waited for his volunteer pamphleteers to show up. Across the room, a white-haired man was discussing his years in the former Czechoslovakia and opining about President Obama's plans for repairing the U.S. economy. Conversations laced with reminiscences are common among party members, many of whom spent years in exile or prison under a succession of repressive Iraqi regimes. Mohammed Jassim Labban, a member of the party's Central Committee, was studying social sciences in Moscow when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. "It was very hurtful," he said, grimacing at the memory of statues of Lenin being yanked down. Hadi, once a professional soccer player, spent four years in prison on charges of trying to topple Saddam Hussein's regime. He speaks proudly of his mother, who urged him to stick to his principles, even if it meant death by hanging. "That's my mother," he said with a chuckle. "She was a strong believer." Both blame the collapse of the Soviet empire on an overly rigid interpretation of socialist ideas. "We believe that Marxist theories are not sacred. Nothing is sacred in politics," said Labban, insisting that Iraq's Communists would not force people into collective farming or impose state control over the economy. Just what they would do if they gained power remains vague. Like most of the parties fielding candidates -- about 14,500 people are running -- the Communists speak of improving electrical service, creating jobs, ending corruption and wiping out sectarianism, without saying how they would accomplish their goals. Labban pointed to the United States' financial problems as proof that "wild capitalism," as Hadi called it, is not the answer. "We're not gloating, but we expected such a crisis, because the system was set up that way," Labban said. The Communists have their own economic woes. They depend on private contributions to fund their campaigns. They can't afford TV ads, so they hit the streets to spread their message. Hadi, who gives $20 a month to the party, goes out daily to bellow through a bullhorn that the Communists are the "party of the poor" and of "the hard-working people." On Sunday, he visited the Shorja market, a chaotic, mile-long strip lined by tall, crumbling apartment blocks dark with grime. As he marched down the street shouting hoarsely, volunteers wearing yellow jerseys with black lettering fluttered around like giant bumblebees. They thrust Communist Party literature at vendors and shoppers, dodging donkey-drawn carts and wooden wheelbarrows pushed by skinny young men moving tomatoes and space heaters. To get here from the party office, Hadi hailed a taxi. His volunteers crammed into a minivan. There were no visible signs of security. Two Communist Party politicians have been killed in the northern semiautonomous region of Kurdistan since Dec. 18. In the days before the January 2005 provincial elections, two Communist Party members in Baghdad were assassinated. But Hadi didn't seem concerned for his safety and was brimming with energy as he barreled through the crowded market at midday. The working-class Iraqis operating the stalls are the people the Communists hope to lure away from the bigger parties "I'll vote for them," said Mehdi Abbas, a taxi driver, citing the party's support for nationalizing the lucrative oil industry. "And the most important thing is that when these people win, we'll get rid of the turbaned clerics," he added with a laugh. Jamil Hussein, a dapper engineer in a tweed overcoat, said he had supported the Communist Party in 1958 after a coup ousted the nation's monarchy and brought hopes of social and economic reforms. "But the circumstances were stronger than our hopes," he said. Even now, Hussein said, he doubted the Communist Party could make a comeback against the religious forces in power. "Its popularity is not like before," he said. Religious leaders agree. Ahmed Massoudi, a spokesman for the movement loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, said he doubted there was a future for the Communist Party. "It contains good, esteemed figures, but its opportunities are limited because most Iraqis are Muslims and concerned with religious thoughts. Religion plays a major role in life here, so a party like the Communist Party has little chance to play a major role," he said. The Communists say it is just such attitudes that will work to their advantage. Most Iraqis prefer a secular government, Hadi said, as an old woman in a black abaya waved away a campaign flier. A man selling fresh fish accepted three fliers but then carefully placed one in each of his barrels of fish. None of this discouraged the candidate. "After five years, the people are at a crossroads," he said. "They can vote for those they already elected, or they can go for the new, democratic secular powers." From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 18:35:52 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 17:35:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] How Greedy Speculators Control Commodity Prices Message-ID: <526805.28600.qm@web180114.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> How Greedy Speculators Control Commodity Prices By Jayati Ghosh -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Original source: People's Democracy (India) One feature of the extraordinary year that has ended was the extreme volatility of global commodity markets. Because economic analysts have become so short-sighted, each of these rapid movements has been over-interpreted as reflecting structural changes in global demand and supply rather than conjunctural forces that are liable to change. For example, when global prices in oil and other commodity markets zoomed to stratospheric levels by the middle of 2008, we were told that it had nothing to do with speculation. Eminent economists joined bankers, financial market consultants and even policymakers, in emphasizing that these price rises were all about "fundamentals" that reflected real changes in demand and supply, rather than the market-influencing actions of a bunch of large players with financial clout and a desire to profit from changing prices. In oil markets, we were warned that the dire predictions of the "peak oil" doomsayers were finally coming to pass. In global food markets the rise in prices of staples was correctly identified to be at least partly related to the medium-term policy neglect of agriculture by governments especially in the developing world, but the role of speculation in commodity futures, enabled by financial deregulation, was denied. Further, it was also argued that the real gainers of this process were the direct producers: not only oil exporting countries but small farmers producing foodgrains that were becoming highly valued internationally. The commodity price boom was supposed to translate directly to income gains for such producers to the point where some governments even argued that there was no need to provide any protection to agriculture since cultivators were already gaining from high crop prices. But the subsequent collapse of commodity prices ? both oil and non-oil ? has shown how wrong the earlier explanations were, and how little primary commodity producers are likely to have gained, especially small producers in the developing world. For primary commodities as a group, all the price gains of the period January 2007 to mid-2008 were wiped out by the later fall in prices. Oil prices in November 2008 were back to the nominal level of January 2007, which implies a decline in real terms. And non-oil commodities, specifically agricultural raw materials and metals, were lower even in nominal terms. SPECULATORS RUIN FARMERS The likelihood of agriculturalists benefiting from such a short-lived price boom is, therefore, unlikely. Indeed, it is likely that they could face opposite effect: farmers shifting acreage in response to price increases could find that prices have crashed by the end of the growing season. Consider, for example, the case of cotton, the most widely planted non-food cash crop that directly affects the livelihood of millions of farmers. This price had fallen significantly in the past few years, so that in January 2007 it was less than 60 per cent of the level reached in 2005. The price started to increase around the middle of 2007, and by March 2008 had increased by 44 per cent compared to May 2007. But after that peak there has been quite a sharp crash in prices in just a few months, such that in November 2008 the price was actually lower than it had been in January 2007! Such volatility can be only very partially be explained by real changes in demand and supply. It is true that there was an increase in demand from China, the world?s foremost garment exporter, around the middle of 2007. But the rapid price thereafter was because speculators took over. Similarly, while the ongoing global recession has affected demand for clothing and, therefore, for cotton, the collapse in prices cannot be explained only by this decline, but is also the result of speculators offloading their stocks. The point is that cultivators who had responded to the price signals of the short-lived boom to sow more cotton will now find themselves stuck with a crop whose price has nearly halved in just eight months. The other major cash crops that dominate cultivation are all oilseeds, and here too, very volatile and sharp swings in prices are evident over the recent period. All the major cooking oils ? palm oil, soybean oil and rapeseed oil ? show continuous and substantial increases January 2007 onwards, followed by sharp declines in the second-half of 2008. The sharpest rise and fall occurred in the palm oil price ? increasing by 208 per cent in March 2008 and then declining by 62 per cent, such that the price in November 2008 was more than 20 per cent lower than it had been in January 2007. Once again, cultivators who opted to sow these crops when their prices were at their peak would now have to face a completely different environment with very different configurations of costs and prices that could easily make the cultivation process financially unviable. Among the agricultural prices that matter the most, of course, are foodgrain prices. The most extreme trends have been evident in rice prices which were broadly stable, increasing only gradually through most of 2007, but then exploded to increase by more than two-and-a-half times between January and May 2008. Rice prices have fallen thereafter but are still 80 per cent higher than they were at the start of the period. Some of this is attributable to the fact that the world trade market for rice is relatively thin compared to total production, as most rice-producing countries are also major consumers of their own output. The sharp rise in prices in early 2008 can be partly attributed to the export bans imposed by two major exporters: India, which the previous year exported around 5 million tons, and Egypt, which exported around 2 million tons out of total world exports of around 18 million tons. Once again, however, speculative pressures are likely to have pushed up trade prices well beyond anything that could be explained by demand-supply imbalances. Wheat prices also more than doubled between January 2007 and March 2008, and declined subsequently although they are still 16 per cent higher than they were at the start of the period. Maize prices went up less sharply but continued to increase until June 2008, but thereafter fell so sharply that the maize price is now below what it was in January 2007. While world trade prices of these foodgrains did fluctuate dramatically, and have now fallen in ways that will adversely affect exporters of these crops, retail prices of these grains have not come down in most developing country markets. Therefore, we have a strange situation in which both the direct producers and the final consumers appear to be worse off because of the volatility. In another context it could be concluded that speculators have gained from this boom-and-bust price cycle, but given the chaos in global financial markets even such a conclusion may not be warranted. A weird example, then, of a negative sum game in global capitalism. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 2 21:43:54 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 20:43:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Robinson Crusoe and the South Sea Bubble Message-ID: <413858.26794.qm@web180116.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Robinson Crusoe and the South Sea Bubble Daniel Defoe?s Robinson Crusoe was for Karl Marx in his Das Kapital an object lesson in the labour theory of value. For a Jean Jacques Rousseau who abhorred book learning this naturalistic survival guide was the one book permitted in the education of Emile. For the immediate and lasting mass readership of this international best-seller of the newly literate age of that Commercial and Financial Revolution which was the necessary prelude to the Industrial Revolution, Robinson Crusoe combined escapist adventure with lessons on practicality and directions for profit. For the 60 year old author in 1719 of this first English novel writing was just another of his commercial projects. Defoe was already famous, indeed notorious, as a verse satirist, pamphleteer, founder of the first tabloid [from inside gaol for seditious libel], propagandist, the spymaster who made the 1707 Union of England and also the Protestant Succession possible, bankrupt businessman, writer of millions of words under multiple signatures, government adviser on trade and economics for both the Whigs and the Tories, when in 1719 he decided that there were signs that his market was buying accounts of sea travel perhaps stimulated by the new South Sea [South Atlantic] Company. Defoe was a writer who saw the media as a profitable business. Hence Robinson Crusoe. However this was also when both London with the South Sea Bubble and Paris with the crash of the Bank of France and the Mississippi Company were bled white by a financial crisis over toxic debt derivatives in unregulated international credit markets. The South Sea Company had been founded to fulfil an objective Defoe had been recommending to government since 1688: To carry on ?the sole trade and traffic, from 1 August 1711, into and unto the Kingdom, lands of America, on the east side from the river Aranoca, to the southernmost part of Terra del Fuego, and on the west side thereof, from the said southernmost part of America, and unto and from all countries in the same limits, reputed to belong to the King of Spain, or which shall hereafter be discovered.? Defoe also approved that its capital should be the funding of 60% of the war-time National Debt. The problem was in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht Spain did not cede the expected trading rights. The shipwreck of the British and French economies was in 1720, but throughout 1719, when Defoe sold his own South-Sea shares, Defoe was desperately writing against speculation and for real trading and colonising efforts in the South Seas especially in Venezuela. In February his Voyages of Sir Walter Raleigh, is dedicated to the South Sea Company thus: I must say, it would be the glory of the Company to embark on such a discovery?.It seems worthy for a Trading Company to attempt this part of the world, inhabited by millions of people, because numbers of people are the source of trade, and they occasion the consumption of manufacture?. It seems a loud call to Great Britain to make such an attempt on Guiana and Peru, and as it cannot be done now but under that authority and by the permission of His Majesty?s South-Sea Company, the undertaking seems to be their due; their charter begins at the river Oroonoque, and no can attempt it without this.? Then Defoe the journalist tried to pressurise the Company on 7 February 1719 floating this ?story? in his Weekly Journal: ?We expect, in two of three days, a most flaming proposal from the South Sea Company, or a body of merchants who claim kindred with them, for erecting a British Colony on the foundation of the South Sea Company?s Charter, upon the terra firma, or the northernmost side of the mouth of the great river oroonoko. They propose, as we hear, the establishing of a factory and settlement there, which shall cost the Company ?500,000, and they demand the government furnish six men of war, and some 4000 regular troops, with some Engineers and 100 pieces of cannon, and military stores in proportion for the maintaining and supporting the design.? Another colony would be 1200 miles up river and the trade would be equal that of the Portughese in Brazil and be a huge market for British manufactures. Again in Robinson Crusoe, published in April 1719, we find Defoe, the expert cartographer, shipwrecking Crusoe on an island off the Orinoco estuary near enough to be visited by cannibals in their canoes but far enough away to escape the interest of the Spaniards. Here a restless, resourceful man of the ?middling sort?, who has already seen how much money can be made with a Brazilian plantation, uses his book-keeping and artisan skills as a tradesman to render the island habitable as another England all with a climate fit for Europeans, crops and domesticated livestock. Over this he rules as the landed country gentleman, he becomes when he returns with his Brazilian gold to England. Crusoe is Defoe?s? ideal of the tradesman who manufactures himself into a gentleman - by behaviour and merit not birth and inheritance. This was another invention of the ?gentlemanly capitalism? of the Commercial Revolution where a man might ?make a name for himself? which so impressed Voltaire in his 2 year exile in England escaping France to save his life as a bourgeois who had dared to insult a chevalier. Crusoe, who himself has escaped Barbary slavery, teaches Man Friday English and the technology/ideology of his civilisation and catechises him into ?a better Christian than I am?, while the cannibals Crusoe drives away. Robinson Crusoe, is a prospectus for what the South Sea Company should be doing in 1719 with the interest from the Government they are receiving from the Funded National Debt rather than creating hysteria in the markets by artificially stimulating the capital values of the ?100 shares, which Defoe had sold at ?120. In Jan 1720 shares were ?128; March ?330;May ?550;June ?890;July ?1000. Then the crash came after the Bubble Act and insider trading and by September it was ?175; December ?124 and it settled at ?140. The Companies ?for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody knows what it is? and another ?to develop perpetual motion? of course were zero. ?I can measure the motions of [heavenly] bodies but I cannot measure human folly?, declared Newton. But he himself still lost ?20,000. Defoe reserves his deepest scorn for the Share-jobbers in his 1719 Anatomy of Exchange Alley, where operated the unregulated Stock Exchange ? the Hedge Funds de nos jours. At a public level they are guilty of treason by ?shorting? in times of national crisis as well as causing runs on even The Bank of England as well as destroying the credit and capital of the nation. ?It is a trade founded in fraud, born of deceit, and nourished by trick, cheat, wheedle, forgeries, falsehoods, and all sorts of delusions.? In fact in his next book in 1719 Captain Singleton the pirate and in 1721 Moll Flanders the thief and prostitute Defoe more than implies that they are less morally repugnant and certainly less dangerous to the public weal and physically more courageous than the stock-jobbers who squandered that credit that underpins his own now desert island. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Feb 3 07:19:35 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:19:35 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Concept of "Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg In-Reply-To: <515668.40697.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <515668.40697.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: This is an exceptionally good article. It's much easier to read on the Political Affairs web site. It's interesting to see the sophistication with which some of these CP authors write. I don't think this would have been possible in the Gus Hall days. Like the one commentator, I too question the repudiation of humanism in the article's conclusion. At 07:42 PM 2/2/2009, Charles Brown wrote: >The Concept of "Aura" and the Question of Art in >Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg By Gary Tedman >http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/8042/1/359/ >1-28-09, I think we should not expect Marxism to >produce a scientific (correct) theory of art, >which would be like a Marxist theory of biology >attempting to replace Darwinism. Instead, the >theory must come from within the realms of art >and be "internal" to that gamut of practices. Of >course, Marxism has an input to make on this >subject, and, in the absence of a universally >accepted theory, it is obliged to take a >position on art, to pick a side, so to speak. It >is also obliged to champion those theories of >art it thinks are the most progressive and >scientific. I am not convinced that Marxism has >done this in the past at all times. The Marxists >Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin and Clement >Greenberg have, I would argue, produced the most >progressive theories of art, sometimes almost as >an aside to their more pressing concerns. This >essay critiques their contributions and also >seeks to amalgamate them into a new and radical >whole. It will help us to start this >investigation by thinking of visual art as >visual philosophy. Art, if it is not simply >decorative, entertainment, or utilitarian, >communicates deep and fundamental ideas, just >like philosophy. I realize, of course, that >???What is philosophy???? is no easy question. >The Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser >(1918-1990) has, however, made it an easier one >for us. For Althusser, philosophy is class >struggle in the field of theory. It battles over >the status of the sciences. Thus, the practice >of science is distinguished from the practice of >ideology. Art, however, differs from philosophy >in that, while philosophy (at least as commonly >understood) deals with the rational via writing, >art specializes in ???feelings,??? taking >feeling to mean both emotion and sensory >perception, using its materials in subtle ways >to affect the senses. Linking art and philosophy >in this way has the benefit of revealing a >hitherto hidden aspect of art: As Althusser >said, all philosophy interpellates us as >subjects. The same can be said about art. >???Interpellation" is a concept Althusser >developed in his theory of ideology. For >Althusser, ideology (even a system of false >ideas such as bourgeois ideology) participates >in the ongoing reproduction of the already >existing social conditions of production. "As >any child knows," Althusser said, all societies >must reproduce themselves. Ideology is necessary >in order to reproduce the "right kind" of human >subject with the "right kind" of "mentality" for >functioning properly in capitalist society. The >bourgeois state has organized modern education >to manage this task, a task which once had been >the function of religious institutions. Part of >this reproduction process is the >???interpellation of the subject.??? >Althusser???s example is the French police way >of hailing: ???Hey you there!??? Such hailing >functions so that the subject recognizes he or >she really is a "responsible individual" subject >to ideology. For Althusser, the ruling >philosophy always interpellates subjects, it >always has a particular "world view," and it >hails its subjects to recognize its authority. >However, all interpellation by the state must be >"materialized." It can never just consist of >"pure ideas" floating from one brain to another. >It must therefore exist in actual practice. We >"act out" ideology, or to put it another way, >because practice always comes before theory, >ideology legitimizes practices that already >exist (e.g., ideology legitimated the Iraq war >after the war had already been started). But, as >Althusser said, bourgeois philosophy ???lives by >its denegation," the promise of an objective >knowledge of what philosophy is, as a practice, >which is offered by Marxism, is always >denegated, or disavowed, by bourgeois >philosophers, who assert that such knowledge is >impossible. This denial of status is crucial to >the ruling ideology. The bourgeois world view, >for example, sees itself as just because it is >universal, which means beyond all partisan >positions. Because of this it may/can be >forceful, resort to violence, etc. The >professional art teacher is similarly obliged to >deny real knowledge of their practice. The >phrase "there's no accounting for taste" is one >of the unwritten commandments of modern art >education. This reflects the bourgeois notion >that art (ultimately) cannot "be scientific" or >subjected to scientific analysis. In this, the >ruling philosophy has decided what science and >art is, but at the same time (absurdly) it holds >there can be no definite (scientific) knowledge >of it. It also asserts this of its own practice >of philosophy. According to the ruling >philosophy, we cannot know what philosophy does, >as a practice. All of this is a function of the >classical "bifurcation thesis," the great >separation of the humanities from the sciences, >which runs through all modern western education. >The bifurcation thesis functions on the basis of >the common ideology; it is simply asserted >(unproven) by that ideology. The theorist who in >the modern period really began to pick apart >this assertion in relation to art was Walter >Benjamin (1892-1940), especially in his essay >"The Author as Producer." While, for Althusser, >ideology takes part in social reproduction by >creating "suitably subjected subjects," this was >a process largely envisaged as taking place in >domain ideology. Even though he describes >ideology as existing in material practices, >these practices are defined by Althusser with an >emphasis on the ideological. Benjamin takes over >aesthetically where Althusser leaves off >ideologically by considering the material >(aesthetic) form of the interpellation, i.e. the >sensual mediation of the idea. Certainly, >Althusser did this too when he wrote (relatively >briefly) about art, Brecht, and the theatre, >against the aesthetic of "myths and drugs," as >he put it, but Benjamin is a more detailed and, >I suggest, gets us further. Benjamin, at the >time of his writing, was bemoaning the rise of >Neo-Kantian philosophical aesthetics (as opposed >to Marxian materialism), and demonstrated its >revival in the practice of contemporary leftist >art. He put forward his theory against positions >that he felt were then, in the 1930s, dominant, >"Activism" and the "New Objectivity" (Neue >Sachlichkeit). Activism promoted a classless >notion of "common sense" and defended, according >to Benjamin, the "indefinable attitude" of "men >of mind," referring to their placing all of the >emphasis on a metaphysical notion of content >understood as entirely separate from the process >of language use. Benjamin opposed the Lukacsian >theory of art, and any dramaturgy that based its >principles on a notion of tragedy which >perceived the dramatic hero as the proponent of >will in a conflict between two mutually >exclusive ethical demands. He criticized, on >this basis, those whom he saw as undergoing a >revolutionary development only in terms of >mentality, without at the same time being able >to think through the question of their own work, >its technique, and its relationship to the means >of production. He thought that these movements >functioned (however revolutionary they may have >seemed) in a counter-revolutionary way as long >as artists experienced solidarity with the >proletariat only in the mind, and not as >material producers. Instead of asking what the >position of an artwork was vis-? -vis the >production relations of its time ? does it >underwritte these relations, is it reactionary, >or does it aspire to overthrow them? ? Benjamin >said we should rather ask the question: What is >the artwork's position within the relations of >production? He argued that this way of looking >at art would make artistic products accessible >to immediate materialist social analysis, the >concept of technique being the dialectical >starting-point from which the "sterile >dichotomy" of form and content could be >overcome. For Benjamin, this was a better way to >determine the relationship between an artwork's >political tendency and its quality. If a correct >political tendency in a work of art includes its >literary (artistic) quality, then its literary >(artistic) tendency should consist in a >progressive development of technique. His >example is Brecht's "art of thinking inside >other people's heads." (We should note here >that, according to Warren Montag, Althusser also >came to this conclusion at one point ). Benjamin >argues that Brecht's method allowed the process >of drama to become transparent to the spectator: >that in order to make the sensory transactions >accountable, Brecht had developed just such a >"productive aesthetic" ? for example, the well >kknown "alienation effect" (not to be confused >with Marx's concept of alienation) was a sensual >technique of this aesthetic. However Benjamin >seems to diverge from this theory when we come >to his far more influential essay, "The Work of >Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" >(Harrison, 2005). This difference is worth >examining because of the latter essay???s >standing in the field of art and art >history/criticism. In this essay, Benjamin has >been interpreted as saying that the new >capitalist production relations and the new >forces of artistic production within it, such as >photography and film, overcome the >above-mentioned limitations by (we must presume) >the fact of their mass reproducibility ? because >mass reproduction remooves the so-called "aura" >of the traditional work of art. Of course, >Benjamin's concept of "aura" is usually taken as >referring to a politically undesirable thing by >the left, given that it can imply a precious, >unique, "elitist" quality, but the background of >his thesis derives here from a particular, and >relatively traditional, view of art history. It >has often been stated in the literature that >previously art was religious and that it is only >now with modern production that it has become >political. Benjamin seems to legitimate this >view in his "Work of Art??? essay of a radical >shift from the previous conditions of art >production. I submit, however, using as an >example Althusser's theory of how modern >education as part of the ideological state >apparatus (which deals with the reproduction of >ideas) emerged from a feudal background. >Althusser contends that art, although definitely >located in religious culture, was even in its >feudal past political, not least because >religion itself was a political force >responsible for the maintenance of class order. >The change in the mode of production does not >alter this aspect. Put bluntly, Benjamin does >not seem to acknowledge this function of >religious art, and therefore makes the modern >condition of art too radically distinct from >past class relations. One consequence of this is >that his idea that the art of the past did not >have a mass audience (as the art of modern >reproduction does) is overstressed. In fact, art >produced by the old guild system could often be >seen by large audiences and even be paraded in >the streets. Also, its method of production was >often not individual but workshop-based, so that >many artists, including apprentices, would work >on a single painting. This is not so dissimilar >from, say, today's film production, but, >ironically perhaps, today's celebrity artists >are actually less likely to work together this >way. Benjamin???s position also assumes that art >needs a mass audience immediately to have a >"mass effect," a position which ought not to be >simply taken for granted. Great works of art may >achieve their mass effect instead by permeating >culture slowly, but nevertheless more thoroughly >than lesser works, in the passage of time. There >are of course many examples of this that we can >experience right now in the museums, and this >is, of course, a tacit acknowledgment that art >has this exact function, in time. Benjamin's >other key idea in "The Work of Art??? essay, >that traditional art has an aura because of its >provenance as a unique object in time, may >perhaps be considered a progressive, material, >aura. By progressive I mean that provenance is >always involves a material object being subject >to the unique moment in which it was materially >constructed, as well as with the material >processes that affect it in its subsequent >history ? all of which are aspects revealed by >the object (whenn studied closely). Thus, even >if a work of art is reproduced exactly, it is >difficult to fake provenance. Time cannot be >repeated. Additional resources: Podcast #91 - >The Road to Peace PA Editors Blog Pass the >Recovery & Reinvestment Act Super Bowl, >Steelers, Rooney and Obama The Super Bowl >Subscribe to this Feed If this interpretation is >correct, the sharp contrast, which is often >implied, between the new "anti-aura" and the >feudal tradition with its religious "pro-aura," >is erroneous. All "good works of art," >considered as such within the framework of the >new capitalist production relations at the close >of the feudal period, tended to be newly defined >in terms of a "reactionary" aura whatever their >technical means. This was, we must assume, >because of the new bourgeois humanist ideology >and the new practices (exploitation, >expropriation, wage slavery) it validated for >that/the new ruling class. There was perhaps >only a relatively slow shift in terms of the >aura, just as the Reformation was a process that >represented a slow shift in religious >sensibility. Today there are merely different >institutions (aesthetic state apparatuses), such >as schools, museums, and galleries, for art. And >it was and is not something unique to the new >technologies promoted in and through these >institutions to act against aura. The simple >fact of being inherently reproducible is no >guarantor against reactionary aura. Indeed we >must point out that photography and film today >do not generally (exceptions exist of course) go >against aura; in fact, they are invariably >treated as having the most intense aura of all >artworks. The aura they do have, however, is not >exclusively found in the uniqueness of the >material object itself (the "original film," >although there is of course the "director's >cut"), but is also due to the uniqueness of the >author "showing up" in the work (a la "auteur >theory"). But this is little different from the >same attitude as in regard to a "traditional" >painting (although certainly the traditional >Christian attitude towards the artwork may have >been actually less directly associating >religious values with the individual artist???s >particular genius). We can now accept that if >the aura of the traditional work of art was once >related to its religious context, this was >because it was meant to impress the illiterate >and had a hypnoidal function (that is, if there >was no subversion of this by the artist), adding >to the special atmosphere of the church/temple. >For example, traditional stained glass windows >in typical European churches provided Christian >narratives using light; this was their "special >effect." Is this hypnoidal effect, this aura, >something that modern mass reproducible artworks >lack? Hardly. Today, film and video are perhaps >the most hypnoidal of all media, given that, to >induce this state in a subject, the classic ruse >is to use a "fixed moving point," such as the >typical glowing TV/video image. Today we have >Microsoft Windows taking the place of the old >stained glass windows. As "windows," we see they >still glow with an "inner light." The only >difference is we now invariably have these >little "temples" at home, where they can more >easily probe us and know our "preferences." In a >sense, they watch us far more closely than Big >Brother ever could in Orwell???s ???1984???; >they are the new temple and oracle rolled into >one. Thus we can see that there are at least two >kinds of aura, and two ways we can treat this >concept-term. Iona Singh has shown how the >apparent aura of great works of art by Vermeer >("Vermeer, Materialism, and the Transcendental >in Art," in Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 16 no. 3) >is in fact its superior physical/sensual >properties, made by an artist with great skill >with materials, and it is this 'sensual aura' >that is actually misrepresented by bourgeois >critics who wish to salvage these great works >for their 'normal' hypnoidal aura. Yet, at the >same time, we see that there are traditional >artworks that do have aura in precisely the >negative sense, in that they use their technical >means almost solely for purposes of heightening >illusion at the service of mystical ideas. So, >while an original traditional artwork (say, a >painting) may have aura due to its unique >provenance and its expert technical qualities, >the new media also has this same aura, and also >its own provenance as a material object. It >cannot avoid this because there is always the >original (even with mass reproduction and even >with the Internet). Hence today, art film and >photography have just as much, or as little, >aura as traditional paintings by old masters, >and in terms of artistic technique have the >potential to hide the sensual-material >transactions between the spectator and the >artwork to a far greater extent because of the >greater technical possibilities that exist today >for illusion. Benjamin's 'The Work of Art??? >essay has often been taken as the modern >left???s justification for many recent kinds of >'new technological' but still narrative art, art >that, in effect, still suffers from the same >problems his other, more radical, essay attacked >(this seems to be a peculiar contradiction in >Benjamin's work). Today, mere use of new >technology plus a loosely critical narrative, >destined to find sympathy with a liberal >outlook, is perhaps the equivalent to >Benjamin???s "new objectivity." Ironically, >however, because of the way Benjamin legitimates >its use, this narrative technique becomes the >ground on which today's progressive art >invariably avoids the scientific question. For >Benjamin, it seems to enough to be progressively >tendentious and to use new technology, which >then stands for "new technique." Although I have >no wish to single out any artist, the >contemporary work of Bill Viola comes to mind >here, with his use of large video plasma screens >showing figurative and highly illusionary, >emotional, narrative artworks. His exhibition >???The Passions??? at the National Gallery >London (22-10-03 to 04-01-04) was in a darkened >room and the entire effect was hypnoidal. Such >emotionalist art always verges on being >sophisticated kitsch. It has all the attributes >of kitsch: it is highly illusionistic, >sentimental and reliant on fancy new technology; >but while I criticize, we should also note that >Viola is a very professional artist and has >genuine expertise, which it would be a mistake >to dismiss as simply "low." In his famous >defense of ???high??? modern abstract art >against the forces of populist kitsch, >???Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939), Clement >Greenberg wondered how we could possibly account >for "high art" alongside "low" culture, given >they are so different. In his essay, Greenberg >deals with a problem that Benjamin (in the >essays I have mentioned above) only approaches >indirectly: the accusation of elitism against >advanced art technique, or in other words >against avant-garde art. Certainly, it can be >inferred that Benjamin???s concept of the >diminishing of aura by mass reproduction is >simultaneously an attack on elitism. For the >Marxian Clement Greenberg of 1939, his >understanding of the new US abstract >expressionist avant-garde arose from: ???a >superior consciousness of history ??? more >precisely, the appearance of a new kind of >criticism of society, an historical criticism > which made it poossible.??? This "consciousness >of history" (according to this particular essay) >somehow or other affected artists, who were even >unaware of it, as it apparently just floated in >on the breeze of the Zeitgeist. In terms of >Benjamin???s productive aesthetic, we can see >how na??ve Greenberg???s "spiritual" view >actually is, how it is really a repetition of >the position that Benjamin was against. Yet, >peculiarly, it is used to defend just the kind >of technique and quality Benjamin was arguing >for (at least in ???The Author as Producer???). >Greenberg???s stance clearly stems from a >Marxist, but still rather humanist and >consequently Hegelian, understanding of art and >ideology, in which art is reduced to ideology >and ideology is really ???Spirit??? dressed as >class struggle. Thus, for Greenberg, the state's >education of the artist makes no appearance and >everything is a question of mental and narrated >allegiance, hovering at a distance above >economic facts, but occasionally dipping into >them to justify certain opinions. Greenberg >essentially writes about art from a position >assumed to be beyond scientific accountability, >that is, from the traditional perspective of the >arts/science bifurcation. He is in art, so he >accordingly feels little obligation to provide >evidence to the same degree as would be >necessary in scientific discourse. Here it is >only required to be convincing in the >"humanities-art way": to be erudite, to be >well-referenced, and to be a bit radical. >Consequently his Marxism functions not to demand >any scientific advance in art theory, but as an >externally applied politics, i.e., more a >posture than a position. In order to save the >avant-garde and high art, with its special aura, >even from the Soviets and their fellow >travelers, whom he saw as aesthetically entwined >in old-fashioned realism. Greenberg is thus >obliged to distinguish between avant-garde art >and "lowbrow" kitsch. But he had to do this >without breaking the bourgeois taboo against >???accounting for taste.??? Therefore his theory >is ultimately only able to infer the existence >of undefined "special people" who have the >capacity to "divine" the difference between >"high" and "low." This notion of "special >people" is also applied to the artists he >championed. Thus, although Greenberg champions >avant-garde abstract artists, his is not the >more rational avant-garde aesthetic of, for >example, the Soviet Constructivists (e.g. >Malevich, Popova, Rodchenko and Rozanova), or >that of Mondrian, but a mystical one that suited >his denegation of exact knowledge better. This >was undoubtedly an aesthetic which still owed a >great debt to the European and Soviet >avant-garde in formal terms, but also, I argue, >had hypnoidal aspects that could more readily >support a mystical narrative. The works of the >Abstract Expressionists are technically >impressive and formally radical and were, I >think (though I will not argue that here), >superior to the then official Soviet art (whose >existence, I believe, contributed to the >eventual downfall of the Soviet Union), and had >ditched certain "dangerous" Brechtian elements >of the kind for which Benjamin argued. To >conclude, I maintain that in the new (US) >context the techniques of avant-garde art were >relatively defused to make them more amenable to >their new social context, yet they still >functioned in a progressive way (internally to >the US, while externally they became a >reactionary symbol representing the radicalism >of the "free world"). Greenberg, Benjamin and >Althusser were writing against the same >historical backdrop, the October Revolution and >the rise of the artistic avant-garde, >particularly the Soviet avant-garde, and its >influence, and the lasting effects of World War >II, including the legacies of Nazism, Stalinism >and cult of personality. It seems to me that >Benjamin and Althusser were struggling to free >themselves from the vestiges of humanism in how >Marxism was interpreted, and that they realized >the question of art was somehow central to this >project. They did not entirely succeed. Indeed, >they both retreat, after making some bold >advances at certain stages in their writings >(Althusser, for instance, towards the end of his >essay on the Piccolo Teatro), to a slightly more >conservative position on the question of art. I >suggest this was because they came up against >the dominant world view that Greenberg aptly >voiced and for which he was lionized. >Greenberg???s theoretical bequest, however, is >much weaker than either Benjamin or Althusser, >because he does not really offer any new concepts of art for us to work with. _ From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Feb 3 07:31:01 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:31:01 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Engels & Early Christianity Message-ID: Frederick Engels and Early Christianity By Thomas Riggins Political Affairs, 1-28-09 http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/8039/1/359/ As I see it, this article has two souls. One, revealing the ideological and institutional complex of the rise of Christianity; two, perpetuating the shallow and ultimately ridiculous parallel between primitive Christianity and the modern workers' movement. But most importantly, note, as I've suggested repeatedly, that Engels was heavily influenced by the Hegelian heritage of higher criticism--David Strauss, Bruno Bauer, etc., as undoubtedly Marx was. I would suggest supplementing this picture by filling in the gaps as to how Pauline Christianity--a sick and depraved construct--initially interacted with the primitive Christian communities, which though a reaction were also infected with the sickness of the very society against which they rebelled. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Feb 3 10:03:59 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:03:59 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rod Serling, For Your Consideration Message-ID: Rod Serling, For Your Consideration By John Pietaro Political Affairs, 1-28-09 http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/8041/1/359/ Rod Serling is one of my heroes. I saw him in person once towards the beginning of the '70s. If he had lived to see Reagan get elected, he really would have been in the Twilight Zone. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Tue Feb 3 11:36:51 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2009 10:36:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] David Duke's Nightmare Comes True! Message-ID: <942549.50286.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> David Duke's Nightmare Comes True! By David Knowles Feb 3rd 2009 9:58AM Filed Under:eRepublicans, Featured Stories, Race, Obama Administration What's a white supremacist to do? Consider the events of recent years. First, David Duke's own party (the GOP) all but abandons the "Southern strategy", hires Condi Rice as Secretary of State and Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. Then, the country as a whole has the nerve to elect its first African American president. To crown it all off, last week, Republicans picked Michael Steele to head up the RNC. Here's what Duke had to say about the selection in a none-too-subtle piece, titled "To Hell with the Republican Party: GOP traitors appoint Obama Junior as Chairman of the Republican Party": The Republican Party leadership, in its latest act of self-immolation appointed Michael Steele, a radical black racist as the leader of the Party. Steele is a passionate supporter of affirmative action programs that racially discriminate against tens of millions of White Americans. You get the gist. Capitalize "White", lowercase "black." Same old story. To add insult to injury, another black guy, Eric Holder, has been confirmed as the nation's top law enforcement official. Oh, and don't forget Obama's pick of a Jew, Rahm Emanuel, as his Chief-of-Staff. Yes, it seems like the former KKK-Grand-Wizard's nightmare of a post-racial America might just be coming true. Those obsessed with the notion of "pure blood" (that includes you, Lord Voldemort) felt their collective pulse rise earlier this year when headlines across the country reported a census bureau finding that in the year 2050, whites will officially become a minority population in these United States. But the assertion was true only if you held a perverse, and racist, notion of what constitutes racial identity.As The Boston Globe explained: So what explains the persistent drumbeat about the impending white minority? A statistical distortion: the exclusion of Hispanic whites. If only non-Hispanic whites are counted, the white population today amounts to 66 percent of the total, and will hit around 46 percent by 2050. But excluding whites of Hispanic origin from the overall white population makes no more sense than excluding whites of Slavic or Scandinavian origin. "Hispanic" is not a race. It is an ethnic category. But whatever the genetic/cultural distinctions, there is no doubt that the face of the country is changing--both in the population at large, and as regards those who control its levers of power. For racists like David Duke, that's nothing to celebrate. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Tue Feb 3 12:59:18 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2009 11:59:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month Award goes to White voters for Obama; Iowa Caucus voters special mention Message-ID: <380370.34112.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> In the US the class and race questions are integrally intertwined. Karl Marx said in _Capital_ "In the United States of America any sort of independent labor movement was paralyzed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded." THE WORKING DAY Struggle for a Normal Working Day Repercussion of the English Factory Acts on Other Countries http://www.graphicwitness.org/contemp/marx37.htm#pg37 Workers of all nations,races and of the World, Unite ! This Black History month the Award goes to the tens millions of White voters around the country for Obama who made Black history and just history. Perhaps the Iowa Caucus voters get a special mention as leaders of this anti-racist movement among White people. Charles From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Tue Feb 3 17:25:54 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2009 16:25:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Frederick Engels and Early Christianity Message-ID: <587099.81463.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Frederick Engels and Early Christianity By Thomas Riggins Political Affairs, 1-28-09 http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/8039/1/359/ As I see it, this article has two souls. One, revealing the ideological and institutional complex of the rise of Christianity; two, perpetuating the shallow and ultimately ridiculous parallel between primitive Christianity and the modern workers' movement. ^^^^^ CB: When I think about this aspect of this article, I think of it as concretizing Marx and Engels famous claim that history is a history of class struggles, exploiter vs exploited. Christianity was an ideology of the slave class struggling against the Roman slaveowning class. According to Marx and Engels, it is human to resist exploitation and oppression, and this is some of the evidence of it. Engels is giving historical evidence of the central Marxist thesis to the working class of his day. Also, of course, Christianity was the main religion of Europe at that time, so it is a materialist explanation of that religion. It is a demystification of Christianity for the Christian European working class. He's extracting the rational kernel, flipping it off of its head onto its feet, following Marx's maxim that the first principle of irreligious criticism is that religion does not make humans, humans make religion. ^^^^ But most importantly, note, as I've suggested repeatedly, that Engels was heavily influenced by the Hegelian heritage of higher criticism--David Strauss, Bruno Bauer, etc., as undoubtedly Marx was. I would suggest supplementing this picture by filling in the gaps as to how Pauline Christianity--a sick and depraved construct--initially interacted with the primitive Christian communities, which though a reaction were also infected with the sickness of the very society against which they rebelled. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Feb 3 19:36:11 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:36:11 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month Award goes to White voters for Obama; Iowa Caucus voters special mention In-Reply-To: <380370.34112.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <380370.34112.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I see the white Obama vote as a non-racial vote, not an anti-racist vote. How many white voters voted for Obama to oppose racism? By and large, they voted for what they perceived to be in their own interests, and didn't let race stand in the way, though many were tempted to do so. This is really the result of a long process of acceptance of respectable blacks in high places, not a revolutionary leap. I think we can do better for Black History Month. At 02:59 PM 2/3/2009, Charles Brown wrote: >In the US the class and race questions are integrally intertwined. >Karl Marx said in _Capital_ > >"In the United States of America any sort of independent labor >movement was paralyzed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the >republic. Labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself where labor >with a black skin is branded." > > > THE WORKING DAY >Struggle for a Normal Working Day >Repercussion of the English Factory Acts on Other Countries > > >http://www.graphicwitness.org/contemp/marx37.htm#pg37 > > >Workers of all nations,races and of the World, Unite ! > > > This Black History month the Award goes to the tens millions of >White voters around the country for Obama who made Black history and >just history. Perhaps the Iowa Caucus voters get a special mention as >leaders of this anti-racist movement among White people. > > >Charles From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Tue Feb 3 22:28:37 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2009 21:28:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] More on generation of capitalist crisis Message-ID: <728806.55848.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Anonymous: The urbanization rate in the NIEs of Asia accelerates > remarkably after 1986. The World Bank did studies on it. ^^^^^^^ CB: However, people moving into the cities and becoming wage-laborers/proletarians is not the over-accumulation of capital that leads to crisis. Wage-laborers are variable capital. Overaccumulation refers, through the OCC, to the accumulation of too much constant capital relative to the amount of variable capital or wage-laborers. Wage-laborers/variable capital is the source of surplus value. They can't be over-accumulated from the standpoint of producing profits , profits per total capital or rate of profit ( unless their wages are too high ! which was not a problem in East Asia at the time referred to) Variable capital increase does not cause the rate of profit to fall. It is overaccumulation of constant capital relative to the amount of variable capital ( increased OCC) that leads to a fall in the rate of profit. So, this trend of increased urbanization/proletarianization is not the cause of the rate of profit falling when it does. Again the rate of profit falls because of a)over-accumulation of _constant_ capital relative to variable capital, increase in the OCC, because variable capital is the only source of new value , and therefore surplus value (and constant capital is not a source of new value or surplus value); and b)overproduction of commodities relative to the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses of wage-laborers, who are the consumers of the great mass of personal consumption commodities, thereby preventing realization of a major fraction of the potential surplus value exploited by the capitalists. The tendency of the rate of profit to fall is a valid generalization of capitalism , because, individual capitalists are constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, in order to produce more unit commodities per labor time to get a leg up on the other capitalists. This is relative surplus value as opposed to absolute surplus value. Eventually , all such efficiency increasing eventually spreads to all capitalists in an industry, and this raises the OCC industry wide (see above on how increase in the OCC causes the rate of profit to fall.) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Feb 4 08:39:29 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 07:39:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month Award goes to White voters for Obama... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <516171.57341.qm@web180104.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> wrote: > Comment > > The idea was to select an individual. ^^^^^ CB: I just made this "Award" up. So, it's my idea. We are going collective and mass, not celebrity. ^^^ > > Why not put forth "a leader of "this > anti-racist movement among White > people." ^^^^ CB: Yes, that wuuld be Democratic Congressman Murtha from Pennsylvania and Labor leader Richard Trumka who valiantly and openly challenged racism against Obama among people in his district and among union members. Union leader Trumka?s speech on racism goes viral http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/13814/ 2008http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2008/10/16/murtha-apologizes-for-calling-western-pa-racist/ October 16, Murtha Apologizes for Calling Western Pa. Racist @ 11:35 am by Hill Staff Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) apologized for calling western Pennsylvania, which includes his district, racist during an interview. ?I apologize for making the comment that ?Western Pennsylvania is a racist area,?" Murtha said in a statement released by his office. ?While we cannot deny that race is a factor in this election, I believe we?ve been able to look beyond race these past few months, and that voters today are concerned with the policy differences of our two candidates and their vision for the future of our great country. "There's no question Western Pennsylvania is a racist area," Murtha told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's editorial board yesterday. Murtha represents Pennsylvania?s 12th district in Congress, which represents southwestern Pennsylvania, and borders West Virginia in parts. -Michael O'Brien > > My selection remains Engels, whose term of endearment of > Marx to Marx can be > translated into modern American English as "Hey > Black." > > The Moor. :-) > > > WL ^^^^^^ CB: As much as I love Fred and Charlie the Moor, on names they have a problem. Using the N-word in personal correspondence :>) They get it for "Workers of all nationalities, unite" and "Labor in white skin will not be free while labor in the Black skin is branded." But that's past history. White Americans for Obama just made fresh Black history. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Wed Feb 4 10:31:40 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:31:40 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Positivist Dispute (Positivismusstreit) - 17 Message-ID: I have attempted to condense the substantive commentary on Adorno's Introduction to the Positivist Dispute that took place a few months ago on various listservs and in private onto a single web page: The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology: Notes, Questions & Comments by Ralph Dumain I: Adorno's Introduction http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/posdispute-01.html Further tasks include submitting commentary on Adorno's other two essays in the English translation, which I believe I still have in handwritten notes, plus an audio recording of a conversation on Adorno's "On the Logic of the Social Sciences". In addition, there are my commentaries on the secondary literature and the additional bibliographical data gathered since I began this discussion. From there, when time permits, I will proceed onward to read Habermas' contributions to the volume. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Feb 4 17:47:35 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 16:47:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rise of China and Pragmatic Marxism, An Interview Message-ID: <513500.29932.qm@web180108.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Rise of China and Pragmatic Marxism, An Interview By Political Affairs Editor's Note: Josef Gregory Mahoney teaches East Asian Studies in Michigan. He has written numerous articles and essays on Chinese history, politics, culture, and philosophy. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Central Minzu University for China Nationalities in Beijing. PA: You recently wrote a review for Political Affairs on Kishore Mahbubani?s The New Asian Hemisphere. The central idea of his book seems to be that there we are seeing ?a rise of Asia,? especially China. You were somewhat critical of his perspective on that and the shift of global hegemony to the East. Could you talk about this? MAHONEY: As I?ve already stipulated, I have a bit of hostility towards Mahbubani, given some of the statements he has made about China in the past where he has described the CCP not as the Communist Party of China but as the Chinese Capitalist Party. I have written about that elsewhere. In the first instance, Mahbubani is absolutely correct, that there is a rise of power in China, but what is the nature of that power? What is that power based on? On the one hand, it is based on the fact that they are able to sell so many products to the United States. So it is a power that is mediated by their ability to sell in the capitalist market, in the global capitalist market. In other words, it is dependent, in a fashion, on whether or not the United States is buying things from China, but, more than this, it is dependent on whether or not businesses like Wal-Mart and others are investing in China. This has led some critics in China to assert that much of China?s economic growth is a result of comprador capitalism. So is this is a true rise, or is it a rise on the coattails of Western hegemonism? That is the question. But more than this, Mahbubani?s central thesis is that Asia itself is rising ? with perhaps China at the center (he kind of avoids saying this, but he focuses on China so much that one gets the impression that this is the case). China is at the center and India is at the periphery. This is important, because again, much more than China, India?s rise has been driven by providing services to the United States. They provide the US with countless services. For example, if you have a problem with your AT&T bill, you call AT&T and you get someone in Bangalore. But what happens if the United States economy experiences a meltdown? What happens to all the money that is being poured into India now, and by extension what happens to all the money that is pouring into China? What happens to these vast dollar reserves that China holds, that could be literally worthless if the value of the American currency plummets? This is something which many people are very concerned about, including China. China right now is in talks with the European Union trying to find a way of getting around using the dollar as the international common currency. But to get back to Mahbubani?s point of reference. In The New Asian Hemisphere, he looks at the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and how China handled that crisis. As I wrote in my review, this crisis was a very important event. It was one of the most important events in the last 20 years. One could even say it is one of the most important events in the history of global capitalism. Effectively what happened is that you had a number of people ? George Soros was chief among them, perhaps ? who saw an opportunity to enter the currency market and make a quick killing on the Thai bhat. This led to the exposure of a number of structural weaknesses in the Thai economy, and it started a chain reaction, because people began seeing that these structural weaknesses also existed in other places, such as Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. So we began to see a snowballing effect and what was effectively a huge divestment from Asia. And as Western investors began to pull money out of Asia, where did they put it? For the most part they put it in the United States. This has led some Asians to suggest that the Asian financial crisis was, in fact, a strategic or tactical maneuver by the West to effect a massive transfer of wealth back to the West ? which maybe even staved off the financial crisis we are now experiencing for another decade. Meanwhile, what did that financial crisis provoke in Asia? The immediate outcome was that the United States went in with guarantees and shored up the economies of Thailand, South Korea and other areas, effectively re-establishing tighter hegemonic capitalist control over these countries at a time when they were beginning to become more independent. Thus we find the United States establishing itself once again more firmly and making these countries more beholden to the United States, at a time when China is trying to rise in the region. In regard to China's response to all this, there is a great book on Premier Zhu Rongji and how he handled the financial crisis by Laurence J. Brahm, titled Zhu Rongji and the Transformation of Modern China (2002), who talks about how the United States tried to pressure China to follow the Washington Consensus that was then being pursued in Thailand and South Korea, and China declined. Many people saw this as a very bold break with American hegemony, a break that was fundamentally in China?s best interests. But, Mahbubani thinks that China?s refusal to follow Washington?s policy was, in fact, something that hurt China and should have been followed for the greater good of Asia. To me, Mahbubani's conclusion is sort of a mythological narrative, the same sort of narrative that we would expect from someone who says that the Chinese Communist Party is the Chinese Capitalist Party. I think another important thing to keep in mind about China over the last 10 years is that you have 1997, which is the beginning of the Asian financial crisis, but more than this you have 9/11. There are a number of people in China, important and intelligent people, who conclude that the aftermath of 9/11, although it was billed as a war on terror, was really a cover for an encircling campaign to contain China. Why? Well, one of the immediate aftermaths of 9/11 was, of course, that we went into Afghanistan, but more than that we began establishing relations and building bases in Khyrgystan and Uzbekistan. When you take into consideration that the US has bases there and in Afghanistan and Iraq, we could effectively shut down the Gulf. We have F-16s throughout Central Asia. In Southeast Asia we have a big naval base in the Singapore area. In effect we have military assets in Taiwan, because we keep selling them planes and weapons. We have the Pacific Fleet, and we have armed forces in South Korea and Japan. We have effectively surrounded China. The military estimates are that we could hit any target in China with conventional weapons in under 15 minutes. Now this is very concerning and disconcerting to China. It is disconcerting in a manner that recalls two other incidents. The first was the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, which many Chinese believe, and people in government believe, the US did intentionally. Secondly there was the spy plane incident in 2001. We fly planes up and down China's coast with monitoring equipment. There was some aggression between two planes and one was forced to land on Hainan island. As people will recall, it was a very big deal. So China sees itself as being in a strange sort of contradictory position, where on the one hand it does business with the United States and welcomes investment, but on the other hand it is certain that the United States is in a sort of low-grade struggle with China, and that the United States is trying to position assets that could effectively curtail China and threaten it. PA: So your criticism of Mahbubani?s argument is not so much with his argument about the rise of China, as in the way you see them pursuing that rise in relation to the US? MAHONEY: Although we can talk about our interests abroad, let?s keep in mind that the United States is bordered by only two countries, Mexico and Canada. China is bordered by thirteen countries: Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Khyrgystan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, and North Korea. A lot of these countries are places where there is some degree of unrest, where there are things happening that may be a broader threat to regional, if not global, security. And if you start talking about how many countries are close enough to China that a short-range missile could be launched from them and hit China, the number goes up quite a bit more. So, given its geographic situation, it is in China?s best interests to create good relations with its neighbors, because the consequences otherwise would be too difficult to deal with strategically. How do you maintain ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) and some kind of deterrent capacity against the United States, but at the same time maintain the ability to go to war with all the small countries that surround you. And China has gone to war. They had a border conflict with the Soviet Union in the 1960s, and they fought a war with Vietnam in the 1970s right after we left. There is friction with North Korea. There is continued concern about Japan, because Japan keeps electing these very nationalistic governments, and Taiwan continues to buy very high-tech weaponry that is basically offensive in nature, not merely defensive. So China lives in a difficult era. But, more than this, China has to have access to oil; it has to have access to resources. It needs to have a good relationship with Russia, because Russia has such vast energy resources. Furthermore, because the United States has effectively put itself in a position to lock down the Gulf, China needs other sources of oil, which is why it has been building relationships in Africa. As a result of China's opening to Africa, the American military is establishing AFRICOM to counteract what it sees as China?s meddling in Africa. But China?s ?meddling? in Africa is in large measure driven by the need to have access to resources that may be closed off to them, given American hegemony in the Middle East. In addition, China has come under substantial attack for working with Myanmar. We keep pressuring China to pressure the admittedly ruthless junta in Myanmar to facilitate democracy, and China has not done this. Neither has India, by the way, and India doesn?t get criticized that much. But why hasn?t China done this? Because there is oil in the waters off of Myanmar, and China has financed and built a pipeline through Myanmar to have access to that oil. Why? For its national security. China is also being criticized for supporting the government in Sudan. But why is it supporting the government in Sudan? Is it because they believe in the repression of minorities? Some would argue yes. They would say, yes, China wants to repress minorities. They do this to their own people. I don?t think that is true. I think that the primary reason they are in Sudan is the same reason they are in Myanmar. They are looking for access to oil and ways to counteract American hegemony in the Middle East. By the same token, just to turn the criticism around, you could say that the United States does business with Saudi Arabia and other regimes that are in many ways as anti-democratic and repressive as the ones that China does business with. This is a broad discussion that has repercussions in many different areas. Do I think that China is broadly committed to global harmony and prosperity? In fact, I do. But I am not convinced by what we have seen in terms of their actions in response to the war on terror or in response to the Asian financial crisis, that there is solid evidence that they are acting in the best interests of the global community. Rather they seem to be simply trying to survive in very difficult times. PA: You are leading us toward, I think, a kind of ideological discussion about China?s role ? that there may be a tendency to view China as a replacement for the Soviet Union. There has always been this idealistic view in our movement that the leading countries in the world socialist movement have an international responsibility to promote democracy, socialism and international solidarity. What you seem to be saying is that China is not trying to take up that banner, except insofar as they can link their own national self-interests to that broader solidarity goal, to the broader issue of internationalism. On the other hand, it is also true that China has developed the concept of peaceful development, so that its own successes do not come at the expense of other countries, as is the case with the United States, but in cooperation with other countries. Could you talk about the history of that concept of peaceful development? MAHONEY: To speak directly to the ideological aspect, Hu Jintao has articulated the notion of a Scientific Development Concept. We could read this on the one hand as the Chinese version of sustainable development, but it is a sustainable development that is not necessarily founded on the idea of sustaining capitalist consumptive practices, as sustainability is so often construed in the West. Instead, it has at its core the notion of socialism and harmony, which is the second major element of Hu Jintao?s ideological statement: the harmonious society. Hu Jintao and others are clear, in a reasonable and logical way, that China cannot ? that no country can ? dominate the globe and sustain that position over the long term, and, furthermore, that pure capitalism is so fundamentally at odds with democracy that it results in exploitative practices, which cannot, at the level of human resources or humanity, or any notion of humanism, be sustained over the long term. But more than this, what we generally see with capitalism is what you see in Northern Mexico right now as a result of NAFTA. It is one of the most polluted areas in the world ? children are being born with birth defects, women are being raped, and so forth and so on, by as a result of the disruptions caused by so-called free trade. Therefore China has expressly stated that this model is not the model it wishes to pursue. I believe that that conviction is based less on ideology than it is on observation of fact. With regard to the idea that China that we should view China in some way as a replacement for the Soviet Union. On the one hand, I do think that we should very carefully study what China is doing. Why? Because China is a big part of the world. But more than this, I believe that China is seriously trying to advance Marxist theory and socialism, and we ought to look at those efforts. However, this is still largely a case of ?socialism in one country.? It is a form of socialism that understands that it cannot sustain itself in China by trying to establish China as a hegemonic power. Now this is not a recent trend. In order to contrast it with the perception of the Soviet Union as the vanguard, we need to maybe go back to 1966, when Mao made it very clear (and the Party seemed to back him on this), that the Soviet Union was pursuing policies that were not sustainable over the long term, and furthermore that the Soviet Union was trying to establish a hegemonic position in the so-called communist world. Therefore, China decided to do two things in the 1960s: First, it broke with the Soviet Union and secondly it broke with internationalism. Whereas in 1950 it entered the conflict in Korea and effectively pushed back the UN forces ? but primarily the United States ? and established a buffer with North Korea. There is also evidence that has been declassified by the Chinese over the last several years that it was largely Chinese ? and this is no slight against the efforts made by Vietnam?s liberation movement ? but it was largely Chinese artillery units that defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Some estimates are that as many as 70,000 pieces of artillery were sent across the border by Mao by Chinese wearing Vietnamese uniforms (see Chen Jian?s Mao?s China and the Cold War, 2001). China was very active in the 1950s trying to advance an internationalist cause/agenda, but then something happened in 1959 ? it was a tragedy really. Again this is according to recently declassified information. The CIA was in fact in Tibet trying to stage an uprising. This led to what then happened to Tibet, which is that the PLA rolled in and crushed the uprising, and the Dalai Lama fled. The Dalai Lama headed an organization that worked directly with the CIA. Now, it is not a popular thing to say in the West, but Lamaist Buddhism in Tibet was one of the most oppressive forms of theocratic feudalism the world has ever seen. So when China says they liberated Tibet in 1949, they mean it, and when they had to go in in 1959 and crush the CIA-organized rebellion there, the really had to. Because whoever controls the Tibetan plateau has an incredible strategic advantage over the whole heartland of China. It was a very unfortunate circumstance, and no one applauds it or feels good about Tibet, but I often say that if you want to criticize China?s modern nation-building in Tibet, then criticize America?s modern nation-building in California, New Mexico, or more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that aside, in 1966 China effectively abandons internationalism. It?s a very interesting moment in Chinese history. On the one hand China initiates the Cultural Revolution, and you see this very hard movement to the left, which the Soviets hated by the way ? they hated it and they criticized it ruthlessly. So there was this very hard movement to the left internally, and at the same time a hard movement to the right internationally. They now abandon internationalism. They abandon supporting movements abroad, and they begin to make overtures ? this starts in 1966 really ? to the United States, culminating in Nixon and Kissinger?s visit in the early 1970s. It is not Deng Xiaoping who opens China to the world, it is Mao who does this. Deng is going to get the credit for it, and we would like to pretend like there is this big rupture between Deng and Mao, but it is really Mao who moves China to the right internationally. It is Deng who will move China to the right domestically. The next thing is that many people on the left, and for good reasons, admire Cuba, Venezuela, and what is going on in Ecuador, Bolivia, and the leftism that has to some degree emerged in Brazil. We love it when Ch?vez goes to Beijing or when officials come from Beijing and travel to these countries and you get these great photos. We have this sense that there is a rise in leftism, that there is solidarity, and that maybe China is at the center of it. But I am not sure that this is really the case, because there is really no evidence that China is pursuing a leadership role in a global solidarity movement that is exclusive of anyone. I think maybe the best evidence of my argument here against this would be the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, which is right there on China?s border. I mean this is a Maoist insurgency for democracy and for socialism, and it wins, it is victorious ? but there is absolutely no evidence that they have received any support, ideological, moral, financial, or material from the Chinese. So I am not sure how anyone can then say, "Well here?s China, and they it's doing all these things at the center of some internationalist, and we should see them within an internationalist Marxist revolutionary paradigm." After all, in large measure we saw the end of of the claim to uphold an internationalist model with the fall of the Soviet Union. For China, the Soviet "fall" came much sooner than 1989, of course. Ironically, one of the reasons China broke with the Soviets in the 1960s is that the Chinese did not think the Soviets were capable of supporting China?s best interests, let alone the broader interests of global revolution. Furthermore, in 1966, China effectively abandoned revolutionary international policies. Given this historical context, I think that those people who come to see China as a potential international solidarity revolutionary leader, as some second coming of the idealized role played by the Soviet Union, is a recurrence of wishful thinking in the same way they saw the Soviet Union have an idealization problem. That said, I am not going to retreat from my earlier point, which is that we do need to study China. We do need to study their work in Marxist theory, because it is very advanced. There is much that we can learn from it about what it means to struggle for progress in the world as it presently is, about what it means to survive and grow, about how to sustain some form of socialism within the context of global capitalist hegemony. This is the broader tactic at work in China, and I think that they have achieved a lot. On the other hand, and I know that this is something that we need to discuss separately, there have been some important issues and questions, and the biggest question has to do with ?What about democracy?? From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Wed Feb 4 18:13:43 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:13:43 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rise of China and Pragmatic Marxism, An Interview In-Reply-To: <513500.29932.qm@web180108.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <513500.29932.qm@web180108.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I could much more easily read this horseshit by following a link and read it in its original, legible format. Instead, CB has to indiscriminately ingest all the offal he scavenges and immediately diahrrhea it onto us. At 07:47 PM 2/4/2009, Charles Brown wrote: >Rise of China and Pragmatic Marxism, An >Interview By Political Affairs Editor's Note: >Josef Gregory Mahoney teaches East Asian Studies >in Michigan. He has written numerous articles >and essays on Chinese history, politics, >culture, and philosophy. He has also been a >visiting scholar at the Central Minzu University >for China Nationalities in Beijing. PA: You >recently wrote a review for Political Affairs on >Kishore Mahbubani???s The New Asian Hemisphere. >The central idea of his book seems to be that >there we are seeing ???a rise of Asia,??? >especially China. You were somewhat critical of >his perspective on that and the shift of global >hegemony to the East. Could you talk about this? >MAHONEY: As I???ve already stipulated, I have a >bit of hostility towards Mahbubani, given some >of the statements he has made about China in the >past where he has described the CCP not as the >Communist Party of China but as the Chinese >Capitalist Party. I have written about that >elsewhere. In the first instance, Mahbubani is >absolutely correct, that there is a rise of >power in China, but what is the nature of that >power? What is that power based on? On the one >hand, it is based on the fact that they are able >to sell so many products to the United States. >So it is a power that is mediated by their >ability to sell in the capitalist market, in the >global capitalist market. In other words, it is >dependent, in a fashion, on whether or not the >United States is buying things from China, but, >more than this, it is dependent on whether or >not businesses like Wal-Mart and others are >investing in China. This has led some critics in >China to assert that much of China???s economic >growth is a result of comprador capitalism. So >is this is a true rise, or is it a rise on the >coattails of Western hegemonism? That is the >question. But more than this, Mahbubani???s >central thesis is that Asia itself is rising ? >with perhaps China at the center (he kind of >avoids saying this, but he focuses on China so >much that one gets the impression that this is >the case). China is at the center and India is >at the periphery. This is important, because >again, much more than China, India???s rise has >been driven by providing services to the United >States. They provide the US with countless >services. For example, if you have a problem >with your AT&T bill, you call AT&T and you get >someone in Bangalore. But what happens if the >United States economy experiences a meltdown? >What happens to all the money that is being >poured into India now, and by extension what >happens to all the money that is pouring into >China? What happens to these vast dollar >reserves that China holds, that could be >literally worthless if the value of the American >currency plummets? This is something which many >people are very concerned about, including >China. China right now is in talks with the >European Union trying to find a way of getting >around using the dollar as the international >common currency. But to get back to >Mahbubani???s point of reference. In The New >Asian Hemisphere, he looks at the Asian >financial crisis in 1997 and how China handled >that crisis. As I wrote in my review, this >crisis was a very important event. It was one of >the most important events in the last 20 years. >One could even say it is one of the most >important events in the history of global >capitalism. Effectively what happened is that >you had a number of people ? George Soros was >chief among them, peerhaps ? who saw an >opportunity to enter the currency maarket and >make a quick killing on the Thai bhat. This led >to the exposure of a number of structural >weaknesses in the Thai economy, and it started a >chain reaction, because people began seeing that >these structural weaknesses also existed in >other places, such as Hong Kong, Japan, South >Korea, and Taiwan. So we began to see a >snowballing effect and what was effectively a >huge divestment from Asia. And as Western >investors began to pull money out of Asia, where >did they put it? For the most part they put it >in the United States. This has led some Asians >to suggest that the Asian financial crisis was, >in fact, a strategic or tactical maneuver by the >West to effect a massive transfer of wealth back >to the West ? which maybe even stavved off the >financial crisis we are now experiencing for >another decade. Meanwhile, what did that >financial crisis provoke in Asia? The immediate >outcome was that the United States went in with >guarantees and shored up the economies of >Thailand, South Korea and other areas, >effectively re-establishing tighter hegemonic >capitalist control over these countries at a >time when they were beginning to become more >independent. Thus we find the United States >establishing itself once again more firmly and >making these countries more beholden to the >United States, at a time when China is trying to >rise in the region. In regard to China's >response to all this, there is a great book on >Premier Zhu Rongji and how he handled the >financial crisis by Laurence J. Brahm, titled >Zhu Rongji and the Transformation of Modern >China (2002), who talks about how the United >States tried to pressure China to follow the >Washington Consensus that was then being pursued >in Thailand and South Korea, and China declined. >Many people saw this as a very bold break with >American hegemony, a break that was >fundamentally in China???s best interests. But, >Mahbubani thinks that China???s refusal to >follow Washington???s policy was, in fact, >something that hurt China and should have been >followed for the greater good of Asia. To me, >Mahbubani's conclusion is sort of a mythological >narrative, the same sort of narrative that we >would expect from someone who says that the >Chinese Communist Party is the Chinese >Capitalist Party. I think another important >thing to keep in mind about China over the last >10 years is that you have 1997, which is the >beginning of the Asian financial crisis, but >more than this you have 9/11. There are a number >of people in China, important and intelligent >people, who conclude that the aftermath of 9/11, >although it was billed as a war on terror, was >really a cover for an encircling campaign to >contain China. Why? Well, one of the immediate >aftermaths of 9/11 was, of course, that we went >into Afghanistan, but more than that we began >establishing relations and building bases in >Khyrgystan and Uzbekistan. When you take into >consideration that the US has bases there and in >Afghanistan and Iraq, we could effectively shut >down the Gulf. We have F-16s throughout Central >Asia. In Southeast Asia we have a big naval base >in the Singapore area. In effect we have >military assets in Taiwan, because we keep >selling them planes and weapons. We have the >Pacific Fleet, and we have armed forces in South >Korea and Japan. We have effectively surrounded >China. The military estimates are that we could >hit any target in China with conventional >weapons in under 15 minutes. Now this is very >concerning and disconcerting to China. It is >disconcerting in a manner that recalls two other >incidents. The first was the bombing of the >Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, which many >Chinese believe, and people in government >believe, the US did intentionally. Secondly >there was the spy plane incident in 2001. We fly >planes up and down China's coast with monitoring >equipment. There was some aggression between two >planes and one was forced to land on Hainan >island. As people will recall, it was a very big >deal. So China sees itself as being in a strange >sort of contradictory position, where on the one >hand it does business with the United States and >welcomes investment, but on the other hand it is >certain that the United States is in a sort of >low-grade struggle with China, and that the >United States is trying to position assets that >could effectively curtail China and threaten it. >PA: So your criticism of Mahbubani???s argument >is not so much with his argument about the rise >of China, as in the way you see them pursuing >that rise in relation to the US? MAHONEY: >Although we can talk about our interests abroad, >let???s keep in mind that the United States is >bordered by only two countries, Mexico and >Canada. China is bordered by thirteen countries: >Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, India, >Pakistan, Tajikistan, Khyrgystan, Kazakhstan, >Mongolia, Russia, and North Korea. A lot of >these countries are places where there is some >degree of unrest, where there are things >happening that may be a broader threat to >regional, if not global, security. And if you >start talking about how many countries are close >enough to China that a short-range missile could >be launched from them and hit China, the number >goes up quite a bit more. So, given its >geographic situation, it is in China???s best >interests to create good relations with its >neighbors, because the consequences otherwise >would be too difficult to deal with >strategically. How do you maintain ICBMs >(intercontinental ballistic missiles) and some >kind of deterrent capacity against the United >States, but at the same time maintain the >ability to go to war with all the small >countries that surround you. And China has gone >to war. They had a border conflict with the >Soviet Union in the 1960s, and they fought a war >with Vietnam in the 1970s right after we left. >There is friction with North Korea. There is >continued concern about Japan, because Japan >keeps electing these very nationalistic >governments, and Taiwan continues to buy very >high-tech weaponry that is basically offensive >in nature, not merely defensive. So China lives >in a difficult era. But, more than this, China >has to have access to oil; it has to have access >to resources. It needs to have a good >relationship with Russia, because Russia has >such vast energy resources. Furthermore, because >the United States has effectively put itself in >a position to lock down the Gulf, China needs >other sources of oil, which is why it has been >building relationships in Africa. As a result of >China's opening to Africa, the American military >is establishing AFRICOM to counteract what it >sees as China???s meddling in Africa. But >China???s ???meddling??? in Africa is in large >measure driven by the need to have access to >resources that may be closed off to them, given >American hegemony in the Middle East. In >addition, China has come under substantial >attack for working with Myanmar. We keep >pressuring China to pressure the admittedly >ruthless junta in Myanmar to facilitate >democracy, and China has not done this. Neither >has India, by the way, and India doesn???t get >criticized that much. But why hasn???t China >done this? Because there is oil in the waters >off of Myanmar, and China has financed and built >a pipeline through Myanmar to have access to >that oil. Why? For its national security. China >is also being criticized for supporting the >government in Sudan. But why is it supporting >the government in Sudan? Is it because they >believe in the repression of minorities? Some >would argue yes. They would say, yes, China >wants to repress minorities. They do this to >their own people. I don???t think that is true. >I think that the primary reason they are in >Sudan is the same reason they are in Myanmar. >They are looking for access to oil and ways to >counteract American hegemony in the Middle East. >By the same token, just to turn the criticism >around, you could say that the United States >does business with Saudi Arabia and other >regimes that are in many ways as anti-democratic >and repressive as the ones that China does >business with. This is a broad discussion that >has repercussions in many different areas. Do I >think that China is broadly committed to global >harmony and prosperity? In fact, I do. But I am >not convinced by what we have seen in terms of >their actions in response to the war on terror >or in response to the Asian financial crisis, >that there is solid evidence that they are >acting in the best interests of the global >community. Rather they seem to be simply trying >to survive in very difficult times. PA: You are >leading us toward, I think, a kind of >ideological discussion about China???s role ? >that there may be a tendency too view China as a >replacement for the Soviet Union. There has >always been this idealistic view in our movement >that the leading countries in the world >socialist movement have an international >responsibility to promote democracy, socialism >and international solidarity. What you seem to >be saying is that China is not trying to take up >that banner, except insofar as they can link >their own national self-interests to that >broader solidarity goal, to the broader issue of >internationalism. On the other hand, it is also >true that China has developed the concept of >peaceful development, so that its own successes >do not come at the expense of other countries, >as is the case with the United States, but in >cooperation with other countries. Could you talk >about the history of that concept of peaceful >development? MAHONEY: To speak directly to the >ideological aspect, Hu Jintao has articulated >the notion of a Scientific Development Concept. >We could read this on the one hand as the >Chinese version of sustainable development, but >it is a sustainable development that is not >necessarily founded on the idea of sustaining >capitalist consumptive practices, as >sustainability is so often construed in the >West. Instead, it has at its core the notion of >socialism and harmony, which is the second major >element of Hu Jintao???s ideological statement: >the harmonious society. Hu Jintao and others are >clear, in a reasonable and logical way, that >China cannot ? that no country can ???? dominate >the globe and sustain that position over the >long term, and, furthermore, that pure >capitalism is so fundamentally at odds with >democracy that it results in exploitative >practices, which cannot, at the level of human >resources or humanity, or any notion of >humanism, be sustained over the long term. But >more than this, what we generally see with >capitalism is what you see in Northern Mexico >right now as a result of NAFTA. It is one of the >most polluted areas in the world ? children are >being bornn with birth defects, women are being >raped, and so forth and so on, by as a result of >the disruptions caused by so-called free trade. >Therefore China has expressly stated that this >model is not the model it wishes to pursue. I >believe that that conviction is based less on >ideology than it is on observation of fact. With >regard to the idea that China that we should >view China in some way as a replacement for the >Soviet Union. On the one hand, I do think that >we should very carefully study what China is >doing. Why? Because China is a big part of the >world. But more than this, I believe that China >is seriously trying to advance Marxist theory >and socialism, and we ought to look at those >efforts. However, this is still largely a case >of ???socialism in one country.??? It is a form >of socialism that understands that it cannot >sustain itself in China by trying to establish >China as a hegemonic power. Now this is not a >recent trend. In order to contrast it with the >perception of the Soviet Union as the vanguard, >we need to maybe go back to 1966, when Mao made >it very clear (and the Party seemed to back him >on this), that the Soviet Union was pursuing >policies that were not sustainable over the long >term, and furthermore that the Soviet Union was >trying to establish a hegemonic position in the >so-called communist world. Therefore, China >decided to do two things in the 1960s: First, it >broke with the Soviet Union and secondly it >broke with internationalism. Whereas in 1950 it >entered the conflict in Korea and effectively >pushed back the UN forces ? but primarily the >Unitedd States ? and established a buffer with >North Korea. Thhere is also evidence that has >been declassified by the Chinese over the last >several years that it was largely Chinese ? and >this is no slight against the efforts made bby >Vietnam???s liberation movement ? but it was >largely Chinese artillery units that defeated >the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Some >estimates are that as many as 70,000 pieces of >artillery were sent across the border by Mao by >Chinese wearing Vietnamese uniforms (see Chen >Jian???s Mao???s China and the Cold War, 2001). >China was very active in the 1950s trying to >advance an internationalist cause/agenda, but >then something happened in 1959 ? it was a >tragedy really. Again this is according to >recently declassified information. The CIA was >in fact in Tibet trying to stage an uprising. >This led to what then happened to Tibet, which >is that the PLA rolled in and crushed the >uprising, and the Dalai Lama fled. The Dalai >Lama headed an organization that worked directly >with the CIA. Now, it is not a popular thing to >say in the West, but Lamaist Buddhism in Tibet >was one of the most oppressive forms of >theocratic feudalism the world has ever seen. So >when China says they liberated Tibet in 1949, >they mean it, and when they had to go in in 1959 >and crush the CIA-organized rebellion there, the >really had to. Because whoever controls the >Tibetan plateau has an incredible strategic >advantage over the whole heartland of China. It >was a very unfortunate circumstance, and no one >applauds it or feels good about Tibet, but I >often say that if you want to criticize >China???s modern nation-building in Tibet, then >criticize America???s modern nation-building in >California, New Mexico, or more recently in Iraq >and Afghanistan. But that aside, in 1966 China >effectively abandons internationalism. It???s a >very interesting moment in Chinese history. On >the one hand China initiates the Cultural >Revolution, and you see this very hard movement >to the left, which the Soviets hated by the way >? they hated it and they criticized it >ruthlessly. So there was this very hard movement >to the left internally, and at the same time a >hard movement to the right internationally. They >now abandon internationalism. They abandon >supporting movements abroad, and they begin to >make overtures ? this starts in 1966 really ? >to the United States, culminatiing in Nixon and >Kissinger???s visit in the early 1970s. It is >not Deng Xiaoping who opens China to the world, >it is Mao who does this. Deng is going to get >the credit for it, and we would like to pretend >like there is this big rupture between Deng and >Mao, but it is really Mao who moves China to the >right internationally. It is Deng who will move >China to the right domestically. The next thing >is that many people on the left, and for good >reasons, admire Cuba, Venezuela, and what is >going on in Ecuador, Bolivia, and the leftism >that has to some degree emerged in Brazil. We >love it when Ch??vez goes to Beijing or when >officials come from Beijing and travel to these >countries and you get these great photos. We >have this sense that there is a rise in leftism, >that there is solidarity, and that maybe China >is at the center of it. But I am not sure that >this is really the case, because there is really >no evidence that China is pursuing a leadership >role in a global solidarity movement that is >exclusive of anyone. I think maybe the best >evidence of my argument here against this would >be the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, which is >right there on China???s border. I mean this is >a Maoist insurgency for democracy and for >socialism, and it wins, it is victorious ? but >there is absolutely no evidencce that they have >received any support, ideological, moral, >financial, or material from the Chinese. So I am >not sure how anyone can then say, "Well here???s >China, and they it's doing all these things at >the center of some internationalist, and we >should see them within an internationalist >Marxist revolutionary paradigm." After all, in >large measure we saw the end of of the claim to >uphold an internationalist model with the fall >of the Soviet Union. For China, the Soviet >"fall" came much sooner than 1989, of course. >Ironically, one of the reasons China broke with >the Soviets in the 1960s is that the Chinese did >not think the Soviets were capable of supporting >China???s best interests, let alone the broader >interests of global revolution. Furthermore, in >1966, China effectively abandoned revolutionary >international policies. Given this historical >context, I think that those people who come to >see China as a potential international >solidarity revolutionary leader, as some second >coming of the idealized role played by the >Soviet Union, is a recurrence of wishful >thinking in the same way they saw the Soviet >Union have an idealization problem. That said, I >am not going to retreat from my earlier point, >which is that we do need to study China. We do >need to study their work in Marxist theory, >because it is very advanced. There is much that >we can learn from it about what it means to >struggle for progress in the world as it >presently is, about what it means to survive and >grow, about how to sustain some form of >socialism within the context of global >capitalist hegemony. This is the broader tactic >at work in China, and I think that they have >achieved a lot. On the other hand, and I know >that this is something that we need to discuss >separately, there have been some important >issues and questions, and the biggest question >has to do with ???What about democracy???? From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Feb 4 23:19:22 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 22:19:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month Award goes to White voters for Obama; Iowa Caucus voters special mention Message-ID: <350652.22071.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Ralph Dumain rdumain I see the white Obama vote as a non-racial vote, not an anti-racist vote. How many white voters voted for Obama to oppose racism? ^^^ CB: Ok. That's a point. I'm saying that it was objectively anti-racist, but I agree with you that it was subjectively non-racial for many. Not all though I think a lot of especially the young people were consciously being anti-racist. They acted on ideals. It gave them a good action upon which to concretize progessive ideals. Probably most whites fighting for the North in the Civil War were actually stil subjectively racist. But their actions were objectively anti-racist. But I think your observation forces me to make an important distinction ^^^^^ By and large, they voted for what they perceived to be in their own interests, and didn't let race stand in the way, though many were tempted to do so. This is really the result of a long process of acceptance of respectable blacks in high places, not a revolutionary leap. ^^^ CB: Yes, a reform, not a revolution. I'd say it's historical ^^^^^ I think we can do better for Black History Month. ^^^^^ CB: Perhaps, but I think it's important to dwell on it , that it was historical. It should be memorialized, written about, built upon. Studies and theses should be done to answer the question you pose: How many white voters voted for Obama to oppose racism? How many voted to be non-racial ? Also, Americans love a winner. It made racists into losers. It sort of makes racism unAmarican or pushes it more into that category. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Feb 4 23:20:41 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 22:20:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Parasails Can Move Ships Message-ID: <391923.96712.qm@web180116.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Parasails Can Move Ships By Maricel Drazer* Terramerica February 4, 2009 D?sseldorf, Germany - They say that faith can move mountains. Now, faith in the wind has led to a new way to move ships. The technique, developed in Germany, is powerful enough to move today's deep-draught cargo vessels and can reduce fuel consumption by 50 percent. An adapted parasail is attached to the ship by cables that can be adjusted according to the direction and intensity of the winds. It is activated automatically, guided by an on-board computer. A 160-square-metre parasail can use the wind to create a traction force of up to eight tonnes, nearly the same push produced by an engine of an Airbus A318 aircraft. With the parasail system, ships can cut their annual fuel use by 10 to 30 percent, reaching 50 percent under optimal wind conditions. In a way it is a return to navigation's origins, prior to the development of steam or diesel powered engines, when sails dominated the seascape. But now, instead of a tall mast with a mainsail attached to it, the large parasail - like a giant parachute - can move in all directions. Its function does not replace, but rather complements the power produced by the engines. The mind behind this return to the wind is Stephan Wrage, born in the northern German port city of Hamburg. He is an engineer and an aficionado of sailing and paragliding. "The idea came to me 15 years ago. I was paragliding on the beach and I wondered if this enormous drag force couldn't be used also to move boats," Wrage told Tierram?rica. In 2001, the SkySails company opened its doors, and began manufacturing this new parasail for ships. In 2007 it began its pilot testing on international routes aboard two cargo ships. The use of wind as a driving force for navigation has met modern technology, notes Peter Schenzle, an advisor for the HSVA, a maritime industries research and development group in Hamburg. Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the project is that the parasails are pollution free: wind is a clean energy source - and abundant on the high seas. There would be great advantages to its widespread use, given that 90 percent of the goods traded in the world is transported by boat along at least one portion of its path from producer to consumer. Currently, there are more than 100,000 ships on the world's seas. The global fleet is predicted to increase 75 percent by 2020. Average fuel consumption of a 100,000-horsepower ship is 12 to 15 tonnes per hour. According to industry estimates, global maritime traffic is thus responsible for some 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year. Although maritime transport is comparatively less polluting than other modes of transport, new regulations are being considered in order to monitor and limit greenhouse gas emissions from ships. In fact, the International Maritime Organisation, an agency of the United Nations, is drafting standards for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from ship traffic, after doing the same in 2008 for sulphur dioxide emissions. Furthermore, one of the most enticing questions about the parasail technology is how it can reduce a ship's operating costs, 90 percent of which is fuel. "We decided to use the SkySails system to preserve the environment, to save resources and, in the long term with gas and oil prices, to continue being competitive," said Gerd Wessels, director of the Wessels shipping company and owner of one of the ships already using the parasail. Depending on the size, the price of the system varies from 500,000 to 3.5 million dollars. According to SkySails, the investment is recovered in three to five years. In the second half of 2009, the company will begin assembly-line manufacture of the product. With orders already in place from Germany, Norway and other European countries, it has already surpassed production capacity for the first year. (*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierram?rica network. Tierram?rica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.) (END/2009) http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45672 From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Feb 4 23:27:40 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 22:27:40 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Concept of "Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg Message-ID: <435317.38966.qm@web180114.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> This is an exceptionally good article. It's much easier to read on the Political Affairs web site. It's interesting to see the sophistication with which some of these CP authors write. I don't think this would have been possible in the Gus Hall days. Like the one commentator, I too question the repudiation of humanism in the article's conclusion. ^^^^^^ CB: That commentator was moi. (smile) Hey, James Lawler and Angela Davis had articles in PA in Gus Hall's day (smile) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Feb 4 23:36:52 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 22:36:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rise of China and Pragmatic Marxism, An Interview Message-ID: <763779.33418.qm@web180103.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Ralph Dumain I could much more easily read this horseshit by following a link and read it in its original, legible format. Instead, CB has to indiscriminately ingest all the offal he scavenges and immediately diahrrhea it onto us. ^^^^ CB: Like Adorno: unintriguing but cryptic From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 5 06:41:19 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 05:41:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] What more specifically does irreversible mean ? Message-ID: <640336.49800.qm@web180102.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> AP - President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove irreversible, a fresh call to a recalcitrant Congress to move quickly. ^^^^^^ CB: What more specifically does irreversible mean ? ^^^^ This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse," Obama wrote in the op-ed titled, "The Action Americans Need." Senate Democratic leaders hope for passage of the legislation by Friday at the latest, although prospects appear to hinge on crafting a series of spending reductions that would make the bill more palatable to centrists in both parties. Obama rejected the argument that more tax cuts are needed in the plan and that piecemeal measures would be sufficient, arguing that Americans made their intentions clear in the election. "I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change," he wrote. Historically huge to begin with, economic stimulus legislation is growing larger by the day in the Senate, where the addition of a new tax break for homebuyers sent the price tag well past $900 billion. "It is time to fix housing first," Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., said Wednesday night as the Senate agreed without controversy to add the new tax break to the stimulus measure, at an estimated cost of nearly $19 billion. The tax break was the most notable attempt to date to add help for the crippled housing industry and gave Republicans a victory as they work to remake the legislation more to their liking. Three swing-vote senators met with Obama at the White House on Wednesday to discuss possible cutbacks, but they declined to discuss details of their talks. Obama has made the legislation a cornerstone of his recovery plan. For their part, Senate Republicans signaled they would persist in their efforts to reduce spending in the measure, to add tax cuts and reduce the cost of mortgages for millions of homeowners. Officials figures were unavailable, but it appeared that the measure carried a price tag of more than $920 billion, making it bigger than the financial industry bailout that passed last year and as large as any measure in memory. Despite bipartisan concerns about the cost, Republicans failed in a series of attempts on Wednesday to cut back the bill's size. The most sweeping proposal, advanced by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., would have eliminated all the spending and replaced it with a series of tax cuts. It was defeated 61-36. Democrats also upheld a so-called Buy American provision that requires projects financed by the measure to be built with domestically produced iron and steel. But with Obama voicing concern about the provision, the requirement was changed to specify that U.S. international trade agreements not to be violated. Additionally, Democrats turned back an attempt to strip out a provision that Obama has said was essential. It would provide a tax cut of up to $1,000 for working couples, including those who do not make enough to pay income taxes. Isakson said the new tax break for homebuyers was intended to help revive the housing industry, which has virtually collapsed in the wake of a credit crisis that began last fall. The proposal would allow a tax credit of 10 percent of the value of new or existing residences, up to a $15,000 limit. Current law provides for a $7,500 tax break but only for first-time homebuyers. Isakson's office said the proposal would cost the government an estimated $19 billion. The provision was the second tax cut approved in as many days targeted to individual industries. On Tuesday, the Senate voted to give a break to consumers who buy new cars. The House approved its own version of the bill last week. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090205/ap_on_go_pr_wh/congress_stimulus Stores see January sales fall; Wal-Mart posts rise (AP) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 5 07:32:11 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 06:32:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Revoke Krugman's Nobel Prize! Message-ID: <247208.72658.qm@web180103.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Barkley Rosser is a Thaxis alum. CB ^^^ Revoke Krugman's Nobel Prize! by Barkley Rosser Yes, I know, not only has no Nobel Prize ever been revoked for anything, but they certainly do not do so for idiotic statements made by winners after they have won. However, as the first winner of the prize for international trade in 31 years, I find it appalling that Paul Krugman has come out for the "buy American" provision in the fiscal stimulus package now under consideration in the US Senate, a provision not supported by President Obama, and roundly denounced by pretty much everybody outside the US, a provision that would violate promises made in November in Washington not to engage in protectionist actions for "at least a year," with at its worst the nightmare possibility of a rerun of the trade war of the 1930s following the US Smoot-Hawley tariff that exacerbated the Great Depression. While some may dismiss such a possibility now, the standing of the US in the world on economic policy may have never been worse, given the role of the collapse of our sub-prime market in the current troubles, and with world merchandise trade dropping at an annualized rate of nearly 45% in November. This is not the time to be playing with such irresponsible fire. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 5 08:12:12 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 07:12:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Russia agrees to Afghan request for defence aid Message-ID: <710792.7506.qm@web180103.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Russia agrees to Afghan request for defence aid Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:13pm IST By Sayed Salahuddin KABUL (Reuters) - Russia has accepted a request from President Hamid Karzai to provide military aid to Afghanistan, the Afghan government said on Monday. The move comes amid complaints by many Afghans that NATO and the United States, who have thousands of troops in Afghanistan, have been slow to equip Afghan national forces to fight the Taliban. Afghanistan has largely relied on NATO and the United States to bankroll its security needs and the economy since U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban government in 2001. But despite receiving some military equipment from NATO, Afghanistan still uses Russian-made weapons and aircraft, left over from the former Soviet Union's 10-year occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since the Taliban's removal, made the request by a letter to Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev in November 2008, the presidential palace said in a statement. "Medvedev, in a letter addressed to Karzai, has said that Russia is ready to help Afghanistan in the defensive sectors," the statement said. Medvedev said defensive ties between Kabul and Moscow would result in effective cooperation on both sides and in the restoration of security in the region, the statement said. Russia was keen for cooperation with Afghanistan in other areas too, the statement quoted Medvedev as saying in the letter. Chief presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said despite Karzai's call on Russia for defensive aid, Afghanistan was committed to its ties with NATO and the United States. "The equipment of our national army, our helicopters and tanks are Russian-made so this (request) has a technical aspect. We have strategic commitment to NATO and the United States," Hamidzada told Reuters. Some 70,000 foreign troops under NATO and U.S. military command are stationed in Afghanistan, and Washington is expected to send up to 30,000 extra forces by summer to the country, where the al Qaeda-backed Taliban have made a comeback since 2005. U.S.-led and Afghan troops overthrew the Taliban government after it refused to hand over al Qaeda leaders wanted by Washington for masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. More than seven years on, Taliban and al Qaeda leaders are still at large and many Afghans believe foreign forces are more focussed on pursuing their own regional agendas, rather than helping Afghanistan. The United States and its allies have not given any time frame for the withdrawal of their forces and say the soldiers will remain in Afghanistan for the long haul and until national security forces can stand on their own feet. ? Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 5 08:14:45 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 07:14:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Kyrgyzstan starts moves to close U.S. airbase Message-ID: <628961.73779.qm@web180110.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Kyrgyzstan starts moves to close U.S. airbase Wed Feb 4, 2009 3:04pm EST By Olga Dzyubenko BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan's government asked parliament on Wednesday to approve the closure of a U.S. military air base which supplies U.S.-led troops fighting in Afghanistan. The decision by the Central Asian state, a former Soviet republic and a traditional Russian ally, sends a tough signal and challenge to new U.S. President Barack Obama as he plans to send additional troops to Afghanistan. But Moscow said it would be flexible to U.S. requests to transit supplies across Russia. It gave no details. The Manas base is an important staging post for the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban and becomes more so as Washington seeks to reinforce supply routes that bypass Pakistan, where supply convoys face security risks. Analysts said the move could be a signal to Obama that Moscow wants to ensure it is consulted in any diplomatic decisions in a region where it has traditional influence but the United States has sought to increase its presence. "I have a feeling Russia wants to offer a new format for cooperation, in which Russia will speak on behalf of the region in contacts with the United States," said Arkady Dubnov, an independent analyst. "Bargaining could be conducted on this footing." Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said the base would be shut after he secured Russian financial aid at talks in Moscow on Tuesday. Adakhan Madumarov, secretary of the Kyrgyz Security Council, said in Moscow the U.S. military would be given 180 days to close its operations and leave once the two sides had exchanged formal diplomatic notes outlining the intention. Moscow denied any connection between the $2 billion package to combat an economic crisis -- the equivalent of about half of Kyrgyzstan's gross domestic product -- and Bishkek's decision. "That was a sovereign and very well thought over decision of the Kyrgyz leader," said Russia's deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin. U.S. SUPPLY ROUTES Closing Washington's only military outpost in Central Asia would pose a challenge for U.S. supply lines in the region, particularly after militants severed the main route into Afghanistan by blowing up a bridge in Pakistan this week. The U.S. State Department said by early Wednesday it had still not been informed officially of the decision. "We have seen many statements in the media but we have not received any notification through the appropriate diplomatic channels on this," said spokesman Gordon Duguid. Many in Kyrgyzstan have criticized the presence of U.S. troops, prompting Washington to explore possibilities in other parts of Central Asia including Uzbekistan which evicted U.S. troops in 2005. Ties have eased since then. Moscow, which operates its own airbase in Kyrgyzstan a few dozen kilometers away from Manas, has been irritated by Manas's existence and has put pressure on Kyrgyzstan to close it, though on Wednesday said it would offer the U.S. support. "We positively reacted to the request of the United States for the transit through Russia of goods and materials to Afghanistan," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told reporters. "We will be flexible in many other ways which will support our joint success in Afghanistan -- that would be the basic school of thinking from which we will proceed." BUSINESS AS USUAL Outside Bishkek, business appeared to go on as usual at the airbase, viewed from behind a ring of barbed wire encircling the facility, home to more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel. At its main gate, three servicemen, all clad in uniforms and looking stern, refused to talk to reporters as they verified registration plates on vehicles entering the base. Outside Manas, surrounded by swathes of empty, snow-blanketed land, a Kyrgyz sheep herder said he supported closing the base -- partly because he wanted more grazing land. "I support this move. We think this airbase only harms our nature," said Ulan, a bearded man of about 50. Although many Kyrgyz have mixed feelings about the presence of U.S. troops, particularly after a U.S. airman shot dead a Kyrgyz man in a 2006 incident, Bakiyev critics said the nation could ill-afford to lose such an important ally as Washington. U.S. officials said while the Manas base was important, any decision to close it would not halt operations in Afghanistan. The United States has 32,000 troops in Afghanistan and U.S. officials have said the planned build-up could grow to include as many as 30,000 troops over the next 12 to 18 months. ? Thomson Reuters 2008 From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 5 12:45:22 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 11:45:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?utf-8?q?Etta_James_Doles_Out_Harsh_=E2=80=98La?= =?utf-8?q?st=E2=80=99_Words_for_Beyonce=2C_Obama?= Message-ID: <819020.58582.qm@web180104.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Evidently, Etta James agees with Ralph (smile) http://h30405.www3.hp.com/print/pdf/2EJYDHE7CMAC/news Etta James Doles Out Harsh ?Last? Words for Beyonce, Obama (Feb. 5) - Etta James sure can hold a grudge, that much is certain after the R&B icon vented her gripes about singer Beyonce Knowles and President Barack Obama during a recent concert in Seattle. The 71-year-old diva is steaming mad over Beyonce?s performance of ?At Last,? her signature tune, at Obama?s first inauguration party. The President and First Lady Michelle Obama danced to the legendary ballad (see photos below). The fiery rant, in which she threatens to beat up ?that woman? and openly mocks ?the one with the big ears,? has been leaked on TMZ. Hear Etta?s Concert Ramblings: ?You guys know your president, right? You know the one with the big ears?? she said to the crowd, unsure of what lay ahead. ?Wait a minute, he ain?t my president, he might be yours, he ain?t my president. You know that woman he had singing for him, singing my song ? she?s going to get her ass whipped.? Beyonce played James on the big screen recently, in ?Cadillac Records.? Now, we have an idea what the elder singer thinks of her movie version. She continued at the concert: ?The great Beyonce. I can?t stand Beyonce,? she told the crowd. ?She has no business up there, singing up there on a big ol? president day, gonna be singing my song that I?ve been singing forever.? James is best known for ?At Last,? released in 1961 on Chess Records, but she has scores of other hits including ?Trust in Me? and ?Fool That I Am.? Beyonce ruffled the sequins of another diva last year when at the Grammy Awards she introduced Tina Turner, and not Aretha Franklin, as ?The Queen.? Her royal highness the Queen of Soul was not pleased by the diss, and called it a ?cheap shot.? From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 5 13:45:48 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 12:45:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Proletarianization and Overaccumulation Message-ID: <935643.68483.qm@web180103.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Let us examine the matter a little more closely. "Overproduction" and "Underconsumption" are two sides of the same coin. "Over" or too much production of what and relative to what ? Too much is produced when the rate of profit starts to fall. Too much _from the perspective of the capitalists_. Not from the perspective of the working class. What is overaccumulation and what is over accumulated so as to cause the rate of profit to fall ? So, what is it that makes the amount of production or accumulation cause the rate of profit to start falling ? Socalled "overproductionists" emphasize the operation of Marx "Law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall " or the FROP, falling rate of profit, for short. Marx reasons ( In Vol. I of _Capital_ that increase in the Organic Composition of Capital or OCC causes a tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Why ? The OCC is the ratio of the Constant Capital (means of production, plant, equipment, raw materials, instruments of production) to Variable Capital ( human labor): Constant Capital (numerator)/Variable Capital(denominator) of a mathematical fraction. As the numerator increases and the denominator decreases, the OCC goes up; it goes down vica versa, of course Marx explained in Vol. I of _Capital_, in the discussion of Relative Surplus value ( as opposed to Absolute Surplus Value) that capitalists are constantly trying to increase relative surplus value by looking for ways to "revolutionize the instruments of production" . The _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ had said the same thing. The bourgeoisie are constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production. Individual capitalists are always looking for innovations in the instuments of production, constant capital, so as to get a leg up on the competition. "Revolutions" of instruments of production are inventions and innovations of machines of all types which increase productivity, that is, allow the production of the same number of unit commodities, with fewer hours of labor , or more unit commodities with the same hours of labor. This increases the rate of surplus value relatively ( absolute surplus value is increased by lengthening the workday). Eventually, the innovations spread to the whole industry, reducing the workforce size. This is a critical process to Waistline's analysis of what is happening with robotization in industry today. It also increases the OCC in an industry. The increase in the OCC eventually tends to lower the average rate of profit when it goes industry wide, because labor, variable capital, is the only source of new value and new surplus value, which is the basis of profit. Capitalists accrue surplus value and profit from their variable capital investment, their investment in labor, not from their investment in constant capital, in more efficient machines and other instruments of production ( well , of course the one capitalist who gets the leg up on the rest with innovative instruments of production increases profit compared to others until they catch up) Thus, Marx concludes this all creates a tendency for the rate of profit to fall. He discusses this in Vol. III ,under the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. It is the accumulation of too much constant capital relative to variable capital that causes the rate of profit to fall in the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Overproduction is production of more commodities than can be sold. In other words, it is production of more commodities than the mass of consumers, the mass of wage-laborers, can buy. This is the sense in which overproduction and underconsumption are two-sides of the same coin. This is a second way in which the rate of profit tends to fall. It creates the classic situation of "inventories growing, warehouses filling up with unsold goods" It is also the point of contradiction of the famous anarchy of production. Many different companies just produce in an uncoordinated or overall unplanned manner. It is the point at which supply and demand don't equal each other. This mismatch is inherent in exploitation. It is inherent in exploitation because societies' wage-laborers as a whole are not paid enough to buy all that they produce. "Overproduction" does not refer to the OCC/FROP logic above. There is not too much _production_ of constant capital, of too much constant capital relative to variable capital. There is too much _accumulation_ or deployment of constant capital relative to variable capital. It is purchase and deployment of constant capital in increased ratio to variable capital that raises the Organic Composition of the total capital and causes the FROP. It is not production of commodities that raises the Organic Composition of the total capital and leads to the FROP. So, it is overaccumulation, not overproduction that causes the FROP, or the falling rate of profit. But also lowering the rate of profit constantly is the unrealized profit due to exploited wage-laborers in society as a whole not being paid enough to buy all the personal consumption goods that they produce. The price of labor power is less than the total value of the commodities that expended labor power produces (Vol. I _Capital_, first sections). The difference between these being surplus value, exploited by the capitalist. The workers therefore aren't as I said paid enough to buy all they produce. Our reform solution is to give the workers back the surplus value, so they can buy the rest of what they produce. This like all reforms won't work or at least won't happen short of more fundamental change of power and state power, state laws. But demanding its institution, puts everybody right up to the wall at the end of capitalism. It exposes more readily the basic foundation of exploitation of capitalism, wage-labor etc. So, I'd say S Artesian is an overaccumulationist, not an overproductionist, in that he relies on the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the FROP underlying his analysis. Of course, it is a specific instance of the FROP that causes the capitalists to start a given recession by getting rid of constant capital. That should be noted in discussions with workers. But, focus on that overaccumulation suggest that the solution to any given crisis should be sought in trying to raise the profit rate "back up". No, we say seek the solution to a crisis in giving the mass of workers money to buy the "surplus" commodities produced that correspond to surplus value exploited by the capitalist. End the "poverty and restricted consumption of the masses" to end a crisis ! That should be the Marxist demand. Charles From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 5 16:44:53 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 15:44:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Proletarianization and Overaccumulation Message-ID: <531407.77993.qm@web180106.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Perhaps we can get an understanding of the issues on this thread by imagining Waistline's totally robotized or automated factory. As Walter Reuther said (to Ford ?) if automobile production is 100% robotized, then who will buy the cars produced ? This refers to a zero profit realization problem for capitalists when there is zero consumption. If workers aren't paid anything the masses are in absolute poverty and absolutely restricted consumption, and they can't buy anything. So, the capitalists have zero realized profit. It is also an absolute overaccumulation situation. The rate of profit is zero because the OCC is mathematically undefined or maybe infinite, as the denominator in the OCC fraction is zero. Constant capital/ variable capital is 1/0 - "one over zero". Since there is no varible capital, no human labor all robots, there is no source of value, no new value, so there is no surplus value and no profit. If there is no exploitation there is no profit. The rate of profit is zero. If there is no profit, there is no capitalism. So, as capitalism moves toward no variable capital and all constant capital, absolute overaccumulation , it moves toward its own negation. Perhaps this extreme, and imaginary * example demonstrates the truth of both overaccumulation ( OCC of infinity/undefined, robots can't be exploited, so zero surplus value) and overproduction/zero-consumption (robots can't buy cars, zero realization of profit ) How's my math ? * (Of course, a perpetual motion machine is an impossibility because of the laws of physics, maybe one of the laws of thermodynamics) Jules Verne From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Thu Feb 5 17:53:19 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:53:19 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?iso-8859-1?q?Etta_James_Doles_Out_Harsh_=E2=80?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=98La_st=E2=80=99_Words_for__Beyonce=2C_Obama?= In-Reply-To: <819020.58582.qm@web180104.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <819020.58582.qm@web180104.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Thank you, Etta! At 02:45 PM 2/5/2009, Charles Brown wrote: >Evidently, Etta James agees with Ralph (smile) >http://h30405.www3.hp.com/print/pdf/2EJYDHE7CMAC/news >Etta James Doles Out Harsh ???Last??? Words for >Beyonce, Obama (Feb. 5) - Etta James sure can >hold a grudge, that much is certain after the >R&B icon vented her gripes about singer Beyonce >Knowles and President Barack Obama during a >recent concert in Seattle. The 71-year-old diva >is steaming mad over Beyonce???s performance of >???At Last,??? her signature tune, at Obama???s >first inauguration party. The President and >First Lady Michelle Obama danced to the >legendary ballad (see photos below). The fiery >rant, in which she threatens to beat up ???that >woman??? and openly mocks ???the one with the >big ears,??? has been leaked on TMZ. Hear >Etta???s Concert Ramblings: ???You guys know >your president, right? You know the one with the >big ears???? she said to the crowd, unsure of >what lay ahead. ???Wait a minute, he ain???t my >president, he might be yours, he ain???t my >president. You know that woman he had singing >for him, singing my song ? she???s going to get >her ass wwhipped.??? Beyonce played James on the >big screen recently, in ???Cadillac Records.??? >Now, we have an idea what the elder singer >thinks of her movie version. She continued at >the concert: ???The great Beyonce. I can???t >stand Beyonce,??? she told the crowd. ???She has >no business up there, singing up there on a big >ol??? president day, gonna be singing my song >that I???ve been singing forever.??? James is >best known for ???At Last,??? released in 1961 >on Chess Records, but she has scores of other >hits including ???Trust in Me??? and ???Fool >That I Am.??? Beyonce ruffled the sequins of >another diva last year when at the Grammy Awards >she introduced Tina Turner, and not Aretha >Franklin, as ???The Queen.??? Her royal highness >the Queen of Soul was not pleased by the diss, and called it a ???cheap shot. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 5 20:54:19 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 19:54:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marx against creationism Message-ID: <373845.66085.qm@web180108.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm The creation of the earth has received a mighty blow from geognosy ? i.e., from the science which presents the formation of the earth, the development of the earth, as a process, as a self-generation. Generatio aequivoca is the only practical refutation of the theory of creation.[33] Now it is certainly easy to say to the single individual what Aristotle has already said: You have been begotten by your father and your mother; therefore in you the mating of two human beings ? a species-act of human beings ? has produced the human being. You see, therefore, that even physically man owes his existence to man. Therefore you must not only keep sight of the one aspect ? the infinite progression which leads you further to inquire: Who begot my father? Who his grandfather? etc. You must also hold on to the circular movement sensuously perceptible in that progress by which man repeats himself in procreation, man thus always remaining the subject. You will reply, however: I grant you this circular movement; now grant me the progress which drives me ever further until I ask: Who begot the first man, and nature as a whole? I can only answer you: Your question is itself a product of abstraction. Ask yourself how you arrived at that question. Ask yourself whether your question is not posed from a standpoint to which I cannot reply, because it is wrongly put. Ask yourself whether that progress as such exists for a reasonable mind. When you ask about the creation of nature and man, you are abstracting, in so doing, from man and nature. You postulate them as non-existent, and yet you want me to prove them to you as existing. Now I say to you: Give up your abstraction and you will also give up your question. Or if you want to hold on to your abstraction, then be consistent, and if you think of man and nature as non-existent, then think of yourself as non-existent, for you too are surely nature and man. Don?t think, don?t ask me, for as soon as you think and ask, your abstraction from the existence of nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egotist that you conceive everything as nothing, and yet want yourself to exist? You can reply: I do not want to postulate the nothingness of nature, etc. I ask you about its genesis, just as I ask the anatomist about the formation of bones, etc. But since for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labour, nothing but the emergence of nature for man, so he has the visible, irrefutable proof of his birth through himself, of his genesis. Since the real existence of man and nature has become evident in practice, through sense experience, because man has thus become evident for man as the being of nature, and nature for man as the being of man, the question about an alien being, about a being above nature and man ? a question which implies the admission of the unreality of nature and of man ? has become impossible in practice. Atheism, as the denial of this unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no longer stands in any need of such a mediation. It proceeds from the theoretically and practically sensuous consciousness of man and of nature as the essence. Socialism is man?s positive self-consciousness, no longer mediated through the abolition of religion, just as real life is man?s positive reality, no longer mediated through the abolition of private property, through communism. Communism is the position as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society. [34] From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 5 21:10:08 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 20:10:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] [politicalaffairs] Re: Political Affairs Magazine - The Concept of " Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg In-Reply-To: <20090206031203.20032.91630@fray.disqus.com> Message-ID: <198475.56138.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Hello, Thanks for your response. Yes, I kinda thought the idea might be that much humanism is philosophical idealism ( in Engels famous sense in _Ludwig Feuerbach: The End of Classical German philsophy_, two great camps of philosophy,idealism and materialism, especially modern philosophy, on the relationship between thought and being, and all that). He's probably avoiding being subjective as opposed to objective, too. But "humanism" as the term is commonly used today in English, is probably part of the rational kernel of idealism that we want to extract. Something might be lost in the translation from French. But even the French CP paper is name _L'Humanite_. Anyway, I'll try to look at Althusser's essay, because I have become more and more a respecter of Althusser over time. And I subscribe to a certain amount of Levi-Straussian structuralism from my schooling in anthropology( even with its aroma of philosophical idealism ,smile); and Althusser was a structuralist in that school. Ideology and all that. By the way, I think Marx did have a concept of human nature, in his discussion of species-being in the _Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844_. He expresses an essentialism on the relationship between women and men that knocks the socks off the post-modernist anti-essentialists in the following passage: In the approach to woman as the spoil and hand-maid of communal lust is expressed the infinite degradation in which man exists for himself, for the secret of this approach has its unambiguous, decisive, plain and undisguised expression in the relation of man to woman and in the manner in which the direct and natural species-relationship is conceived. The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the relation of man to woman. In this natural species-relationship man?s relation to nature is immediately his relation to man, just as his relation to man is immediately his relation to nature ? his own natural destination. In this relationship, therefore, is sensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence has become nature to man, or to which nature to him has become the human essence of man. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Thu Feb 5 21:28:46 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:28:46 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] [politicalaffairs] Re: Political Affairs Magazine - The Concept of " Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg In-Reply-To: <198475.56138.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <20090206031203.20032.91630@fray.disqus.com> <198475.56138.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Althusserian and French anti-humanism in general is bullshit, the French intellectual's way of, as they say, epater les bourgeois. If "humanism" alludes to something else, then that should be decoded. And I think Tedman is quite mistaken. At 11:10 PM 2/5/2009, Charles Brown wrote: >Hello, Thanks for your response. Yes, I kinda >thought the idea might be that much humanism is >philosophical idealism ( in Engels famous sense >in _Ludwig Feuerbach: The End of Classical >German philsophy_, two great camps of >philosophy,idealism and materialism, especially >modern philosophy, on the relationship between >thought and being, and all that). He's probably >avoiding being subjective as opposed to >objective, too. But "humanism" as the term is >commonly used today in English, is probably part >of the rational kernel of idealism that we want >to extract. Something might be lost in the >translation from French. But even the French CP >paper is name _L'Humanite_. Anyway, I'll try to >look at Althusser's essay, because I have become >more and more a respecter of Althusser over >time. And I subscribe to a certain amount of >Levi-Straussian structuralism from my schooling >in anthropology( even with its aroma of >philosophical idealism ,smile); and Althusser >was a structuralist in that school. Ideology and >all that. By the way, I think Marx did have a >concept of human nature, in his discussion of >species-being in the _Economic and Philosophic >Manuscripts of 1844_. He expresses an >essentialism on the relationship between women >and men that knocks the socks off the >post-modernist anti-essentialists in the >following passage: In the approach to woman as >the spoil and hand-maid of communal lust is >expressed the infinite degradation in which man >exists for himself, for the secret of this >approach has its unambiguous, decisive, plain >and undisguised expression in the relation of >man to woman and in the manner in which the >direct and natural species-relationship is >conceived. The direct, natural, and necessary >relation of person to person is the relation of >man to woman. In this natural >species-relationship man???s relation to nature >is immediately his relation to man, just as his >relation to man is immediately his relation to >nature ? his own natural destination. In >this relationship, therefore, is sensuously >manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the >extent to which the human essence has become >nature to man, or to which nature to him has >become the human essence of man. From this >relationship one can therefore judge man???s >whole level of development. From the character >of this relationship follows how much man as a >species-being, as man, has come to be himself >and to comprehend himself; the relation of man >to woman is the most natural relation of human >being to human being. It therefore reveals the >extent to which man???s natural behaviour has >become human, or the extent to which the human >essence in him has become a natural essence ? >the extent to which his human nature has come to >be nnatural to him. This relationship also >reveals the extent to which man???s need has >become a human need; the extent to which, >therefore, the other person as a person has >become for him a need ? the extent to which he >in his inddividual existence is at the same time >a social being. The first positive annulment of >private property ? crudee communism ? is thus >merely a manifestation of the vileeness of >private property, which wants to set itself up >as the positive community system." >http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm >Indeed, the human subject is an ensemble of >social relations, cultural beings in the >anthropological sense of "culture". But the >sexual relationship is a natural social >relationship, the sexual instinct a social >instinct, and thus sexual relations are both >socially and naturally social. The sexual >relationship is a special exception to the >postmodernist correct idea that human >subjectivity and individuals are predominantly >socially or culturally constructed (maybe, ? >smile) Ciao, Comrade Charles Brown --- On Fri, >2/6/09, Disqus > wrote: > >From: Disqus > > Subject: >[politicalaffairs] Re: Political Affairs >Magazine - The Concept of " Aura" and >the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and >Greenberg > To: cdb1003 at prodigy.net > Date: >Friday, February 6, 2009, 3:12 AM > Gary Tedman >(unregistered) wrote, in response to bing: > > >hello, > > > > Althusser meant philosophical >humanism, which is basically > mainstream >bourgeois ideology, he distinguished it from > >humanitarianism, but there is a lot of humanism >in bourgeois > humanitarianism too (charity for >example). Yes, Marx said > that, and being a >'true humanist' is to go beyond > classical >humanism, as he did for example in his >criticism > of Feuerbach.. A classic humanist >belief would be of the > 'human spirit' or 'Man' >with a 'human > nature' (essence), 'born free' >and > 'responsible' for 'himself'. For Marx >the > human subject is an ensemble of social >relations (to be > brief). See Althusser's essay >"Marxism is not a > Humanism" in the book "For >Marx". > > > > > > Link to comment: > >http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/8042/1/359/#comment-5848873 > > From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 6 09:48:20 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 08:48:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Economic tsunami Message-ID: <420917.10490.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ? Sam said: If there were such a thing as an economic tsunami, I would say we are experiencing it. Not since the Great Depression has the economy been in such bad shape, which leads many economists to predict that the downturn will be L-shaped, that is, deep and prolonged. Furthermore, the economic contraction is worldwide. No country or region will escape its pain and long reach. Nor can any national economy, ours included, hope to make a full recovery without global coordination and cooperation. In an integrated global economy, we either swim together or sink together. Financialization ? two-edged sword While the present economic turbulence was triggered by the collapse of the housing markets over the past two years, its underlying cause goes back to the mid-1970s. At that time U.S. economy was rocked to its core by the interweaving of seemingly stubborn and contradictory economic problems ? high inflation and unemployment, declining confidence in the dollar as a means of international payment, new competitive rivals in Europe and Asia, and a falling profit rate, all of which occurred in the context of overproduction in world commodity markets. Stagflation was the term coined to describe this contradictory phenomenon. Faced with this unraveling of the economy and a crisis of profitability, then-chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker stepped into the breech and pushed up interest rates to near 20 per cent. This spike in interest rates threw the country into a deep recession, sending unemployment rates to the highest level since the Great Depression, forcing the closing of scores of manufacturing plants and a great number of family farms, laying waste to cities and whole regions, and bringing incredible hardship to the working class, and especially African-American, Latino and other racial minorities and women workers. The rate hike also opened the door for a many-sided attack on labor and its allies, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the pre-Depression era. Wage and benefit concessions were demanded. New labor saving techniques and computerization invaded the workplace. Rules governing seniority, job classifications, line speed, and safety were either eliminated or routinely violated. And, the relocation of production to non-union and offshore sites became standard fare. If we thought this was only done to dramatically increase the corporate share of the value that workers create in the production process relative to what they receive, we would be wrong. It was also motivated by the overarching desire of corporate capital to cripple the social power of the labor movement and disrupt its alliance with its most durable and powerful ally - the African American people. Now we can't leave it at this, because, in addition to the working class and its allies taking a pounding, there is another side to this intricate story ? Volcker's interest rate spike also wrung inflation out of the economy, restored confidence in the dollar in international money markets, and, especially important to us, redirected domestic and foreign investment capital (and there was plenty of it), abruptly and massively from the "real" economy ? auto, steel, machine tool, construction, and so on ? into financial channels and speculative ventures where returns were markedly higher. Once in financial channels, money/speculative capital stayed there, but it did not sit on its hands. Its financial agents (banks, investment houses, hedge funds, private equity firms, mutual funds, and so on) intent on expanding their profits in an increasingly toothless regulatory environment raced at breakneck speed into a massive buying and selling and borrowing and spending speculative spree for the next three decades. And all this led to an explosion of the financial sector in terms of employment, transactions, and profits. Nearly 40 per cent of corporate profits came from this sector in the early years of this decade ? not to mention the salaries, bonuses, stock options, and dividends of Wall St. insiders. ? Capital that produces little, destroys much If this transformation of the U.S. economy into a speculative casino run by the "masters of the universe," hunkered down on Wall St., has its roots in the unraveling of the U.S. economy three decades ago, what greased the skids during this period was the production and easy availability, seemingly without end, of staggering amounts of debt ? corporate, consumer and government. Debt is as old as capitalism. But what is different in recent decades is that the production of debt and the accompanying speculative excesses and bubbles were not simply passing moments at the end of the business cycle, but essential to evolution, interrelations, and functioning of the overall economy. Without the massive piling up of debt and speculative bubbles first in internet technology, then in the stock market, and most recently, in housing, engineered by the Wall St/Washington complex, the performance of the U.S. and world economy would have been far, far worse. But, as we are painfully learning, turning our economy into a financial casino built on the pileup of massive amounts of debt and bubbles that eventually burst is a two-edged sword. While it stimulates the economy, restores profitability and enriches the corporate class on a scale never seen, it also introduces enormous instability, economic insecurity, income inequality, and imbalances and distortions into the arteries and structure of the U.S. and world economy. In other words, the growth of the financial sector and bubble driven economics were an unstable, bloodsucking, leech-like, and temporary fix for a sluggish, underperforming economy and the vehicle for the financial titans of U.S. capitalism to reassert their power. But as events have shown ? it could not forever mask and compensate for stagnation tendencies, declining income of working people, and the shrinkage of the material goods sector of the economy. In fact, its remedy of rerouting capital into finance and turning the financial sector and speculation into the main dynamo of the U.S. and global economy only served to postpone the crisis to a later day and, in doing so, assured that it would be on a much broader scale as we now see. A Wal-Mart economy of low wages, even when combined with financial speculation and massive debt creation is unsustainable and eventually erupts into crisis. At some point, the chickens do come home to roost.. From mehmetcagatayaydin at yahoo.com Sat Feb 7 06:30:54 2009 From: mehmetcagatayaydin at yahoo.com (Mehmet Cagatay) Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 05:30:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] [politicalaffairs] Re: Political Affairs Magazine - The Concept of " Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <712437.67838.qm@web31702.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Mr. Dumain, would you please clarify why you regard Althusserian anti-humanism as a kind of "epater les bourgeois"? Thank you in advance, Mehmet ?agatay http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/ --- On Fri, 2/6/09, Ralph Dumain wrote: > Althusserian and French anti-humanism in general > is bullshit, the French intellectual's way of, as > they say, epater les bourgeois. If "humanism" > alludes to something else, then that should be > decoded. And I think Tedman is quite mistaken. From farmelantj at juno.com Sat Feb 7 07:27:53 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (Jim Farmelant) Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 09:27:53 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] [politicalaffairs] Re: Political Affairs Magazine - The Concept of " Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg Message-ID: <20090207.092753.5540.0.farmelantj@juno.com> On Sat, 7 Feb 2009 05:30:54 -0800 (PST) Mehmet Cagatay writes: > > Mr. Dumain, would you please clarify why you regard Althusserian > anti-humanism as a kind of "epater les bourgeois"? The whole debate seems peculiarly French to me. In France since the 19th century humanism was seen as something that was closely tied to the bourgeoisie. Even someone like Sartre struggled over whether he was a humanist or not. He eventually decided that his existentialism was a kind of humanism, but one that was different from the kinds of humanism that the bourgeoisie typically embraced. In Sartre's case, I think he identified conventional bourgeois humanism with essentialism. Those humanisms posited a human essence, whereas for Sartre, existence preceded essence. In the French debates over humanism in the 1960s and 1970s, structuralists and poststructuralists like Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault attempted to push the critique of humanism much further than Sartre had been willing to go. Sartre's existentialism, as he realized, was still a humanism. He placed free will at the center of his conception of man. People, regardless of the circumstances that they might find themselves in, still retained their freedom, if only the freedom to redefine their situation in alternative ways. The French anti-humanists questioned this view in light of such developments in the human sciences like structural linguistics (which Levi-Strauss to generalize into a complete anthropology), psychoanalysis (i.e. the work of Lacan which enjoyed great currency in this period), and of course, Marxism. Althusser, was of course, a Marxist and long time member of the PCF. Foucault, who had been a student of Althusser, was a member of the PCF for a brief period of time. By the 1950s, he had renounced Marxism in favor of Nietzscheanism, although his work was still very much influenced by Marxism. Levi-Strauss, I believed, identified himself at this time as a Marxist, although his work doesn't strike me as being particularly Marxist. There were certainly differences in viewpoints between these people. Althusser doesn't seem to have been particularly enamored with Levi-Strauss's work, and he didn't like being called a structuralist. However, all these people's work, whether drawing from Saussure, Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, or Heidegger, all had certain themes in common. They all rejected the Sartrean emphasis on human freedom, instead emphasizing the extent to which human behavior is determined by structures of various sorts, whether these be linguistic structures, kinship structures, structures of epistemology (Foucault in this *The Order of Things*), social structures as represented by the mode of production and associated superstructures (i.e. Althusser), and so forth. They all rejected the traditional humanist idea that their exists an unchanging human essence which provides the basis for freedom and equality and human rights. For the French antihumanists, this conception was rejected as being ideological and/or metaphysical, and they drew variously upon Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, in their critiques of humanism. > > Thank you in advance, > > > > Mehmet ?agatay > http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/ > > > --- On Fri, 2/6/09, Ralph Dumain > wrote: > > > Althusserian and French anti-humanism in general > > is bullshit, the French intellectual's way of, as > > they say, epater les bourgeois. If "humanism" > > alludes to something else, then that should be > > decoded. And I think Tedman is quite mistaken. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > > ____________________________________________________________ Click now for easy qualification on auto loans even with bad credit! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/PnY6rw4DjCERYK5gSSDrHjS4uhluxNytJa9bOdnXQvteZtsjDX5AF/ From dogangoecmen at aol.com Sat Feb 7 08:07:51 2009 From: dogangoecmen at aol.com (dogangoecmen at aol.com) Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2009 10:07:51 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] [politicalaffairs] Re: Political Affairs Magazine - The Concept of " Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg In-Reply-To: <20090207.092753.5540.0.farmelantj@juno.com> References: <20090207.092753.5540.0.farmelantj@juno.com> Message-ID: <8CB574CFAFF97B7-AC0-1EBB@webmail-me06.sysops.aol.com> Jim, thank you very much for this illuminating background knowledge. Dogan -----Original Message----- From: Jim Farmelant To: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu CC: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 15:27 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] [politicalaffairs] Re: Political Affairs Magazine - The Concept of " Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg n Sat, 7 Feb 2009 05:30:54 -0800 (PST) Mehmet Cagatay mehmetcagatayaydin at yahoo.com> writes: Mr. Dumain, would you please clarify why you regard Althusserian anti-humanism as a kind of "epater les bourgeois"? The whole debate seems peculiarly French to me. n France since the 19th century humanism was een as something that was closely tied to he bourgeoisie. Even someone like Sartre truggled over whether he was a humanist r not. He eventually decided that his xistentialism was a kind of humanism, ut one that was different from the kinds f humanism that the bourgeoisie typically mbraced. In Sartre's case, I think he dentified conventional bourgeois humanism ith essentialism. Those humanisms osited a human essence, whereas for artre, existence preceded essence. In the French debates over humanism n the 1960s and 1970s, structuralists nd poststructuralists like Levi-Strauss, ouis Althusser, and Michel Foucault ttempted to push the critique of humanism uch further than Sartre had been willing o go. Sartre's existentialism, as he realized, as still a humanism. He placed free will t the center of his conception of man. eople, regardless of the circumstances hat they might find themselves in, still etained their freedom, if only the reedom to redefine their situation n alternative ways. The French nti-humanists questioned this view n light of such developments in the uman sciences like structural linguistics which Levi-Strauss to generalize into complete anthropology), psychoanalysis i.e. the work of Lacan which enjoyed reat currency in this period), and of ourse, Marxism. Althusser, was f course, a Marxist and long time ember of the PCF. Foucault, ho had been a student of Althusser, as a member of the PCF for a brief eriod of time. By the 1950s, he had enounced Marxism in favor of Nietzscheanism, lthough his work was still very much nfluenced by Marxism. Levi-Strauss, believed, identified himself at this time s a Marxist, although his work doesn't trike me as being particularly Marxist. There were certainly differences in viewpoints etween these people. Althusser doesn't eem to have been particularly enamored ith Levi-Strauss's work, and he didn't ike being called a structuralist. However, ll these people's work, whether drawing rom Saussure, Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, r Heidegger, all had certain themes in ommon. They all rejected the Sartrean mphasis on human freedom, instead mphasizing the extent to which human ehavior is determined by structures f various sorts, whether these be inguistic structures, kinship structures, tructures of epistemology (Foucault n this *The Order of Things*), social tructures as represented by20the ode of production and associated uperstructures (i.e. Althusser), and o forth. They all rejected the traditional umanist idea that their exists an unchanging uman essence which provides the basis or freedom and equality and human rights. or the French antihumanists, this conception as rejected as being ideological and/or etaphysical, and they drew variously pon Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, n their critiques of humanism. Thank you in advance, Mehmet ?agatay http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/ --- On Fri, 2/6/09, Ralph Dumain wrote: > Althusserian and French anti-humanism in general > is bullshit, the French intellectual's way of, as > they say, epater les bourgeois. If "humanism" > alludes to something else, then that should be > decoded. And I think Tedman is quite mistaken. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___________________________________________________________ lick now for easy qualification on auto loans even with bad credit! ttp://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/PnY6rw4DjCERYK5gSSDrHjS4uhluxNytJa9bOdnXQvteZtsjDX5AF/ _______________________________________________ arxism-Thaxis mailing list arxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu o change your options or unsubscribe go to: ttp://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis _____________________________________________________ ___________________ AOL Email goes Mobile! You can now read your AOL Emails whilst on the move. Sign up for a free AOL Email account with unlimited storage today. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 7 13:01:23 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 12:01:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Political Affairs Magazine - The Concept of " Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg Message-ID: <741014.34368.qm@web180114.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> :Picking up on Jim F's discussion below it seems to me that the structuralist and other objections to "humanism" are objections to "individualism". That is ?humanism/individualism as a failure to understand Marx's notion that human in individuals are an "ensemble of their social relations".? The human individual is a highly social individual.?An extreme example of what here is being termed "humanism" would be Margaret Thatcher's claim that "there is no such thing as society". Her implication being that we are just a collection of individuals. Another term for this is "reductionism" as if' human society can be reduced to the interaction of all the individuals who have specific human individual natures or individual natural instincts , self-interests, etc. ?In bourgeois economics the natural individual is the "rational man"? and what Marx criticizes as the "Robinsonade". In ?bourgeois ?law it's the "reasonable man". It is a fundamental tenet of the various Social Darwinisms. ? A fundamental critique of individualism is that it is actually a socially determined' ideology of the bourgeoisie. ? ?It is to reduce the social whole to the sum of its parts. ? The Briitsh Marxist philosopher Christopher Cauldwell has several essays critiquing this very well. ? Ted Winslow of several lists here calls it "external relations" when 'reality is in the form of "internal relations" He follows Whitehead on this, and his debates with Bertrand 'Russell. This takes it out of the realm of human society to the whole of reality.? So, reducing wholes to the sum of their parts in general. ? ? ?Jim Farmelant fOn Sat, 7 Feb 2009 05:30:54 -0800 (PST) Mehmet Cagatay writes: > > Mr. Dumain, would you please clarify why you regard Althusserian > anti-humanism as a kind of "epater les bourgeois"? The whole debate seems peculiarly French to me. In France since the 19th century humanism was seen as something that was closely tied to the bourgeoisie. Even someone like Sartre struggled over whether he was a humanist or not. He eventually decided that his existentialism was a kind of humanism, but one that was different from the kinds of humanism that the bourgeoisie typically embraced. In Sartre's case, I think he identified conventional bourgeois humanism with essentialism. Those humanisms posited a human essence, whereas for Sartre, existence preceded essence. In the French debates over humanism in the 1960s and 1970s, structuralists and poststructuralists like Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault attempted to push the critique of humanism much further than Sartre had been willing to go. Sartre's existentialism, as he realized, was still a humanism. He placed free will at the center of his conception of man. People, regardless of the circumstances that they might find themselves in, still retained their freedom, if only the freedom to redefine their situation in alternative ways. The French anti-humanists questioned this view in light of such developments in the human sciences like structural linguistics (which Levi-Strauss to generalize into a complete anthropology), psychoanalysis (i.e. the work of Lacan which enjoyed great currency in this period), and of course, Marxism. Althusser, was of course, a Marxist and long time member of the PCF. Foucault, who had been a student of Althusser, was a member of the PCF for a brief period of time. By the 1950s, he had renounced Marxism in favor of Nietzscheanism, although his work was still very much influenced by Marxism. Levi-Strauss, I believed, identified himself at this time as a Marxist, although his work doesn't strike me as being particularly Marxist. There were certainly differences in viewpoints between these people. Althusser doesn't seem to have been particularly enamored with Levi-Strauss's work, and he didn't like being called a structuralist. However, all these people's work, whether drawing from Saussure, Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, or Heidegger, all had certain themes in common. They all rejected the Sartrean emphasis on human freedom, instead emphasizing the extent to which human behavior is determined by structures of various sorts, whether these be linguistic structures, kinship structures, structures of epistemology (Foucault in this *The Order of Things*), social structures as represented by the mode of production and associated superstructures (i.e. Althusser), and so forth. They all rejected the traditional humanist idea that their exists an unchanging human essence which provides the basis for freedom and equality and human rights. For the French antihumanists, this conception was rejected as being ideological and/or metaphysical, and they drew variously upon Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, in their critiques of humanism. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 7 13:28:01 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 12:28:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Concept of "Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg Message-ID: <210818.55179.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The Concept of "Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg By Gary Tedman click here for related stories: science 1-28-09, 10:33 am I think we should not expect Marxism to produce a scientific (correct) theory of art, which would be like a Marxist theory of biology attempting to replace Darwinism. Instead, the theory must come from within the realms of art and be "internal" to that gamut of practices. Of course, Marxism has an input to make on this subject, and, in the absence of a universally accepted theory, it is obliged to take a position on art, to pick a side, so to speak. It is also obliged to champion those theories of art it thinks are the most progressive and scientific. I am not convinced that Marxism has done this in the past at all times. The Marxists Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin and Clement Greenberg have, I would argue, produced the most progressive theories of art, sometimes almost as an aside to their more pressing concerns. This essay critiques their contributions and also seeks to amalgamate them into a new and radical whole. It will help us to start this investigation by thinking of visual art as visual philosophy. Art, if it is not simply decorative, entertainment, or utilitarian, communicates deep and fundamental ideas, just like philosophy. I realize, of course, that ?What is philosophy?? is no easy question. The Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-1990) has, however, made it an easier one for us. For Althusser, philosophy is class struggle in the field of theory. It battles over the status of the sciences. Thus, the practice of science is distinguished from the practice of ideology. Art, however, differs from philosophy in that, while philosophy (at least as commonly understood) deals with the rational via writing, art specializes in ?feelings,? taking feeling to mean both emotion and sensory perception, using its materials in subtle ways to affect the senses. Linking art and philosophy in this way has the benefit of revealing a hitherto hidden aspect of art: As Althusser said, all philosophy interpellates us as subjects. The same can be said about art. ?Interpellation" is a concept Althusser developed in his theory of ideology. For Althusser, ideology (even a system of false ideas such as bourgeois ideology) participates in the ongoing reproduction of the already existing social conditions of production. "As any child knows," Althusser said, all societies must reproduce themselves. Ideology is necessary in order to reproduce the "right kind" of human subject with the "right kind" of "mentality" for functioning properly in capitalist society. The bourgeois state has organized modern education to manage this task, a task which once had been the function of religious institutions. Part of this reproduction process is the ?interpellation of the subject.? Althusser?s example is the French police way of hailing: ?Hey you there!? Such hailing functions so that the subject recognizes he or she really is a "responsible individual" subject to ideology. For Althusser, the ruling philosophy always interpellates subjects, it always has a particular "world view," and it hails its subjects to recognize its authority. However, all interpellation by the state must be "materialized." It can never just consist of "pure ideas" floating from one brain to another. It must therefore exist in actual practice. We "act out" ideology, or to put it another way, because practice always comes before theory, ideology legitimizes practices that already exist (e.g., ideology legitimated the Iraq war after the war had already been started). But, as Althusser said, bourgeois philosophy ?lives by its denegation," the promise of an objective knowledge of what philosophy is, as a practice, which is offered by Marxism, is always denegated, or disavowed, by bourgeois philosophers, who assert that such knowledge is impossible. This denial of status is crucial to the ruling ideology. The bourgeois world view, for example, sees itself as just because it is universal, which means beyond all partisan positions. Because of this it may/can be forceful, resort to violence, etc. The professional art teacher is similarly obliged to deny real knowledge of their practice. The phrase "there's no accounting for taste" is one of the unwritten commandments of modern art education. This reflects the bourgeois notion that art (ultimately) cannot "be scientific" or subjected to scientific analysis. In this, the ruling philosophy has decided what science and art is, but at the same time (absurdly) it holds there can be no definite (scientific) knowledge of it. It also asserts this of its own practice of philosophy. According to the ruling philosophy, we cannot know what philosophy does, as a practice. All of this is a function of the classical "bifurcation thesis," the great separation of the humanities from the sciences, which runs through all modern western education. The bifurcation thesis functions on the basis of the common ideology; it is simply asserted (unproven) by that ideology. The theorist who in the modern period really began to pick apart this assertion in relation to art was Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), especially in his essay "The Author as Producer." While, for Althusser, ideology takes part in social reproduction by creating "suitably subjected subjects," this was a process largely envisaged as taking place in domain ideology. Even though he describes ideology as existing in material practices, these practices are defined by Althusser with an emphasis on the ideological. Benjamin takes over aesthetically where Althusser leaves off ideologically by considering the material (aesthetic) form of the interpellation, i.e. the sensual mediation of the idea. Certainly, Althusser did this too when he wrote (relatively briefly) about art, Brecht, and the theatre, against the aesthetic of "myths and drugs," as he put it, but Benjamin is a more detailed and, I suggest, gets us further. Benjamin, at the time of his writing, was bemoaning the rise of Neo-Kantian philosophical aesthetics (as opposed to Marxian materialism), and demonstrated its revival in the practice of contemporary leftist art. He put forward his theory against positions that he felt were then, in the 1930s, dominant, "Activism" and the "New Objectivity" (Neue Sachlichkeit). Activism promoted a classless notion of "common sense" and defended, according to Benjamin, the "indefinable attitude" of "men of mind," referring to their placing all of the emphasis on a metaphysical notion of content understood as entirely separate from the process of language use. Benjamin opposed the Lukacsian theory of art, and any dramaturgy that based its principles on a notion of tragedy which perceived the dramatic hero as the proponent of will in a conflict between two mutually exclusive ethical demands. He criticized, on this basis, those whom he saw as undergoing a revolutionary development only in terms of mentality, without at the same time being able to think through the question of their own work, its technique, and its relationship to the means of production. He thought that these movements functioned (however revolutionary they may have seemed) in a counter-revolutionary way as long as artists experienced solidarity with the proletariat only in the mind, and not as material producers. Instead of asking what the position of an artwork was vis-?-vis the production relations of its time ? does it underwrite these relations, is it reactionary, or does it aspire to overthrow them? ? Benjamin said we should rather ask the question: What is the artwork's position within the relations of production? He argued that this way of looking at art would make artistic products accessible to immediate materialist social analysis, the concept of technique being the dialectical starting-point from which the "sterile dichotomy" of form and content could be overcome. For Benjamin, this was a better way to determine the relationship between an artwork's political tendency and its quality. If a correct political tendency in a work of art includes its literary (artistic) quality, then its literary (artistic) tendency should consist in a progressive development of technique. His example is Brecht's "art of thinking inside other people's heads." (We should note here that, according to Warren Montag, Althusser also came to this conclusion at one point ). Benjamin argues that Brecht's method allowed the process of drama to become transparent to the spectator: that in order to make the sensory transactions accountable, Brecht had developed just such a "productive aesthetic" ? for example, the well known "alienation effect" (not to be confused with Marx's concept of alienation) was a sensual technique of this aesthetic. However Benjamin seems to diverge from this theory when we come to his far more influential essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (Harrison, 2005). This difference is worth examining because of the latter essay?s standing in the field of art and art history/criticism. In this essay, Benjamin has been interpreted as saying that the new capitalist production relations and the new forces of artistic production within it, such as photography and film, overcome the above-mentioned limitations by (we must presume) the fact of their mass reproducibility ? because mass reproduction removes the so-called "aura" of the traditional work of art. Of course, Benjamin's concept of "aura" is usually taken as referring to a politically undesirable thing by the left, given that it can imply a precious, unique, "elitist" quality, but the background of his thesis derives here from a particular, and relatively traditional, view of art history. It has often been stated in the literature that previously art was religious and that it is only now with modern production that it has become political. Benjamin seems to legitimate this view in his "Work of Art? essay of a radical shift from the previous conditions of art production. I submit, however, using as an example Althusser's theory of how modern education as part of the ideological state apparatus (which deals with the reproduction of ideas) emerged from a feudal background. Althusser contends that art, although definitely located in religious culture, was even in its feudal past political, not least because religion itself was a political force responsible for the maintenance of class order. The change in the mode of production does not alter this aspect. Put bluntly, Benjamin does not seem to acknowledge this function of religious art, and therefore makes the modern condition of art too radically distinct from past class relations. One consequence of this is that his idea that the art of the past did not have a mass audience (as the art of modern reproduction does) is overstressed. In fact, art produced by the old guild system could often be seen by large audiences and even be paraded in the streets. Also, its method of production was often not individual but workshop-based, so that many artists, including apprentices, would work on a single painting. This is not so dissimilar from, say, today's film production, but, ironically perhaps, today's celebrity artists are actually less likely to work together this way. Benjamin?s position also assumes that art needs a mass audience immediately to have a "mass effect," a position which ought not to be simply taken for granted. Great works of art may achieve their mass effect instead by permeating culture slowly, but nevertheless more thoroughly than lesser works, in the passage of time. There are of course many examples of this that we can experience right now in the museums, and this is, of course, a tacit acknowledgment that art has this exact function, in time. Benjamin's other key idea in "The Work of Art? essay, that traditional art has an aura because of its provenance as a unique object in time, may perhaps be considered a progressive, material, aura. By progressive I mean that provenance is always involves a material object being subject to the unique moment in which it was materially constructed, as well as with the material processes that affect it in its subsequent history ? all of which are aspects revealed by the object (when studied closely). Thus, even if a work of art is reproduced exactly, it is difficult to fake provenance. Time cannot be repeated. Additional resources: Podcast #91 - The Road to Peace PA Editors Blog The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly News of the Day by Norman Markowitz SACP STATEMENT ON UP COMING NATIONAL ELECTIONS Fidel Reflects on Barack Obama Subscribe to this Feed If this interpretation is correct, the sharp contrast, which is often implied, between the new "anti-aura" and the feudal tradition with its religious "pro-aura," is erroneous. All "good works of art," considered as such within the framework of the new capitalist production relations at the close of the feudal period, tended to be newly defined in terms of a "reactionary" aura whatever their technical means. This was, we must assume, because of the new bourgeois humanist ideology and the new practices (exploitation, expropriation, wage slavery) it validated for that/the new ruling class. There was perhaps only a relatively slow shift in terms of the aura, just as the Reformation was a process that represented a slow shift in religious sensibility. Today there are merely different institutions (aesthetic state apparatuses), such as schools, museums, and galleries, for art. And it was and is not something unique to the new technologies promoted in and through these institutions to act against aura. The simple fact of being inherently reproducible is no guarantor against reactionary aura. Indeed we must point out that photography and film today do not generally (exceptions exist of course) go against aura; in fact, they are invariably treated as having the most intense aura of all artworks. The aura they do have, however, is not exclusively found in the uniqueness of the material object itself (the "original film," although there is of course the "director's cut"), but is also due to the uniqueness of the author "showing up" in the work (a la "auteur theory"). But this is little different from the same attitude as in regard to a "traditional" painting (although certainly the traditional Christian attitude towards the artwork may have been actually less directly associating religious values with the individual artist?s particular genius). We can now accept that if the aura of the traditional work of art was once related to its religious context, this was because it was meant to impress the illiterate and had a hypnoidal function (that is, if there was no subversion of this by the artist), adding to the special atmosphere of the church/temple. For example, traditional stained glass windows in typical European churches provided Christian narratives using light; this was their "special effect." Is this hypnoidal effect, this aura, something that modern mass reproducible artworks lack? Hardly. Today, film and video are perhaps the most hypnoidal of all media, given that, to induce this state in a subject, the classic ruse is to use a "fixed moving point," such as the typical glowing TV/video image. Today we have Microsoft Windows taking the place of the old stained glass windows. As "windows," we see they still glow with an "inner light." The only difference is we now invariably have these little "temples" at home, where they can more easily probe us and know our "preferences." In a sense, they watch us far more closely than Big Brother ever could in Orwell?s ?1984?; they are the new temple and oracle rolled into one. Thus we can see that there are at least two kinds of aura, and two ways we can treat this concept-term. Iona Singh has shown how the apparent aura of great works of art by Vermeer ("Vermeer, Materialism, and the Transcendental in Art," in Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 16 no. 3) is in fact its superior physical/sensual properties, made by an artist with great skill with materials, and it is this 'sensual aura' that is actually misrepresented by bourgeois critics who wish to salvage these great works for their 'normal' hypnoidal aura. Yet, at the same time, we see that there are traditional artworks that do have aura in precisely the negative sense, in that they use their technical means almost solely for purposes of heightening illusion at the service of mystical ideas. So, while an original traditional artwork (say, a painting) may have aura due to its unique provenance and its expert technical qualities, the new media also has this same aura, and also its own provenance as a material object. It cannot avoid this because there is always the original (even with mass reproduction and even with the Internet). Hence today, art film and photography have just as much, or as little, aura as traditional paintings by old masters, and in terms of artistic technique have the potential to hide the sensual-material transactions between the spectator and the artwork to a far greater extent because of the greater technical possibilities that exist today for illusion. Benjamin's 'The Work of Art? essay has often been taken as the modern left?s justification for many recent kinds of 'new technological' but still narrative art, art that, in effect, still suffers from the same problems his other, more radical, essay attacked (this seems to be a peculiar contradiction in Benjamin's work). Today, mere use of new technology plus a loosely critical narrative, destined to find sympathy with a liberal outlook, is perhaps the equivalent to Benjamin?s "new objectivity." Ironically, however, because of the way Benjamin legitimates its use, this narrative technique becomes the ground on which today's progressive art invariably avoids the scientific question. For Benjamin, it seems to enough to be progressively tendentious and to use new technology, which then stands for "new technique." Although I have no wish to single out any artist, the contemporary work of Bill Viola comes to mind here, with his use of large video plasma screens showing figurative and highly illusionary, emotional, narrative artworks. His exhibition ?The Passions? at the National Gallery London (22-10-03 to 04-01-04) was in a darkened room and the entire effect was hypnoidal. Such emotionalist art always verges on being sophisticated kitsch. It has all the attributes of kitsch: it is highly illusionistic, sentimental and reliant on fancy new technology; but while I criticize, we should also note that Viola is a very professional artist and has genuine expertise, which it would be a mistake to dismiss as simply "low." In his famous defense of ?high? modern abstract art against the forces of populist kitsch, ?Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939), Clement Greenberg wondered how we could possibly account for "high art" alongside "low" culture, given they are so different. In his essay, Greenberg deals with a problem that Benjamin (in the essays I have mentioned above) only approaches indirectly: the accusation of elitism against advanced art technique, or in other words against avant-garde art. Certainly, it can be inferred that Benjamin?s concept of the diminishing of aura by mass reproduction is simultaneously an attack on elitism. For the Marxian Clement Greenberg of 1939, his understanding of the new US abstract expressionist avant-garde arose from: ?a superior consciousness of history ??more precisely, the appearance of a new kind of criticism of society, an historical criticism ?which made it possible.? This "consciousness of history" (according to this particular essay) somehow or other affected artists, who were even unaware of it, as it apparently just floated in on the breeze of the Zeitgeist. In terms of Benjamin?s productive aesthetic, we can see how na?ve Greenberg?s "spiritual" view actually is, how it is really a repetition of the position that Benjamin was against. Yet, peculiarly, it is used to defend just the kind of technique and quality Benjamin was arguing for (at least in ?The Author as Producer?). Greenberg?s stance clearly stems from a Marxist, but still rather humanist and consequently Hegelian, understanding of art and ideology, in which art is reduced to ideology and ideology is really ?Spirit? dressed as class struggle. Thus, for Greenberg, the state's education of the artist makes no appearance and everything is a question of mental and narrated allegiance, hovering at a distance above economic facts, but occasionally dipping into them to justify certain opinions. Greenberg essentially writes about art from a position assumed to be beyond scientific accountability, that is, from the traditional perspective of the arts/science bifurcation. He is in art, so he accordingly feels little obligation to provide evidence to the same degree as would be necessary in scientific discourse. Here it is only required to be convincing in the "humanities-art way": to be erudite, to be well-referenced, and to be a bit radical. Consequently his Marxism functions not to demand any scientific advance in art theory, but as an externally applied politics, i.e., more a posture than a position. In order to save the avant-garde and high art, with its special aura, even from the Soviets and their fellow travelers, whom he saw as aesthetically entwined in old-fashioned realism. Greenberg is thus obliged to distinguish between avant-garde art and "lowbrow" kitsch. But he had to do this without breaking the bourgeois taboo against ?accounting for taste.? Therefore his theory is ultimately only able to infer the existence of undefined "special people" who have the capacity to "divine" the difference between "high" and "low." This notion of "special people" is also applied to the artists he championed. Thus, although Greenberg champions avant-garde abstract artists, his is not the more rational avant-garde aesthetic of, for example, the Soviet Constructivists (e.g. Malevich, Popova, Rodchenko and Rozanova), or that of Mondrian, but a mystical one that suited his denegation of exact knowledge better. This was undoubtedly an aesthetic which still owed a great debt to the European and Soviet avant-garde in formal terms, but also, I argue, had hypnoidal aspects that could more readily support a mystical narrative. The works of the Abstract Expressionists are technically impressive and formally radical and were, I think (though I will not argue that here), superior to the then official Soviet art (whose existence, I believe, contributed to the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union), and had ditched certain "dangerous" Brechtian elements of the kind for which Benjamin argued. To conclude, I maintain that in the new (US) context the techniques of avant-garde art were relatively defused to make them more amenable to their new social context, yet they still functioned in a progressive way (internally to the US, while externally they became a reactionary symbol representing the radicalism of the "free world"). Greenberg, Benjamin and Althusser were writing against the same historical backdrop, the October Revolution and the rise of the artistic avant-garde, particularly the Soviet avant-garde, and its influence, and the lasting effects of World War II, including the legacies of Nazism, Stalinism and cult of personality. It seems to me that Benjamin and Althusser were struggling to free themselves from the vestiges of humanism in how Marxism was interpreted, and that they realized the question of art was somehow central to this project. They did not entirely succeed. Indeed, they both retreat, after making some bold advances at certain stages in their writings (Althusser, for instance, towards the end of his essay on the Piccolo Teatro), to a slightly more conservative position on the question of art. I suggest this was because they came up against the dominant world view that Greenberg aptly voiced and for which he was lionized. Greenberg?s theoretical bequest, however, is much weaker than either Benjamin or Althusser, because he does not really offer any new concepts of art for us to work with. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 7 20:42:22 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 19:42:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?utf-8?q?What_are_the_CPUSA=E2=80=99s_views_on_?= =?utf-8?q?the_USSR=3F?= In-Reply-To: <282343.27162.qm@web35508.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <144310.76219.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 2/7/09, juan De La Cruz wrote: From: juan De La Cruz Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] What are the CPUSA?s views on the USSR? To: cdb1003 at prodigy.net Date: Saturday, February 7, 2009, 2:15 PM ...I think or want to recommend to start our critical study of the exussr by using the concept revolutionary tentative in order to correctly understand that "particular" historical moment.? One of the historical documents that demonstrates that the revolutionary proletariat was defeated during the 1917-1923 international wave of proletarian action is found in Lenin's Collective Works: The Eighth Party Congress and a decree stopping revolutionary action against private property....? Lenin's himself acknowledge during its intervention in the Party's Congress that Soviets had been transformed into government's administration organs for the proletariat.....In the second document he signed a decree calling the direct action against private property to be stopped and those structures to merged with the Soviets, that were already organs of capital's administration....We shall not forget the international invasion that followed to consolidate the new form of capital's dictatorship in contradiction with other fraction of capital...until all contradictions exploited in 1938(9): the second generalized capital war.? Also, we could see and learn more historical evidence?of the proletariat defeat in the?files of the Third International.?? with revolutionary salutations, ballista? ? ^^^^^ Is it your conclusion that the great october revolution was not really that great ? --- On Mon, 2/2/09, Charles Brown wrote: From: Charles Brown Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] What are the CPUSA?s views on the USSR? To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu, marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu Date: Monday, February 2, 2009, 5:15 PM What are the CPUSA?s views on the USSR? The subject of the USSR is a complex one. There was certainly an insufficiently developed democracy, but to dismiss over 70 years of their history developing socialism as completely undemocratic is a gross oversimplification. They practiced forms of economic democracy and worker involvement unknown in this country. They offered citizens many essential benefits that the drive to capitalism has destroyed. When the "solution" is worse than the problem, it is not a solution. Capitalism has made life for the vast majority in the former Soviet Union and other former socialist countries much worse. All indicators of social health are deteriorating, such as the sharp rise in infant mortality, the decrease in longevity rates, levels of malnutrition and starvation, decreasing health care for most of the population, inadequate and overwhelmed social security and welfare programs. The problems they faced would have had a better chance of being solved by more socialism, not less! I recommend six books to help deepen your knowledge of the accomplishments and shortcomings of the Soviet Union: Heroic Struggle, Bitter Defeat by Bhaman Azad from International Publishers, 2000, Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti from City Light Publishers. These are both valuable contributions to the discussion of what happened in the Soviet Union, why, and how that connects to the history of Soviet policies. About issues of human rights and socialist development in the Soviet Union, see Human Rights in the Soviet Union by Albert Szymanski, Zed Books, 1984. An earlier book of his, Is the Red Flag Still Flying, included an afterward that is a (very incomplete) start at an historical materialist analysis of Stalin?s role. (Symanski was an economist and a Maoist who set out to prove the Maoist thesis of "capitalist restoration" in the Soviet Union, but on examining the statistics and realities, came to the conclusion that the Maoists were wrong, that the Soviet Union was still primarily run in the interests of the working class. He used statistics and facts as reported by right-wing academicians, arguing that facts as reported by anti-communists could be used to prove progressive points with greater believability by anti-communist readers.) Soviet Women ( Ramparts Press, 1975) and Soviet But Not Russian (Ramparts Press, 1985) by William Mandel and The Siberians by Farley Mowat are useful responses to the barrage of anti-communism directed at the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. (Note that for writing this particular book, Farley Mowat was barred from entering the United States in the 1980s! He wrote a short funny book about his experiences. The U. S. State Department finally backed down, at which time Mowat refused to enter! Other world-famous authors have been refused entry into the U.S. as "undesirable aliens," including Nobel Literature Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.) http://www.cpusa.org/article/static/511/#question27 ? _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis From jannuzi at gmail.com Sun Feb 8 02:49:11 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2009 18:49:11 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Concept of "Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg Message-ID: What an f-ed up thread title. You might find Piaget's book 'Structuralism' interesting. Can't find an electronic version, and the book, at least in English translation, is out of print (used copies around). I think Althusser simply resented the attention Levi-Strauss was getting once he had 'set up shop' in Paris, more than anything. In terms of the overhang of structuralist influence I see in linguistics and applied linguistics, I tend to lump the structuralists into the term 'socio-structuralist behaviorists, with some exceptions (Piaget being one outside of linguistics and anthropology). Chomsky is often put down as an early structuralist, but if he is it is best to remember he rejects French thinking the way most French have rejected or worked around German thinking (including Marx). So Chomsky belongs early on with 'American structuralism'. However, using formalisms he attempts to 'psychologize' structural lingustics (hence the big deal about his 'taking on' and defeating psychological behaviorism in the academic legends of the 50s and 60s that those of us who went to university in the 70s and 80s had to live with). I would say the attempt largely fails, but no one is more aware of this than Chomsky himself. Piaget, Jean (1970). Structuralism. New York: Harper & Row. For a quick summary: http://reagle.org/joseph/2003/seminar/1006-structuralism-gabriele.html Structuralism by Jean Piaget Abstract In Structuralism Piaget provides an overlook on the penetration of the idea of "structure" in various fields of natural and social sciences. Through the different applications and contributions exemplified in the book, structuralism appears as a powerful approach to the analysis of phenomena in several fields of knowledge. Rather than looking at the structure as a given order that exists in reality, Piaget advises that it is more useful to consider it a sort of approach, a method of examination of reality, which has certain rules and implications. In this sense, structure is an a priori, the condition to detect in things regularity and discontinuity, connections and differences. The three main characters of the structuralist approach are: * structures are based on the idea of wholeness . Structuralism objects to the atomism of the analytical and empiricist perspectives, and thus the vision of the theoretical work as taking apart or putting together isolated elements. * structures are systems characterizes by specific dynamics of transformations , through which they develop and change, while keeping certain boundaries. * structures are self-regulating : structures change according to their own rules, without the need for an external intervention Structuralism could be considered the most systematic and methodical approach to the understanding of social and natural phenomena. It entails the study of phenomena through hypothetical models or "structures", with a special focus on the study of the laws that govern such structures. A structure is thus a hypothetical, heuristic model used for the relational investigation of phenomena. As a method, structuralism replaces the atomistic emphasis on phenomena seen as unique and mutually independent entities, by elaborating hypothetical models of a more general order with the goal of shifting the emphasis to the relationship between these phenomena. In social science for example, structuralism, by emphasizing systems of relationships, aims at de-emphasizing the role of the subject, while emphasizing the structured character of the human condition, with its built-in constraints and patterns. In its ambition to be systematic, structuralism borrows from any scientific domain in which the phenomena observed have been organized into a grammar of forms and structural relationships. Introduction Structuralism is hard to define because it has taken many different forms. When introducing its general traits, we encounter two main problems: * to define the nature of ideal of the concept of structure * to observe the critical intentions which accompanied the birth of any variety of structuralism The idea of structure: there is an ideal of intelligibility held in common by all structuralists (mathematics, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, etc.) If we should focus on the positive content of the idea of structure, we could come upon at least two aspects are common to all kinds of structuralisms: 1. structures are self-sufficient, we do not have to make reference to all sorts of extraneous elements to understand them; 2. their theoretical employment has shown that structures, despite their diversity, have certain common properties; (p.4) Three main characteristics of structures: " In short the notion of structure is comprised of three key ideas: the ideas of wholeness, the idea of transformation, the idea of self-regulation" (p.5) Structures involve transformations regulated by laws: " We may say that a structure is a system of transformations. Inasmuch as it is a system and not a mere collection of elements and their properties, these transformations involve laws." (p.5) Structures have distinct characteristic in different scientific domains: "The mode of existence of a structure must be determined separately for each particular area of investigation" (p.5) Wholeness Structures vs aggregates: "All structuralists recognize as fundamental the contrast between structures and aggregates, the former being wholes , the latter composites formed of elements that are independent of the complexes into which they enter" (p.7) Structures do have elements, but the "elements of a structure are subordinated to laws , and it is in terms of these laws that the structure qua whole or system is defined (?) These laws confer on the whole as such overall properties distinct from the properties of its elements" (p.7) The idea of wholeness raises two main problems: * nature of wholeness: it would be a mistake to consider wholes either in terms of their structural laws or allow only for atomistic compounding of prior elements. There is a third position, which is that if operational structuralism : the logical procedures or natural processes by which the whole is formed are primary, not the whole, which is consequent on the system's laws of composition, or the elements. (p.9). * formation of wholeness: have these composite wholes always been composed? Do structures call for formation, or is only some sort of eternal preformation compatible with them? (p.9) These questions lead us to the second characteristic of structures, namely their being systems of transformations , rather than of static forms. Transformations The laws governing structures are themselves structuring: it is the constant duality of being simultaneously structuring and structured that account for the success of the notion of law or rule employed by structuralists (p.10). Structuralism started with the work of Saussure and it is associated with the work of Gestalt psychologists. Linguistics and psychological structuralism were associated with the dawning of ideas of transformation (p.11) All known structures are, without exception, systems of transformation. (p.11) Self-regulation Self-regulation entails self-maintenance and closure: transformations inherent in a structure never lead beyond the system but always engender elements that belong to it and preserve its laws. In this sense the structure is closed. These properties of conservation along with stability of boundaries despite the construction of indefinitely many new elements presuppose that structures are self-regulating. (p.11) How is self-regulation achieved? At the highest level self-regulation proceeds by application of perfectly explicit rules, these rules being, of course, the very ones that define the structure under consideration, for examples operations. But what's is an operation structurally considered? It is a perfect regulation, which has its inverse in the system. (p.15) There is a vast class of structures which are not strictly logical or mathematical, that is, whose transformations unfold in time (linguistic, sociological, psychological structures). Such transformations are governed by laws that are not operations in the strict sense of the word, but they depend on the interplay of anticipation and correction. (p.16) Rhythm, regulation, operation, these are the three basic mechanisms of self-regulation and self-maintenance. (p.16) 2 Mathematical and Logical Structures Structuralists concepts derive from general algebra. The first known structure was the mathematical "group": a group is a system consisting of a set if elements together with an operation of rule of combination and having the following properties: 1. performed upon elements of the set, the combinatory operation yields only elements of the set 2. the set contains a neuter element which doesn't affect the combinatory operation with any other member of the group 3. the combinatory operation has an inverse in the system (+n ? n = 0) 4. the combinatory operation is associative The primary reason for the success of the group concept is the peculiar form of abstraction by which it is obtained, named "reflective abstraction": it does not derive properties from things but from our ways of acting on things, the operations we perform on them. (p.19) Groups also obey the rules of transformations and self-regulation (p.20) "Parent structures" The Bourbaki wanted to subordinate all mathematics to the idea of structure, thus overcoming the traditional compartmentalization. The group structure is quite independent of the intrinsic nature of its elements, and the transformations are disengaged from the object subject of such transformation The Bourbaki program consists essentially in extending this procedure by subjecting mathematical elements of every variety, regardless to of the standard mathematical domain they belong, to this sort of "reflective abstraction" so as too arrive at structures of maximum generality. (p.24) Three kinds of parents structures: algebraic, order and topologic, organized by two methods of constructions, combination and differentiation (p.25) Does this mathematical architecture build on foundations that are in some manner natural, or are the Bourbaki parent structures simply an axiomatic basis of their system? From the study of the intellectual development of the child it seems that "the mother structures of the Borurbaki correspond to coordinations that are necessary to all intellectual activity. (p.27). Logical structures Logic systems have all the characteristics of structure (see p.29) but are lacking in two respects: "they are fabricated ad hoc , and structuralism is really after is the discovery of the "natural structures"; also, a logical system is only a relative whole , since it is open "at the top" (formulae that are indemonstrable so long as one stays in the system), and "at the bottom", since primitive conceptions and axioms have all sorts of implicit elements. Godel: no consistent formal system sufficiently "rich" to contain elementary arithmetic can, by its own principles of reasoning, demonstrate its own consistency. This undermined the formalist idea that mathematic was reducible to logic and logic could be exhaustively formalized. Since Godel we know that axiomatic method has certain inherent limitations.(p.33) This had the effect of creating the notion of "weak" and "strong" structures. This hierarchy gave rise to an idea of "construction", just as in biology the hierarchy of properties suggested the idea of "evolution". (..) The idea of structure as a system of transformations becomes continuous with that of construction as a continual formation. (p.34) 3 Physical and biological structures Is man, nature, or both the source of structure? In the terrain of physics they come together (p.37) The harmony between mathematics and physics (..) is a correspondence of human operations with those of object-operators, a harmony, then, between the human being and the innumerable operators in nature. (p. 41) Organic strucures The organism is the paradigm structure. However, biological structuralism is only in its beginnings. Reductionist approaches in biology failed to see that never in physics progress takes the form of simply adding on new information (p.45) The first attempt to introduce an explicitly structuralist perspective into biology was inspired by work in experimental psychology concerned with perceptual or motor schemes (Gestalten) The notion of structure as a self-regulationg system should be carried beyond the individual organism, even beyond the population, to encompass the complex of milieu, phenotype and genetic pool. (..) Biological wholes and self-regulating systems enable us to understand the connection between "structures" and " the subject" (p.51) 4 Psychological structures The most prominent form of psychological structuralism is the theory of Gestalten. The central idea of Gestaltist structuralism is the idea of wholeness: complex perceptual units like a melody of a person's physiognomy have perceptual qualities accrue to them as configurations (Gestalten). Gestalt psychologists maintained that what is given is always from the start a whole, a structure within which the sensations figure only as elements (p.56) Laws of perceptual totalities: * the whole, over and beyond having qualitative features of its own, has a quantitative value different from that of the sum of its parts. * Perceptual totalities tend to take on the "best" form possible, "good" forms being simple, regular, symmetrical, closely packed, and so on. This entails physical principle of equilibration. (p.56) The notion of equilibration is important, because it involves the idea of transformation within a system and the idea of self-regulation. Gestalt psychology is therefore a structuralist theory more on account of its use of equilibration principles than because of the laws of wholeness it proposes. (p.57) 5 Linguistic Structuralism Language is a group institution. The syntax and semantics of a language yield a set of rules to which any individual speaking that language must submit. It is the natural source of structures. (p.75) Linguistic structuralism goes back to Saussure, who showed that diachronic development is not the only process to be taken notice of in the study of a language. In addition to its historical aspect language has a "systematic" aspect; it embodies laws of equilibrium which operate on its elements and which yield a synchronic system. (p.76) Fundamental importance of the arbitrariness of the verbal sign, which is merely conventional. The relations between synchronics and diachronics must be different in linguistics than in other domains, where structure belongs not to the means of the expression, but to the expressed, to the signified rather than to the signifier, to realities which have intrinsic value and normative power. (p. 79) Transformational structuralism Chomsky's theories place linguistic structures among those maximally general structures which derive their wholeness not from descriptive and static laws but from laws of transformation. (p.81) Two key ideas of Chomsky's linguistics: generative grammar, and the placement of this grammar in an innate reason. (p.82) Applications of Chomsky's structuralism are noteworthy for several reasons. First, they do much to attenuate the contrast between language as a social institution and speech as an individual performance, and to cast doubt upon the notion that the development of speech and with it of all individuals consists merely in an adaptation of the collective norms (p.85) 6 Structural analysis in the social sciences All the social sciences yield structuralist theories since, however different they may be, they are all concerned with social groups and subgroups, that is, with self-regulating transformational totalities. A social group is evidently a whole; being dynamic, it is the seat of transformations; and since one of the basic facts about such groups is that they impose all sorts of constraints and norms, they are self-regulating. (p.97) Global structuralism (Durkheim): treats totality as a primary concept explanatory as such. Analytic structuralism: Marcel Mauss is considered the originator of authentic anthropological structuralism because, especially in his studies on the gift, he sought and found the details of transformational interactions. (p.98) Anthropological structuralism of Levi-Strauss Fundamental principle of his structuralism: "all social life, however elementary, presupposes an intellectual activity in man of which the formal properties cannot, accordingly, be a reflection of the concrete organization of society" (p.107) Anthropological structuralism is firmly synchronic, but in a different way than with linguistics. The system of beliefs and customs studied by the anthropologists is less subject to change than the language systems studied by the linguist. (..) The norms themselves depend upon structures, which are permanent, so that this sort of synchronics is somehow expression of an invariant diachronics. This does not mean that Levi-Strauss wants to abolish history; only, the changes brought about by history do not affect the human mind itself and, furthermore, their analysis again requires recourse to "structures" ? diachronic instead of synchronic. (107) Concept of pre-logic: pre-logic in the double sense of being anterior to an explicit logic and of being preparatory for the latter. (p.116) Whereas other animals cannot alter themselves except by changing their species, man can transform himself by transforming the world can structure himself by constructing structures; and these structures are his own, for they are eternally predestined. So the history of intelligence is not simply an inventory of elements; it's a bundle of transformations, not to be confused with the transformations of culture or those of symbolic activity, but antedating and giving rise to both of these. (p.119) 7 Structuralism and philosophy Structuralism and dialectic Levi Strauss discussed Sartre's Critique of the Dialectic Reason: Piaget says that " in the domain of the sciences themselves structuralism has always been linked with a constructivism from which the epithet "dialectical" can hardly be withheld ? the emphasis upon historical development, opposition between contraries, is surely just as a characteristic of constructivism as of dialectic, and that the idea of wholeness figures centrally in structuralism as in dialectical modes of thought is obvious. (p.121) What is the dialectical reason for Levi-Strauss? It is always constitutive, in the sense of being venturesome, building bridges and crossing them, whereas analytical reason separates because it wants not only to understand but to control (122) Marx and structuralism: there is a structuralist strand in Marx, something halfway between what we called global and analytical structuralism, since he distinguishes "real infrastructures" from "ideological infrastructures" and describes the former in terms which, though remaining qualitative, are precise enough to bring us close to directly observable relations (p.125) From jannuzi at gmail.com Sun Feb 8 03:43:17 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2009 19:43:17 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Concept of "Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Actually the discussion, such as it is, puts me most to mind of Bourdieu. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/bourdieu.htm In short, social science does not have to choose between that form of social physics, represented by Durkheim ? who agrees with social semiology in acknowledging that one can only know 'reality' by applying logical instruments of classification ? and the idealist semiology which, undertaking to construct 'an account of accounts', as Harold Garfinkel puts it, can do no more than record the recordings of a social world which is ultimately no more than the product of mental, i.e., linguistic, structures. What we have to do is to bring into the science of scarcity, and of competition for scarce goods, the practical knowledge which the agents obtain for themselves by producing ? on the basis of their experience of the distributions, itself dependent on their position in the distributions ? divisions and classifications which are no less objective than those of the balance-sheets of social physics. In other words, we have to move beyond the opposition between objectivist theories which identify the social classes (but also the sex or age classes) with discrete groups, simple countable populations separated by boundaries objectively drawn in reality, and subjectivist (or marginalist) theories which reduce the 'social order' to a sort of collective classification obtained by aggregating the individual classifications or, more precisely, the individual strategies, classified and classifying, through which agents class themselves and others. One only has to bear in mind that goods are converted into distinctive signs, which may be signs of distinction but also of vulgarity, as soon as they are perceived relationally, to see that the representation which individuals and groups inevitably project through their practices and properties is an integral part of social reality. A class is defined as much by its being-perceived as by its being, by its consumption ? which need not be conspicuous in order to be symbolic ? as much as by its position in the relations of production (even if it is true that the latter governs the former). The Berkeleian ? i.e., petit-bourgeois ? vision which reduces social being to perceived being, to seeming, and which, forgetting that there is no need to give theatrical performances (representations) in order to be the object of mental representations, reduces the social world to the sum of the (mental) representations which the various groups have of the theatrical performances put on by the other groups, has the virtue of insisting on the relative autonomy of the logic of symbolic representations with respect to the material determinants of socio-economic condition. The individual or collective classification struggles aimed at transforming the categories of perception and appreciation of the social world and, through this, the social world itself, are indeed a forgotten dimension of the class struggle. But one only has to realize that the classificatory schemes which underlie agents' practical relationship to their condition and the representation they have of it are themselves the product of that condition, in order to see the limits of this autonomy. Position in the classification struggle depends on position in the class structure; and social subjects ? including intellectuals, who are not those best placed to grasp that which defines the limits of their thought of the social world , that is, the illusion of the absence of limits ? are perhaps never less likely to transcend 'the limits of their minds' than in the representation they have and give of their position, which defines those limits. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/jan/28/guardianobituaries.books His sociological work covered a wide range of subjects, starting with an examination of the peasantry in the B?arn, where he had been brought up and studied farming, with particular reference to the number of peasants who did not marry. This study was historical as well as economic and sociological. In it he warned all sociologists: "Observation of reality puts us on our guard against the temptation to construct over-simple models." Bourdieu was preoccupied with detail but also an attempt to produce a wide and more general system of ideas. Although he is always seen as a supporter of the student revolutionaries of 1968, he was, in fact, highly critical of their ideas. His belief that teachers could be, in spite of themselves, essentially traditionalist and that students had, unwittingly, become the bearers of a culture with which they were satisfied, was not popular. In October 1999 he spoke to some 70 leading patrons of the audio-visual arts in Paris. "Masters of the world, do you know what you are doing?" was his question. His answer was that, since they obeyed the law of maximum profits in the shortest possible time, they were killing culture. http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/06/23/mclemee Q: Something about his career always seemed paradoxical. Sartre was always his worst-case reference, for example. But by the time of his death in 2002, Bourdieu was regarded as the person who had filled Sartre's shoes. Has your work given you a sense of how to resolve this seeming contradiction? A: There is a lot of silence in Bourdieu's work on the ways in which he acquired power and prestige within the French academic system or about how he became the most famous public intellectual in France at the time of his death. He was more self-reflexive about earlier periods in his life. I have trouble defending Bourdieu in this contradiction about his stance toward the public intellectual, even though I applaud his political engagements. I think that Bourdieu felt he had more authority to speak to some of these issues than did other academics, given his social origins and empirical research in Algeria and France among the underclass. Bourdieu repeatedly positioned the sociologist (and one can only assume he meant himself here, too) as having a privileged perspective on the "reality" of systems of domination. Bourdieu was very critical of Sartre for speaking out about the war in Algeria and for championing a sort of revolutionary spirit among Algerians. Bourdieu accused him of trying to be a "total intellectual" who could speak on any topic and who did not understand the situation in Algeria as profoundly as did the sociologist-ethnologist Bourdieu. When Bourdieu himself became more visible in his own political views (particularly in attacks against globalization and neo-liberalism), he does seem to have acted like the "journalist"-academics he lampooned in Homo Academicus. Nevertheless, when he was criticizing (in his essay On Television) what he saw as the necessity for "fast thinking" on television talk shows in France, where talking heads must quickly have something to say about anything, Bourdieu did (in his defense) refrain from pontificating about any and everything. There is still a huge controversy raging in France about Bourdieu's political engagements. His detractors vilify him for his attacks against other intellectuals and journalists while he became a public intellectual himself. His defenders have published a book of his political writings (Interventions, 1961-2001) seeking to show his long-standing commitments, and continue to guard his reputation beyond the grave. I cannot help but think that Bourdieu's public combative persona, and his (in his own terms) refusals and ruptures, helped rather than thwarted his academic career. The degree to which this was calculated or (as he claimed) was the result of the "peasant" habitus he acquired growing up in southwestern France, is unknown. Q: So much of his analysis of academic life is focused on the French university system that there is always a question of how well it could apply elsewhere. I'm curious about your thoughts on this. What's it been like to move between his concepts and models and your own experience as an American academic? A: I see two ways to answer your question. Certainly, in the specifics, French academia is very different. I have experienced that directly. My own American cultural values of independence (which may, I am aware, be a total illusion) conflict with those of many French academics. When I first arrived in France to do my dissertation fieldwork, I came with a grant that opened some doors to French academia, but I had little direct sponsorship by powerful patrons in the U.S. I was doing a project that had little to do with the work of my professors, none of whom had done research in France or Europe, and it was something that I had come up with on my own. This was surprising to the French, who were familiar with a patron-client system of professor/student relations. Most of the graduate students I met in France were involved in projects related to the work of their professors. French academia, still centralized in Paris despite attempts at decentralization, is a much smaller universe than that of the vast American system. There is little room for remaining "outside" of various polemics there. I've learned, for instance, that some people whom I like and admire in France hated Bourdieu and that Bourdieu followers tend to be very fierce in their defense of him and want to promote their view of his work. This is not to say that American academia doesn't have similar forces operating, but there are multiple points of value and hierarchy here. Whereas Bourdieu could say that Philosophy dominated French academia during the mid-20th century, it is harder to pinpoint one single dominant intellectual framework here. I do, however, feel that Bourdieu's critique of academia as part of a larger project of the study of power (which he made very explicit in The State Nobility) is applicable beyond France. His work on academia provided us with a method of inquiry to look at the symbolic capital associated with academic advancement and, although the specific register of this will be different in different national contexts, the process may be similar. Just as Bourdieu did in France, for example, one could study how it is that elite universities here "select" students and professors. Q: We have a memoir of Sartre's childhood in The Words. Is there anything comparable for Bourdieu? A: Bourdieu produced self-referential writings that began to appear in the late 1990s, with "Impersonal Confessions" in Pascalian Meditations (1997), a section called "Sketch for a Self-Analysis" in his final lectures to the Coll?ge de France, Science of Science and Reflexivity (2001), and then the stand-alone volume Esquisse pour une Auto-Analyse, published posthumously in 2004. [Unlike the other titles listed, this last volume is not yet available in English. ? S.M.] A statement by Bourdieu that "this is not an autobiography" appears as an epigraph to the 2004 essay. I find his autobiographical writings interesting because they show us a bit about how he wanted to use his own methods of socio-analysis on himself and his own life, with a focus particularly on his formative years ? his childhood, his education, his introduction to academia, and his experiences in Algeria. Bourdieu was uncomfortable with what he saw as narcissism in much autobiography, and also was theoretically uncomfortable with life stories that stressed the individual as hero without sufficient social analysis. He had earlier written an essay on the 'biographical illusion" that elaborated on his biographical approach, but without self-reference. These essays are not, then, autobiographical in the conventional sense of a linear narrative of a life. Bourdieu felt that a truly scientific sociology depended on reflexivity on the part of the researcher, and by this he meant being able to analyze one's own position in the social field and one's own habitus. On the one hand, however, Bourdieu's auto-analysis was a defensive move meant to preempt his critics. Bourdieu included a section on self-interpretation in his book on Heidegger, in which he referred to it as "the riposte of the author to those interpretations and interpreters who at once objectify and legitimize the author, by telling him what he is and thereby authorizing him to be what they say he is..." (101). As Bourdieu became increasingly a figure in the public eye and increasingly a figure of analysis and criticism, he wanted to explain himself and thus turned to self-interpretation and auto-analysis. Q: In a lot of ways, Bourdieu seems like a corrosive thinker: someone who strips away illusions, rationalizations, the self-serving beliefs that institutions foster in their members. But can you identify a kernel of something positive or hopeful in his work ? especially in regard to education? I'd like to think there is one.... A: Bourdieu had little to say about how schools and universities operate that is positive, and he was very critical of them. The hopeful kernel here is that in understanding how they operate, how they inflict symbolic violence and perpetuate the illusions that enable systems of domination, we can improve educational institutions. Bourdieu felt strongly that by de-mystifying the discourses and aura of authority surrounding education (especially its elite forms), we can learn something useful. The trick is how to turn this knowledge into power, and Bourdieu did not have any magical solutions for this. That is work still to be done. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Feb 10 09:01:09 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:01:09 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace Message-ID: boyd, danah. 2007. "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace ." Apophenia Blog Essay. June 24 . http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html I don't do Facebook or myspace, so all this has escaped my attention. It's fascinating, though. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 12 22:30:52 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:30:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Concept of "Aura" and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg Message-ID: <853743.89679.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Gary Tedman (unregistered) wrote, in response to bing: Hi, Yep, very interesting. I agree about Marx and his concept of human nature, and sexuality, and what you say. But it is different to the classical humanist essence (very). I did write about this (sort of) in an essay in RM ("Subjectless Aesthetics"). Marx's idea of species being is very subtle and underestimated, in my view. Despite all the arguments against Althusser that have passed, I think his critique of humanism (essay "Marxism and Humanism") is an excellent contribution to Marxist theory. In my view what today forms the core of bourgeois ideology, which does not have to be consistent, is a sort of amalgamation of positivism and humanism. Yes, I agree there are progressive moments in humanism, but I also think the great majority of it is harmful and confusing, at least to those wanting to understand the difference of Marxism to other notionally critical 'alternative positions'. --- um, I guess I think and have argued that social realism is the embodiment of humanism in art, which goes further than Althusser. ciao! From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 12 23:39:25 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:39:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism and Humanism Message-ID: <768.5897.qm@web180112.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Louis Althusser 1964 Part Seven. Marxism and Humanism http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1964/marxism-humanism.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ?Marxism and Humanism? first appeared in the Cahiers de l?I.S.E.A., June 1964. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I Today, Socialist ?Humanism? is on the agenda. As it enters the period which will lead it from socialism (to each according to his labour) to communism (to each according to his needs), the Soviet Union has proclaimed the slogan: All for Man, and introduced new themes: the freedom of the individual, respect for legality, the dignity of the person. In workers? parties, the achievements of socialist humanism are celebrated and justification for its theoretical claims is sought in Capital, and more and more frequently, in Marx?s Early Works. This is a historical event. I wonder even whether socialist humanism is not such a reassuring and attractive theme that it will allow a dialogue between Communists and Social-Democrats, or even a wider exchange with those ?men of good will? who are opposed to war and poverty. Today, even the high-road of Humanism seems to lead to socialism. In fact, the objective of the revolutionary struggle has always been the end of exploitation and hence the liberation of man, but, as Marx foresaw, in its first historical phase, this struggle had to take the form of the struggle between classes. So revolutionary humanism could only be a ?class humanism?, ?proletarian humanism?. The end of the exploitation of man meant the end of class exploitation. The liberation of man meant the liberation of the working class and above all liberation by the dictatorship of the proletariat. For more than forty years, in the U.S.S.R., amidst gigantic struggles, ?socialist humanism? was expressed in the terms of class dictatorship rather than in those of personal freedom.[1] The end of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the U.S.S.R. opens up a second historical phase. The Soviets say, in our country antagonistic classes have disappeared, the dictatorship of the proletariat has fulfilled its function, the State is no longer a class State but the State of the whole people (of everyone). In the U.S.S.R. men are indeed now treated without any class distinction, that is, as persons. So in ideology we see the themes of class humanism give way before the themes of a socialist humanism of the person. Ten years ago socialist humanism only existed in one form: that of class humanism. Today it exists in two forms: class humanism, where the dictatorship of the proletariat is still in force (China, etc.), and (socialist) personal humanism where it has been superseded (the U.S.S.R.). Two forms corresponding to two necessary historical phases. In ?personal? humanism, ?class? humanism contemplates its own future, realized. This transformation in history casts light on certain transformations in the mind. The dictatorship of the proletariat, rejected by Social-Democrats in the name of (bourgeois) personal ?humanism?, and which bitterly opposes them to Communists, has been superseded in the U.S.S.R. Even better, it is foreseeable that it might take peaceful and short-lived forms in the West. From here we can see in outline a sort of meeting between two personal ?humanisms?, socialist humanism and Christian or bourgeois liberal humanism. The ?liberalization? of the U.S.S.R. reassures the latter. As for socialist humanism, it can see itself not only as a critique of the contradictions of bourgeois humanism, but also and above all as the consummation of its ?noblest? aspirations. Humanity?s millenarian dreams, prefigured in the drafts of past humanisms, Christian and bourgeois, will at last find realization in it: in man and between men, the reign of Man will at last begin. Hence the fulfilment of the prophetic promise Marx made in the 1844 Manuscripts: Communism ... as the real appropriation of the human essence through and for men ... this communism as a fully developed naturalism ? Humanism?. II To see beyond this event, to understand it, to know the meaning of socialist humanism, it is not enough just to register the event, nor to record the concepts (humanism, socialism) in which the event itself thinks itself. The theoretical claims of the concepts must be tested to ensure that they really do provide us with a truly scientific knowledge of the event. But precisely in the couple ?humanism-socialism? there is a striking theoretical unevenness: in the framework of the Marxist conception, the concept ?socialism? is indeed a scientific concept, but the concept ?humanism? is no more than an ideological one. Note that my purpose is not to dispute the reality that the concept of socialist humanism is supposed to designate, but to define the theoretical value of the concept. When I say that the concept of humanism is an ideological concept (not a scientific one), I mean that while it really does designate a set of existing relations, unlike a scientific concept, it does not provide us with a means of knowing them. In a particular (ideological) mode, it designates some existents, but it does not give us their essences. If we were to confuse these two orders we should cut ourselves off from all knowledge, uphold a confusion and risk falling into error. To show this clearly, I shall briefly invoke Marx?s own experience, for he only arrived at a scientific theory of history at the price of a radical critique of the philosophy of man that had served as his theoretical basis during the years of his youth (1840-45). I use the words ?theoretical basis? in their strict sense. For the young Marx, ?Man? was not just a cry denouncing poverty and slavery. It was the theoretical principle of his world outlook and of his practical attitude. The ?Essence of Man? (whether freedom, reason or community) was the basis both for a rigorous theory of history and for a consistent political practice. This can be seen in the two stages of Marx?s humanist period. The First Stage was dominated by a liberal-rationalist humanism closer to Kant and Fichte than to Hegel. In his conflict with censorship, Rhenish feudal laws, Prussian despotism, Marx?s political struggle and the theory of history sustaining it were based theoretically on a philosophy of man. Only the essence of man makes history, and this essence is freedom and reason. Freedom: it is the essence of man just as weight is the essence of bodies. Man is destined to freedom, it is his very being. Whether he rejects it or negates it, he remains in it for ever: ?So much is freedom the essence of Man that even its adversaries are realizing it when they fight against its reality... . So freedom has always existed, in one way or another, sometimes only as a particular privilege, sometimes as a general right.?[2] This distinction illuminates the whole of history: thus, feudalism is freedom, but in the ?non-rational? form of privilege; the modern State is freedom, but in the rational form of a universal right. Reason: man is only freedom as reason. Human freedom is neither caprice, nor the determinism of interest, but, as Kant and Fichte meant it, autonomy, obedience to the inner law of reason. This reason, which has ?always existed though not always in a rational form?[3] (e.g. feudalism), in modern times does at least exist in the form of reason in the State, the State of law and right. ?Philosophy regards the State as the great organism in which legal, moral and political freedom should find their realization and in which the individual citizen, when he obeys the State?s laws, is only obeying the natural laws of his own reason, of human reason .?[4] Hence the task of philosophy: ?Philosophy demands that the State be the State of human nature?. [5] This injunction is addressed to the State itself: if it would recognize its essence it would become reason, the true freedom of man, through its own reform of itself. Therefore, politico-philosophical criticism (which reminds the State of its duty to itself) sums up the whole of politics: the free Press, the free reason of humanity, becomes politics itself. This political practice ? summed up in public theoretical criticism, that is, in public criticism by way of the Press ? which demands as its absolute precondition the freedom of the Press is the one Marx adopted in the Rheinische Zeitung. Marx?s development of his theory of history was the basis and justification for his own practice: the journalist?s public criticism that he saw as political action par excellence. This Enlightenment Philosophy was completely rigorous. The Second Stage (1842-5) was dominated by a new form of humanism: Feuerbach?s ?communalist? humanism. The Reason State had remained deaf to reason: there was no reform of the Prussian State. History itself delivered this judgment on the illusions of the humanism of reason: the young German radicals had been expecting that when he was King the heir to the throne would keep the liberal promises he had made before his coronation. But the throne soon changed the liberal into a despot ? the State, which should at last have become reason, since it was in itself reason, gave birth merely to unreason once again. From this enormous disappointment, lived by the young radicals as a true historical and theoretical crisis, Marx drew the conclusion: ?The political State ... encapsulates the demands of reason precisely in its modern forms. But it does not stop there. Everywhere it presupposes realized reason. But everywhere it also slides into the contradiction between its theoretical definition and its real hypotheses.? A decisive step had been taken: the State?s abuses were no longer conceived as misappropriations of the State vis-?-vis its essence, but as a real contradiction between its essence (reason) and its existence (unreason). Feuerbach?s humanism made it possible to think just this contradiction by showing in unreason the alienation of reason, and in this alienation the history of man, that is, his realization.[6] Marx still professes a philosophy of man: ?To be radical is to grasp things by the root; but for man the root is man himself? (1843). But then man is only freedom-reason because he is first of all ?Gemeinwesen?, ?communal being?, a being that is only consummated theoretically (science) and practically (politics) in universal human relations, with men and with his objects (external nature ?humanized? by labour). Here also the essence of man is the basis for history and politics. History is the alienation and production of reason in unreason, of the true man in the alienated man. Without knowing it, man realizes the essence of man in the alienated products of his labour (commodities, State, religion). The loss of man that produces history and man must presuppose a definite pre-existing essence. At the end of history, this man, having become inhuman objectivity, has merely to re-grasp as subject his own essence alienated in property, religion and the State to become total man, true man. This new theory of man is the basis for a new type of political action: the politics of practical reappropriation. The appeal to the simple reason of the State disappears. Politics is no longer simply theoretical criticism, the enlightenment of reason through the free Press, but man?s practical reappropriation of his essence. For the State, like religion, may well be man, but man dispossessed: man is split into citizen (State) and civil man, two abstractions. In the heaven of the State, in ?the citizen?s rights?, man lives in imagination the human community he is deprived of on the earth of the ?rights of man?. So the revolution must no longer be merely political (rational liberal reform of the State), but ?human? (?communist?), if man is to be restored his nature, alienated in the fantastic forms of money, power and gods. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Fri Feb 13 06:10:57 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:10:57 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism and Humanism Message-ID: This is such horseshit. This is a peculiarly French variety of humanism and anti-humanism. It has nothing to do with how the concept is understood in the English-speaking world. Humanism is not metaphysics. The problem with humanism in the USA is different, as its relationship to Marxism. See my blog entry: Socialism & Humanism: Novack & Mattick At 01:39 AM 2/13/2009, Charles Brown wrote: >Louis Althusser 1964 Part Seven. Marxism and Humanism >http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1964/marxism-humanism.htm From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Fri Feb 13 05:59:50 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 07:59:50 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism and Humanism In-Reply-To: <768.5897.qm@web180112.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <768.5897.qm@web180112.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: This is such horseshit. This is a peculiarly French variety of humanism and anti-humanism. It has nothing to do with how the concept is understood in the English-speaking world. Humanism is not metaphysics. The problem with humanism in the USA is different, as its relationship to Marxism. See my blog entry: Socialism & Humanism: Novack & Mattick At 01:39 AM 2/13/2009, Charles Brown wrote: >Louis Althusser 1964 Part Seven. Marxism and >Humanism >http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1964/marxism-humanism.htm >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >???Marxism and Humanism??? first appeared in the >Cahiers de l???I.S.E.A., June 1964. >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >I Today, Socialist ???Humanism??? is on the >agenda. As it enters the period which will lead >it from socialism (to each according to his >labour) to communism (to each according to his >needs), the Soviet Union has proclaimed the >slogan: All for Man, and introduced new themes: >the freedom of the individual, respect for >legality, the dignity of the person. In >workers??? parties, the achievements of >socialist humanism are celebrated and >justification for its theoretical claims is >sought in Capital, and more and more frequently, >in Marx???s Early Works. This is a historical >event. I wonder even whether socialist humanism >is not such a reassuring and attractive theme >that it will allow a dialogue between Communists >and Social-Democrats, or even a wider exchange >with those ???men of good will??? who are >opposed to war and poverty. Today, even the >high-road of Humanism seems to lead to >socialism. In fact, the objective of the >revolutionary struggle has always been the end >of exploitation and hence the liberation of man, >but, as Marx foresaw, in its first historical >phase, this struggle had to take the form of the >struggle between classes. So revolutionary >humanism could only be a ???class humanism???, >???proletarian humanism???. The end of the >exploitation of man meant the end of class >exploitation. The liberation of man meant the >liberation of the working class and above all >liberation by the dictatorship of the >proletariat. For more than forty years, in the >U.S.S.R., amidst gigantic struggles, >???socialist humanism??? was expressed in the >terms of class dictatorship rather than in those >of personal freedom.[1] The end of the >dictatorship of the proletariat in the U.S.S.R. >opens up a second historical phase. The Soviets >say, in our country antagonistic classes have >disappeared, the dictatorship of the proletariat >has fulfilled its function, the State is no >longer a class State but the State of the whole >people (of everyone). In the U.S.S.R. men are >indeed now treated without any class >distinction, that is, as persons. So in ideology >we see the themes of class humanism give way >before the themes of a socialist humanism of the >person. Ten years ago socialist humanism only >existed in one form: that of class humanism. >Today it exists in two forms: class humanism, >where the dictatorship of the proletariat is >still in force (China, etc.), and (socialist) >personal humanism where it has been superseded >(the U.S.S.R.). Two forms corresponding to two >necessary historical phases. In ???personal??? >humanism, ???class??? humanism contemplates its >own future, realized. This transformation in >history casts light on certain transformations >in the mind. The dictatorship of the >proletariat, rejected by Social-Democrats in the >name of (bourgeois) personal ???humanism???, and >which bitterly opposes them to Communists, has >been superseded in the U.S.S.R. Even better, it >is foreseeable that it might take peaceful and >short-lived forms in the West. From here we can >see in outline a sort of meeting between two >personal ???humanisms???, socialist humanism and >Christian or bourgeois liberal humanism. The >???liberalization??? of the U.S.S.R. reassures >the latter. As for socialist humanism, it can >see itself not only as a critique of the >contradictions of bourgeois humanism, but also >and above all as the consummation of its >???noblest??? aspirations. Humanity???s >millenarian dreams, prefigured in the drafts of >past humanisms, Christian and bourgeois, will at >last find realization in it: in man and between >men, the reign of Man will at last begin. Hence >the fulfilment of the prophetic promise Marx >made in the 1844 Manuscripts: Communism ... as >the real appropriation of the human essence >through and for men ... this communism as a >fully developed naturalism ? Humanism????. II To >see beyond this event, to understand it, to know >the meaning of socialist humanism, it is not >enough just to register the event, nor to record >the concepts (humanism, socialism) in which the >event itself thinks itself. The theoretical >claims of the concepts must be tested to ensure >that they really do provide us with a truly >scientific knowledge of the event. But precisely >in the couple ???humanism-socialism??? there is >a striking theoretical unevenness: in the >framework of the Marxist conception, the concept >???socialism??? is indeed a scientific concept, >but the concept ???humanism??? is no more than >an ideological one. Note that my purpose is not >to dispute the reality that the concept of >socialist humanism is supposed to designate, but >to define the theoretical value of the concept. >When I say that the concept of humanism is an >ideological concept (not a scientific one), I >mean that while it really does designate a set >of existing relations, unlike a scientific >concept, it does not provide us with a means of >knowing them. In a particular (ideological) >mode, it designates some existents, but it does >not give us their essences. If we were to >confuse these two orders we should cut ourselves >off from all knowledge, uphold a confusion and >risk falling into error. To show this clearly, I >shall briefly invoke Marx???s own experience, >for he only arrived at a scientific theory of >history at the price of a radical critique of >the philosophy of man that had served as his >theoretical basis during the years of his youth >(1840-45). I use the words ???theoretical >basis??? in their strict sense. For the young >Marx, ???Man??? was not just a cry denouncing >poverty and slavery. It was the theoretical >principle of his world outlook and of his >practical attitude. The ???Essence of Man??? >(whether freedom, reason or community) was the >basis both for a rigorous theory of history and >for a consistent political practice. This can be >seen in the two stages of Marx???s humanist >period. The First Stage was dominated by a >liberal-rationalist humanism closer to Kant and >Fichte than to Hegel. In his conflict with >censorship, Rhenish feudal laws, Prussian >despotism, Marx???s political struggle and the >theory of history sustaining it were based >theoretically on a philosophy of man. Only the >essence of man makes history, and this essence >is freedom and reason. Freedom: it is the >essence of man just as weight is the essence of >bodies. Man is destined to freedom, it is his >very being. Whether he rejects it or negates it, >he remains in it for ever: ???So much is freedom >the essence of Man that even its adversaries are >realizing it when they fight against its >reality... . So freedom has always existed, in >one way or another, sometimes only as a >particular privilege, sometimes as a general >right.???[2] This distinction illuminates the >whole of history: thus, feudalism is freedom, >but in the ???non-rational??? form of privilege; >the modern State is freedom, but in the rational >form of a universal right. Reason: man is only >freedom as reason. Human freedom is neither >caprice, nor the determinism of interest, but, >as Kant and Fichte meant it, autonomy, obedience >to the inner law of reason. This reason, which >has ???always existed though not always in a >rational form???[3] (e.g. feudalism), in modern >times does at least exist in the form of reason >in the State, the State of law and right. >???Philosophy regards the State as the great >organism in which legal, moral and political >freedom should find their realization and in >which the individual citizen, when he obeys the >State???s laws, is only obeying the natural laws >of his own reason, of human reason .???[4] Hence >the task of philosophy: ???Philosophy demands >that the State be the State of human nature???. >[5] This injunction is addressed to the State >itself: if it would recognize its essence it >would become reason, the true freedom of man, >through its own reform of itself. Therefore, >politico-philosophical criticism (which reminds >the State of its duty to itself) sums up the >whole of politics: the free Press, the free >reason of humanity, becomes politics itself. >This political practice ??? summed up in public >theoretical criticism, that is, in public >criticism by way of the Press ? which demandds >as its absolute precondition the freedom of the >Press is the one Marx adopted in the Rheinische >Zeitung. Marx???s development of his theory of >history was the basis and justification for his >own practice: the journalist???s public >criticism that he saw as political action par >excellence. This Enlightenment Philosophy was >completely rigorous. The Second Stage (1842-5) >was dominated by a new form of humanism: >Feuerbach???s ???communalist??? humanism. The >Reason State had remained deaf to reason: there >was no reform of the Prussian State. History >itself delivered this judgment on the illusions >of the humanism of reason: the young German >radicals had been expecting that when he was >King the heir to the throne would keep the >liberal promises he had made before his >coronation. But the throne soon changed the >liberal into a despot ? the State, which should >at last have become reasonn, since it was in >itself reason, gave birth merely to unreason >once again. From this enormous disappointment, >lived by the young radicals as a true historical >and theoretical crisis, Marx drew the >conclusion: ???The political State ... >encapsulates the demands of reason precisely in >its modern forms. But it does not stop there. >Everywhere it presupposes realized reason. But >everywhere it also slides into the contradiction >between its theoretical definition and its real >hypotheses.??? A decisive step had been taken: >the State???s abuses were no longer conceived as >misappropriations of the State vis-? -vis its >essence, but as a real contradiction between its >essence (reason) and its existence (unreason). >Feuerbach???s humanism made it possible to think >just this contradiction by showing in unreason >the alienation of reason, and in this alienation >the history of man, that is, his realization.[6] >Marx still professes a philosophy of man: ???To >be radical is to grasp things by the root; but >for man the root is man himself??? (1843). But >then man is only freedom-reason because he is >first of all ???Gemeinwesen???, ???communal >being???, a being that is only consummated >theoretically (science) and practically >(politics) in universal human relations, with >men and with his objects (external nature >???humanized??? by labour). Here also the >essence of man is the basis for history and >politics. History is the alienation and >production of reason in unreason, of the true >man in the alienated man. Without knowing it, >man realizes the essence of man in the alienated >products of his labour (commodities, State, >religion). The loss of man that produces history >and man must presuppose a definite pre-existing >essence. At the end of history, this man, having >become inhuman objectivity, has merely to >re-grasp as subject his own essence alienated in >property, religion and the State to become total >man, true man. This new theory of man is the >basis for a new type of political action: the >politics of practical reappropriation. The >appeal to the simple reason of the State >disappears. Politics is no longer simply >theoretical criticism, the enlightenment of >reason through the free Press, but man???s >practical reappropriation of his essence. For >the State, like religion, may well be man, but >man dispossessed: man is split into citizen >(State) and civil man, two abstractions. In the >heaven of the State, in ???the citizen???s >rights???, man lives in imagination the human >community he is deprived of on the earth of the >???rights of man???. So the revolution must no >longer be merely political (rational liberal >reform of the State), but ???human??? >(???communist???), if man is to be restored his >nature, alienated in the fantastic forms of >money, power and gods. From this point on, this >practical revolution must be the common work of >philosophy and of the proletariat, for, in >philosophy, man is theoretically affirmed; in >the proletariat he is practically negated. The >penetration of philosophy into the proletariat >will be the conscious revolt of the affirmation >against its own negation, the revolt of man >against his inhuman conditions. Then the >proletariat will negate its own negation and >take possession of itself in communism. The >revolution is the very practice of the logic >immanent in alienation: it is the moment in >which criticism, hitherto unarmed, recognizes >its arms in the proletariat. It gives the >proletariat the theory of what it is; in return, >the proletariat gives it its armed force, a >single unique force in which no one is allied >except to himself. So the revolutionary alliance >of the proletariat and of philosophy is once >again sealed in the essence of man. III In 1845, >Marx broke radically with every theory that >based history and politics on an essence of man. >This unique rupture contained three >indissociable elements. (1) The formation of a >theory of history and politics based on >radically new concepts: the concepts of social >formation, productive forces, relations of >production, superstructure, ideologies, >determination in the last instance by the >economy, specific determination of the other >levels, etc. (2) A radical critique of the >theoretical pretensions of every philosophical >humanism. (3) The definition of humanism as an >ideology. This new conception is completely >rigorous as well, but it is a new rigour: the >essence criticized (2) is defined as an ideology >(3), a category belonging to the new theory of >society and history (1). This rupture with every >philosophical anthropology or humanism is no >secondary detail; it is Marx???s scientific >discovery. It means that Marx rejected the >problematic of the earlier philosophy and >adopted a new problematic in one and the same >act. The earlier idealist (???bourgeois???) >philosophy depended in all its domains and >arguments (its ???theory of knowledge???, its >conception of history, its political economy, >its ethics, its aesthetics, etc.) on a >problematic of human nature (or the essence of >man). For centuries, this problematic had been >transparency itself, and no one had thought of >questioning it even in its internal >modifications. This problematic was neither >vague nor loose; on the contrary, it was >constituted by a coherent system of precise >concepts tightly articulated together. When Marx >confronted it, it implied the two complementary >postulates he defined in the Sixth Thesis on >Feuerbach: (1) that there is a universal essence >of man; (2) that this essence is the attribute >of ???each single individual??? who is its real >subject. These two postulates are complementary >and indissociable. But their existence and their >unity presuppose a whole empiricist-idealist >world outlook. If the essence of man is to be a >universal attribute, it is essential that >concrete subjects exist as absolute givens; this >implies an empiricism of the subject. If these >empirical individuals are to be men, it is >essential that each carries in himself the whole >human essence, if not in fact, at least in >principle; this implies an idealism of the >essence. So empiricism of the subject implies >idealism of the essence and vice versa. This >relation can be inverted into its ???opposite??? >? empiricism of the concept/idealism oof the >subject. But the inversion respects the basic >structure of the problematic, which remains >fixed. In this type-structure it is possible to >recognize not only the principle of theories of >society (from Hobbes to Rousseau), of political >economy (from Petty to Ricardo), of ethics (from >Descartes to Kant), but also the very principle >of the (pre-Marxist) idealist and materialist >???theory of knowledge??? (from Locke to >Feuerbach, via Kant). The content of the human >essence or of the empirical subjects may vary >(as can be seen from Descartes to Feuerbach); >the subject may change from empiricism to >idealism (as can be seen from Locke to Kant): >the terms presented and their relations only >vary within the invariant type-structure which >constitutes this very problematic: an empiricism >of the subject always corresponds to an idealism >of the essence (or an empiricism of the essence >to an idealism of the subject). By rejecting the >essence of man as his theoretical basis, Marx >rejected the whole of this organic system of >postulates. He drove the philosophical >categories of the subject, of empiricism, of the >ideal essence, etc., from all the domains in >which they had been supreme. Not only from >political economy (rejection of the myth of homo >economicus, that is, of the individual with >definite faculties and needs as the subject of >the classical economy); not just from history >(rejection of social atomism and >ethico-political idealism); not just from ethics >(rejection of the Kantian ethical idea); but >also from philosophy itself: for Marx???s >materialism excludes the empiricism of the >subject (and its inverse: the transcendental >subject) and the idealism of the concept (and >its inverse: the empiricism of the concept). >This total theoretical revolution was only >empowered to reject the old concepts because it >replaced them by new concepts. In fact Marx >established a new problematic, a new systematic >way of asking questions of the world, new >principles and a new method. This discovery is >immediately contained in the theory of >historical materialism, in which Marx did not >only propose a new theory of the history of >societies, but at the same time implicitly, but >necessarily, a new ???philosophy???, infinite in >its implications. Thus, when Marx replaced the >old couple individuals/human essence in the >theory of history by new concepts (forces of >production, relations of production, etc.), he >was, in fact, simultaneously proposing a new >conception of ???philosophy???. He replaced the >old postulates (empiricism/idealism of the >subject, empiricism/idealism of the essence) >which were the basis not only for idealism but >also for pre-Marxist materialism, by a >historico-dialectical materialism of praxis: >that is, by a theory of the different specific >levels of human practice (economic practice, >political practice, ideological practice, >scientific practice) in their characteristic >articulations, based on the specific >articulations of the unity of human society. In >a word, Marx substituted for the >???ideological??? and universal concept of >Feuerbachian ???practice??? a concrete >conception of the specific differences that >enables us to situate each particular practice >in the specific differences of the social >structure. So, to understand what was radically >new in Marx???s contribution, we must become >aware not only of the novelty of the concepts of >historical materialism, but also of the depth of >the theoretical revolution they imply and >inaugurate. On this condition it is possible to >define humanism???s status, and reject its >theoretical pretensions while recognizing its >practical function as an ideology. Strictly in >respect to theory, therefore, one can and must >speak openly of Marx???s theoretical >anti-humanism, and see in this theoretical >anti-humanism the absolute (negative) >precondition of the (positive) knowledge of the >human world itself, and of its practical >transformation. It is impossible to know >anything about men except on the absolute >precondition that the philosophical >(theoretical) myth of man is reduced to ashes. >So any thought that appeals to Marx for any kind >of restoration of a theoretical anthropology or >humanism is no more than ashes, theoretically. >But in practice it could pile up a monument of >pre-Marxist ideology that would weigh down on >real history and threaten to lead it into blind >alleys. For the corollary of theoretical Marxist >anti-humanism is the recognition and knowledge >of humanism itself: as an ideology. Marx never >fell into the idealist illusion of believing >that the knowledge of an object might ultimately >replace the object or dissipate its existence. >Cartesians, knowing that the sun was two >thousand leagues away, were astonished that this >distance only looked like two hundred paces: >they could not even find enough of God to fill >in this gap. Marx never believed that a >knowledge of the nature of money (a social >relation) could destroy its appearance, its form >of existence ? a thing, for this appearance was >its veery being, as necessary as the existing >mode of production.[7] Marx never believed that >an ideology might be dissipated by a knowledge >of it: for the knowledge of this ideology, as >the knowledge of its conditions of possibility, >of its structure, of its specific logic and of >its practical role, within a given society, is >simultaneously knowledge of the conditions of >its necessity. So Marx???s theoretical >anti-humanism does not suppress anything in the >historical existence of humanism. In the real >world philosophies of man are found after Marx >as often as before, and today even some Marxists >are tempted to develop the themes of a new >theoretical humanism. Furthermore, Marx???s >theoretical anti-humanism, by relating it to its >conditions of existence, recognizes a necessity >for humanism as an ideology, a conditional >necessity. The recognition of this necessity is >not purely speculative. On it alone can Marxism >base a policy in relation to the existing >ideological forms, of every kind: religion, >ethics, art, philosophy, law ? and in the very >fronnt rank, humanism. When (eventually) a >Marxist policy of humanist ideology, that is, a >political attitude to humanism, is achieved ? a >policy which may be either a rejjection or a >critique, or a use, or a support, or a >development, or a humanist renewal of >contemporary forms of ideology in the >ethico-political domain ? this policy wwill only >have been possible on the absolute condition >that it is based on Marxist philosophy, and a >precondition for this is theoretical >anti-humanism. IV So everything depends on the >knowledge of the nature of humanism as an >ideology. There can be no question of attempting >a profound definition of ideology here. It will >suffice to know very schematically that an >ideology is a system (with its own logic and >rigour) of representations (images, myths, ideas >or concepts, depending on the case) endowed with >a historical existence and role within a given >society. Without embarking on the problem of the >relations between a science and its >(ideological) past, we can say that ideology, as >a system of representations, is distinguished >from science in that in it the practico-social >function is more important than the theoretical >function (function as knowledge). What is the >nature of this social function? To understand it >we must refer to the Marxist theory of history. >The ???subjects??? of history are given human >societies. They present themselves as totalities >whose unity is constituted by a certain specific >type of complexity, which introduces instances, >that, following Engels, we can, very >schematically, reduce to three: the economy, >politics and ideology. So in every society we >can posit, in forms which are sometimes very >paradoxical, the existence of an economic >activity as the base, a political organization >and ???ideological??? forms religion, ethics, >philosophy, etc.). So ideology is as such an >organic part of every social totality. It is as >if human societies could not survive without >these specific formations, these systems of >representations (at various levels), their >ideologies. Human societies secrete ideology as >the very element and atmosphere indispensable to >their historical respiration and life. Only an >ideological world outlook could have imagined >societies without ideology and accepted the >utopian idea of a world in which ideology (not >just one of its historical forms) would >disappear without trace, to be replaced by >science. For example, this utopia is the >principle behind the idea that ethics, which is >in its essence ideology, could be replaced by >science or become scientific through and >through; or that religion could be destroyed by >science which would in some way take its place; >that art could merge with knowledge or become >???everyday life???, etc. And I am not going to >steer clear of the crucial question: historical >materialism cannot conceive that even a >communist society could ever do without >ideology, be it ethics, art or ???world >outlook???. Obviously it is possible to foresee >important modifications in its ideological forms >and their relations and even the disappearance >of certain existing forms or a shift of their >functions to neighbouring forms; it is also >possible (on the premise of already acquired >experience) to foresee the development of new >ideological forms (e.g. the ideologies of ???the >scientific world outlook??? and ???communist >humanism???) but in the present state of Marxist >theory strictly conceived, it is not conceivable >that communism, a new mode of production >implying determinate forces of production and >relations of production, could do without a >social organization of production, and >corresponding ideological forms. So ideology is >not an aberration or a contingent excrescence of >History: it is a structure essential to the >historical life of societies. Further, only the >existence and the recognition of its necessity >enable us to act on ideology and transform >ideology into an instrument of deliberate action >on history. It is customary to suggest that >ideology belongs to the region of >???consciousness???. We must not be misled by >this appellation which is still contaminated by >the idealist problematic that preceded Marx. In >truth, ideology has very little to do with >???consciousness???, even supposing this term to >have an unambiguous meaning. It is profoundly >unconscious, even when it presents itself in a >reflected form (as in pre-Marxist >???philosophy???). Ideology is indeed a system >of representations, but in the majority of cases >these representations have nothing to do with >???consciousness???: they are usually images and >occasionally concepts, but it is above all as >structures that they impose on the vast majority >of men, not via their ???consciousness???. They >are perceived-accepted-suffered cultural objects >and they act functionally on men via a process >that escapes them. Men ???live??? their >ideologies as the Cartesian ???saw??? or did not >see ? if he was not looking at it ? the moon two >wo hundred paces away: not at all as a form of >consciousness, but as an object of their >???world??? ? as their ????world??? itself. But >what do we mean, then, when we say that ideology >is a matter of men???s ???consciousness???? >First, that ideology is distinct from other >social instances, but also that men live their >actions, usually referred to freedom and >???consciousness??? by the classical tradition, >in ideology, by and through ideology; in short, >that the ???lived??? relation between men and >the world, including History (in political >action or inaction), passes through ideology, or >better, is ideology itself. This is the sense in >which Marx said that it is in ideology (as the >locus of political struggle) that men become >conscious of their place in the world and in >history, it is within this ideological >unconsciousness that men succeed in altering the >???lived??? relation between them and the world >and acquiring that new form of specific >unconsciousness called ???consciousness???. So >ideology is a matter of the lived relation >between men and their world. This relation, that >only appears as ???conscious??? on condition >that it is unconscious, in the same way only >seems to be simple on condition that it is >complex, that it is not a simple relation but a >relation between relations, a second degree >relation. In ideology men do indeed express, not >the relation between them their conditions of >existence, but the way they live the relation >between them and their conditions of existence: >this presupposes both a real relation and an >???imaginary???, ???lived??? relation. Ideology, >then, is the expression of the relation between >men and their ???world???, that is, the >(overdetermined) unity of the real relation and >the imaginary relation between them and their >real conditions of existence. In ideology the >real relation is inevitably invested in the >imaginary relation, a relation that expresses a >will (conservative, conformist, reformist or >revolutionary), a hope or a nostalgia, rather >than describing a reality. It is in this >overdetermination of the real by the imaginary >and of the imaginary by the real that ideology >is active in principle, that it reinforces or >modifies the relation between men and their >conditions of existence, in the imaginary >relation itself. It follows that this action can >never be purely instrumental; the men who would >use an ideology purely as a means of action, as >a tool, find that they have been caught by it, >implicated by it, just when they are using it >and believe themselves to be absolute masters of >it. This is perfectly clear in the case of a >class society. The ruling ideology is then the >ideology of the ruling class. But the ruling >class does not maintain with the ruling >ideology, which is its own ideology, an external >and lucid relation of pure utility and cunning. >When, during the eighteenth century, the >???rising class???, the bourgeoisie, developed a >humanist ideology of equality, freedom and >reason, it gave its own demands the form of >universality, since it hoped thereby to enroll >at its side, by their education to this end, the >very men it would liberate only for their >exploitation. This is the Rousseauan myth of the >origins of inequality: the rich holding forth to >the poor in ???the most deliberate discourse??? >ever conceived, so as to persuade them to live >their slavery as their freedom. In reality, the >bourgeoisie has to believe in its own myth >before it can convince others, and not only so >as to convince others, since what it lives in >its ideology is the very relation between it and >its real conditions of existence which allows it >simultaneously to act on itself (provide itself >with a legal and ethical consciousness, and the >legal and ethical conditions of economic >liberalism) and on others (those it exploits and >is going to exploit in the future: the ???free >labourers???) so as to take up, occupy and >maintain its historical role as a ruling class. >Thus, in a very exact sense, the bourgeoisie >lives in the ideology of freedom the relation >between it and its conditions of existence: that >is, its real relation (the law of a liberal >capitalist economy) but invested in an imaginary >relation (all men are free, including the free >labourers). Its ideology consists of this play >on the word freedom, which betrays the bourgeois >wish to mystify those (???free men???!) it >exploits, blackmailing them with freedom so as >to keep them in harness, as much as the >bourgeoisie???s need to live its own class rule >as the freedom of those it is exploiting. Just >as a people that exploits another cannot be >free, so a class that uses an ideology is its >captive too. So when we speak of the class >function of an ideology it must be understood >that the ruling ideology is indeed the ideology >of the ruling class and that the former serves >the latter not only in its rule over the >exploited class, but in its own constitution of >itself as the ruling class, by making it accept >the lived relation between itself and the world >as real and justified. But, we must go further >and ask what becomes of ideology in a society in >which classes have disappeared. What we have >just said allows us to answer this question. If >the whole social function of ideology could be >summed up cynically as a myth (such as Plato???s >???beautiful lies??? or the techniques of modern >advertising) fabricated and manipulated from the >outside by the ruling class to fool those it is >exploiting, then ideology would disappear with >classes. But as we have seen that even in the >case of a class society ideology is active on >the ruling class itself and contributes to its >moulding, to the modification of its attitudes >to adapt it to its real conditions of existence >(for example, legal freedom) ? it is clear that >ideology (as aa system of mass representations) >is indispensable in any society if men are to be >formed, transformed and equipped to respond to >the demands of their conditions of existence. >If, as Marx said, history is a perpetual >transformation of men???s conditions of >existence, and if this is equally true of a >socialist society, then men must be ceaselessly >transformed so as to adapt them to these >conditions; if this ???adaptation??? cannot be >left to spontaneity but must be constantly >assumed, dominated and controlled, it is in >ideology that this demand is expressed, that >this distance is measured, that this >contradiction is lived and that its resolution >is ???activated???. It is in ideology that the >classless society lives the inadequacy/adequacy >of the relation between it and the world, it is >in it and by it that it transforms men???s >???consciousness???, that is, their attitudes >and behaviour so as to raise them to the level >of their tasks and the conditions of their >existence. In a class society ideology is the >relay whereby, and the element in which, the >relation between men and their conditions of >existence is settled to the profit of the ruling >class. In a classless society ideology is the >relay whereby, and the element in which, the >relation between men and their conditions of >existence is lived to the profit of all men. V >We are now in a position to return to the theme >of socialist humanism and to account for the >theoretical disparity we observed between a >scientific term (socialism) and an ideological >one (humanism). In its relations with the >existing forms of bourgeois or Christian >personal humanism, socialist personal humanism >presents itself as an ideology precisely in the >play on words that authorizes this meeting. I am >far from thinking that this might be the meeting >of a cynicism and a na??v??t??. In the case in >point, the play on words is still the index of a >historical reality, and simultaneously of lived >ambiguity, and an expression of the desire to >overcome it. When, in the relations between >Marxists and everyone else, the former lay >stress on a socialist personal humanism, they >are simply demonstrating their will to bridge >the gap that separates them from possible >allies, and they are simply anticipating the >movement, trusting to future history the task of >providing the old words with a new content. It >is this content that matters. For, once again, >the themes of Marxist humanism are not, first of >all, themes for the use of others. The Marxists >who develop them necessarily do so for >themselves before doing so for others. Now we >know what these developments are based on: on >the new conditions existing in the Soviet Union, >on the end of the dictatorship of the >proletariat and on the transition to communism. >And this is where everything is at stake. This >is how I should pose the question. To what in >the Soviet Union does the manifest development >of the themes of (socialist) personal humanism >correspond? Speaking of the idea of man and of >humanism in The German Ideology, Marx commented >that the idea of human nature, or of the essence >of man, concealed a coupled value judgment, to >be precise, the couple human/inhuman; and he >wrote: ???the ???inhuman??? as much as the >???human??? is a product of present conditions; >it is their negative side???. The couple >human/inhuman is the hidden principle of all >humanism which is, then, no more than a way of >living-sustaining-resolving this contradiction. >Bourgeois humanism made man the principle of all >theory. This luminous essence of man was the >visible counterpart to a shadowy inhumanity. By >this part of shade, the content of the human >essence, that apparently absolute essence, >announced its rebellious birth. The man of >freedom-reason denounced the egoistic and >divided man of capitalist society. In the two >forms of this couple inhuman/human, the >bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century lived in >???rational-liberal??? form, the German left >radical intellectuals in ???communalist??? or >???communist??? form, the relations between them >and their conditions of existence, as a >rejection, a demand and a programme. What about >contemporary socialist humanism? It is also a >rejection and a denunciation: a rejection of all >human discrimination, be it racial, political, >religious or whatever. It is a rejection of all >economic exploitation or political slavery. It >is a rejection of war. This rejection is not >just a proud proclamation of victory, an >exhortation and example addressed to outsiders, >to all men oppressed by Imperialism, by its >exploitation, its poverty, its slavery, its >discriminations and its wars: it is also and >primarily turned inwards: to the Soviet Union >itself. In personal socialist humanism, the >Soviet Union accepts on its own account the >supersession of the period of the dictatorship >of the proletariat, but it also rejects and >condemns the ???abuses??? of the latter, the >aberrant and ???criminal??? forms it took during >the period of the ???cult of personality???. >Socialist humanism, in its internal use, deals >with the historical reality of the supersession >of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of >the ???abusive??? forms it took in the U.S.S.R. >It deals with a ???dual??? reality: not only a >reality superseded by the rational necessity of >the development of the forces of production of >socialist relations of production (the >dictatorship of the proletariat) ? but also a >reality which ought not to have hadd to be >superseded, that new form of ???non-rational >existence of reason???, that part of historical >???unreason??? and of the ???inhuman??? that the >past of the U.S.S.R. bears within it: terror, >repression and dogmatism ? preccisely what has >not yet been completely superseded, in its >effects or its misdeeds. But with this wish we >move from the shade to the light, from the >inhuman to the human. The communism to which the >Soviet Union is committed is a world without >economic exploitation, without violence, without >discrimination ? a world opening up before >the Soviets the infinite vistas of progress, of >science, of culture, of bread and freedom, of >free development ? a wworld that can do without >shadows or tragedies. Why then all this stress >so deliberately laid on man? What need do the >Soviets have for an idea of man, that is, an >idea of themselves, to help them live their >history? It is difficult here to avoid relating >together the necessity to prepare and realize an >important historical mutation (the transition to >communism, the end of the dictatorship of the >proletariat, the withering-away of the State >apparatus, presupposing the creation of new >forms of political, economic and cultural >organization, corresponding to this transition) >on the one hand ? and, on the other, the >histoorical conditions in which this transition >must be put into effect. Now it is obvious that >these conditions too, bear the characteristic >mark of the U.S.S.R.???s past and of its >difficulties ? not only the mark of the >difficultties due to the period of the ???cult >of personality???, but also the mark of the more >distant difficulties characteristic of the >???construction of socialism in one country???, >and in addition in a country economically and >culturally ???backward??? to start with. Among >these ???conditions???, first place must be >given to the ???theoretical??? conditions >inherited from the past. The present >disproportion of the historical tasks to their >conditions explains the recourse to this >ideology. In fact, the themes of socialist >humanism designate the existence of real >problems: new historical, economic, political >and ideological problems that the Stalinist >period kept in the shade, but still produced >while producing socialism ? problems of the >forms of economic, political and cultural >organization that correspond to the level of >development attained by socialism???s productive >forces; problems of the new form of individual >development for a new period of history in which >the State will no longer take charge, >coercively, of the leadership or control of the >destiny of each individual, in which from now on >each man will objectively have the choice, that >is, the difficult task of becoming by himself >what he is. The themes of socialist humanism >(free development of the individual, respect for >socialist legality, dignity of the person, etc.) >are the way the Soviets and other socialists are >living the relation between themselves and these >problems, that is, the conditions in which they >are posed. It is striking to observe that, in >conformity with the necessity of their >development, in the majority of socialist >democracies as in the Soviet Union, problems of >politics and ethics have come to the fore and >that for their part, Western parties, too, are >obsessed with these problems. Now, it is not >less striking to see that these problems are >occasionally, if not frequently, dealt with >theoretically by recourse to concepts derived >from Marx???s early period, from his philosophy >of man: the concepts of alienation, fission, >fetishism, the total man, etc. However, >considered in themselves, these problems are >basically problems that, far from calling for a >???philosophy of man???, involve the preparation >of new forms of organization for economic, >political and ideological life (including new >forms of individual development) in the >socialist countries during the phase of the >withering-away or supersession of the >dictatorship of the proletariat. Why is it that >these problems are posed by certain ideologues >as a function of the concepts of a philosophy of >man ? instead of being openly, fully and >rrigorously posed in the economic, political and >ideological terms of Marxist theory? Why do so >many Marxist philosophers seem to feel the need >to appeal to the pre-Marxist ideological concept >of alienation in order supposedly to think and >???resolve??? these concrete historical >problems? We would not observe the temptation of >this ideological recourse if it were not in its >own way the index of a necessity which cannot >nevertheless take shelter in the protection of >other, better established, forms of necessity. >There can be no doubt that Communists are >correct in opposing the economic, social, >political and cultural reality of socialism to >the ???inhumanity??? of Imperialism in general; >that this contrast is a part of the >confrontation and struggle between socialism and >imperialism. But it might be equally dangerous >to use an ideological concept like humanism, >with neither discrimination nor reserve, as if >it were a theoretical concept, when it is >inevitably charged with associations from the >ideological unconsciousness and only too easily >blends into themes of petty-bourgeois >inspiration (we know that the petty bourgeoisie >and its ideology, for which Lenin predicted a >fine future, have not yet been buried by >History). Here we are touching on a deeper >reason, and one doubtless difficult to express. >Within certain limits this recourse to ideology >might indeed be envisaged as the substitute for >a recourse to theory. Here again we would find >the theoretical conditions currently inherited >by Marxist theory from its past ? not just the >dogmatism of the Stalinist period, but also, >from further back, the heritage of the >disastrously opportunist interpretations of the >Second International which Lenin fought against >throughout his life, but which have neither as >yet been buried by History. These conditions >have hindered the development which was >indispensable if Marxist theory was to acquire >precisely those concepts demanded by the new >problems: concepts that would have allowed it to >pose these problems today in scientific, not >ideological terms; that would have allowed it to >call things by their names, that is, by the >appropriate Marxist concepts, rather than, as >only too often happens, by ideological concepts >(alienation) or by concepts without any definite >status. For example, it is regrettable to >observe that the concept by which Communists >designate an important historical phenomenon in >the history of the U.S.S.R. and of the >workers??? movement: the concept of the ???cult >of personality??? would be an ???absent???, >unclassifiable concept in Marxist theory if it >were taken as a theoretical concept; it may well >describe and condemn a mode of behaviour, and on >these grounds, possess a doubly practical value, >but, to my knowledge, Marx never regarded a mode >of political behaviour as directly assimilable >to a historical category, that is, to a concept >from the theory of historical materialism: for >if it does designate a reality, it is not its >concept. However, everything that has been said >of the ???cult of personality??? refers exactly >to the domain of the superstructure and >therefore of State organization and ideologies; >further it refers largely to this domain alone, >which we know from Marxist theory possesses a >???relative autonomy??? (which explains very >simply, in theory, how the socialist >infrastructure has been able to develop without >essential damage during this period of errors >affecting the superstructure). Why are existing, >known and recognized Marxist concepts not >invoked to think and situate this phenomenon, >which is in fact described as a mode of >behaviour and related to one man???s >???psychology???, that is, merely described but >not thought? If one man???s ???psychology??? >could take on this historical role, why not pose >in Marxist terms the question of the historical >conditions of the possibility of this apparent >promotion of ???psychology??? to the dignity and >dimensions of a historical fact? Marxism >contains in its principles the wherewithal to >pose this problem in terms of theory, and hence >the wherewithal to clarify it and help to >resolve it. It is no accident that the two >examples I have invoked are the concept of >alienation and the concept of the ???cult of >personality???. For the concepts of socialist >humanism, too (in particular the problems of law >and the person), have as their object problems >arising in the domain of the superstructure: >State organization, political life, ethics, >ideologies, etc. And it is impossible to hold >back the thought that the recourse to ideology >is a short cut there too, a substitute for an >insufficient theory. Insufficient, but latent >and potential. Such is the role of this >temptation of the recourse to ideology; to fill >in this absence, this delay, this gap, without >recognizing it openly, by making one???s need >and impatience a theoretical argument, as Engels >put it, and by taking the need for a theory for >the theory itself. The philosophical humanism >which might easily become a threat to us and >which shelters behind the unprecedented >achievements of socialism itself, is this >complement which, in default of theory, is >destined to give certain Marxist ideologue the >feeling of the theory that they lack; a feeling >that cannot lay claim to that most precious of >all the things Marx gave us ? the possibiliity >of scientific knowledge. That is why, if today >socialist humanism is on the agenda, the good >reasons for this ideology can in no case serve >as a caution against the bad ones, without >dragging us into a confusion of ideology and >scientific theory. Marx???s philosophical >anti-humanism does provide an understanding of >the necessity of existing ideologies, including >humanism. But at the same time, because it is a >critical and revolutionary theory, it also >provides an understanding of the tactics to be >adopted towards them; whether they should be >supported, transformed or combated. And Marxists >know that there can be no tactics that do not >depend on a strategy ? and no sttrategy that >does not depend on theory. October, 1963 >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >1. Here I am using ???class humanism??? in the >sense of Lenin???s statement that the October >socialist revolution had given power to the >working classes, the workers and the poor >peasants, and that, on their behalf, it had >secured conditions of life, action and >development that they had never known before: >democracy for the working classes, dictatorship >over the oppressors. I am not using ???class >humanism??? in the sense adopted in Marx???s >early works, where the proletariat in its >???alienation??? represents the human essence >itself, whose ???realization??? is to be assured >by the revolution; this ???religious??? >conception of the proletariat (the ???universal >class???, since it is the ???loss of man??? in >???revolt against its own loss???) was >re-adopted by the young Luk??cs in his >Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. 2. Die >Rheinische Zeitung, ???The Freedom of the >Press???, 12 May 1842. 3. Letter to Ruge, >September 1843 ?? an admirable formulation, the >key to Marx???s early philosophy. 4. Die >Rheinische Zeitung, ???On the leading article in >no. 179 of the K??lnische Zeitung???, 14 July >1842. 5. Ibid. 6. This confluence of Feuerbach >and the theoretical crisis in which history had >thrown the young German radicals explains their >enthusiasm for the author of the Provisional >Theses, of the Essence of Christianity and of >the Principles of the Philosophy of the Future. >Indeed, Feuerbach represented the theoretical >solution to the young intellectuals??? >theoretical crisis. In his humanism of >alienation, he gave them the theoretical >concepts that enabled them to think the >alienation of the human essence as an >indispensable moment in the realization of the >human essence, unreason (the irrational reality >of the State) as a necessary moment in the >realization of reason (the idea of the State). >It thus enabled them to think what they would >otherwise have suffered as irrationality itself: >the necessary connexion between reason and >unreason. Of course, this relation remained >trapped in a philosophical anthropology, its >basis, with this theoretical proviso: the >remanipulation of the concept of man, >indispensable to think the historical relation >between historical reason and unreason. Man >ceases to be defined by reason and freedom: he >becomes, in his very principle, >???communalist???, concrete intersubjectivity, >love, fraternity, ???species being???. 7. The >whole, fashionable, theory of ???reification??? >depends on a projection of the theory of >alienation found in the early texts, >particularly the 1844 Manuscripts, on to the >theory of ???fetishism??? in Capital. In the >1844 Manuscripts, the objectification of the >human essence is claimed as the indispensable >preliminary to the reappropriation of the human >essence by man. Throughout the process of >objectification, man only exists in the form of >an objectivity in which he meets his own essence >in the appearance of a foreign, non-human, >essence. This ???objectification??? is not >called ???reification??? even though it is >called inhuman. Inhumanity is not represented >par excellence by the model of a ???thing???: >but sometimes by the model of animality (or even >of pre-animality ? the man who no longer even >has simple aniimal relations with nature), >sometimes by the model of the omnipotence and >fascination of transcendence (God, the State) >and of money, which is, of course, a >???thing???. In Capital the only social relation >that is presented in the form of a thing (this >piece of metal) is money. But the conception of >money as a thing (that is, the confusion of >value with use-value in money) does not >correspond to the reality of this ???thing???: >it is not the brutality of a simple ???thing??? >that man is faced with when he is in direct >relation with money; it is a power (or a lack of >it) over things and men. An ideology of >reification that sees ???things??? everywhere in >human relations confuses in this category >???thing??? (a category more foreign to Marx >cannot be imagined) every social relation, >conceived according to the model of a >money-thing ideology. >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >A Complementary Note on ???Real Humanism??? ???A >Complementary Note on ???Real Humanism"??? first >appeared in La Nouvelle Critique, March 1965. >The concept of ???real-humanism??? sustains the >argument of an article by Jorge Semprun >published in Clart??, no. 58 (see Nouvelle >Critique, no. 164, March 1965). It is a concept >borrowed from Marx???s Early Works. >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Just a word or two on the phrase ???real >humanism???. The specific difference lies in the >adjective: real. Real-humanism is scientifically >defined by its opposition to unreal humanism, >ideal(ist), abstract, speculative humanism and >so on. This reference humanism is simultaneously >invoked as a reference and rejected for its >abstraction, unreality, etc., by the new >real-humanism. So the old humanism is judged by >the new as an abstract and illusory humanism. >Its illusion is to aim at an unreal object, to >have as its content an object which is not the >real object. Real humanism presents itself as >the humanism that has as its content not an >abstract speculative object, but a real object. >But this definition remains a negative one: it >is sufficient to express the rejection of a >certain content, but it does not provide the new >content as such. The content aimed at by >real-humanism is not in the concepts of humanism >or ???real??? as such, but outside these >concepts. The adjective real is gestural; it >points out that to find the content of this new >humanism you must look in reality ? in society, >the State, etc. So the concept of real-humanism >is linked to the concept of humanism as its >theoretical reference, but it is opposed to it >through its rejection of the latter???s abstract >object ? and by providing a concrete, real, >objecct. The word real plays a dual role. It >shows up the idealism and abstraction in the old >humanism (negative function of the concept of >reality); and at the same time it designates the >external reality (external to the old humanism) >in which the new humanism will find its content >(positive function of the concept of reality). >However, this positive function of the word >???real??? is not a positive function of >knowledge, it is a positive function of >practical gesture. What, indeed, is this >???reality??? which is to transform the old >humanism into real-humanism? It is society. The >Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach goes so far as to say >that the non-abstract ???man??? is ???the >ensemble of the social relations???. Now if we >take this phrase literally as an adequate >definition it means nothing at all. Try and give >it a literal explication and you will see that >there is no way out without recourse to a >periphrasis of the following kind: ???If anyone >wants to know what reality is, not the reality >corresponding adequately to the concept of man, >or of humanism, but the reality which is >directly at issue in these concepts, it is not >an abstract essence but the ensemble of the >social relations.??? This periphrasis >immediately highlights the inadequacy of the >concept of man to its definition: the ensemble >of the social relations. Between these two terms >(man/ensemble of the social relations) there is, >doubtless, some relation, but it is not legible >in the definition, it is not a relation of >definition, not a relation of knowledge. But >this inadequacy has a meaning, this relation has >a meaning: a practical meaning. This inadequacy >manifestly designates an action to be achieved, >a displacement to be put into effect. It means >that to find the reality alluded to by seeking >abstract man no longer but real man instead, it >is necessary to turn to society, and to >undertake an analysis of the ensemble of the >social relations. In the phrase real-humanism, >in my opinion, the concept ???real??? is a >practical concept, the equivalent of a signal, >of a notice-board that ???points out??? what >movement is to be put into effect and in what >direction, to what place, must there be >displacement to reach the real earth rather than >the heaven of abstraction. ???The real this >way!??? We follow this guide and we come out >into society, the social relations, and the >conditions of their real possibility. But it is >then that the shocking paradox appears: once >this displacement has really been put into >effect, once the scientific analysis of this >real object has been undertaken, we discover >that a knowledge of concrete (real) men, that >is, a knowledge of the ensemble of the social >relations is only possible on condition that we >do completely without the theoretical services >of the concept of man (in the sense in which it >existed in its theoretical claims even before >the displacement). In fact, this concept seems >to me to be useless from a scientific viewpoint, >not because it is abstract! ? but because it iis >not scientific. To think the reality of society, >of the ensemble of social relations, we must put >into effect a radical displacement, not only a >spatial displacement (from the abstract to the >concrete) but also a conceptual displacement (we >change our basic concepts!). The concepts >whereby Marx thought reality, which >real-humanism pointed out, never ever again >introduce as theoretical concepts the concepts >of man or humanism; but other, quite new >concepts, the concepts of mode of production, >forces of production, relations of production, >superstructure, ideology, etc. This is the >paradox: the practical concept that pointed out >for us the destination of the displacement has >been consumed in the displacement itself, the >concept that pointed out for us the site for >investigation is from now on absent from the >investigation itself. This is a characteristic >phenomenon of the transitions ? breaks tthat >constitute the advent of a new problematic. At >certain moments in the history of ideas we see >these practical concepts emerge, and typically >they are internally unbalanced concepts. In one >aspect they belong to the old ideological >universe which serves as their ???theoretical??? >reference (humanism); but in the other they >concern a new domain, pointing out the >displacement to be put into effect to get to it. >In the first aspect they retain a >???theoretical??? meaning (the meaning in their >universe of reference); in the second their only >meaning is as a practical signal, pointing out a >direction and a destination, but without giving >an adequate concept of it. We still remain in >the domain of the earlier ideology; we are >approaching its frontier and a signpost points >out to us a beyond, a direction and a >destination.??? Cross the frontier and go on in >the direction of society and you will find the >real.??? The signpost is still standing in the >ideological domain, the message is written in >its language, even if it does use ???new??? >words, even the rejection of ideology is written >in ideological language, as we see so strikingly >in Feuerbach; the ???concrete???, the >???real???, these are the names that the >opposition to ideology bears in ideology. You >can stay indefinitely at the frontier line, >ceaselessly repeating concrete! concrete! real! >real! This is what Feuerbach did, and Feuerbach, >too, spoke of society and State, and never >stopped talking about real man, man with needs, >concrete man, who is merely the ensemble of his >developed human needs, of politics and industry. >He stayed with the words which in their >concreteness itself referred him to the image of >man whose realization he called for (Feuerbach, >too, said that real man is society, in a >definition then adequate to its concept, since >society was for him in each of its historical >moments never more than the progressive >manifestation of the human essence). Or, on the >contrary, you can cross the frontier for good >and penetrate into the domain of reality and >embark ???seriously on its study???, as Marx >puts it in The German Ideology. Then the signal >will have played its practical part. It remains >in the old domain, in the domain abandoned by >the very fact of displacement. There you are >face to face with your real object, obliged to >forge the requisite and adequate concepts, to >think it, obliged to accept the fact that the >old concepts and in particular the concept of >real-man or real humanism will not allow you to >think the reality of man, that to reach this >immediacy, which is precisely not an immediacy, >it is necessary, as always where knowledge is >concerned, to make a long detour. You have >abandoned the old domain, the old concepts. Here >you are in a new domain, for which new concepts >will give you the knowledge. The sign that a >real change in locus and problematic has >occurred, and that a new adventure is beginning, >the adventure of science in development. So are >we condemned to repeat the same experience? Real >humanism may today be the slogan of a rejection >and a programme and thus in the best of cases a >practical signal, the rejection of an abstract >???humanism??? which only existed in the >discourse and not in the reality of institutions >? and the gesture towards a beyond,, a reality >which is still beyond, which is not yet truly >realized, but only hoped for, the programme of >an aspiration to be brought to life. It is only >too clear that profound rejections and authentic >wishes, as well as an impatient desire to >overcome still unconquered obstacles, are, in >their own way, translated in this concept of >real humanism. It is also certain that in every >epoch of history men must make their own >experiments on their own account, and it is no >accident that some of them retrace the >???paths??? taken by their elders and ancestors. >It is certainly indispensable that Communists >should take seriously the real meaning concealed >in this wish, the realities for which this >practical concept is an index. It is certainly >indispensable that Communists should pass to and >fro between the still uncertain, confused and >ideological forms in which this wish or some new >experiment are expressed ? and their own >theoretical concepts; that they shouldd, when >the need has been absolutely proved, forge new >theoretical concepts adequate to the upheavals >of practice in our own time. But we should not >forget that the frontier separating ideology >from scientific theory was crossed about one >hundred and twenty years ago by Marx; that this >great undertaking and this great discovery have >been recorded in the works and inscribed in the >conceptual system of a knowledge whose effects >have little by little transformed the face of >the earth and its history. We cannot and must >not for one instant renounce the benefits of >this irreplaceable gain, the benefits of these >theoretical resources which far transcend in >wealth and potential the use that has so far >been made of them. We must not forget that an >understanding of what is going on in the world >today and the political and ideological >interchange indispensable to the broadening and >reinforcement of the base of socialism are only >possible if, for our part, we do not fall behind >what Marx gained for us, as far behind as that >still uncertain frontier between ideology and >science. We can give help to all those who are >near to crossing that frontier, but only on >condition that we have crossed it ourselves, and >have inscribed in our concepts the irreversible >result of this change of scene. For us, the >???real??? is not a theoretical slogan; the real >is the real object that exists independently of >its knowledge ?? but which can only be defined >by its knowledge. In this second, theoretical, >relation, the real is identical to the means of >knowing it, the real is its known or to-be-known >structure, it is the very object of Marxist >theory, the object marked out by the great >theoretical discoveries of Marx and Lenin, the >immense, living, constantly developing field, in >which the events of human history can from now >on be mastered by men???s practice, because they >will be within their conceptual grasp, their >knowledge. This is what I meant when I >demonstrated that real-humanism or socialist >humanism may be the object of a recognition or >of a misunderstanding, according to the status >assigned it in respect to theory; that it can >serve as a practical, ideological slogan in so >far as it is exactly adequate to its function >and not confused with a quite different >function; that there is no way in which it can >abrogate the attributes of a theoretical >concept. I also meant that this slogan is not >itself its own light, but can at most point out >the place, beyond it, where light reigns. I >meant that a certain inflation of this >practical, ideological concept might induce >Marxist theory to fall behind its own frontiers; >and what is more, might even hinder, if not bar, >the way to truly posing, and hence truly >solving, the problems whose existence and >urgency it is intended to designate, in its own >way. Simply put, the recourse to ethics so >deeply inscribed in every humanist ideology may >play the part of an imaginary treatment of real >problems. Once known, these problems are posed >in precise terms; they are organizational >problems of the forms of economic life, >political life and individual life. To pose >these problems correctly and to resolve them in >reality, they must be called by their names, >their scientific names. The slogan of humanism >has no theoretical value, but it does have value >as a practical index: we must get down to the >concrete problems themselves, that is, to their >knowledge, if we are to produce the historical >transformation whose necessity was thought by >Marx. We must be careful that in this process no >word, justified by its practical function, >usurps a theoretical function; but that in >performing its practical function, it >simultaneously disappears from the field of >theory. January, 1965 >_______________________________________________ >Marxism-Thaxis mailing list >Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu To change >your options or unsubscribe go to: >http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG. >Version: 7.5.552 / Virus Database: >270.10.23/1948 - Release Date: 2/12/2009 7:20 AM From rasherrs at eircom.net Fri Feb 13 10:06:27 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:06:27 -0000 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ireland and Economic Depression Message-ID: <002501c98dfd$689901b0$39cb0510$@net> February 2009-02-12 Ireland and Economic Depression By Paddy Hackett The world economy has plunged into a sustained economic depression. The signs are that this depression will be deep and prolonged. The main way by which capitalism can come out of the depression is by reducing both the living standards and employment conditions of the working class. The only other solution is social revolution involving the seizure of power from the capitalist class by the working class involving the establishment of a world communist federation. Because of the peculiarities of the Irish situation: booms powered by bubbles and a government that instead of storing up its surplus tax returns in anticipation of future contingencies squandered it. The surplus revenue was used to bribe sections of the electorate into voting them back into power. It was also used to subsidise its capitalist friends such as property developers and bankers. Since the outset of the depression this same Irish government has been engaged in a sustained attack on the working class. This is its way of taking the Irish economy out of recession. It seeks to achieve this by dividing the working class --pitting worker against worker. At present the government is encouraging division of private sector workers from public sector workers. In this way it hopes to launch a successful offensive against public sector workers. Victory here will increase the government?s self-confidence while tending weaken to weaken the working class as a whole. Consequently the chances of the government successfully launching further attacks on public and private sections of the working class in the Irish Republic is enhanced. Public sector workers are ?among the most unionised section and politically more advanced of the working class. This helps explain how this strata of the working class has managed to maintain relatively better living standards and conditions of work and social life. This is why the government has been striving to defeat it. The government hopes to restructure the civil service as a means of disorganising public sector workers. It hopes that restructuring with the aid of new technology will put civil service workers out of work. In this way their resistance can be undermined in the way that workers within the private sector were disorganised and disarmed. The introduction of new technology restructured the composition of the working class. The effect of this development weakened and demoralised the working class. It is imperative, therefore, that the working class stoutly resist this sustained offensive being mounted by the government against it. This defensive action must involve strike action eventually culminating in the general strike together with the setting up of workers councils for the organisation of economic, social and political life. To achieve this the current character of the trade union must be replaced by communist unions of the working class. These communist unions, in contrast to the present condition of the unions, must be inherently democratic. They must have minimum centralisation and maximum democracy. Preceding this workers must struggle to set up workplace committees as a means of organising against the bosses and the leadership of the trade unions. The government actively encourages mass immigration into the Republic on an unprecedented scale. Again this forms part of the strategy of promoting division within the working class. This is designed to weaken the working class in the Irish Republic. The mass immigration of labour power into the Republic is intended to drive the price of labour power down. It also tends to hinder the prospects of the Irish working class organising itself into a unified politically conscious class force. The pressure imposed on high profile corporate, banking and media figures with super high salaries to take a voluntary cutback in their salaries is just a ploy to exert further pressure on workers to accept wage cutbacks. The present depression is a result of capitalism?s failure to let the economic system follow its cyclical downswing whereby capitalism cleanses itself of less profitable enterprises. This leads to a restoration of profitability and greater sustained economic activity. Instead the capitalist class through the medium of the state modified downswings through interventionist activity. This is because the ruling class feared a generalised depression because of the threat of a challenge capitalism and its state. But the more the cyclical behaviour of capitalism is modified and prevented from completing its cycle the greater, more intense and universal the crisis. The signs are that we have now been plunged into such an economic depression. However no amount of subjective interventionism will arrest it this time. The growing reserve army of the unemployed means that the production of surplus value, total profits, has diminished. This means that there exists less resources from which to meet state expenditure. This forces the state to cut spending, increase taxes and borrowing. Borrowing is just a form of future taxation with a difference. Interest must be paid which amounts to an addition to future taxation. This constitutes a further deduction from total profits which further adversely affects investment conditions. This tends to spiral downwards. This means that the Irish economy will have to further contract to reproduce the conditions for recovery. This means that spending cuts, taxation and borrowing must be further increased. We have now entered a new historical epoch. Politics will never be the same again. Ireland is heading, as a minute and relatively insignificant component of the capitalist economy into a deep and prolonged economic downturn. Under these new conditions of sustained economic stagnation the class struggle will sharpen. As things progress capitalism?s obsolescent character becomes increasingly visible. This economic depression can only be resolved in two ways: Revolution or reaction. At present the leadership of the working class (trade union and political leadership) has been offering solutions that are intended to rescue capitalism. The rescue of capitalism can only be achieved at the expense of the working class. There exist no significant political forces advocating a solution necessitating the transcendence of capitalism. The latter solution has not been seriously mooted within the public sphere. Communists must begin to build a communist political force if the class interests of the working class is to be served. This can begin by organising of circles of communist intellectuals. Such a communist intelligentsia conducts an intellectual struggle to propagate communist doctrine. As the intelligentsia develops and spreads its influence it can ideologically and politically link up with the more advanced sections of the working class to form a communist party. The throwing out of work of masses of workers weakens the working class both objectively and subjectively. It as no surprise then that the working class may initially show less resistance under conditions of growing unemployment. Having said this there is an opportunistic element embedded in the depression. These are companies that are using the downturn as a pretext for laying off workers, making workers labour harder and imposing wage cuts. These are companies that are not necessarily too adversely affected by the downswing. They are companies hoping to use the depression to increase profits by cutting costs. The government are guilty of a similar strategy in relation to the public sector workers. They have been mounting a campaign against the public sector workforce from well before the depression. In these circumstances workers must demand that the books of companies be opened to the workers for inspection. Paddy Hackett From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Fri Feb 13 10:09:23 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:09:23 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] socialism icon needed Message-ID: Aside from the hammer-and-sickle, and photos of Marx or other iconic figures, what other emblem of socialism can you think of? From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 13 23:20:34 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:20:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism and Humanism; Laborious Humanism Message-ID: <99615.10662.qm@web180115.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> CB: In Althusser's terms, the mature Marx significantly relocates humanism and essentialism, philosophical anthropology to human labor in that it is a main source of value; and there is a sense of human essence in the abstract equality of all abstract human labor. It's "homogeneous" and "uniform". It "exists in the organism of every ordinary individual." It's "human labour pure and simple. ", "identically abstract" ( and abstractly identical", "human labor generally" and physiologically and "ESSENTIALLY the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, &c. " Both the value creating character , and the use-value creating character of labor ( see below), are essentially human> Marx's is a laborious humanism, in _Capital_ Capital I: "The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary." "...But the value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human labour in general. And just as in society, a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere man, on the other hand, a very shabby part,[14] so here with mere human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour power, i.e., of the labour power which, on an average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of "every ordinary individual." "...While, therefore, with reference to use value, the labour contained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with reference to value it counts only quantitatively, and must first be reduced to human labour pure and simple... " "..On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labour power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value of commodities..." "The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power. " "For, in the first place, however varied the useful kinds of labour, or productive activities, may be, it is a physiological fact, that they are functions of the human organism, and that each such function, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, &c. " CB:There is even an essential human natural equality of the use-value creating character of labor. Capital I: "So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life. " From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 13 23:47:44 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:47:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marx's laborious humanism, species-being Message-ID: <952068.99217.qm@web180112.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Here is more elaboration of human essence in labor in the abstract, human species-being. For Marx, labor is human creative essence. Making is essentially human ( as is making out; smile) Of course human leisure, play, recreation is of species-being , and human essence , too. In this sense, "philosophy of football" is not an improper usage. CB ^^^^^^ The Labour-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value THE LABOUR-PROCESS OR THE PRODUCTION OF USE-VALUES http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives \ the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman?s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be. The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, the personal activity of man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its instruments. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 00:13:52 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:13:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Why is history a history of class struggles ? Message-ID: <207846.69453.qm@web180102.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Althusser says: "In 1845, Marx broke radically with every theory that based history and politics on an essence of man. This unique rupture contained three indissociable elements. (1) The formation of a theory of history and politics based on radically new concepts: the concepts of social formation, productive forces, relations of production, superstructure, ideologies, determination in the last instance by the economy, specific determination of the other levels, etc. (2) A radical critique of the theoretical pretensions of every philosophical humanism. (3) The definition of humanism as an ideology. " ^^^^^ CB: By at least 1848 with the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, we can infer that Marx has relocated the essence of humans , his humanism in Althusser's sense, in human labor. This is in part the reason that history is a history of class struggles. For exploitation of labor triggers a human instinct in exploited laborers to recover and enjoy all the fruits of their labor, appropriate all the products of their work. History progesses as exploited laborers win victories restructuring the immense superstructure with each revolution. Althusser's claim that Marx's radical new theory is scientific is correct because the new theory deals with _necessary_ connections in human society. Labor is necessary for human life. Capital I: "So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life. " From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 00:34:38 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:34:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Toolmaking and use as an aspect of the human labor and essence Message-ID: <949375.80029.qm@web180102.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Benjamin Franklin defines humans as toolmakers, Franklin anthropology. Control of fire, chemistry, is toolmaking, and Promethean anthropology. CB http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of some substances in order to make other substances subservient to his aims. [2] Leaving out of consideration such ready-made means of subsistence as fruits, in gathering which a man?s own limbs serve as the instruments of his labour, the first thing of which the labourer possesses himself is not the subject of labour but its instrument. Thus Nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of the Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his original tool house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones for throwing, grinding, pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself is an instrument of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implies a whole series of other instruments and a comparatively high development of labour. [3] No sooner does labour undergo the least development, than it requires specially prepared instruments. Thus in the oldest caves we find stone implements and weapons. In the earliest period of human history domesticated animals, i.e., animals which have been bred for the purpose, and have undergone modifications by means of labour, play the chief part as instruments of labour along with specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and shells. [4] The use and fabrication of instruments of labour, although existing in the germ among certain species of animals, is specifically characteristic of the human labour-process, and Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making animal. Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. [5] Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on. Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature, which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, &c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which latter class, we may in a general way, call the vascular system of production. The latter first begins to play an important part in the chemical industries From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 02:12:10 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:12:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] WHY THE U.S. STIMULUS PACKAGE IS BOUND TO FAIL Message-ID: <881666.18945.qm@web180108.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> WHY THE U.S. STIMULUS PACKAGE IS BOUND TO FAIL DAVID HARVEY Much is to be gained by viewing the contemporary crisis as a surface eruption generated out of deep tectonic shifts in the spatio-temporal disposition of capitalist development. The tectonic plates are now accelerating their motion and the likelihood of more frequent and more violent crises of the sort that have been occurring since 1980 or so will almost certainly increase. The manner, form, spatiality and time of these surface disruptions are almost impossible to predict, but that they will occur with greater frequency and depth is almost certain. The events of 2008 have therefore to be situated in the context of a deeper pattern. Since these stresses are internal to the capitalist dynamic (which does not preclude some seemingly external disruptive event like a catastrophic pandemic also occurring), then what better argument could there be, as Marx once put it, "for capitalism to be gone and to make way for some a lternative and more rational mode of production." I begin with this conclusion since I still find it vital to emphasize if not dramatize, as I have sought to do over and over again in my writings over the years, that failure to understand the geographical dynamics of capitalism or to treat the geographical dimension as in some sense merely contingent or epiphenomenal, is to both lose the plot on how to understand capitalist uneven geographical development and to miss out on possibilities for constructing radical alternatives. But this poses an acute difficulty for analysis since we are constantly faced with trying to distill universal principles regarding the role of the production of spaces, places and environments in capitalism's dynamics, out of a sea of often volatile geographical particularities. So how, then, can we integrate geographical understandings into our theories of evolutionary change? Let us look more carefully at the tectonic shifts. In November 2008, shortly after the election of a new President, the National Intelligence Council of the United States issued its delphic estimates on what the world would be like in 2025. Perhaps for the first time, a quasi-official body in the United States predicted that by 2025 the United States, while still a powerful if not the most powerful single player in world affairs, would no longer be dominant. The world would be multi-polar and less centered and the power of non-state actors would increase. The report conceded that US hegemony had been fading on and off for some time but that its economic, political and even military dominance was now systematically waning. Above all (and it is important to note that the report was prepared before the implosion of the US and British financial systems), "the unprecedented shift in relative wealth and economic power roughly from West to East now under way will continue." full: http://grupodapiedade.posterous.com/radical-europe-fwd-moneybanksc From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 02:27:47 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:27:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ian Angus on Charles Darwin Message-ID: <850588.15767.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Ian Angus on Charles Darwin http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=366 February 6, 2009 Charles Darwin and Materialist Science *By Ian Angus. *February 12, 2009 is Darwin Day, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. His masterwork, /On the Origin of Species/, was published 150 years ago, in November 1859, initiating a revolution in science that continues to this day. Although Darwin?s political views were far from radical, his insights became the central weapons in the battle to establish materialist science as the basis for our understanding of the world, and contributed to the development of Marxism. Charles Robert Darwin was, to say the least, an unlikely revolutionary. His father was a prominent physician and wealthy investor; his grandfather was Josiah Wedgwood, founder of one of the largest manufacturing companies in Europe. He could have lived a life of leisure ? instead he devoted his life to science. After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, 22-year-old Charles Darwin boarded the British survey ship /HMS Beagle/ as an unpaid naturalist, subsidized by his doting father. When he returned after five years, he had thousands of pages of scientific observations, over 1,500 carefully preserved specimens ? and growing doubts about the dominant scientific and religious ideas of his day. *A heretical conclusion* At that time, Darwin wrote in his 1861 introduction to /Origin/, ?the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created.? Biblical literalists and deists alike agreed that species were fixed by divine law. Dogs might vary in appearance, but dogs don?t give birth to cats. After five years of travel and two years of study at home, Darwin came to a heretical conclusion: species were not immutable. All animals were descended from common ancestors, different species resulted from gradual changes over millions of years, and God had nothing to do with it. It is difficult, today, to understand how shocking this idea would be to the middle and upper classes of Darwin?s time. Religion wasn?t just the ?opium of the masses?? it gave the wealthy moral justification for their privileged lives in a world of constant change and gross inequality. The world was unfolding according to God?s wishes, and anyone who questioned that endangered the very fragile social order. Nevertheless, by the 1830s educated people knew that the /Genesis/ creation story couldn?t be literally true. The rise of capitalism in the 1700s had led to booms in mining and canal building: those works exposed geological layers and ancient fossils that clearly contradicted the idea of a recently-created earth. In the same period, imperialism led to global exploration and the discovery of more varieties of plant and animal life than any European had ever imagined. Why had the Creator been so extravagant? And why, if each animal was created separately, were their underlying structures so similar ? why do bats? wings, whales? flippers, lions? paws and human hands all contain the same bones? Many attempts were made to preserve a central role for God and creation in the face of this evidence. Perhaps the most sophisticated was developed in the 1850s by Richard Owen, head of natural science at the British Museum and inventor of the word ?dinosaur.? He argued that all animals are variations on ideas ? ?archetypes? ? in God?s mind. God ?foreknew all variations? on those archetypes, and made them real in forms that would suit various environments or situations over time. At the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum, the great French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck offered a non-religious explanation. He proposed that there is a ?chain of being,? a ladder of life, with single-celled animals at the bottom and humans at the top. Nature constantly and spontaneously creates new creatures that have an innate drive to climb the ladder, becoming more complex, or perfect, over time. As they climb, they also adapt to environmental changes: giraffes have long necks because their ancestors had to stretch to reach high leaves, while fish that live in caves are blind because their ancestors? vision declined as a result of disuse. This concept was not central to Lamarck?s theory, but ?inheritance of acquired characteristics? has since become inextricably connected to his name. *A materialist explanation* While Lamarck and others just /speculated/ that species changed over time, Darwin provided convincing /evidence/. More important, he showed that it happened by natural processes, without any help from gods or mysterious progressive forces. That is, his explanation of evolution was /materialist/. In Darwin?s theory, three factors combine to create new species: variation, inheritance, and natural selection. There are many differences between the members of any species, and those differences will result in some individuals being more likely to survive environmental changes and so pass on their variations to the next generation. Over long periods of time, such variations will spread through the population, while any that reduce the possibility of reproduction will decline. Eventually the accumulation of new characteristics results in new species. Darwin developed the key elements of his theory by 1838, but didn?t publish it because he knew how hostile the scientific community of his day was to both materialism and evolution . Only after 20 years, when he had become one of the best-known and most respected naturalists in England, did he finally make his heresy public. /On the Origin of Species/ was an instant best-seller. The publisher printed 1,250 copies but received orders for 1,500 copies on the first day. A second edition of 3,000 copies followed in a few weeks, and some 110,000 copies were sold in England by the end of the century. While Darwin?s ideas were quickly accepted by many scientists, especially younger ones, they were roundly condemned by the scientific establishment and by religious leaders. Adam Sedgwick, Darwin?s geology professor at Cambridge, called /On the Origin of Species/ ?utterly false and grievously mischievous? and declared his ?detestation of the theory, because of its unflinching materialism,? while Richard Owen denounced it as an ?abuse of science.? *Marx and Engels and Darwin* Outside official scientific circles, Darwin?s ideas found strong support in the workers movement. Friedrich Engels said /Origin/ was ?absolutely splendid,? and Karl Marx called it ?the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.? Marx?s friend Wilhelm Liebknecht later recalled that ?when Darwin drew the conclusions from his research work and brought them to the knowledge of the public, we spoke of nothing else for months but Darwin and the enormous significance of his scientific discoveries.? In /Origin,/ Marx and Engels/ /found a materialist explanation of nature?s history to complement and strengthen their materialist explanation of human history. They particularly valued Darwin?s demonstration that nature has a history that can be explained in materialist, natural terms. In /Anti-D//?hring/, Engels wrote: ?Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically ? she does not move in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes through a real historical evolution. In this connection, Darwin must be named before all others. He dealt the metaphysical conception of Nature the heaviest blow by his proof that all organic beings, plants, animals, and man himself, are the products of a process of evolution going on through millions of years.? *A triumph for humanity* Darwin spent most of the rest of his life researching evolution and natural selection, while his supporters defended his ideas against the most influential opinion leaders of his day. By the time he died in 1882, few scientists still disputed the fact of evolution ? but it took much longer for most to accept the materialist core of Darwin?s work, that variation and natural selection are the processes that drive evolution. For decades scientists searched for an alternative to natural selection that would be compatible with the idealist conception that God, or some equivalent progressive tendency in nature, guided evolution upwards until humans emerged as the pinnacle of creation. But twentieth century genetic research proved that Darwin was right all along: that variations occur naturally, and that natural selection is the main force determining which variations survive and spread. Darwin?s commitment to naturalist science has triumphed. No modern scientist, not even one with deep religious convictions, would today suggest that ?then a miracle happened? is an acceptable explanation for anything in nature, including the origins, immense variety and constant changes in life on our planet. This materialist victory in science is one of humanity?s greatest achievements. For that reason alone, no matter what his hesitations, delays or prejudices, Charles Darwin deserves to be remembered and honoured by everyone who looks forward to the ending of superstition and ignorance in all aspects of life. The idea that nature has a history, that species come into existence, change and disappear through natural processes, is just as revolutionary, and just as important to socialist thought, as the idea that capitalism isn?t eternal but came into being at a given time and will one day disappear from the earth. /Ian Angus// is an associate editor of Socialist Voice , and editor of the online journal Climate and Capitalism . He is currently writing a book on Darwin and materialism. / From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 02:28:24 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:28:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Jewishness of Jews Without Money Message-ID: <856057.66241.qm@web180102.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> http://www.jbooks.com/interviews/index/IP_Buhle_Gold.htm The Jewishness of Jews Without Money By PAUL BUHLE Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the 1996 edition of Jews Without Money (originally published in 1930) was how the political wrangling of the past had slipped into history, leaving behind one of the most magnificent of Jewish-American sagas. Alfred Kazin?s introduction to the new edition almost skipped over Michael Gold?s better-known reputation as polemicist for the Daily Worker and its literary counterparts through some thick and much thin, all the way to Gold?s death in 1967. Jews Without Money had been written as Gold?s own personal story of Jewish slum life with a heroic-political ending as brief and irrelevant as the ending of a Hollywood melodrama. The real thing was the rest of the saga. And what a saga! The Yiddish short-story writer and dramatist Leon Kobrin became known, mainly by virtue of his stories in the Forverts, as the ?Jewish Zola,? chronicler of misery and impoverishment. If the sobriquet had not already been earned, Gold would have had the best claim. Original Sin is not the problem of the Lower East Side inhabitants; poverty sinks into every corpuscle of their collective blood. The Sin is real, but it belongs to the bullies and the braggarts. Generations before Woody Allen?s Crimes and Misdemeanors roasted the hypocritical figures among the Jewish-American arrivistes, Gold lacerated the diamond-wearing matrons, the slum lords, the sweatshop kings, and others who had scant mercy for their own people (and wanted to be accepted by the Gentiles, preferably rich Gentiles, more than anything). Not all the villains were Jews, by any means. Gold was keen on the Irish cops of New York who took pride in drawing blood with their clubs at any Jewish labor activity, especially if they could bash a young radical woman. He took in the others, boxers to politicians, who were part of Jewish life but not of it. But Gold was more interested in human consequences. In one of his famous phrases, ?America is so rich and fat, because it has eaten the tragedy of millions of immigrants.? Gold wrote, in his own introduction to the book, that he could not accept America?s gods because he had his own idol: his mother. If this sounds amazingly saccharine for an avowed atheist and revolutionary, it is nevertheless the deepest sentiment in the novel and the one that rings the truest after all these years. A wife: a ?buttinski? and reformer, self-sacrificing for anyone in trouble, literal midwife for home births, defender of neighbors threatened by drunken husbands, also proud to be Jewish in no small part because antisemitism showed how low and animalistic the haters were?all this thanks to a marriage broker. Jewish also because the memory of Europe, the relatives left behind in Europe, one might suggest the 800 years of Yiddishkayt, was inextricably part of her sense of family and self. What would a Jew be without that memory, or the generosity of spirit toward the poor that his mother represented? Jews Without Money, the testimony of Michael Granich aka Mike Gold, is alive as long as Jewish-American immigrant history plays a vivid role in collective memory?and that shows no sign of dissipating. For all Gold?s particularities, it?s certain that the election of Barack Obama with the overwhelmingly enthusiastic support of Jewish voters is one more reminder that if poverty is the real sin, reform offers redemption. Mike Gold knew it a long time ago. Paul Buhle's latest project is "Yiddishland," a comic-art volume collaboration with Harvey Pekar and others. Reprinted with permission from the journal Sh'ma (January 2009) as part of a larger conversation about Jews and Money (www.shma.com). From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 04:18:42 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 03:18:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom Message-ID: <414864.48160.qm@web180104.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Sat Feb 14 10:04:24 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:04:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?utf-8?q?Frederick_Douglass_=2814_Feb_1818_?= =?utf-8?q?=E2=80=93_20_Feb_1895=29?= Message-ID: <379415.1234631064987.JavaMail.root@whwamui-apprise.pas.sa.earthlink.net> Happy birthday & Valentine's Day . . . Fred was born the same year as Marx and died the same year as Engels. Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass And here's an atheist treat: Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach from Ottilie Assing about Frederick Douglass http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/dougls1.html From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 10:09:47 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:09:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism and Humanism; Laborious Humanism Message-ID: <37894.60389.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> CB: In Althusser's terms, ^^^ CB: As far as I know, Althusser doesn't say what I say below. It is an extension, by me, of Althusser's basic argument in his famous essay beyond what he says. I believe Althusser concludes that there is no "humanism" in the mature Marx. I am disagreeing with Althusser , a sort of negation of his negating humanism in Marx ^^^^^^^ the mature Marx significantly relocates humanism and essentialism, philosophical anthropology to human labor in that it is a main source of value; and there is a sense of human essence in the abstract equality of all abstract human labor. It's "homogeneous" and "uniform". It "exists in the organism of every ordinary individual." It's "human labour pure and simple. ", "identically abstract" ( and abstractly identical", "human labor generally" From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 10:16:21 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:16:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Why is history a history of class struggles ? Critique of Althusser Message-ID: <331125.19922.qm@web180114.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Charles Brown Althusser says: "In 1845, Marx broke radically with every theory that based history and politics on an essence of man. This unique rupture contained three indissociable elements. (1) The formation of a theory of history and politics based on radically new concepts: the concepts of social formation, productive forces, relations of production, superstructure, ideologies, determination in the last instance by the economy, specific determination of the other levels, etc. (2) A radical critique of the theoretical pretensions of every philosophical humanism. (3) The definition of humanism as an ideology. " ^^^^^ CB: By at least 1848 with the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, we can infer that Marx has relocated the essence of humans , his humanism in Althusser's sense, in human labor. ^^^^^ CB: However, Althusser does _not_ say what I am saying here about 1848 and Marx relocating human essence in human labor. ^^^^^^ This is in part the reason that history is a history of class struggles. For exploitation of labor triggers a human instinct in exploited laborers to recover and enjoy all the fruits of their labor, appropriate all the products of their work. History progesses as exploited laborers win victories restructuring the immense superstructure with each revolution. ^^^^ CB: Althusser doesn't say this , though. I do. ^^^^^^ Althusser's claim that Marx's radical new theory is scientific is correct because the new theory deals with _necessary_ connections in human society. Labor is necessary for human life. Capital I: "So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life. " From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 10:19:32 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:19:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] from the kingdom of necessity Message-ID: <666274.44075.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 10:26:35 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:26:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Douglass and Feuerbach Message-ID: <900249.288.qm@web180115.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Ralph D: And here's an atheist treat: Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach from Ottilie Assing about Frederick Douglass http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/dougls1.html ^^^^^ CB: Cool , Ralph ! From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 10:38:46 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:38:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] socialism icon needed Message-ID: <124547.56343.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Ralph Dumain Aside from the hammer-and-sickle, and photos of Marx or other iconic figures, what other emblem of socialism can you think of? ^^^ CB: The color red. red flag From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 13:01:27 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:01:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Locus of material necessity in human society and history Message-ID: <428380.91766.qm@web180108.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> This is a reworking and expansion of a thesis I have been developing on Thaxis Charles Materialism, Necessity and Freedom: Rehearsal of the Fundamentals of Marxism By the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ every Marxist knows the A,B,C's of historical materialism or the materialist conception of history. The history of hitherto existing society, since the breaking up of the ancient communes, is a history of class struggles between oppressor and oppressed. Classes are groups that associate in a division of labor to produce their material means of existence. Why are class struggles fundamental in determining the whole of society's laws and rules, it's history and culture, the "super-structure" ? Because exploited classes are coerced into producing surpluses for exploiting classes by making supply of the physiological necessities of life to the exploited classes conditional upon their producing those surpluses. Not only do exploited classes produce the physiological and derivative material necessities of life for society , but they are denied the fruits of their labor unless they supply the bosses, the ruling classes with super fruits. Ruling class coerce this exploitation by control of the state power or special repressive apparatus In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels implied this elementary anthropological or "human natural" rationale for this conception of class relations determining substantially the shape of society as a whole. In a section titled "History: Fundamental Conditions, they say: "*life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life." Production and economic classes are the starting point of Marxist analysis of human society because human life, like all plant and animal life must fulfill biological needs to exist as life at all. It is an appeal to biologic (which I support, all of the anti-vulgar materialist critiques to the contrary notwithstanding, but that's my other paper). Whatever humans do that is "higher" than plants and animals, we cannot do if we do not first fulfill or plant/animal like needs, physiological necessities. Marx and Engels define scientific analysis as tracing the materially or objectively _necessary_ connections in a phenomenon. Thus, the scientific understanding of human society must be based in the materially necessary connections of human society. Fulfillment of physiological or biological requirments are the materially necessary "connections" for humans. These biological necessary connections exist in all human societies. But it is only in' class divided society that , as said above, surpluses are extorted from exploited classes by ruling classes by employment and threat of deployment of the forces of destruction and violenced, standing bodies of armed men , against the exploited and ruled classes less they disgorge the surplus fruits of their labor to the ruling classes. For not only is supply of food, shelter, air etc. biologically and materially necessary for living. The _absence_ of being killed or bodily harmed by armed men is materially necessary to live. Thus, the mode of destruction is as central to the necessary connections of human society as the mode of production. The mode of destruction as critical in ruling class coercion and extortion of the ruled classes is a mode of necessity in human society and history. Thus the mode of necessity in human society consists in both the mode of production and the mode of destruction. On Materialism ( speaking of Mao), there are two levels of the relationship between thought and being: "economics" and "physics". While society remains in the Realm (or kingdom) of Necessity , society during its class divided history, ruling classes control masses by conditioning fulfillment of the _material_ needs of the exploited classes on the exploited classes ' producing surpluses for the ruling , exploiting classes. The materialism (determinism by the material) at this level derives from the coercive use of conditional provision of material needs. In all societies, including those in the Realm (kingdom of Freedom ( socialist, communist future and ancient) , all people must , of course, "obey" the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, objective reality etc. "physics", in the general sense. The "higher" (cultural, semiotic. super-structrual, social conditioning traditions, "super-natural, aesthetic, artistic etc.) human activities are limited or negatively determined ( See Marshall Sahlins' _Culture and Practical Reason_ on biological limits of culture) by the productive and destructive activities, the activities that produce biological necessities or deprive human biological necessities (Althougn, in human IDEAS, SYMBOLS, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE, because of the arbitrary central definition of the symbol ("sign" in French) there is non-necessary connection. _Arbitrary_ connection is the opposite of _necessary_ connection. This is the sense in which superstructure is not subject to scientific analysis the way that infrastructure is. Idea systems do simulate necessity as rules, such as rules of grammar or cultural rules, including state enforced laws Also in formal logic, "necessary" arises in > _modus ponens_, modus tolens or "if-then", if p, then q, q is a necessary > condition of p, i.e. not q,not p. This is arbitrary and abstract necessity. In the Realm of Necessity, ( Marx and Engels used the > term "necessity" here precisely to make the point I am making here) > there is a science of human conduct based on the things that human must > do, i.e. necessity. As Marx and Engels had to explain to "the Germans" in _The German > Ideology_, humans have physiological necessities. In meeting these, > there arise scientifically discernable necessary patterns in their behavior To continue, This means that historical materialism starts with human nature, our human natural species qualities, Feuerbach's "species-being " This is Marx's point in the famous passage in the Intro to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy concerning social being determining social consciousness "At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. " Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs The economic conditions may be articulated "with the precision of a natural science" because in that sector of society biological necessities or needs are met, and as discussed above, thereby necessary connections reside. Necessary connections are the business of science. Being determines consciousness, but intermitently However, being determines consciousness discontinuously. ("primarily and ultimately"). Meanwhile, in between time, being and consciousness are reciprocally determiining. Being , in the form of class struggle, determines consciousness in history. However, the revolutions which are the points of determination or change by class struggle are intermittent and rare. Most of the time consciousness or ideology is not changing, is not in a revolutionary state of transformation. Most of the time society is in a status quo, a relative equilibrium , is not changing fundamentally. This is somewhat analogous to the punctuated equilibrium of Stephen Jay Gould in natural history, with the punctuations being the revolutions when being determines, asserts itself, like the roof falling in periodically asserts the law of gravity, when contradictions reach a crisis. It is the long equilibria that cause the confusion and make people think that consciousness has determined being in history's revolutionary changes, or the idealist error. Also, there is a sense in which consciousness as a system of ideas does determine people's conduct. When an idea grips the masses , it becomes a material force; and lots of ideas grip the masses. In fact , the masses only act based on ideas that grip them. What revolutions do is change the system of ideas that determines peoples' conduct. And only class struggles change systems of ideas or ideologies. This is the fundamental sense of being determines consciousness or part of the theory of historical materialism. As Marx says "...so can we not judge such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. " " In big historical changes, Necessity is the mother of invention. , the mother of revolution. The necessary connections in economy and class structure periodically, though rarely , break through to "invent" a new superstructure revolutionary ideas. Necessity is the mother of invention, new ideas. Ideology is the stabilizer of convention. Ideologies are formal logics, based on the principle of identity as their first principle. Formal logics are not "self-changing", they abdure contradictions ( non-identity) tend to sustain convention, avoid invention of new principles. This is why we don't think our way to revolution. This is why dialectical logic , with contradiction as its first principle, is rooted in class struggle , reflecting real or material contradictions. The Second Thesis on Feuerbach - the test of theory is practice Thus, the most practically reasonable and rational course is for the working class of our era to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. This would be the optimum for the class self-interest of the working class , collectively and individually in its billions of people. Yet, we are in a lag time, the long lag time of the "equilibrium" before the punctuation of revolution. Irrational ideas, from the standpoint of the working class,ideas of many types compete with the rational idea of revolutionary class struggle for gripping the working masses. False consciousness, capitalist ideology is determining being, keeping it stuck in capitalist relations of production. Do any of the fancy Marxist theories which interrogate the principle of being determines consciousness have solutions to the riddles of the irrational, anti-class self-interest ideologies, systems of ideas and images which are gripping the masses and blinding them to their historic revolutionary mission ? That is a question on c onsciousness for today's challengers to materialism who also claim to be Marxist in some sense. An even more fundamental understanding of consciousness must come through an augmented Marxist feminism. As the historically constituted class of oppressed and exploited reproductive or c aring laborers, the creators of subjects en masse, women have been the uncredited makers of consiousness in history. This is not just in childrearing , although that is obviously important, but in all caring labor which is critical in shaping and repairing the self. This includes housework, for the house or the home is that shelter where the adult self is itself away from work in the capitalist daily geography of the person.Thus, women's liberation and recovery of women's history is fundamental to the science of consciousness. http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/m-fem/1998m07/msg00006.htm (Here is a reiteration of the above thesis) Materialism, Necessity and Freedom: Rehearsal of the Fundamentals of Marxism A three act play with beginning, middle and end, and non-dogmatic improvisation. Several vulgar parts Double materialist determination; there are two levels of determination, in materialism attitude toward the relationship between thought and being: 1)"economics" and 2) "physics". 1)"economics" While society remains in the Realm of Necessity , ruling classes control masses by conditioning fulfillment of the _material_ needs of the exploited classes on the exploited classes ' producing surpluses for the ruling , exploiting classes. The materialism (determinism by the material) at this level derives from the coercive use of conditional provision of material needs. 2) "physics" In all societies, including those in the Realm of Freedom ( socialist, communist future and ancient) , all people must , of course, "obey" the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, objective reality etc. "physics", in the general sense. The first level above is based in the specific biological necessities of the second level. There is a third level of materialist determination in the Marxist thesis. It is also economic. Marx and Engels (Engels and Marx) claim that history is a history of class struggles. The answer to the question "Why is history a history of class struggles ?" is the philosophy of historical materialism. Why is it that economic material relationship of exploiting and exploited classes causes the changes which are called "history" ? The alternatives at the time Marx wrote the thesis were especially Great Men in state and economic power and Big Ideas as in Philosophies of Great Men. Marx in wanting to take a scientific approach to the question, looked to necessity upon the theory that science details necessary connections between things. There is no necessity as strict in the realms of ideas or Great Men as the necessity of biology, and by extension the area of economics of material production of minimal life sustaining necessities or Being or Existence There still must be made an argument as to why and what changes by class struggle determination in the sense that history is a history of class struggles. What changes through the course of history ? If it were the structure of the relationship between classes, then what about tautology ? So, Big Ideas (or Consciousness) and Great Men _types_ change as the change that is history. However, Being determines consciousness intermittently, rarely in terms of the total time of the many generations of people. Most generations don't experience a fundamental or revolutionary change. And so on the rare, intermittent determinism of the structure of ideas by the Realm proper of Necessity: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1998-March/007351.html Although biology only limits us human beings because we have culture (super-natures and natures ) this contradiction between biology and culture is still where it is at in generating universals or big generals. Being determines consciousness is still a focal rule of thumb (guide to action) for building a universal, real common interests among huge numbers of people, the masses. My first post-Marx development of species-being is to derive women's liberation organically from historical materialism's premises, as Marx and Engels derive workers' liberation from those species-being historical premises. It is a correction of classical Marxism, but based on Marxsim's own premises. In ways its too vulgar for pomos and fancy marxists. However, the pomos and their old cousins, Frankfurt school, Gramsci, exitentialists, et al. all the fancy marxists have taught us something: being determines consciousness discontinuously, intermittmently, rarely. Through most of the actual time of history ( day-to-day life; quotidien), consciousness and being are reciprocally determining. Only rarely, in revolutions, primarily and ultimately does being utterly determine consciousness. Today, that means that the direct naked appeal to the working class' class self-interest is inadequate in itself-necessary but not sufficient in the formal logical sense -to inspire revolution. That appeal cannot be dropped - the vast majority are working class, wage laborers - but must be complemented with appeals to other consciousness, other consciousness = determined by being (gender, for example) and consciousness that is determined more by consciousness. Overall one wants to change the world based on interpreting it, changing it through practical-critical activity, a unity of theory and practice still. (to be continued) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 14:06:11 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:06:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] kingdoms of necessity and freedom Message-ID: <425670.65925.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 2/14/09, Charles Brown wrote: > From: Charles Brown > Subject: kingdom of necessity > To: cdb1003 at prodigy.net > Date: Saturday, February 14, 2009, 8:31 PM > From Anti-Duhring > > With the seizing of the means of production > by society, production of > commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the > mastery of the > product over the producer. Anarchy in > social production is replaced by > systematic, definite organization. The struggle for > individual > existence disappears. Then, for the > first time, man, in a certain > sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal > kingdom, and > emerges from mere animal conditions > of existence into really human > ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which > environ man, > and which have hitherto ruled man, > now comes under the dominion and > control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, > conscious > lord of nature, because he has now > become master of his own social > organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto > standing > face-to-face with man as laws of > Nature foreign to, and dominating > him, will then be used with full understanding, and so > mastered by > him. Man's own social organization, > hitherto confronting him as a > necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the > result of his > own free action. The extraneous > objective forces that have, hitherto, > governed history,pass under the control of man himself. > Only from that > time will man himself, more and > more consciously, make his own history > ? only from that time will the social causes set in > movement by him > have, in the main and in a constantly > growing measure, the results > intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom > of necessity > to the kingdom of freedom From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 14:51:33 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:51:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Derivatives Message-ID: <850782.67273.qm@web180112.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Derivatives http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2009w06/msg00016.htm by Warren E Buffett, Chairman and CEO >From the Chairman's Letter of the 2002 Annual Report of Berkshire Hathaway Incorporated. "Charlie" is Mr Buffet's partner, Charles T Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire. Charlie and I are of one mind in how we feel about derivatives and the trading activities that go with them: We view them as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 18:44:51 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:44:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Insert for Locus of material necessity in human society and history Message-ID: <173134.71183.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> I didn't finish these thoughts in what I posted CB The Second Thesis on Feuerbach - the test of theory is practice - is also rooted in or expresses the determination of ideas by material practice, "practical- critical , revolutionary,activity" (from the First Thesis on Feuerbach) Theory, a system of ideas, is proven true or changed when it is used to guide material practice in both "physics" and "economics". Social theory or ideology that guides real practice gives rise to contradictions that react back to change the theory, "disprove"it, if it contradicts material necessity even if only in the long run as in human history. Theb proof of the pudding is in the eating. The disproof of capitalism's theory or ideology, is in the continuous immiseration of masses and the periodic crises, wars and pollution. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 14 23:03:24 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:03:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Freedom: from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom Message-ID: <74565.17495.qm@web180103.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The concept of necessity appears again in Engels famous distinction between the kingdom (realm) of necessity and the kingdom of freedom. The transition from one to the other marks the end of class divided and exploitive society to communism. The terms and idea here is based on Hegel famous notion that freedom is the mastery of necessity. The freedom in communist society is based on humans mastering their own social structure in the sense that exploiting classes no longer are able to exploit exploited classes by conditioning provision of basic necessities or meeting biological and physiological needs, upon exploited classes serving up material surpluses to the exploiting classes. As Engels says in the quote below, " "And he has now > become master of his own social > organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto > standing > face-to-face with man as laws of > Nature foreign to, and dominating > him, will then be used with full understanding, and so > mastered by > him." He was mastered by his/her own social organization before by the existence of Masters,rulers who exploited "him and her". The masses of women and men master the Masters who were imposing necessity on the many, controlling them by conditioning proviision of their necessities on the giving of surpluses, as discussed at length in the last few posts. This is the specific necessity that is mastered by the masses and the specific character of the freedom of this "kingdom of freedom". The science that comprehends and intellectually masters the peculiar complex of necessity in exploitative society (the kingdom of necessity) is the science of historical materialism, Marxism. Once it successfully leads revolution to world socialism and communism, it makes its own subject matter - exploitative societies of all types, especially in the final conflict capitalism = obsolete, kaput, thrown in the dustbin of history. Like the proletariat ending all classes including itself, historical materialism and its practice self-abolishes. The kingdom of freedom will have a new art of society, which will be less a science. The system of thought that guides action in the realm of freedom will have a heavier proportion of idealism rather than materialism (science), because, as I say above the artificially imposed necessity of class society will be no longer imposed The freedom of communism will in part be that ideas, thought, human will, conscious planning rather than material necessity will guide action and activities. Humans will be able to do what they will and want, that is be free. On Sat, 2/14/09, Charles Brown wrote: > From: Charles Brown > Subject: kingdom of necessity > To: cdb1003 at prodigy.net > Date: Saturday, February 14, 2009, 8:31 PM > From Anti-Duhring > > With the seizing of the means of production > by society, production of > commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the > mastery of the > product over the producer. Anarchy in > social production is replaced by > systematic, definite organization. The struggle for > individual > existence disappears. Then, for the > first time, man, in a certain > sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal > kingdom, and > emerges from mere animal conditions > of existence into really human > ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which > environ man, > and which have hitherto ruled man, > now comes under the dominion and > control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, > conscious > lord of nature, because he has now > become master of his own social > organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto > standing > face-to-face with man as laws of > Nature foreign to, and dominating > him, will then be used with full understanding, and so > mastered by > him. Man's own social organization, > hitherto confronting him as a > necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the > result of his > own free action. The extraneous > objective forces that have, hitherto, > governed history,pass under the control of man himself. > Only from that > time will man himself, more and > more consciously, make his own history > ? only from that time will the social causes set in > movement by him > have, in the main and in a constantly > growing measure, the results > intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom > of necessity > to the kingdom of freedom From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sun Feb 15 11:42:45 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 10:42:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Alain Badiou Message-ID: <828231.3780.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Ruthless Critic of All that Exists : Full: Alain Badiou's book on Sarkozy reveals the philosopher's own advocacy of change based in reality, which is beginning to displace the old 'new philosophy' of Bernard-Henri L?vy et al By Christopher Bickerton >From Wikipedia: [Alain Badiou (born 17 January 1937 in Rabat, Morocco) is a prominent French philosopher, formerly chair of philosophy at the ?cole Normale Sup?rieure (ENS). Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy. Particularly through a creative appropriation of set theory from his early interest in mathematics, Badiou seeks to recover the concepts of being, truth and the subject in a way that is neither postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity. He was politically active very early on, and was one of the founding members of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU). The PSU was particularly active in the struggle for the decolonization of Algeria. He wrote his first novel, Almagestes, in 1964. In 1967 he joined a study group organized by Louis Althusser and grew increasingly influenced by Jacques Lacan. The student uprisings of May 1968 reinforced Badiou's commitment to the far Left, and he participated in increasingly radical communist and Maoist groups, such as the UCFML. In 1969 he joined the faculty of University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis), which was a bastion of counter-cultural thought. There he engaged in fierce intellectual debates with fellow professors Gilles Deleuze and Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard, whose philosophical works he considered unhealthy deviations from the Althusserian program of a scientific Marxism. In the 1980s, as both Althusserian Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis went into decline (with Lacan dead and Althusser in an asylum), Badiou published more technical and abstract philosophical works, such as Th?orie du sujet (1982), and his magnum opus, Being and Event (1988).] From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Sun Feb 15 19:48:13 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:48:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Bukharin pamphlet Message-ID: <17106099.1234752493416.JavaMail.root@whwamui-apprise.pas.sa.earthlink.net> Bukharin, N[ikolai]. Finance Capital in Papal Robes: A Challenge, translated by Moissaye J. Olgin. New York: Friends of the Soviet Union, 1931(?). 24 pp. http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/socmovements/Pages/viewtext.php?s=browse&tid=2758&author=\%22Bukharin%2C+N.\%22&route=browseby.php&by=author&s=browse This seems to be a fairly rare item. I can't find a digitized copy online. The Library of Congress doesn't have it. Curiously, I have a photocopy of an Esperanto translation but not of the English. Any collectors out there have possession of this document? From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 16 06:15:17 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:15:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Up and out of poverty, now Message-ID: <926400.95582.qm@web180103.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The Marxist reform solution for getting us out of crisis depression is up and out of poverty ,now ! Unrestrict the consumption of the masses ! CB From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 16 07:21:25 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:21:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ukrainian workers occupy a farming machinery plant Message-ID: <921286.26167.qm@web180113.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> http://red-news.livejournal.com/1462.html Ukrainian workers occupy a farming machinery plant From jannuzi at gmail.com Mon Feb 16 20:45:34 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:45:34 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Up and out of poverty, now Message-ID: > The Marxist reform solution for getting > us out of crisis depression is up and out > of poverty ,now ! Unrestrict the > consumption of the masses ! Careful CB, Republicans and Democrats will think you have a type of Socialist Tourette's syndrome. But wait, I feel a few of my own ejaculatory exhortations coming on: Out of Iraq and Afghanistan now--and APOLOGIZE! Make health care affordable for everyone by SOCIALIZING IT--health care for everyone!!!! Retirement and enough income for EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CJ From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 16 21:38:01 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:38:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Up and out of poverty, now Message-ID: <213992.616.qm@web180114.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> > The Marxist reform solution for getting > us out of crisis depression is up and out > of poverty ,now ! Unrestrict the > consumption of the masses ! Careful CB, Republicans and Democrats will think you have a type of Socialist Tourette's syndrome. But wait, I feel a few of my own ejaculatory exhortations coming on: Out of Iraq and Afghanistan now--and APOLOGIZE! Make health care affordable for everyone by SOCIALIZING IT--health care for everyone!!!! Retirement and enough income for EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CJ ^^^^^^^^^ CB: Actually, it's a shout out to Waistline. Up and out of poverty is an old slogan of Welfare Rights Organization http://www.mwro.org/ From jannuzi at gmail.com Mon Feb 16 23:12:51 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:12:51 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Up and out of poverty, now In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >>CB: Actually, it's a shout out to Waistline. Up and out of poverty is an old slogan of Welfare Rights Organization http://www.mwro.org/<< Interesting. Are they Marxist? Do they include Marxists? CJ -- Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ We are Feral Cats http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/ From jannuzi at gmail.com Mon Feb 16 23:16:39 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:16:39 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Alain Badiou Message-ID: >>[Alain Badiou (born 17 January 1937 in Rabat, Morocco) is a prominent French philosopher, formerly chair of philosophy at the ?cole Normale Sup?rieure (ENS). Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy. Particularly through a creative appropriation of set theory from his early interest in mathematics, Badiou seeks to recover the concepts of being, truth and the subject in a way that is neither postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity.<< Isn't it interesting just how the French colonial experience has produced so many leading French intellectuals, writers, academics? CJ From farmelantj at juno.com Tue Feb 17 05:32:04 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:32:04 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Alain Badiou Message-ID: <20090217.073204.17546.0@webmail05.vgs.untd.com> -- CeJ wrote: "Isn't it interesting just how the French colonial experience has produced so many leading French intellectuals, writers, academics?" Do you mean like Camus? Althusser? Derrida? Jim Farmelant ____________________________________________________________ Click to get kitchen cabinets at affordable prices. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/PnY6rw2eZNnswusAojciGHqO5GlWB7mZHjarYioTvnrCzHfRZZJWh/ From brandelune at gmail.com Tue Feb 17 05:41:57 2009 From: brandelune at gmail.com (JC Helary) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:41:57 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Alain Badiou In-Reply-To: <20090217.073204.17546.0@webmail05.vgs.untd.com> References: <20090217.073204.17546.0@webmail05.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: <56FCB870-E1C2-4B6B-BB86-9389821025EA@gmail.com> On mardi 17 f?vr. 09, at 21:32, farmelantj at juno.com wrote: > -- CeJ wrote: > > "Isn't it interesting just how the French colonial experience has > produced so many leading French intellectuals, writers, academics?" > > Do you mean like Camus? Althusser? Derrida? Bourdieu. Jean-Christophe Helary From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Tue Feb 17 05:41:31 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:41:31 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Alain Badiou In-Reply-To: <20090217.073204.17546.0@webmail05.vgs.untd.com> References: <20090217.073204.17546.0@webmail05.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: And Bourdieu, who is far more interesting than wankers like Derrida. At 07:32 AM 2/17/2009, farmelantj at juno.com wrote: >-- CeJ wrote: > >"Isn't it interesting just how the French colonial experience has >produced so many leading French intellectuals, writers, academics?" > >Do you mean like Camus? Althusser? Derrida? > >Jim Farmelant From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Tue Feb 17 18:18:11 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:18:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Scary Message-ID: <178829.60448.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> This is really creepy. CB Comments in Detroit Free Press for article "Obama signs stimulus: 'Today does mark the beginning of the end'" this bill were SOOOOOO important, SOOOO necessary to have it passed NOW, what the hell caused obama to wait four days to sign it? Oh, I get it, yesterday being presidents day and a holliday, it wasn't a good photo op, was it? 02/17/2009 4:55:10 a.m. EDTIf this bill were SOOOOOO important, SOOOO necessary to have it passed NOW, what the hell caused obama to wait four days to sign it?
Oh, I get it, yesterday being presidents day and a holliday, it wasn't a good photo op, was it? Putzy Recommend(11) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse michaelc wrote: "The flailing economy continues to dominate Obama?s time." Yeah, thats why he took the weekend off to fly to Chicago to spend time going out, and getting a haircut. 02/17/2009 6:41:54 a.m. EDT"The flailing economy continues to dominate Obama?s time."

Yeah, thats why he took the weekend off to fly to Chicago to spend time going out, and getting a haircut.
michaelc Recommend(10) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse scarepolitics wrote: We could be 3 days into economic recovery right now......ha 02/17/2009 6:50:26 a.m. EDTWe could be 3 days into economic recovery right now......ha scarepolitics Recommend(7) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse FreeFromTyranny wrote: "and be among people who may benefit from the huge government intervention" MAY BENEFIT? Glad it's a shot in the dark whether or not "the people" just might (or might not) benefit from the 787 billion dollar disaster. Can't wait for the future, it may be "so bright, I gotta wear shades". 02/17/2009 6:52:48 a.m. EDT"and be among people who may benefit from the huge government intervention"

MAY BENEFIT? Glad it's a shot in the dark whether or not "the people" just might (or might not) benefit from the 787 billion dollar disaster. Can't wait for the future, it may be "so bright, I gotta wear shades". FreeFromTyranny Recommend(7) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse Uniondues wrote: "Capping the biggest victory of his month-old administration, Obama will sign the economic legislation today in Denver." Interesting that the press says this is an Obama "victory" - well I want an American Victory..... 02/17/2009 6:55:42 a.m. EDT"Capping the biggest victory of his month-old administration, Obama will sign the economic legislation today in Denver."

Interesting that the press says this is an Obama "victory" - well I want an American Victory.....
Uniondues Recommend(15) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse frmrDetroiter wrote: No matter how much money we spend, I don't see how any stimulus measures can work long-term until we take steps to restore our domestic manufacturing base. "Green jobs"? Gimme a break. For our economy's and national security's sake, we must get back to making our own goods. 02/17/2009 7:05:09 a.m. EDTNo matter how much money we spend, I don't see how any stimulus measures can work long-term until we take steps to restore our domestic manufacturing base.
"Green jobs"? Gimme a break. For our economy's and national security's sake, we must get back to making our own goods. frmrDetroiter Recommend(12) New post Reply to this Post The only real "stimulus" items in this stimulus bill are the parts that encourage business investment: the extension of bonus depreciation and expensing of equipment purchases. Some of the infrastructure spending items are good, such as roads and highways. The rest is pure social pork no matter how Obama or the media spins it. 02/17/2009 7:12:39 a.m. EDTThe only real "stimulus" items in this stimulus bill are the parts that encourage business investment: the extension of bonus depreciation and expensing of equipment purchases. Some of the infrastructure spending items are good, such as roads and highways. The rest is pure social pork no matter how Obama or the media spins it. Bman69 Recommend(8) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse SPDDD wrote: Funny how the AP brings up the deficit after the bill has been approved, I am so glad we have a press like they did in the USSR! It just feels so good to have a press that leaves out certain facts until it is too late. Have a good day Comrade! 02/17/2009 7:14:10 a.m. EDTFunny how the AP brings up the deficit after the bill has been approved, I am so glad we have a press like they did in the USSR! It just feels so good to have a press that leaves out certain facts until it is too late. Have a good day Comrade! SPDDD Recommend(12) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse luv-mich_hateDet wrote: What a joke. The sky is falling and we have to pass this today or the earth will end. Nobody gets to read it, it's that important. Then the Messiah and his horse toothed wife go off to Chicago for a Holiday weekend. Where is their urgency on his part. We all know that they pushed this bill through feeding on the ignorance of the sheep that voted for Obama in the first place. Just an opportunity to expand governments hold on the common people with further entitlements and government programs. This will ensure goverment dependency for generations to come. And this is all in the name of Stimulus. Don't insult my intelligence If you voted for this socialist you are as dumb as I the rest of his drones. 02/17/2009 7:15:13 a.m. EDTWhat a joke. The sky is falling and we have to pass this today or the earth will end. Nobody gets to read it, it's that important. Then the Messiah and his horse toothed wife go off to Chicago for a Holiday weekend. Where is their urgency on his part.

We all know that they pushed this bill through feeding on the ignorance of the sheep that voted for Obama in the first place. Just an opportunity to expand governments hold on the common people with further entitlements and government programs. This will ensure goverment dependency for generations to come. And this is all in the name of Stimulus. Don't insult my intelligence

If you voted for this socialist you are as dumb as I the rest of his drones. luv-mich_hateDet Recommend(16) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse scarepolitics wrote: Obama's scare politics have created a depression we won't get out of for 5 years....This is what happened when you stick it to the rich guy.... He scared the wealthy by promising to spread their wealth. He scared the middle class by saying that It will get worse before it gets better.... And the money for nothing crowd will never be happy because they always want more.... We will see how trickle up works., because nothing is trickling down right now. How's it feel? 02/17/2009 7:16:43 a.m. EDTObama's scare politics have created a depression we won't get out of for 5 years....This is what happened when you stick it to the rich guy....
He scared the wealthy by promising to spread their wealth.
He scared the middle class by saying that It will get worse before it gets better....
And the money for nothing crowd will never be happy because they always want more....
We will see how trickle up works., because nothing is trickling down right now. How's it feel? scarepolitics Recommend(9) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse Bman69 wrote: Replying to luv-mich_hateDet: ...Then the Messiah and his horse toothed wife... Thanks for making me spit out my coffee on my computer screen! ha ha! 02/17/2009 7:19:39 a.m. EDT

Replying to luv-mich_hateDet:

...Then the Messiah and his horse toothed wife...


Thanks for making me spit out my coffee on my computer screen! ha ha!
Bman69 Recommend(5) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse funshinestate wrote: $787 BILLION spent and very few jobs in the private sector will be created. Billions of dollars in PORK.By waiting for a photo op. Barack Hussein Obama jr. will fly from Washington D.C. to Denver Co. and will burn 10 Thousand gallons of jet fuel to do so. This extravagance is so Barry,now he can sign the Porkulus bill at a factory that makes solar panels,just so everyone knows how "green" he is. How hypocritical! Just to put that amount of fuel into perspective an averages American does not burn that amount in THIRTY YEARS! By signing this pork laden monstrosity against the advice and wishes of the majority of economists,and the Congressional Budget Office,Barry now OWNS the economy.Hang on,he and the democrats WILL be back,just watch! 02/17/2009 7:23:50 a.m. EDT The signing of the end to America. 02/17/2009 7:48:21 a.m. EDTThe signing of the end to America. newbalt09 Recommend(10) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse newbalt09 wrote: This is "Financial Terrorism" by the Goverment. We will suffer for decades to come..... 02/17/2009 7:51:59 a.m. EDTThis is "Financial Terrorism" by the Goverment. We will suffer for decades to come..... newbalt09 Recommend(13) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse worksforaliving wrote: As a working class, tax-paying American I am thrilled at the $4.00 per week I will see added to my paycheck. Now if gas, food, water, and electric stay the same I will rush right out and get the six-pack of coke. Whoppeeeeee! Happy Days Are Here Again. 02/17/2009 7:56:39 a.m. EDTAs a working class, tax-paying American I am thrilled at the $4.00 per week I will see added to my paycheck. Now if gas, food, water, and electric stay the same I will rush right out and get the six-pack of coke. Whoppeeeeee! Happy Days Are Here Again. worksforaliving Recommend(9) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse worksforaliving wrote: Can someone answer me this Why is Obama still running for election? He has the job. 02/17/2009 8:11:09 a.m. EDTCan someone answer me this Why is Obama still running for election? He has the job. worksforaliving Recommend(9) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse denbyite wrote: Obama is flying out to Denver today in the mega million dollar Air Force One Private Jet using thousands of gallons of Jet fuel so he can sign this porkulus bill in front of a museum to politicize his "Green" agenda. Congress harshely criticized the big thre CEO's for flying private jets to washington but says nothing about this needless taxpayer expenditure. First of all, if this bill was so urgent last week, Why didn't he sign it at that time?? Thats because the urgency was created only to get quick passage by the congress puppets before anyone could even read the bill. Once it was approved by Congress he could then sit back and arrange for his staged signing with the wind mills spinning in the background. Improving our economy is indeed urgent but Obama's "Denver Concert" seems to indicate otherwise. Can anyone disagree or respond without using the words "Bush" or "republicans" ? 02/17/2009 8:16:41 a.m. EDTObama is flying out to Denver today in the mega million dollar Air Force One Private Jet using thousands of gallons of Jet fuel so he can sign this porkulus bill in front of a museum to politicize his "Green" agenda. Congress harshely criticized the big thre CEO's for flying private jets to washington but says nothing about this needless taxpayer expenditure. First of all, if this bill was so urgent last week, Why didn't he sign it at that time?? Thats because the urgency was created only to get quick passage by the congress puppets before anyone could even read the bill. Once it was approved by Congress he could then sit back and arrange for his staged signing with the wind mills spinning in the background. Improving our economy is indeed urgent but Obama's "Denver Concert" seems to indicate otherwise. Can anyone disagree or respond without using the words "Bush" or "republicans" ? denbyite Recommend(10) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse scarepolitics wrote: Replying to worksforaliving: Can someone answer me this Why is Obama still running for election? He has the job. He's starting his 2012 campaign...Everything Democrats say and do is aimed at the next election...not the people..... 02/17/2009 8:17:58 a.m. EDT

Replying to worksforaliving:

Can someone answer me this Why is Obama still running for election? He has the job.



He's starting his 2012 campaign...Everything Democrats say and do is aimed at the next election...not the people..... scarepolitics Recommend(9) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse scarepolitics wrote: Where are all the kool aid drinkers? Getting in line for their free handouts......? 02/17/2009 8:20:38 a.m. EDTWhere are all the kool aid drinkers?
Getting in line for their free handouts......? scarepolitics Recommend(9) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse isay2 wrote: And where is all this money comming from??? We have a trillion dollar national debt and yet we are now giving the compnaies who put us in this debt more money??? Why not just give each american citizen $200,000 to pay off their mrtgages then that would stimulate the economy! NOt guiving these fat greedy blood sucking companies the money!! Oh Yeah why doesn't President Obama explain why the Nevada Senator was able to get 8 Billion dollars for a high speed train from LA toLas Vegas, and yes that was earmarked not a loan!!! Government makes me sick! And for all you Democrats don't think for a minute that you won't be payinghigher taxes someone has to pay for this stimulus package!!! 02/17/2009 8:26:42 a.m. EDTAnd where is all this money comming from??? We have a trillion dollar national debt and yet we are now giving the compnaies who put us in this debt more money??? Why not just give each american citizen $200,000 to pay off their mrtgages then that would stimulate the economy! NOt guiving these fat greedy blood sucking companies the money!! Oh Yeah why doesn't President Obama explain why the Nevada Senator was able to get 8 Billion dollars for a high speed train from LA toLas Vegas, and yes that was earmarked not a loan!!! Government makes me sick! And for all you Democrats don't think for a minute that you won't be payinghigher taxes someone has to pay for this stimulus package!!! isay2 Recommend(9) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse scarepolitics wrote: And on Wednesday in Arizona, Obama will unveil another part of his economic recovery effort -- a plan to help millions of homeowners fend off foreclosure. Mark my words when he helps the losers and idiots that signed these adjustable rate loans that they couldn't afford but fails to help the responsable people that pay their bills and move into affordable housing when they lose their jobs. There will be outrage.......punish the winners by helping the losers. 02/17/2009 8:27:56 a.m. EDTAnd on Wednesday in Arizona, Obama will unveil another part of his economic recovery effort -- a plan to help millions of homeowners fend off foreclosure.

Mark my words when he helps the losers and idiots that signed these adjustable rate loans that they couldn't afford but fails to help the responsable people that pay their bills and move into affordable housing when they lose their jobs.
There will be outrage.......punish the winners by helping the losers. scarepolitics Recommend(9) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse denbyite wrote: Replying to worksforaliving: As a working class, tax-paying American I am thrilled at the $4.00 per week I will see added to my paycheck. Now if gas, food, water, and electric stay the same I will rush right out and get the six-pack of coke. Whoppeeeeee! Happy Days Are Here Again. Congress's porkulus package is extracting about $5000 from every taxpayer in the US so that we can all get $4.00 per week to stimulate the economy. Geez not a single liberal post on what a great move this is by the democrats. Could it be they're finally realizing what a travesty this bill is, that it was nothing but one huge ear-mark designed to pay back the party faithful? What a disgrace. 02/17/2009 8:30:25 a.m. EDTGeez not a single liberal post on what a great move this is by the democrats. Could it be they're finally realizing what a travesty this bill is, that it was nothing but one huge ear-mark designed to pay back the party faithful? What a disgrace. StHelen Recommend(4) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse No2Unions wrote: 2010 - The year of the VAT.....I can't wait. 02/17/2009 8:31:29 a.m. EDT2010 - The year of the VAT.....I can't wait. No2Unions Recommend(4) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse Bman69 wrote: Replying to scarepolitics: And on Wednesday in Arizona, Obama will unveil another part of his economic recovery effort -- a plan to help millions of homeowners fend off foreclosure. Mark my words when he helps the losers and idiots that signed these adjustable rate loans that they couldn't afford but fails to help the responsable people that pay their bills and move into affordable housing when they lose their jobs. There will be outrage.......punish the winners by helping the losers. What do you mean "when he helps..." It started with Bush making debt forgiveness to homeowners a nontaxable event in 2007. And the bank bailout helped the idiot greedy banks who gave out these risky loans. Seems like either the really rich or really poor and stupid have gotten bailouts. Apparently they want to reward fiscally irresponsible behavior. Those of us who live within our means get nothing out of this stimulus. 02/17/2009 8:45:15 a.m. EDT

Replying to scarepolitics:

And on Wednesday in Arizona, Obama will unveil another part of his economic recovery effort -- a plan to help millions of homeowners fend off foreclosure.

Mark my words when he helps the losers and idiots that signed these adjustable rate loans that they couldn't afford but fails to help the responsable people that pay their bills and move into affordable housing when they lose their jobs.
There will be outrage.......punish the winners by helping the losers.


What do you mean "when he helps..." It started with Bush making debt forgiveness to homeowners a nontaxable event in 2007. And the bank bailout helped the idiot greedy banks who gave out these risky loans. Seems like either the really rich or really poor and stupid have gotten bailouts. Apparently they want to reward fiscally irresponsible behavior. Those of us who live within our means get nothing out of this stimulus. Bman69 Recommend(4) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse HandymanSC wrote: I find it funny, that the DEMOCRATS said that the people did not inderstand what a ARM is, and didnt read the fine print, that NONE even bothered to read this SPENDING BILL, and yet voted for it. Myself I hope many people stayed home today to see what they can get for free, 02/17/2009 8:45:51 a.m. EDTI find it funny, that the DEMOCRATS said that the people did not inderstand what a ARM is, and didnt read the fine print, that NONE even bothered to read this SPENDING BILL, and yet voted for it. Myself I hope many people stayed home today to see what they can get for free, HandymanSC Recommend(8) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse jimbobha wrote: Hey Obama, when you gives as all free healthcare, how about including home owners and car insurance. US will soon be the worlds biggest welfare state. 02/17/2009 8:47:32 a.m. EDTHey Obama, when you gives as all free healthcare, how about including home owners and car insurance. US will soon be the worlds biggest welfare state. jimbobha Recommend(5) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse wink59 wrote: My question is, if this was so important that no one even had time to read it before signing it, why did Obama then wait 4 days to sign it? Shouldn't it have been signed immediately? If he could wait 4 days, why couldn't he let everyone have 4 more days to try and actually ready the thing? 02/17/2009 8:47:51 a.m. EDTMy question is, if this was so important that no one even had time to read it before signing it, why did Obama then wait 4 days to sign it? Shouldn't it have been signed immediately? If he could wait 4 days, why couldn't he let everyone have 4 more days to try and actually ready the thing? wink59 Recommend(9) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse HandymanSC wrote: They have already started saying that they are going to lend to people who do NOT HAVE to show proff of income, and Low income part time workers. WE be BACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK 02/17/2009 8:48:21 a.m. EDTThey have already started saying that they are going to lend to people who do NOT HAVE to show proff of income, and Low income part time workers. WE be BACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK HandymanSC Recommend(4) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse StHelen wrote: I can't wait for that extra $8 a week to show up. As a smoker who was taxed out of purchasing regular cigarettes and switched to "roll-your-own " to save money I'm especially thankful- for now if I save that $8 for three weeks I can offset the $23 per pound tax increase on tobacco they just passed. What a relief! It's just a matter of time before this fixes everything!! I'm getting short on kool-aide- anyone have any to spare? 02/17/2009 8:49:45 a.m. EDTI can't wait for that extra $8 a week to show up. As a smoker who was taxed out of purchasing regular cigarettes and switched to "roll-your-own " to save money I'm especially thankful- for now if I save that $8 for three weeks I can offset the $23 per pound tax increase on tobacco they just passed. What a relief! It's just a matter of time before this fixes everything!! I'm getting short on kool-aide- anyone have any to spare? StHelen Recommend(2) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse wonders wrote: Hasn't anybody wondered what the huge rush was for Congress to approve this massive spending bill. They do it so fast that nobody reads the darn thing. And then President Obama waits for four days to sign it. Why weren't the American people given those four days to examine the bill (along with the Congressmen who voted on it). If they liked it, then it could have been approved and signed the same day (today) by President Obama. This entire thing is a lie perpectuated by Obama to ram a bill that is nothing more than 25 years of Democratic wish lists and which will do nothing for ordinary Americans. So much for a new and open Administration. This guy makes Bush look sober and prudent in terms of spending. 02/17/2009 8:53:04 a.m. EDTHasn't anybody wondered what the huge rush was for Congress to approve this massive spending bill. They do it so fast that nobody reads the darn thing. And then President Obama waits for four days to sign it. Why weren't the American people given those four days to examine the bill (along with the Congressmen who voted on it). If they liked it, then it could have been approved and signed the same day (today) by President Obama. This entire thing is a lie perpectuated by Obama to ram a bill that is nothing more than 25 years of Democratic wish lists and which will do nothing for ordinary Americans. So much for a new and open Administration. This guy makes Bush look sober and prudent in terms of spending. wonders Recommend(8) New post Replying to StHelen: No, they do not realize, they never took time to review Obama's policies... they just voted.. Geez not a single liberal post on what a great move this is by the democrats. Could it be they're finally realizing what a travesty this bill is, that it was nothing but one huge ear-mark designed to pay back the party faithful? What a disgrace. 02/17/2009 8:53:06 a.m. EDT

Replying to StHelen:

No, they do not realize, they never took time to review Obama's policies... they just voted..

Geez not a single liberal post on what a great move this is by the democrats. Could it be they're finally realizing what a travesty this bill is, that it was nothing but one huge ear-mark designed to pay back the party faithful? What a disgrace.

newbalt09 Recommend(6) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse Nooitgedagt wrote: This reminds me of a great history book I read about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. 02/17/2009 8:59:22 a.m. EDTThis reminds me of a great history book I read about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Nooitgedagt Recommend(8) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse wink59 wrote: Why are none of the newspapers, news channels reporting on this kind of thing? How can they all be on board with no questions? If the old administration would have asked for such a thing, you can bet it would have been totally torn to shreds and examined. I think we need that same mind set here... 02/17/2009 9:06:29 a.m. EDTWhy are none of the newspapers, news channels reporting on this kind of thing? How can they all be on board with no questions? If the old administration would have asked for such a thing, you can bet it would have been totally torn to shreds and examined. I think we need that same mind set here... wink59 Recommend(6) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse DTownMark wrote: Hope brought him into the White House, fearmongering will keep him there. 02/17/2009 9:08:20 a.m. EDTHope brought him into the White House, fearmongering will keep him there.

DTownMark Recommend(9) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse jkru55 wrote: The Stimulus won't work because it's top heavy with tax breaks for the wealthy and short on infrastructure. Those crybaby Republicans pushed for all those changes and then didn't vote on the bill. Those gutless Democrats caved in. It was this "trickle down " philosophy that the Republicans were finally able to pull off and now everyone but the Koolaide guzzlers realizes failed. Now the same Republicans are adding their economic "expertise" and those stupid Dems are actually adding it. Have all the jobless people calculated how much you're getting back?Tax breaks won't pull the economy out. Jobs will. Good paying jobs. 02/17/2009 9:12:46 a.m. EDTThe Stimulus won't work because it's top heavy with tax breaks for the wealthy and short on infrastructure. Those crybaby Republicans pushed for all those changes and then didn't vote on the bill. Those gutless Democrats caved in. It was this "trickle down " philosophy that the Republicans were finally able to pull off and now everyone but the Koolaide guzzlers realizes failed. Now the same Republicans are adding their economic "expertise" and those stupid Dems are actually adding it. Have all the jobless people calculated how much you're getting back?Tax breaks won't pull the economy out. Jobs will. Good paying jobs. jkru55 Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse PCloadletter wrote: Replying to jkru55: The Stimulus won't work because it's top heavy with tax breaks for the wealthy and short on infrastructure. Those crybaby Republicans pushed for all those changes and then didn't vote on the bill. Those gutless Democrats caved in. It was this "trickle down " philosophy that the Republicans were finally able to pull off and now everyone but the Koolaide guzzlers realizes failed. Now the same Republicans are adding their economic "expertise" and those stupid Dems are actually adding it. Have all the jobless people calculated how much you're getting back?Tax breaks won't pull the economy out. Jobs will. Good paying jobs. When has the government ever created self sustaining (the kind not permanently funded by the tax payer) "good paying" jobs? How is this travesty of a bill a Republican thing??? Count them, there were THREE that had any input on this. The Democrats DON'T NEED REPUBLICANS... If they don't realize that, they are too stupid to be in charge... 02/17/2009 9:29:07 a.m. EDT

Replying to jkru55:

The Stimulus won't work because it's top heavy with tax breaks for the wealthy and short on infrastructure. Those crybaby Republicans pushed for all those changes and then didn't vote on the bill. Those gutless Democrats caved in. It was this "trickle down " philosophy that the Republicans were finally able to pull off and now everyone but the Koolaide guzzlers realizes failed. Now the same Republicans are adding their economic "expertise" and those stupid Dems are actually adding it. Have all the jobless people calculated how much you're getting back?Tax breaks won't pull the economy out. Jobs will. Good paying jobs.


When has the government ever created self sustaining (the kind not permanently funded by the tax payer) "good paying" jobs?


How is this travesty of a bill a Republican thing??? Count them, there were THREE that had any input on this. The Democrats DON'T NEED REPUBLICANS... If they don't realize that, they are too stupid to be in charge...
PCloadletter Recommend(3) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse scarepolitics wrote: Replying to Bman69: Replying to scarepolitics: A." It started with Bush making debt forgiveness to homeowners a nontaxable event in 2007. And the bank bailout helped the idiot greedy banks who gave out these risky loans. Seems like either the really rich or really poor and stupid have gotten bailouts. Apparently they want to reward fiscally irresponsible behavior. Those of us who live within our means get nothing out of this stimulus. Clinton is part of the problem with the Community Redevelopment Act. His economic team was threatening the banks if they didn't make these worthless loans. The Bush administration tried,11 times to tighten regulation on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and was beat down by the Democrats in Congress at every turn 02/17/2009 9:35:13 a.m. EDT

Replying to Bman69:

Replying to scarepolitics:

A." It started with Bush making debt forgiveness to homeowners a nontaxable event in 2007. And the bank bailout helped the idiot greedy banks who gave out these risky loans. Seems like either the really rich or really poor and stupid have gotten bailouts. Apparently they want to reward fiscally irresponsible behavior. Those of us who live within our means get nothing out of this stimulus.


Clinton is part of the problem with the Community Redevelopment Act. His economic team was threatening the banks if they didn't make these worthless loans. The Bush administration tried,11 times to tighten regulation on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and was beat down by the Democrats in Congress at every turn
scarepolitics Recommend(8) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse rosado wrote: The worst part about this whole deal is that the people like myself who are stilling working at a job have got nothing, zero, except an extra 8 bucks a week. They gave unemployment checks 25 bucks extra! How does this make sense? I'm sorry but I refuse to give this guy a chance because he is flat out Liar, He flat out lied to get elected and he flat lies in front of the camera when he says this bill will create or save 3.4 million jobs. WAFJ! 02/17/2009 10:19:01 a.m. EDT O'Bama just wanted to take another plane ride. He'll sign anything that President Pelosi hands him. 02/17/2009 10:20:34 a.m. EDTO'Bama just wanted to take another plane ride. He'll sign anything that President Pelosi hands him. trustedsource Recommend(6) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse averagejoe100 wrote: Please stop whinning, the bill passed, its over. Find something else to gripe about will you!!!! PS. If you really feel so bad about this bill why don't you give the gov back the stimulus refund and refuse to take any of the new jobs that will be created. Come on stand by your principles!!!! Hypocrits!!!! 02/17/2009 10:33:25 a.m. EDTPlease stop whinning, the bill passed, its over. Find something else to gripe about will you!!!! PS. If you really feel so bad about this bill why don't you give the gov back the stimulus refund and refuse to take any of the new jobs that will be created. Come on stand by your principles!!!! Hypocrits!!!! averagejoe100 Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse michaelc wrote: Replying to averagejoe100: Please stop whinning, the bill passed, its over. Find something else to gripe about will you!!!! PS. If you really feel so bad about this bill why don't you give the gov back the stimulus refund and refuse to take any of the new jobs that will be created. Come on stand by your principles!!!! Hypocrits!!!! That won't be hard. Since you are still liable for state, city, local, taxes on that whopping 400-800 tax credit. You may actually be paying more per year in taxes than the tax cut is worth if it puts you into the next bracket. As for jobs, unless they are government, there won't be any. 02/17/2009 10:42:17 a.m. EDT

Replying to averagejoe100:

Please stop whinning, the bill passed, its over. Find something else to gripe about will you!!!! PS. If you really feel so bad about this bill why don't you give the gov back the stimulus refund and refuse to take any of the new jobs that will be created. Come on stand by your principles!!!! Hypocrits!!!!

That won't be hard. Since you are still liable for state, city, local, taxes on that whopping 400-800 tax credit. You may actually be paying more per year in taxes than the tax cut is worth if it puts you into the next bracket. As for jobs, unless they are government, there won't be any. michaelc Recommend(1) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse worksforaliving wrote: Replying to averagejoe100: Fist it is not a stimulus refund it is a credit. Second new jobs are you going to work doing bridge repair, road repair? If you are an ex GM Design Engineer I don't think you will work for $12 an hour. Please stop whinning, the bill passed, its over. Find something else to gripe about will you!!!! PS. If you really feel so bad about this bill why don't you give the gov back the stimulus refund and refuse to take any of the new jobs that will be created. Come on stand by your principles!!!! Hypocrits!!!! 02/17/2009 10:43:43 a.m. EDT

Replying to averagejoe100:

Fist it is not a stimulus refund it is a credit. Second new jobs are you going to work doing bridge repair, road repair? If you are an ex GM Design Engineer I don't think you will work for $12 an hour.
Please stop whinning, the bill passed, its over. Find something else to gripe about will you!!!! PS. If you really feel so bad about this bill why don't you give the gov back the stimulus refund and refuse to take any of the new jobs that will be created. Come on stand by your principles!!!! Hypocrits!!!!

worksforaliving Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse PCloadletter wrote: Replying to averagejoe100: Please stop whinning, the bill passed, its over. Find something else to gripe about will you!!!! PS. If you really feel so bad about this bill why don't you give the gov back the stimulus refund and refuse to take any of the new jobs that will be created. Come on stand by your principles!!!! Hypocrits!!!! Sorry, we all have to pay for. I guarantee most of us are paying FAR more into this than I'll ever see in a "tax refund" or any kind of return on this investment. I'd happily give it back, it meant the government wouldn't borrow the money in the first place. Yup, it passed. It's over and done with... other than the long term damage it will do. Hey, I hope I'm wrong.. but a basic grasp of mathematics and economics doesn't give me much "HOPE" for this plan. 02/17/2009 10:46:31 a.m. EDT

Replying to averagejoe100:

Please stop whinning, the bill passed, its over. Find something else to gripe about will you!!!! PS. If you really feel so bad about this bill why don't you give the gov back the stimulus refund and refuse to take any of the new jobs that will be created. Come on stand by your principles!!!! Hypocrits!!!!



Sorry, we all have to pay for. I guarantee most of us are paying FAR more into this than I'll ever see in a "tax refund" or any kind of return on this investment. I'd happily give it back, it meant the government wouldn't borrow the money in the first place.

Yup, it passed. It's over and done with... other than the long term damage it will do. Hey, I hope I'm wrong.. but a basic grasp of mathematics and economics doesn't give me much "HOPE" for this plan. PCloadletter Recommend(1) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse averagejoe100 wrote: Sorry about your situation. We might want to address the 1.5 million foreign high tech workers etc that Bush and Co allowed into this country. Obama intends to penalize employers who offshore their work, he should also have congress drastically reduce the # of H1B visas etc that were authorized under the Bush regime. If your ox is now being gored than perhaps the time to change parties is at hand. 02/17/2009 10:50:06 a.m. EDTSorry about your situation. We might want to address the 1.5 million foreign high tech workers etc that Bush and Co allowed into this country. Obama intends to penalize employers who offshore their work, he should also have congress drastically reduce the # of H1B visas etc that were authorized under the Bush regime. If your ox is now being gored than perhaps the time to change parties is at hand. averagejoe100 Recommend New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse scarepolitics wrote: Obama and the dems own the economy now.....The stocks are down 255.00 Good job Obama keep talking down the economy. Soon it will be martial law when the kool aid drinkers wake up and realize they've been had, and take to the streets. No wonder gun sales are through the roof... See ya, I'm on my way to the gun store... 02/17/2009 10:51:13 a.m. EDTObama and the dems own the economy now.....The stocks are down 255.00
Good job Obama keep talking down the economy. Soon it will be martial law when the kool aid drinkers wake up and realize they've been had, and take to the streets.

No wonder gun sales are through the roof...
See ya, I'm on my way to the gun store... scarepolitics Recommend(5) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse MichiganJRay wrote: Replying to rosado: The worst part about this whole deal is that the people like myself who are stilling working at a job have got nothing, zero, except an extra 8 bucks a week. They gave unemployment checks 25 bucks extra! How does this make sense? I'm sorry but I refuse to give this guy a chance because he is flat out Liar, He flat out lied to get elected and he flat lies in front of the camera when he says this bill will create or save 3.4 million jobs. WAFJ! I'm not complainin and I am NOT getting ANYTHING more on my SS or pension checks. But I pay for your excessive use of credit when my charge card credit goes up. Stop being so "me" oriented and look at the overall picture. He never said this package would affect everyone equally and you are already down playing it when all of the details haven't even been released yet. If I got $8 more a week, that's $38.75 a month (4-1/3 weks) and I will take that - send me yours. The would pay another medication or two plus a restaurant meal. 02/17/2009 10:51:32 a.m. EDT

Replying to rosado:

The worst part about this whole deal is that the people like myself who are stilling working at a job have got nothing, zero, except an extra 8 bucks a week. They gave unemployment checks 25 bucks extra! How does this make sense? I'm sorry but I refuse to give this guy a chance because he is flat out Liar, He flat out lied to get elected and he flat lies in front of the camera when he says this bill will create or save 3.4 million jobs. WAFJ!


I'm not complainin and I am NOT getting ANYTHING more on my SS or pension checks. But I pay for your excessive use of credit when my charge card credit goes up. Stop being so "me" oriented and look at the overall picture. He never said this package would affect everyone equally and you are already down playing it when all of the details haven't even been released yet. If I got $8 more a week, that's $38.75 a month (4-1/3 weks) and I will take that - send me yours. The would pay another medication or two plus a restaurant meal. MichiganJRay Recommend(1) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse michaelc wrote: Replying to averagejoe100: Sorry about your situation. We might want to address the 1.5 million foreign high tech workers etc that Bush and Co allowed into this country. Obama intends to penalize employers who offshore their work, he should also have congress drastically reduce the # of H1B visas etc that were authorized under the Bush regime. If your ox is now being gored than perhaps the time to change parties is at hand. Really? If they were that concerned about, wouldn't it have been easy to slip into this bill? 02/17/2009 10:55:57 a.m. EDT

Replying to averagejoe100:

Sorry about your situation. We might want to address the 1.5 million foreign high tech workers etc that Bush and Co allowed into this country. Obama intends to penalize employers who offshore their work, he should also have congress drastically reduce the # of H1B visas etc that were authorized under the Bush regime. If your ox is now being gored than perhaps the time to change parties is at hand.

Really? If they were that concerned about, wouldn't it have been easy to slip into this bill? michaelc Recommend(3) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse howiedeaniac wrote: Replying to scarepolitics: Obama and the dems own the economy now.....The stocks are down 255.00 Good job Obama keep talking down the economy. Soon it will be martial law when the kool aid drinkers wake up and realize they've been had, and take to the streets. No wonder gun sales are through the roof... See ya, I'm on my way to the gun store... You'd better hurry, because hidden within the bowels of this "stimulus" bill is a nice tax on ammo. 02/17/2009 10:57:59 a.m. EDT

Replying to scarepolitics:

Obama and the dems own the economy now.....The stocks are down 255.00
Good job Obama keep talking down the economy. Soon it will be martial law when the kool aid drinkers wake up and realize they've been had, and take to the streets.

No wonder gun sales are through the roof...
See ya, I'm on my way to the gun store...

You'd better hurry, because hidden within the bowels of this "stimulus" bill is a nice tax on ammo. howiedeaniac Recommend(3) New post Reply to this Post Report Abuse From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Feb 18 07:53:20 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 06:53:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Guatemala apologizes to Cuba for Bay of Pigs Message-ID: <570501.80816.qm@web180110.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Fox 40 KTXL TV/DT Sacramento Guatemala apologizes to Cuba for Bay of Pigs By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ HAVANA (AP) ? Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom apologized to Cuba on Tuesday for his country's having allowed the CIA to train exiles in the Central American country for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. "Today I want to ask Cuba's forgiveness for having offered our country, our territory, to prepare an invasion of Cuba," Colom said during a speech at the University of Havana. "It wasn't us, but it was our territory." He added that he wished to apologize "as president and head of state, and as commander in chief of the Guatemalan army." About 1,500 Cuban exiles trained under CIA guidance in Guatemala before invading the island beginning April 17, 1961, in an unsuccessful bid to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist government. The invasion ended after less than three days, with about 100 invaders killed and more than 1,000 captured by Cuban forces. Colom, whose government is considered center-leftist, said he was asking Cuba's forgiveness as "a sign of solidarity and that times are changing," and to "reaffirm my idea that Latin America is changing." At the height of the Cold War, the Guatemalan military government of Miguel Ramon Ydigoras Fuentes allowed the CIA to train an exile force in the rural province of Retalhuleu. Known as the 2506 Brigade and comprising mostly Miami-area Cuban exiles, the group was determined to overthrow Castro's government ? which had brought the Soviet bloc closer than ever to the continental United States by seizing power in Cuba 28 months before. The invaders landed at Playa Larga at the innermost part of the Bay of Pigs, on the southern coast of central Cuba. The fighting later moved south, to Playa Giron, where Castro's forces triumphed after less than 72 hours, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy failed to provide air support. Colom said Tuesday that "Cuba deserves its own destiny, a destiny that you all built with this revolution of 50 years." "Defend it," he said, referring to the guerrilla uprising that brought Castro to power on Jan. 1, 1959. "Defend it like you have always done." Colom's comments drew sustained applause from his Cuban audience. Like Cubans, Guatemalans harbor a deep resentment toward the United States for past violence. The CIA helped topple the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and Washington backed a series of hardline military and civilian governments during that country's 36-year civil war, in which 200,000 Guatemalans died or disappeared before peace accords were signed in December 1996. During a visit to Guatemala in March 1999, President Bill Clinton said any U.S. support given to military forces or intelligence units that engaged in "violent and widespread repression" was wrong. "And the United States must not repeat that mistake." During Colom's state visit to Havana, he awarded his country's highest honor to Castro, though it was unclear if he would meet with the ailing, 82-year-old former president, who has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006. The Guatemalan president's was the latest in a string of recent visits to Havana by regional leaders, including Panama's Martin Torrijos and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. Fidel Castro, who ceded power to his younger brother Raul about a year ago, met with two other visiting Latin American presidents, Cristina Fernandez of Argentina and Chile's Michelle Bachelet. Photographs of him with each of the presidents were later released by their respective governments, and a series of photos featuring Castro and Bachelet appeared in Cuba's communist newspaper Granma on Tuesday. Link: http://www.fox40.com/pages/landing_world_news/?Guatemala-apologizes-t... From about at thenation.com Wed Feb 18 13:44:15 2009 From: about at thenation.com (The Nation Magazine) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:44:15 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Stop the execution of Troy Davis! Message-ID: EmailNation [] Dear EmailNation Subscriber, Troy Davis has been on death row in Georgia for 18 years for the murder of a Police Officer in Savannah; a murder he maintains he did not commit. And, after 18 years, the case against him has crumbled. His execution date has been delayed 3 times because the pieces just don't add up. Now, the state of Georgia may be about to kill the wrong man. Follow the links below and join Amnesty International USA's call to urge Georgia Governor Perdue to prevent the execution of Troy Davis. All best, Peter Rothberg The Nation [] Troy Davis was convicted in 1991 for the murder of a police officer. After 18 years on death row, the state of Georgia is prepared to kill a man who may be innocent: Tell Georgia Governor Perdue to prevent the execution of Troy Davis! [] [] [] [] [] [] Dear EmailNation Subscriber, The state of Georgia seems determined to kill Troy Davis. Despite mounting evidence proving his innocence, Troy's life still hangs in the balance. Urge Georgia Governor Perdue to exercise leadership and prevent the execution of Troy Davis! While Troy Davis has sat on death row for the last 18 years, the case against him has crumbled. His execution date has been delayed 3 times because the pieces just don't add up. The state of Georgia may be about to kill the wrong man: * 7 of the 9 witnesses have recanted their testimonies * No murder weapon nor any physical evidence has been found to link Troy to the crime * And if that wasn't enough to cast a shadow of doubt: One of the remaining two witnesses has actually been implicated as the real killer [] [] [] Take Action for Troy Davis. Troy Davis remains on death row in Georgia Troy Davis was sentenced to death despite a tainted case and serious claims of innocence. Take Action Now! [] [] [] [] Pursuing the case against Troy Davis is an outrageous display of injustice. The family of police officer Mark MacPhail, whose life was tragically cut short by this crime, and the people of Georgia deserve true justice. It cannot be accomplished by executing a man with such strong claims of innocence. The story of Troy Davis is not over. You have the power to help tip the scale in favor of justice. Please take action today. Sincerely, Sue G. Vaughn Director, Death Penalty Abolition Campaign Amnesty International USA [] Donate DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. Messages sent to this email address are not read. If you have a question or comment, please use our interactive online help system. Subscribe to our RSS feeds. Copyright 2008 | Amnesty International USA | 5 Penn Plaza | New York, NY 10001 | 212.807.8400 [] You are receiving this message because you are a subscriber to EmailNation. Please do not reply to this email as it will not be answered. To reach the correct department at The Nation, Click here. The Nation, 33 Irving Pl, New York, NY 10003 From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Feb 18 18:04:05 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:04:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] In Defense of Washington and Wall Street Message-ID: <366279.72979.qm@web180110.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> In Defense of Washington and Wall Street Robert Fitch 1. The Crisis of 2007-2008 THE VERY ELDERLY ARE PRONE TO FALL. And unlike infants who also tumble frequently, each time seniors stumble, they risk a disabling or even a fatal injury. On August 9th 2007, after an unparalleled quarter century long expansion, which had been checked in the developed countries only mildly and briefly, capitalism finally tripped and lost its balance with predictable results: banks tottered, while credit and commercial paper markets writhed in paralysis. After about a month, though, notwithstanding the failure of the markets to unfreeze, the crisis was declared over. The palsied patient was deemed well enough to resume normal activity -- a diagnosis apparently confirmed when two months later, on October 9th, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached 14,164, an all time high. The March 2008 meltdown of two hedge funds belonging to Bear, Stearns suggested otherwise. A pillar of the "shadow banking system" that had emerged over the last two decades, Bear was forced into liquidation, sold to J.P. Morgan for $256 million. Scarcely more than a year earlier it was said to be worth $68.7 billion. Yet this stunning write-down barely moved Wall Street's needle. The market continued to move choppily until September 14th 2008, when Mr. FIRE (as in finance, insurance and real estate) fell again, with even more dire consequences. That Sunday, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Later in the day, Merrill, Lynch announced its liquidation. Just two days later, AIG, the world's largest insurance company, was taken over by the government. This time, Wall Street had suffered the equivalent of a broken neck. Even in the immediate aftermath of the 1929 Crash, the biggest Wall Street banks didn't fail. They continued to lend. (The wave of failures by thousands of heartland banks came later.) But in 2008, it was precisely the big banks which formed the leading vector of the collapse. Within a period of 200 days, the five biggest U.S. investment banking houses -- the institutions that since the Reagan era had given Wall Street its swagger and identity -- had either gone bankrupt, or forced to find a merger partner or re-organized themselves as bank holding companies. Whenever the spinal cord is severed at the top two vertebrae, i.e., at the neck, the greatest immediate peril is that the victim stops breathing. The September 2008 crisis was marked by increasingly desperate measures to keep big FIRE from asphyxiation. The measures taken included flooding the system with liquidity -- almost unlimited loans and loan guarantees. The Bush Administration came up with a $700 billion plan to deleverage the banks (i.e., raise their dangerously low ratio of equity to debt) by buying their bad mortgage-backed securities. And when that didn't work, passed legislation which amounted to a semi-nationalization of the remaining big banks -- the equivalent of cutting a hole in the patient's trachea. By October's end FIRE was breathing, albeit with a tube provided by the U.S. guarantee of inter bank loans. But breathing is not walking. A financial system in which banks lend only to other banks refusing to act as intermediaries to the non-financial sector-- is still non-functional. In the midst of the anarchy, the headline "Capitalism in Convulsion" appeared not in The Militant or The People's World, but in the August, salmon colored pages of The Financial Times.1 Unlike the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) crisis or the dot.com bust which were more or less confined to the G-7 countries, or the Asian, Mexican, Argentinean crises -- which remained localized within the Third World -- the crisis of 2007-8 was truly global. It spread from America to Europe to Latin America to Asia and even to remote Iceland which was all but officially bankrupt and forced to await rescue from the IMF. Nor was the crisis confined to capitalism's financial sub-system. Production was shrinking, consumption was off. Even foreign trade, the main driver of the world economy, was contracting. "There is a real possibility of a real, deep, international depression," said one senior monetary official at a G20 meeting in Dubai who spoke on the condition of anonymity, calling the crisis "the worst in 100 years."2 2. The Meaning of the Meltdown IN 1989, THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL was widely interpreted as a failure of the Communist system. But not by its supporters. They favored minimalist interpretations. Liberal Stalinists saw it as a reaction to certain overzealous GDR officials in the security apparatus; conservatives as the failure of those same officials to contain the illegal exodus. Still others blamed Soviet Premier Gorbachev's blundering efforts to deregulate the Soviet system, which they insisted was still fundamentally sound. Similarly, the present crisis can be interpreted in various ways. Not as the result of inherent, structural, repeated, and irredeemable tendencies within the capitalist system. But as altogether something more surmountable. Democrats have pointed to a failure of capitalism's financial sub-system, i.e., of Wall Street -- where greed ran amok -- and in Washington where officials refused to rein in the Street's wildest propensities. By repealing the depression era Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, the argument runs, Congress demolished the pillar of the old regulatory architecture. And it declared off limits any supervision of the new, escalating trade in opaque forms of over-the-counter derivatives.3 Republicans, while not immune to the widely popular "greedy" banker trope, tended mostly to blame capitalism's regulators -- above all blundering by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who allegedly, in the aftermath of the 2001 dot.com collapse, held interest rates "too low, too long." He should have kept his hands off the monetary joystick. The implosion interrupted what might be called "The Big Sleep of the American Left": our failure to exert a detectible influence on working class institutions or on American political life as a whole. The sleepy time coincides roughly with the quarter century long boom which began in 1983 with the recovery from the stagflation crisis of the seventies. Throughout the period, as the global economy continued its unparalleled dizzying ascent, 19th century supply side economics experienced a revival. Not just the napkin version preached by Arthur Laffer, who argued that if you want to increase tax revenues, cut tax rates. But an over-arching argument about the nature of capitalism and its powers of adjustment. The 19th century classic writers -- James Mill, J.B. Say, David Ricardo -- taught that market failures or "gluts" were impossible. Temporary over-supply in this or that market for shoes or hats or handkerchiefs, yes. A generalized over-supply, of shoes, hats and handkerchiefs all at the same time, no.4 So absent meddling by government authorities, depressions were not a possibility. Markets would always self-adjust because market agents -- suppliers of labor and capital -- would behave rationally. Workers, seeing that they had priced themselves out of the market, would work harder and lower their wages. Holders of capital would lower interest rates, which would reduce saving and spur investment. Acceptance of the simple supply side formula, "supply creates its own demand" bred confidence among the believers. The concerns of Keynes, who worried about "effective demand," and the notions of Marx, who argued that the scramble for profits created its own barrier, could be dismissed as groundless. And as America's ruined central cities sprang back to life from the arson and abandonment of the seventies and the stores filled up with cheap Asian goods and American designed microchips powered a global technoboom, with unemployment falling to record lows, a lite version of supply side economics quietly permeated the Left -- in the assumption that "post-industrial" capitalism was more or less impregnable in its First World stronghold. Perhaps understandably, sections of the Left began to lose interest in the struggles going on in the material world around them, re-grouping around the priority of culture wars and even for some science wars. And while economic radicalism didn't disappear, the burden of its critique lay in the idea of an unequal exchange between first and third world countries, which prevented less developed raw material producing nations from industrializing. The idea of class wars within nations gave way to the notion of "proletarian nations."5 Socialism became strictly a Third World option. The Left could try to assist the special victims of First World capitalism -- blacks, women, minorities, immigrants. But not American workers. As Michael Kazin observed, very few American leftists invoked the link between labor and the creation of wealth and capital and the appropriation of that wealth which had been at the core of American radicalism from the 19th century to the 1940s.6 Speculation about transforming first world capitalist institutions became about as respectable as spoon bending. One consequence of the 2007-8 economic tsumani is to wash away the foundations of the intellectual world of the sensible center.7 But much of the Left's outlook rested tacitly on those same foundations. As well as its secret sense that it had no genuine vocation for politics except on the margins of American life. Perhaps the collapse of financial markets hasn't yet produced a mass market for ideas about democratic control of the economy. Yet there appears at least to be a niche. Are markets always wiser than majorities? Would the majority of Americans have voted in a plebiscite for deindustrialization? At a minimum, now that a Republican administration has ordered a semi-nationalization of banks and insurance companies, the supply side era is over, creating the potential for a Left socialist revival. But not without challenging the minimalist interpretations of the great meltdown put forward by the two mainstream political parties. 3. Three Things I Learned About Crises From Marx THE DEPTH AND SCOPE OF THE MELTDOWN have made Marx fashionable once again at least in Europe, the BBC reports.8 But acquiring the intellectual resources for the challenge is not simply a matter of mining Marxian texts. If there is a Marxian road to understanding the crisis, it's a cloverleaf highway - with many ways to get on and get off, and each turn-off resulting in a different political direction. There are many Marxist schools. And each explains crises in different ways - as the result of underconsumption; of overproduction; in terms of the falling rate of profit; or as a consequence of the disproportionality between growth rates in consumer and producer good sectors.9 Notwithstanding the impossibility of establishing a true Marxist interpretation of the crisis, his powerful, suggestive, but mostly undeveloped crisis analysis contains three contentious insights which provide a scaffold for grasping the present events. The first might be called the "universal dynamism" thesis. Supply-siders accept it but most modern Marxists don't. Marx portrayed capitalism as an inexorable accumulation machine whose dynamism is fed by the behavior of multiple competitive capitalists all forced to consume productively rather than personally, all relentlessly recycling their profits back into the enterprise. All searching for a way to reduce costs. This feature turned capitalism into a uniquely dynamic and expansive system: one whose dynamism could not be confined to its Western countries of origin. The spread of English commerce, he argued, albeit restricted at first to opium, would "lay the material foundations of Western society in Asia."10 At the same time -- and here's where supply siders get off the bus and neo- Marxists get back on -- Marx recognized capitalist development traced no smooth, upward, untroubled arc. Growth was achieved only through system shattering crises -- "business cycles" -- which proved comprehensively destructive.11 In the abrupt swing from world prosperity to world depression, tens of millions were doomed to unemployment and the dole; economic upheaval would shatter normal trade relations, freeze immigration and promote economic nationalism and political dynamite -- in the form of left/right polarization leading to dictatorship, fascism and war. Finally, there's the least accepted Marxian argument about crises: his claim that they have their origin in the "real" sector of the economy - where commodities were produced -- not in the financial sector where the crisis almost invariably breaks out. "At first glance," Marx writes, "the whole crisis seems to be merely a credit and money crisis." But look again, he advises, and you see that the unsaleable securities represent unsaleable commodities. Or in our own immediate case the oversupply of mortgage backed securities represents the oversupply of houses, and ultimately an oversupply of capital in general. In this way, the crisis expresses in a violent way capitalism's fundamental conflict: Capitalism develops awesomely large productive forces whose limits are checked by the requirement that production be profitable.12 To avoid depressing the profit rate, productive capital saves instead of investing, transferring its saving from the productive sphere, seeking shelter in the financial system where productive capital is turned into credit or financial capital. Indeed, too much. "But credit," Marx wrote, only "accelerates the violent outbreaks of the crisis."13 To accelerate something is not to cause it.14 4. Explaining The Meltdown THE PROXIMATE CAUSE OF THE 2007-8 CRISIS was the imploding of what Yale Professor Robert Shiller called the greatest real estate bubble in U.S. history or possibly even world history. Between 1996 and 2005, house prices nationwide increased about 90 percent. In the five years between 2000 to 2005 alone, house prices increased by roughly 60 percent.15 That hadn't happened even in the real estate boom of the 1920s, whose premonitory bust in 1926 gestured wildly but vainly at the still greater collapse to come in 1929. While the inner mechanics of the individual parts that make up the self-destructive bubble apparatus are famously complex -- the SPVs SIVs, the CDOs, CDSs and other "financial dark matter" -- the mechanics of the collapse itself are fairly straightforward. It's not necessary to understand quantum mechanics to grasp why an apple falls to the ground. Newtonian mechanics will suffice. Nor do we need to study the structure of DNA to know why old people fall -- they take slower and shorter steps. Similarly, by concentrating on the intricacies of frenzied finance on Wall Street and faulty regulatory mechanisms in DC, we lose perspective on the ultimate as opposed to the proximate causes of the world crisis. The ultimate cause of the 2007-8 crisis was not the pricking of the real estate bubble in the United States, but the implosion of the greatest and longest global expansion in the history of capitalism going back to the first industrial revolution (1760-1830). The rapid transformation, particularly of the Chinese and Indian economies, produced a super boom that blew away all norms for economic expansion.16 World GDP rates rose to unprecedented levels - peaking at 6 percent in 2007, six times higher than the rate during the first industrial revolution. And what drove the boom? Notwithstanding the core claim of the sensible center that the nature of the period was defined by the rise of post-industrialism and the fall of the blue collar worker who would go the way of the peasant, the boom was shaped by record rates of manufacturing growth and even higher rates of growth in manufacturing trade. The increase in manufacturing itself was fed by a world-reshaping, mass migration of manufacturing capital from the more developed to the less developed countries. Capital was attracted by appalling, but ultimately ravishingly high rates of labor exploitation -- to India, which was emerging as the world's back office, but above all to China, which became the world's workshop, employing 109 million manufacturing workers. (Versus 53 million in the G7 countries.)17 In the United States, median hourly manufacturing wage was $17.85 an hour.18 In China, manufacturing workers in the coastal provinces earned 91 cents an hour at productivity rates increasingly converging with those in the United States19 (inland workers earned 57 cents an hour.)20 The long boom that began in 1983 saw astonishing reversals of economic structure -- particularly in the United States where the FIRE industry displaced manufacturing and all others -- as the leading industry by GDP share. In 1983, at the beginning of the boom, manufacturing was still larger than FIRE. By 2007, the FIRE sector had become 1.8 times the size of the manufacturing sector.21 There were equally bizarre reversals of economic fortune, as the United States once the world's prime creditor nation, became its greatest debtor nation, with poor nations -- most prominently China -- among its largest creditors. Yet despite these startling novelties, the present boom has ended in overproduction and over-consumption just like the classic booms of the past. Consider the world depressions that began in 1837, 1873 and 1929. For these crises, like the implosion of 2007-08, the following seven stage sequence can serve as a model: A fall in the rate of accumulation, or at least a fall in the rate of acceleration; actual profit rates may even rise just before the collapse; but the high rates are sustained by a slowing down of accumulation rates. Formation of surplus capital hoards. Unable to return "home" for productive re-investment, the surplus seeks to preserve itself by moving into financial channels. Capital over-supply forces down interest rates, clearing the way for asset inflation and financial excess. First because low interest rates automatically increase the value of fictitious capital in land and in securities; and second because low interest rates cause risk premiums to fall, promoting riskier behavior as rentiers chase yield. Asset bubbles form as speculators are attracted by the seemingly inexorable rise in asset prices. Prices accelerate further because of rampant bubble psychology. The chain letter snaps. Housing prices burst the bounds of household incomes. Stock prices soar far beyond historic price/earnings ratio. Prices collapse. A local financial crisis breaks out among the most vulnerable borrowers, who can no longer re-finance, leaving the most recent round of developers and mortgage holders unable to pay off their loans, and/or stock speculators can't cover margin calls from their brokers. Asset prices collapse, taking down credit suppliers. A spreading of the financial ripples outward from their point of origin, as asset deflation produces a global panic. And finally -- but not yet of course in 2007-08: Protracted economic stagnation; widespread double-digit unemployment rates; falling wages and commodity prices; growing economic nationalism and a tendency towards "organized capitalism." There are two main differences between this seven step scenario and the mainstream accounts. Regulatory and monetary explanations see the problem as U.S. centered. Obviously the United States can't be ignored -- the meltdown began here. But the emphasis must be on global imbalances. True, the United States is over-consuming. But the rest of the world is over-producing. The second difference is the emphasis on how excesses in the real sector -- the capital glut and the resulting low interest rates -- produce wilding in the FIRE sector. By contrast, mainstream models reverse the causal arrow so that financial and real estate excess bring down an essentially healthy real sector. Except for the wrongheadedness of Greenspan or the antics of a comparative handful of hedge fund operators, mainstreamers then see no reason why the expansion should not go on indefinitely. They don't look at a twenty-five year expansion as being the equivalent of a twenty-five year old dog. The bubble simply erupted. But whence? Either exogenously -- outside the system -- by dodgy regulators who disrupted the economy's natural path towards self-correction -- in the Republican version; or in the Democratic version the bubble is produced endogenously -- in the FIRE sector -- aided by dodgy regulators who look the other way at speculative excess. The Democrats cite a whole host of regulatory failures. There's the problem of fragmented regulation -the Fed regulates banks; the SEC stocks; the states insurance companies. They point to de-regulatory measures like the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Then there's the embarrassment of private regulation -- ceding securities rating to the conflict-of-interest laden private rating agencies. Even more serious perhaps is the absence of new regulation for new institutions -- e.g., failure to bring Over -the-Counter derivative trading under control; ditto the emergence of a shadow banking system, which created "a de facto assembly line for purchasing, packaging, and selling unregistered, high- risk securities."22 The Republicans -- along with their economic mentors in academia -- supply-siders, monetarists, Austrians and Chicagoans -- often talk about too stringent regulation -- like the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1978. The Democratic Administration, they allege, allowed community groups like ACORN to coerce giant banks into making hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to unqualified minority borrowers. But mostly they focus on the interest rate activism of Alan Greenspan. The "too low too long" mantra -- the fed funds rate, they point out, remained below two percent from 2002-2004. One problem with the explanation is that the bubble didn't start in 2002. It was already underway in 1996. As Robert Shiller points out, it lasted three times longer than the period of monetary laxity. Bubble growth continued to accelerate even in 1999 when the Fed was tightening. Moreover, 30 year mortgage rates were mostly unresponsive to Fed moves at the short term end of the interest curve.23 What's more, if the U.S. bubble was simply the result of a Fed policy error -- why did real estate bubbles form all around the world? Bubbles in Spain, Ireland, U.K. and perhaps the mother of all bubbles in Shanghai, where 1 million apartments were built in a single year -- as opposed to 2 million in the peak year for the entire United States. And the average apartment was $300,000 in a city where the median household income is $2,000.24 By comparison, the median household income in Queens is $42,000. If the same income to housing price ratio obtained in Queens, the average housing price would be $6.3 million. Perhaps even more challenging to the Greenspan as the Grinch Who Stole Prosperity model is the comparable behavior of German bank regulators. Roughly speaking between 2002-4, overnight interest rates charged by German banks were only about a percent higher than the federal funds rate. German rates were kept low for longer than in the United States. Yet there was no German real estate bubble. The same could be said for Switzerland and Austria: very low interest rates, no real estate bubble. What German banks, along with their Swiss, Austrian and west European counterparts, do have instead is an emerging market nations bubble: $4.7 trillion in cross-border bank loans to Eastern Europe, Latin America and emerging Asia extended during the global credit boom. It's a sum, according to a Bank for International Settlements reckoning, that "vastly exceeds the scale of both the U. S. sub- prime and Alt-A debacles."25 There are many ways to build a bubble. Different countries have different architectural styles. America, with the most advanced entreprenurial culture, has the most complex: a financial engineering industry -- the United States invented such financial gimmicks as securitization, the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs), and the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). But the central European method, while more traditional, works just as well. Austrian bankers simply lend huge amounts to their favorite clients, the Hungarians. Lending money to Hungarians who can't pay them back is an Austrian tradition that goes back to the early 19th century when the Rothschild Creditanstalt no sooner financed the Hungarian railway system when it abruptly failed. Hungarian loans were a major factor in the collapse of Creditanstalt again in 1931 which took down an estimated 60- 80 percent of Austrian industry triggering the European great depression.26 This time Austrian banks have lent 85 percent of their GDP to Hungarians, who have an external debt worth about 100 percent of their GDP. Ideally, strict, comprehensive, incorruptible regulation could have stopped all this over-lending to under- qualified borrowers dead in its tracks. But in what world do regulatory bureaucrats, barking and snapping like Welsh corgis herding cattle, determine the moves of bankers? Certainly not in ours, where the relevant laws that create the framework for regulation are passed by legislatures influenced not by concerns for macro-economic stability, but by the strength of relevant lobbies. In our world, the FIRE lobby is the largest by far.27 Even if the regulators had more power, and there were a lot more of them, it's not clear how they could be so effective as to prevent another Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) from happening. LTCM showed that one renegade hedge fund, is all it takes to ignite a crisis when the fields of capital are very dry. What regulator would second guess a team of Nobel Prize winners or fathom their formulas for risk or even decipher their complex trades?28 And even if legislators and regulators somehow summoned up the political will and financial sophistication to tame rogue genius lenders, why wouldn't the traders who like to discount risk simply de-camp for some less regulated place? As Chairman Bernanke observed in the immediate aftermath of the Bear Stearns collapse: "The oversight of these firms must recognize the distinctive features of investment banking and take care neither to unduly inhibit efficiency and innovation nor to induce a migration of risk-taking activities to institutions that are less regulated or beyond our borders."29 Historically, the influence of regulators is pro-cyclical, least evident when it's most needed. Regulations are strictest in the aftermath of a collapse, weakest during the manias. Glass Steagall, comprehensive legislation taming the securities behavior of big banks, passed in 1933; it was repealed in 1999 at the height of the dot.com boom. Evidently, what chiefly regulates bankers' behavior is not regulators but conditions in the money market. What the great depressions of 1837, 1873, and 1929 share with the present crisis is a huge inflow of surplus capital into financial centers which drives down interest rates and alters banking standards and norms. That such a surplus formed prior to the 2007-8 crisis there is little doubt. A big policy debate broke out in 2005 involving Bernanke, and critics of U.S. monetary policy over its provenance and meaning.30 Both pointed to the U.S. current account deficit as proof of the surplus. But Fed critics called it a "liquidity glut." The hundreds of billions flowing uphill each year from poor Asian countries to wealthy America were driven by the hydraulics of U.S. monetary policies. Overly stimulative U.S. policies enabled the U..S. to over consume and over borrow. Martin Wolf, editor of the Financial Times, noted that the United States had absorbed 70 per cent of the rest of the world's surplus capital, while its consumption accounted for 91 percent of the increase in gross domestic product in this decade.31 Bernanke, who in 2005 was just a Fed governor, defended U.S. posture and policies. He took note of the bizarre role reversal -- Scrooge borrowing from Tiny Tim -- but argued that the surplus took the form of a "savings glut." And the Chinese were its agents. The United States was just reacting to the Chinese decision to save so great a portion of their income. Well over a trillion was now mostly invested in U.S. Treasuries and government sponsored enterprises. China's savings rate -- managed by the state -- had reached a staggering 50 percent. Even Chinese households on their comparatively tiny incomes saved 30 percent. The U.S. private households, which at the beginning of the superboom were saving nearly 10 percent, now have negative savings. But Americans were making the best of a situation not of their making, acting as Stakhanovite consumers in order to promote the continuation of global expansion. U.S. borrowing was necessary to protect the world from imminent collapse. A striking feature of Bernanke's account -- as well as that of his adversaries who assert the liquidity thesis -- is that neither think trade has anything to do with the trade deficit. Explains Bernanke, "The U.S. trade balance is the tail of the dog; for the most part, it has been passively determined by foreign and domestic incomes, asset prices, interest rates, and exchange rates, which are themselves the products of more fundamental driving forces." For the economists, the financial markets determine the markets for commodities. Any nation could have a giant trade surplus; it's ultimately just a policy choice about savings behavior. The country with the giant surplus just happened to be China. Utterly ignored is the fact that trade surplus/ capital glut could never have formed without staggeringly high rates of labor exploitation in the strict Marxian sense: the ratio of value added by labor divided by wages.32 As far as what drove the boom and what caused the bust, it's the rate of exploitation that's the dog. The savings rate is the tail. Conclusion MARX TALKS FREQUENTLY about the capitalist's "wolfish hunger" for profit and his ravenous appetite for capital accumulation. It's no small irony that the most wolfish and ravenous capitalists in history should turn out to be Chinese Communist Party officials trained to revere Marx. But that doesn't detract from the serviceability of Marxian premises about capitalist dynamics. Whose fault is the crisis? Chinese over-exporting or American over-importing? "It should be noted in regard to imports and exports," Marx observes, "that one after another, all countries become involved in a crisis and that it then becomes evident that all of them with few exceptions, have exported and imported too much. So that they all have an unfavorable balance of payments."33 Marx wouldn't have been surprised at the failure of the once highly touted $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. "The entire artificial system of forced expansion of the reproduction process cannot, of course, be remedied by having some bank, like the Bank of England, give to all the swindlers the deficient capital by means of its paper and having it buy up all the depreciated commodities at their old nominal values."34 Making the swindlers whole does nothing to restore profitability in the real sector. The global rupture that's taken place over the last 15 months suggests a pattern of growth -- a global division of labor -- that has grown not just increasingly unwieldy, but probably unsustainable. How can the "imbalances" be fixed unless the United States becomes a producer as well as a consumer of commodities? But how can the United States become a producer on the world market given the vast disparity in rates of exploitation? Only in a post-industrial world which never existed. How can the United States continue to consume Chinese products without Chinese credit -- which is dependent on unsustainable American consumption? No doubt adjustments can be made -- both China and the United States can de-globalize. But such necessarily wrenching transformations take time, more like decades than years. No doubt there is something comforting about the world of the sensible center where greedy bankers, bad regulators or too much regulation brings doom and disaster. At least we remain masters of our fate. At least the virtues still count -- if we can only renew our commitment to them. In the capitalist world as described by Marx -- and this is perhaps the insight most in need of refurbishing -- we think we're actors but we're not. Capitalism is the form of society that must ruthlessly develop the productive forces, but it develops them in a form that turns their agents into passive victims of the process. The reassuring side of Marx's view of capital expansion and collapse is the opportunity it offers for a revival of the spirit of resistance among the working people: "Without the great alternative phases of dullness, prosperity, over-excitement, crisis, and distress, which modern industry traverses in periodically recurring cycles?with the up and down of wages resulting from them ?the working class? would be a heart-broken, a weak- minded worn-out unresisting mass whose self-emancipation would prove as impossible as that of the slaves of ancient Greece and Rome."35 Class struggle is the best stimulus package. Notes John Plender,"Capitalism in Convulsion," Financial Times, September 18, 2008. return Thomas Atkins, "Depression overshadows G20 summit," Reuters, November 10, 2008. return See for example Joseph Stiglitz. return See Capital, III, 251-2 for Marx's definition of "absolute overproduction" and its cause. return A core notion of Mussolini and various fascist intellectuals like Corradini, re-cycled by Mao and filtering down to the Third Worldist Left in the 70's. return The Populist Persuasion, (New York: Basic Books, 1995). 273 return A self-referential term used by such as The Brookings Institution, the Democratic Leadership Council and Colin Powell. return BBC, "Marx popular amid credit crunch," Oct. 20, 2008. return Michael Bleaney, Underconsumption Theories (New York: International Publishers, 1976), esp. ch.6. return "Future Results of British Rule in India," Portable Marx, 337; see also Capital, III, 333-334. return Mainstream economics -- particularly "supply side" economics which flourished during the Long Boom -- was able to grasp #1 but not #2. While acknowledging problem of inequality, they maintained that people were still better off than before; And insisted that true system-shattering crises were impossible. Economists influential on the American Left rejected both #1, and #2. They saw capitalism sunk in protracted stagnation; and argued, just like the Russian 19th century populists that the only way to develop productive forces in third world was some form of de-linkage. return Capital, Vol III (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), p.490. return Vol. III, Ch.27, p. 441. return A point made by an anonymous blogger who insists that Marx is obsolete because he fails to realize that the crisis really is caused by machinations of the financial sector. return Ben S. Bernanke, "Remarks on the economic o utlook," At the International Monetary Conference, Barcelona, Spain (via satellite), June 3, 2008. return A genuine boom, marked by unprecedented growth in productivity, and not a super-bubble, as George Soros argues. See The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (New York: Public Affairs, 2008) esp. ch.5 "The Super-Bubble Hypothesis" return Judith Bannister, "Manufacturing Employment in China," BLS, Monthly Review, July, 2005. return BLS, "Earnings." return RIETI, "Benchmarking Industrial Competitiveness by International Comparison of Productivity," Dec. 26, 2006. return Judith Banister, "Manufacturing Earnings and compensation in China," BLS Monthly Labor Review, November 2005. return BEA, Gross Domestic Product by Industry Accounts, 1947-2007. Between 1983 and 2007 financial profits rose from 17 percent to nearly 40 percent of all corporate profits ERP, Table B-91, 2008. return Christopher Whalen, "Expanding Fed's Power is Wrong Plan," American Banker, April 4, 2008. return The Subprime Solution, 49. return Don Lee, "A Home Boom Busts," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 8, 2006. return "Alt -A" stands for Alternative A. It's a euphemism for mortgages slightly less dodgy than sub-prime mortgages. See here. return Niall Fergusson, The House of Rothschild 1849- 1999. 465. return Opensecrets.org credits FIRE with approximately $2.76 in lobbying expenditures between 1996 and 2008. return Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed, (New York: Random House, 2000), 187. return Ben S. Bernanke, "Financial Regulation and Financial Stability, July 8, 2008. return For savings glut thesis see here. For the liquidity glut view see StanleyRoach. return Martin Wolf, "Villains and victims of global capital flows," Financial Times June 12 2007 return In Marxian terminology, the ratio of surplus value(s) over variable capital (v) or s/v., which is also the ratio of paid to unpaid labor. return Vol. III, ch. 30, p. 491. return Vol III, ch.30. p. 490. return New York Daily Tribune, July 14, 1853, cited in Lezek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, (New York: W.W.Norton, 2005), 248 return BOB FITCH studied economic history at Berkeley in the 1960s where he also co-founded the Vietnam Day Committee with Jerry Rubin. His latest book is Solidarity For Sale (Public Affairs, 2006). Contents of No. 46 New Politics home page From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Feb 18 21:52:54 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:52:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] unemployment Message-ID: <550189.31306.qm@web180103.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02132009.html Every president since Reagan, particularly Clinton, has jimmied the unemployment criteria to produce an undercount. The actual number for the two months is nearer one and three quarter million. The actual total unemployment rate, according to statistician John Williams, by pre-Reagan criteria, rose to 18 per cent in January, from 17.5 per cent in December. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 20 23:47:31 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:47:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: <944698.48868.qm@web180113.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html Someone named Orlov says in the essay linked above: When the Soviet system went away, many people lost their jobs, everyone lost their savings, wages and pensions were held back for months, their value was wiped out by hyperinflation, there shortages of food, gasoline, medicine, consumer goods, there was a large increase in crime and violence, and yet Russian society did not collapse. Somehow, the Russians found ways to muddle through. How was that possible? It turns out that many aspects of the Soviet system were paradoxically resilient in the face of system-wide collapse, ^^^^^ CB: Evidently, the SU had more of a grass roots and democratic society , working class people's world there all along than a lot of observers and critics, West and East , thought. Was this a paradox or was it proof that working people ran things more than critics claimed ? That the author evidently didn't expect this, suggests he didn't quite understand fully what was going on "at the base" of his country. ^^^^^ many institutions continued to function, and the living arrangement was such that people did not lose access to food, shelter or transportation, and could survive even without an income. The Soviet economic system failed to thrive, and the Communist experiment at constructing a worker's paradise on earth was, in the end, a failure. ^^^^^ CB: Or maybe the collapse of the Soviet state was the state whithering away, as Marx prognosticated. And what is left is closer to the free association of free producers, or whatever, Since Marx didn't predict a "workers paradise", maybe this author is looking for the wrong thing, and what is there is closer to what Marx envisioned than he thinks. Since the collapse of the Soviet state, I've always been interested in the reports like this one that people continued to survive "without income" or wages. That means that the money system, the wage system went "poof" ! That's what is supposed to happen in communism. Very interesting. ^^^^^^ But as a side effect it inadvertently achieved a high level of collapse-preparedness. ^^^^^^ CB: Maybe it wasn't so inadvertent. Maybe the big ,bad Soviet state was a protective, scary mask worn to ward off the vicious imperialist system, and the real future society was grown on purpose underneath, with hardy roots. It is not likely an accident that the society he describes survived and functions. You can be sure that they are growing a lot of local food in gardens. ^^^^^ In comparison, the American system could produce significantly better results, for time, but at the cost of creating and perpetuating a living arrangement that is very fragile, and not at all capable of holding together through the inevitable crash. Even after the Soviet economy evaporated and the government largely shut down, Russians still had plenty left for them to work with. ^^^^^ CB: My estimate is that he is mistaken that this was "inadvertent". It was not a paradise, but it was a place where the working class was empowered and running their own lives. ^^^^^^ And so there is a wealth of useful information and insight that we can extract from the Russian experience, which we can then turn around and put to good use in helping us improvise a new living arrangement here in the United States ? one that is more likely to be survivable. ^^^^^^ CB: Hopefully. But unfortunately, we don't have socialism, and they did. From farmelantj at juno.com Sat Feb 21 15:44:29 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (Jim Farmelant) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:44:29 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: <20090221.174430.3836.0.farmelantj@juno.com> On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:47:31 -0800 (PST) Charles Brown writes: > http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html > > Someone named Orlov says in the essay linked above: > > When the Soviet system went away, many > people lost their jobs, everyone lost their savings, wages and > pensions were held back for months, their value > was wiped out by hyperinflation, there shortages of food, gasoline, > medicine, consumer goods, there was a > large increase in crime and violence, and yet Russian society did > not collapse. Somehow, the Russians found > ways to muddle through. How was that possible? It turns out that > many aspects of the Soviet system were paradoxically > resilient in the face of system-wide collapse, > ^^^^^ > CB: Evidently, the SU had more of a grass roots and democratic > society , working class people's world there all > along than a lot of observers and critics, West and East , thought. > Was this a paradox or was it proof that working > people ran things more than critics claimed ? The Socialist Workers Party (USA) has long been insistent that Russia remains a kind of "workers state." Their formulations strike me as nutty, but I think that they have stumbled on to a facet of post-Soviet life that merits further exploration, which is that many aspects of the Soviet system have managed to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, given the recent economic downturn which has now begun to impact Russia, it is quite possible that we might see Russia reverting back to Soviet-style economic and social policies in order to maintain order. It also seems to be the case that the same is true for some of the other former Warsaw Pact countries as well. The Czech Republic for instance has since 1989 been governed mostly by rightwing governments that have been avowedly committed to neoliberal economic policies, and yet I have read that much of the social safety net that was built up under the Communist regime has remained more or less in place since 1989. That indeed it has been the continuing existence of this social safety net that made it possible for the post-Communists governments to gain the acquiescence of the Czech masses in the creation of a market economy there. > > > That the author evidently didn't expect this, > suggests he didn't quite understand fully what was going on "at the > base" of his country. > > ^^^^^ > > many institutions continued to function, and > the living arrangement was such that people did not lose access to > food, shelter or transportation, and could survive > even without an income. The Soviet economic system failed to thrive, > and the Communist experiment at constructing a > worker's paradise on earth was, in the end, a failure. > ^^^^^ > CB: Or maybe the collapse of the Soviet state > was the state whithering away, as Marx prognosticated. And what is > left is closer to the free association of free producers, > or whatever, Since Marx didn't predict a "workers paradise", maybe > this author is looking for the wrong thing, and what > is there is closer to what Marx envisioned than he thinks. > > Since the collapse of the Soviet state, I've > always been interested in the reports like this one that people > continued to survive "without income" or wages. That > means that the money system, the wage system went "poof" ! That's > what is supposed to happen in communism. > > Very interesting. > > ^^^^^^ > > But as a side effect it inadvertently achieved > a high level of collapse-preparedness. > > ^^^^^^ > CB: Maybe it wasn't so inadvertent. Maybe the > big ,bad Soviet state was a protective, scary mask worn to ward off > the vicious imperialist system, and the real future society was > grown on purpose underneath, with hardy roots. It is > not likely an accident that the society he describes survived and > functions. > You can be sure that they are growing a lot of local food in > gardens. > > ^^^^^ > > > In comparison, the American system could > produce significantly better results, for time, but at the cost of > creating and perpetuating a living arrangement > that is very fragile, and not at all capable of holding together > through the inevitable crash. Even after the Soviet > economy evaporated and the government largely shut down, Russians > still had plenty left for them to work with. > ^^^^^ > CB: My estimate is that he is mistaken that > this was "inadvertent". It was not a paradise, but it was a place > where the working class was empowered and running their own lives. > ^^^^^^ > > And so there is a wealth of useful information > and insight that we can extract from the Russian experience, which > we can then turn around and put to good use in helping > us improvise a new living arrangement here in the United States ? > one that is more likely to be survivable. > > ^^^^^^ > CB: Hopefully. But unfortunately, we don't have socialism, and they > did. > > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > ____________________________________________________________ Get free phone system price quotes from multiple dealers and save! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTQZaptLm4ZBKBhh68o4DJ1ExCdGrqo5Se71iR0TzkvRzb2HKvTnKh/ From ballistanc at yahoo.com Sat Feb 21 16:46:09 2009 From: ballistanc at yahoo.com (juan De La Cruz) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:46:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? In-Reply-To: <20090221.174430.3836.0.farmelantj@juno.com> Message-ID: <367870.72218.qm@web35507.mail.mud.yahoo.com> What is socialism? ? ...we?could start or continue our conversation having a clear and Communist understanding of socialism in this particular moment.? What do you think?? Let me know if you are interested so we could base our discussion on the soviet experience on? solid ground...materialist ground...for example: under which conditions the State whiter away?? Were those conditions given in 1917?? Are there historical evidence of the existence of communist minorities interpretations of that particular moment of human history?? Why events had developed the way they did?? Let me know if we could deepen our debate on different grounds... --- On Sat, 2/21/09, Jim Farmelant wrote: From: Jim Farmelant Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? To: cdb1003 at prodigy.net, marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu, a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu Date: Saturday, February 21, 2009, 5:44 PM On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:47:31 -0800 (PST) Charles Brown writes: > http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html > > Someone named Orlov says in the essay linked above: > > When the Soviet system went away, many > people lost their jobs, everyone lost their savings, wages and > pensions were held back for months, their value > was wiped out by hyperinflation, there shortages of food, gasoline, > medicine, consumer goods, there was a > large increase in crime and violence, and yet Russian society did > not collapse. Somehow, the Russians found > ways to muddle through. How was that possible? It turns out that > many aspects of the Soviet system were paradoxically > resilient in the face of system-wide collapse, > ^^^^^ > CB: Evidently, the SU had more of a grass roots and democratic > society , working class people's world there all > along than a lot of observers and critics, West and East , thought. > Was this a paradox or was it proof that working > people ran things more than critics claimed ? The Socialist Workers Party (USA) has long been insistent that Russia remains a kind of "workers state." Their formulations strike me as nutty, but I think that they have stumbled on to a facet of post-Soviet life that merits further exploration, which is that many aspects of the Soviet system have managed to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, given the recent economic downturn which has now begun to impact Russia, it is quite possible that we might see Russia reverting back to Soviet-style economic and social policies in order to maintain order. It also seems to be the case that the same is true for some of the other former Warsaw Pact countries as well. The Czech Republic for instance has since 1989 been governed mostly by rightwing governments that have been avowedly committed to neoliberal economic policies, and yet I have read that much of the social safety net that was built up under the Communist regime has remained more or less in place since 1989. That indeed it has been the continuing existence of this social safety net that made it possible for the post-Communists governments to gain the acquiescence of the Czech masses in the creation of a market economy there. > > > That the author evidently didn't expect this, > suggests he didn't quite understand fully what was going on "at the > base" of his country. > > ^^^^^ > > many institutions continued to function, and > the living arrangement was such that people did not lose access to > food, shelter or transportation, and could survive > even without an income. The Soviet economic system failed to thrive, > and the Communist experiment at constructing a > worker's paradise on earth was, in the end, a failure. > ^^^^^ > CB: Or maybe the collapse of the Soviet state > was the state whithering away, as Marx prognosticated. And what is > left is closer to the free association of free producers, > or whatever, Since Marx didn't predict a "workers paradise", maybe > this author is looking for the wrong thing, and what > is there is closer to what Marx envisioned than he thinks. > > Since the collapse of the Soviet state, I've > always been interested in the reports like this one that people > continued to survive "without income" or wages. That > means that the money system, the wage system went "poof" ! That's > what is supposed to happen in communism. > > Very interesting. > > ^^^^^^ > > But as a side effect it inadvertently achieved > a high level of collapse-preparedness. > > ^^^^^^ > CB: Maybe it wasn't so inadvertent. Maybe the > big ,bad Soviet state was a protective, scary mask worn to ward off > the vicious imperialist system, and the real future society was > grown on purpose underneath, with hardy roots. It is > not likely an accident that the society he describes survived and > functions. > You can be sure that they are growing a lot of local food in > gardens. > > ^^^^^ > > > In comparison, the American system could > produce significantly better results, for time, but at the cost of > creating and perpetuating a living arrangement > that is very fragile, and not at all capable of holding together > through the inevitable crash. Even after the Soviet > economy evaporated and the government largely shut down, Russians > still had plenty left for them to work with. > ^^^^^ > CB: My estimate is that he is mistaken that > this was "inadvertent". It was not a paradise, but it was a place > where the working class was empowered and running their own lives. > ^^^^^^ > > And so there is a wealth of useful information > and insight that we can extract from the Russian experience, which > we can then turn around and put to good use in helping > us improvise a new living arrangement here in the United States ? > one that is more likely to be survivable. > > ^^^^^^ > CB: Hopefully. But unfortunately, we don't have socialism, and they > did. > > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > ____________________________________________________________ Get free phone system price quotes from multiple dealers and save! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTQZaptLm4ZBKBhh68o4DJ1ExCdGrqo5Se71iR0TzkvRzb2HKvTnKh/ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 21 17:35:43 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:35:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? In-Reply-To: <20090221.174430.3836.0.farmelantj@juno.com> Message-ID: <539521.32889.qm@web180115.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 2/21/09, Jim Farmelant wrote: > From: Jim Farmelant > > The Socialist Workers Party (USA) has long been insistent > that Russia remains a kind of "workers state." > Their formulations > strike me as nutty, but I think that they have stumbled on > to > a facet of post-Soviet life that merits further > exploration, > which is that many aspects of the Soviet system have > managed > to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, given > the recent economic downturn which has now begun to > impact Russia, it is quite possible that we might see > Russia > reverting back to Soviet-style economic and social policies > in order to maintain order. > > It also seems to be the case that the same is true for > some of the other former Warsaw Pact countries as well. > The Czech Republic for instance has since 1989 been > governed mostly by rightwing governments that have > been avowedly committed to neoliberal economic > policies, and yet I have read that much of the social > safety net that was built up under the Communist > regime has remained more or less in place since > 1989. That indeed it has been the continuing > existence of this social safety net that made it > possible for the post-Communists governments > to gain the acquiescence of the Czech masses > in the creation of a market economy there. ^^^^^^ CB: It is interesting that the social safety net remained, because as I understand it, neo-liberalism is supposed to strip away welfare and the social safety net. So, perhaps the name was "neoliberalism" but the facts on the ground were not so neo-liberal. It really will be interesting to see what happens now if the world wide recession/depression batters what ever free-market institutions that were actually established in Eastern Europe, Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union. Their stock markets are likely to be more fragile and limited than those in the US and Western Europe. A crash of neo-phyte stock markets could be their end or lead to their permanent limitation. Besides the social safety net, how far could they really go in privatizing basic means of production and basic necessities industries, such as food, utilities, mass transit, water, gas, electricity, telephone? Those are only half private in the US. It probably wouldn't be a very big step to nationalize them - permanently. The same with the banking system. In Eastern Europe, and countries like Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania with no Russian troops there anymore, there may be little reason to resent socialist organization, socialist _self_organization and self-determination. Perhaps socialism will come as a negation of the negation of the first experience of socialism. They don't have to call it "socialism" or "communism" Just call it "economic democracy and freedom" or social democracy or democratic socialism. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 21 17:40:24 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:40:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither Message-ID: <808703.90161.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> What is socialism? ^^^^^ CB: Abolition of private property in the basic means of production. ^^^^^ ...we could start or continue our conversation having a clear and Communist understanding of socialism in this particular moment. What do you think? Let me know if you are interested so we could base our discussion on the soviet experience on solid ground...materialist ground...for example: under which conditions the State whiter away? Were those conditions given in 1917? Are there historical evidence of the existence of communist minorities interpretations of that particular moment of human history? Why events had developed the way they did? Let me know if we could deepen our debate on different grounds... ^^^ CB: Tell us what different grounds. From farmelantj at juno.com Sat Feb 21 17:53:17 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (Jim Farmelant) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 19:53:17 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: <20090221.195318.4256.0.farmelantj@juno.com> On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:35:43 -0800 (PST) Charles Brown writes: > > > > --- On Sat, 2/21/09, Jim Farmelant wrote: > > > From: Jim Farmelant > > > > > The Socialist Workers Party (USA) has long been insistent > > that Russia remains a kind of "workers state." > > Their formulations > > strike me as nutty, but I think that they have stumbled on > > to > > a facet of post-Soviet life that merits further > > exploration, > > which is that many aspects of the Soviet system have > > managed > > to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, given > > the recent economic downturn which has now begun to > > impact Russia, it is quite possible that we might see > > Russia > > reverting back to Soviet-style economic and social policies > > in order to maintain order. > > > > It also seems to be the case that the same is true for > > some of the other former Warsaw Pact countries as well. > > The Czech Republic for instance has since 1989 been > > governed mostly by rightwing governments that have > > been avowedly committed to neoliberal economic > > policies, and yet I have read that much of the social > > safety net that was built up under the Communist > > regime has remained more or less in place since > > 1989. That indeed it has been the continuing > > existence of this social safety net that made it > > possible for the post-Communists governments > > to gain the acquiescence of the Czech masses > > in the creation of a market economy there. > > ^^^^^^ > CB: It is interesting that the social > safety net remained, because as I understand > it, neo-liberalism is supposed to strip > away welfare and the social safety net. > So, perhaps the name was "neoliberalism" > but the facts on the ground were not so > neo-liberal. > > It really will be interesting to see > what happens now if the world wide > recession/depression batters > what ever free-market institutions > that were actually established in > Eastern Europe, Russia and the rest > of the former Soviet Union. Their > stock markets are likely to be more > fragile and limited than those in the > US and Western Europe. A crash of > neo-phyte stock markets could be > their end or lead to their permanent > limitation. Besides the social safety > net, how far could they really go > in privatizing basic means of production > and basic necessities > industries, such as food, utilities, mass > transit, water, gas, electricity, telephone? > Those are only half private in the > US. It probably wouldn't be a very > big step to nationalize them - permanently. > The same with the banking system. Well in Russia the state renationalized most of the energy industry several years ago. Putin, as president, went a long way towards reestablishing the leading role of the state in the management of Russia's economy. The state is a major stockholder in many of Russia's largest companies. One of Putin's big achievements was to rein in the oligarchs who had taken control of much of Russia's economy under Yeltsin. All this course takes us back to a lot of the old debates over the nature of the former Soviet Union: was it socialist? was it state capitalist? a degenerate workers state? a bureacratic collectivism? And to those old debates we can now can add debates over the nature of contemporary post-Soviet Russia. The post-Soviet regimes of Yeltsin and Putin had the avowed aim of restoring capitalism, but it seems that the reality there is perhaps more complex. They never could entirely obliterate Soviet-era institutions and practices, and now, I suspect, that the current world economic practice may force the current government of Medvedev and Putin to revive many of the old Soviet policies. I suppose that we might characterize the current Russian economy as a kind of state capitalism with some socialist characteristics. Jim F. > > In Eastern > Europe, and countries like Latvia, > Estonia and Lithuania with no Russian > troops there anymore, there may be > little reason to resent socialist > organization, socialist _self_organization > and self-determination. > > Perhaps socialism will come as a > negation of the negation of the > first experience of socialism. > > They don't have to call it > "socialism" or "communism" Just call it > "economic democracy and freedom" > or social democracy or > democratic socialism. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > > ____________________________________________________________ Click to learn about options trading and get the latest information. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTIzQaKqKDWtUHB687b2RagjNMBwhGf2qCMhoLUSDzR8181lroxupC/ From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 21 18:16:59 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:16:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? In-Reply-To: <20090221.195318.4256.0.farmelantj@juno.com> Message-ID: <203842.34140.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 2/22/09, Jim Farmelant wrote: > Well in Russia the state renationalized most > of the energy industry several years ago. > Putin, as president, went a long way towards > reestablishing the leading role of the state in > the management of Russia's economy. The > state is a major stockholder in many of > Russia's largest companies. One of Putin's > big achievements was to rein in the oligarchs > who had taken control of much of Russia's > economy under Yeltsin. > > All this course takes us back to a lot > of the old debates over the nature of > the former Soviet Union: was it socialist? > was it state capitalist? a degenerate workers > state? a bureacratic collectivism? > > And to those old debates we can now > can add debates over the nature of contemporary > post-Soviet Russia. The post-Soviet regimes > of Yeltsin and Putin had the avowed aim of > restoring capitalism, but it seems that the > reality there is perhaps more complex. > They never could entirely obliterate Soviet-era > institutions and practices, and now, I suspect, > that the current world economic practice may > force the current government of Medvedev > and Putin to revive many of the old Soviet policies. > I suppose that we might characterize the > current Russian economy as a kind of > state capitalism with some socialist characteristics. > > Jim F. ^^^^^^^^ CB: The overall historical process might be zig-zagging toward socialism, rather than moving in a straight line. One step forward two steps backward...one step right two and a half steps to the left. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. That's what it's all about. > > From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 21 21:44:59 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:44:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? In-Reply-To: <20090221.195318.4256.0.farmelantj@juno.com> Message-ID: <214533.15560.qm@web180113.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Also, notice the Soviet state did not kill a lot of people when it went away. That's another characteristic of the process that fits the term "whither". Away not with a bang but a whimper. CB --- On Sun, 2/22/09, Jim Farmelant wrote: > From: Jim Farmelant > Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? > To: cdb1003 at prodigy.net, marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > Cc: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > Date: Sunday, February 22, 2009, 12:53 AM > On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:35:43 -0800 (PST) Charles Brown > writes: > > > > > > > > --- On Sat, 2/21/09, Jim Farmelant > wrote: > > > > > From: Jim Farmelant > > > > > > > > The Socialist Workers Party (USA) has long been > insistent > > > that Russia remains a kind of "workers > state." > > > Their formulations > > > strike me as nutty, but I think that they have > stumbled on > > > to > > > a facet of post-Soviet life that merits further > > > exploration, > > > which is that many aspects of the Soviet system > have > > > managed > > > to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union. > Indeed, given > > > the recent economic downturn which has now begun > to > > > impact Russia, it is quite possible that we might > see > > > Russia > > > reverting back to Soviet-style economic and > social policies > > > in order to maintain order. > > > > > > It also seems to be the case that the same is > true for > > > some of the other former Warsaw Pact countries as > well. > > > The Czech Republic for instance has since 1989 > been > > > governed mostly by rightwing governments that > have > > > been avowedly committed to neoliberal economic > > > policies, and yet I have read that much of the > social > > > safety net that was built up under the Communist > > > regime has remained more or less in place since > > > 1989. That indeed it has been the continuing > > > existence of this social safety net that made it > > > possible for the post-Communists governments > > > to gain the acquiescence of the Czech masses > > > in the creation of a market economy there. > > > > ^^^^^^ > > CB: It is interesting that the social > > safety net remained, because as I understand > > it, neo-liberalism is supposed to strip > > away welfare and the social safety net. > > So, perhaps the name was "neoliberalism" > > but the facts on the ground were not so > > neo-liberal. > > > > It really will be interesting to see > > what happens now if the world wide > > recession/depression batters > > what ever free-market institutions > > that were actually established in > > Eastern Europe, Russia and the rest > > of the former Soviet Union. Their > > stock markets are likely to be more > > fragile and limited than those in the > > US and Western Europe. A crash of > > neo-phyte stock markets could be > > their end or lead to their permanent > > limitation. Besides the social safety > > net, how far could they really go > > in privatizing basic means of production > > and basic necessities > > industries, such as food, utilities, mass > > transit, water, gas, electricity, telephone? > > Those are only half private in the > > US. It probably wouldn't be a very > > big step to nationalize them - permanently. > > The same with the banking system. > > Well in Russia the state renationalized most > of the energy industry several years ago. > Putin, as president, went a long way towards > reestablishing the leading role of the state in > the management of Russia's economy. The > state is a major stockholder in many of > Russia's largest companies. One of Putin's > big achievements was to rein in the oligarchs > who had taken control of much of Russia's > economy under Yeltsin. > > All this course takes us back to a lot > of the old debates over the nature of > the former Soviet Union: was it socialist? > was it state capitalist? a degenerate workers > state? a bureacratic collectivism? > > And to those old debates we can now > can add debates over the nature of contemporary > post-Soviet Russia. The post-Soviet regimes > of Yeltsin and Putin had the avowed aim of > restoring capitalism, but it seems that the > reality there is perhaps more complex. > They never could entirely obliterate Soviet-era > institutions and practices, and now, I suspect, > that the current world economic practice may > force the current government of Medvedev > and Putin to revive many of the old Soviet policies. > I suppose that we might characterize the > current Russian economy as a kind of > state capitalism with some socialist characteristics. > > Jim F. > > > > > In Eastern > > Europe, and countries like Latvia, > > Estonia and Lithuania with no Russian > > troops there anymore, there may be > > little reason to resent socialist > > organization, socialist _self_organization > > and self-determination. > > > > Perhaps socialism will come as a > > negation of the negation of the > > first experience of socialism. > > > > They don't have to call it > > "socialism" or "communism" Just > call it > > "economic democracy and freedom" > > or social democracy or > > democratic socialism. > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > > Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > > > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > > > > > > ____________________________________________________________ > Click to learn about options trading and get the latest > information. > http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTIzQaKvxIf3DBA25LiPu2eb9Q41M598mi7DN3UwE3ACH5iXTnhfDC/ From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 21 22:16:42 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:16:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Review of Sokal's "Beyond the Hoax" Message-ID: <694027.3599.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> [Marxism] Brilliant review of Alan Sokal's "Beyond the Hoax" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: archive at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [Marxism] Brilliant review of Alan Sokal's "Beyond the Hoax" From: Louis Proyect Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:09:40 -0500 User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (Windows/20081209) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue46/Touger46.htm From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 21 22:23:06 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:23:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Sokal: law as a heuristic for natual science Message-ID: <232743.4991.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Hoax and Reality Jerold Touger Suppose I am asked to pick a number from 1 to 99,999,999,999. I claim to have a method for getting it right on the first try despite seemingly insuperable odds. If I then proceed to do so, it gives my claim enormous credibility. If others claiming the same method likewise get it right, or pick numbers clustering closely around the correct one -- perhaps differing only in the last one or two places -- it does not in a strictly logical sense prove my claim is correct, but makes the case for it compelling, as our legal system would put it, "beyond a reasonable doubt." This, in essence, is what happens when an experimental measurement of the electron's magnetic moment agrees with what theory predicts to eleven decimal places. This outcome, as Sokal says, "would be utterly miraculous if quantum mechanics were not saying something at least approximately true about the world [and] . . . if electrons did not really exist in some sense or another." ^^^ CB: as our legal system would put it, "beyond a reasonable doubt. Here we go again with a natural scientist using the law as a heuristic. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Sun Feb 22 00:23:59 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 02:23:59 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Review of Sokal's "Beyond the Hoax" In-Reply-To: <694027.3599.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <694027.3599.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I thought Proyect hated Sokal. The review is hardly brilliant but it is to the point. I am sure Sokal got all his information about India from Meera Nanda, who has written numerous books and articles on the subject. I haven't read Sokal's books, though I have always been in sympathy with his aims. However, judging from the review, there comes a point where one ends up beating a dead horse to death. At 12:16 AM 2/22/2009, Charles Brown wrote: >[Marxism] Brilliant review of Alan Sokal's "Beyond the Hoax" > >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >To: archive at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >Subject: [Marxism] Brilliant review of Alan Sokal's "Beyond the Hoax" >From: Louis Proyect >Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:09:40 -0500 >User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (Windows/20081209) > >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue46/Touger46.htm From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Sun Feb 22 07:56:00 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 09:56:00 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] e-mail discussion lists Message-ID: This is off-topic, but since this is a GNU-Mailman mailing list and since so many of the members belong to many discussion lists, this should be a decent place to submit my question. I subscribe to numerous yahoo groups, and even have two of my own. I also subscribe to several Mailman mailing lists, including this one, of course. Unlike yahoo, there is no overall listing of discussion lists for Mailman that I know about. Other services that host discussion lists that I've been on are topica and googlegroups. I can't think of any others I've been involved with, outside of university-based listservs. In sum: Yahoo! Groups http://groups.yahoo.com/ Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html Google Groups http://groups.google.com Topica http://lists.topica.com/ I'm asking myself, should I choose to start new groups in addition to groups already established, which service should use? Are there pros and cons of each I have not taken into consideration? From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Feb 22 11:20:54 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 13:20:54 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: No. The withering away of the state is predicated upon a couple of things: the withering away of the need for massive organized armed bodies of men domestically and internationally; the destruction of the value relations and the resolution of class antagonism. I was reluctant to reply to the question posed by this thread because it seemed to pose matters outside the concept of the state "as the irreconcilability of class antagonisms." For the state to begin its process of withering class antagonism - property as class, must be in the process of withering. Further, in Anti-Duhring, Marx and Engels outline the precondition for the state to wither away as state, founded and predicated on "the concept of the state as the irreconcilability of class antagonisms." The Soviet state as state was overthrown. In their comments, Marx and Engels wrote that only the residual aftermath of value would remain. Thus, riveting the state to the division of labor in society. Although administered by government the social safety net, welfare, housing, etc., is not the state. All government bureaucracies are not the meaning of the state, although the state as state has its bureaucracy, or it could not be an organized structure. I do not understand the Housing agency - HUD, to fall within the scope and meaning for the state as defined above by Lenin and Engels and Marx. Rather, HUD is an agency of the government as a bureaucracy. The Pentagon, a government agency is on the other hand a part of the state because of its function and role in society. WL. **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000003) From shmage at pipeline.com Sun Feb 22 12:51:45 2009 From: shmage at pipeline.com (Shane Mage) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:51:45 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Feb 22, 2009, at 1:20 PM, Waistline2 at aol.com wrote: > > The withering away of the state is predicated upon a couple of > things: the > withering away of the need for massive organized armed bodies of men > domestically and internationally; the destruction of the value > relations and the > resolution of class antagonism. But Lenin wrote (in State and Revolution) that the withering away of the state begins at the very instance when the proletariat ("the armed working class") takes power. The Commune-state is "a state of a new type." The soviet state, alas, though not "strangled at birth" by the Wilsons and Churchills was subjected to grave injuries that led to its violent death at the hands of the Stalinist counterrevolution in the years 1935-1939. Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Feb 22 13:32:35 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:32:35 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: But Lenin wrote (in State and Revolution) that the withering away of the state begins at the very instance when the proletariat ("the armed working class") takes power. The Commune-state is "a state of a new type." The soviet state, alas, though not "strangled at birth" by the Wilsons and Churchills was subjected to grave injuries that led to its violent death at the hands of the Stalinist counterrevolution in the years 1935-1939. Shane Mage Comment In my opinion history itself has revealed that Lenin was historically wrong on more than a couple of propositions. For instance the famous proclamation that Soviet Power + electrification of the country side = communism was never correct. Lenin was also incorrect in stating "let us proceed to build the socialist order." It was a good sentiment, but impossible as Lenin himself discovered. Hence NEP. Then of course world communism was historically incorrect on the resolution of the agrarian question. Questions of reform or revolution has been posted historically incorrect. Me think that after 100 years it is high time we looked at matters with fresh eyes and on the basis of a time frame the better part of 100 years since Lenin's death. I generally prefer Marx and Engels over Lenin . . . . all the time. . How can the state wither away outside of that which is fundamental to what gives rise to the state in the first place? Nor is the issue bounded primarily by the existence of capitalist states. WL. **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000003) From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Feb 22 13:45:53 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:45:53 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: But Lenin wrote (in State and Revolution) that the withering away of the state begins at the very instance when the proletariat ("the armed working class") takes power. The Commune-state is "a state of a new type." The soviet state, alas, though not "strangled at birth" by the Wilsons and Churchills was subjected to grave injuries that led to its violent death at the hands of the Stalinist counterrevolution in the years 1935-1939. Shane Mage Comment "Why do we don these absurd things? The reason is clear: firstly, because ours is a backward country; secondly, education in our country is at the lowest level; and thirdly., because we are receiving no assistance. Not a single civilized state is helping us. On the contrary. they are all working against us. Fourthly, owing to our state apparatus. We took over the old state apparatus, and this was unfortunate for us. Very often the state apparatus worker against us. In 1917, after we captured power, the situation was that the apparatus sabotaged us. This frightened us very much and we pleaded with the state officials: "Please come back." They all came back, but this was unfortunate for us." (Lenin). Here is the genesis of the historically specific problem Lenin grappled with . . . in his words. "Very often the state apparatus worker against us." Why and how is the subject of volumes of writing. WL. **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000003) From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Feb 22 17:01:23 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:01:23 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: In a message dated 2/22/2009 6:18:37 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, Waistline2 writes: But Lenin wrote (in State and Revolution) that the withering away of the state begins at the very instance when the proletariat ("the armed working class") takes power. The Commune-state is "a state of a new type." The soviet state, alas, though not "strangled at birth" by the Wilsons and Churchills was subjected to grave injuries that led to its violent death at the hands of the Stalinist counterrevolution in the years 1935-1939. Shane Mage What Lenin wrote should not prevent anyone from thinking and looking - shifting through history and the facts, especially when fundamentally different interpretation exists. If the states begin to wither, why not simple state what this means and meant in the Soviet context? The Stalin regime did not over throw the state. Perhaps you mean the Soviet form, but this cannot be ascertain from is written. The state is an organization of violence, bottom line. The matter of the "Soviet form" or Workers council form of organization, a question that has fascinated me for decades, leading to studying this matter, cannot be confused with the existence of the state as an organization of violence expressing the irreconcilability of class antagonism and the rule of a class. Issues dealing with the state as a class power and instrument of violence, becomes clearer in my mind by remembering the Marxist definition of the state as the product of the irreconcilably of class antagonism. Such discussion are difficult for me because no one ever define or clarify what we mean by different terms and concepts and instead assume everyone understands concepts the same way. The Soviet state, whose name was the Soviet Power, must not be confused with and identified as "the Soviet government." The Soviet state was above all a state or the organization of violence: the organization of the proletarian class as the state power, and the task of the state as state, was to guarantee the rule of a class, with the force of arms. The Soviet state was a state of a new type because for the second time in history, this organization of violence was welded as an instrument of rule by the majority against the minority. In my opinion that is what Lenin meant, rather than the peculiar form or organization of this violence. This state as state, is very different from the meaning and role of government, which is not the organization of violence in the hands of a class, but the committee system, no matter what is peculiar form. The committee system write the day to day economic and political agenda for society as well as shape the society's constitutional laws. This included an overlapping function of suppressing the resistance of the exploiting class; of organizing a blue print for a socialist economy on the basis of the existing level of productive forces, even when such a level did not exist during the time of Lenin, and consequently was not possible. The state does not organize the plan, the blueprint precisely because it is the state, rather than the government. (Pardon, let me get a coffee, which I should not be drinking but here goes another two hours.) In the everyday practical life of people, the Soviet government (not the state) was the top section of this same state organization, its top employees, organized as bureaus composed of party and non-party people. The government may make mistakes - (the bureaus or committee system); may commit endless absurdities, atrocities and blunders fraught with the danger of a temporary collapse of the dictatorship of the proletariat - class rule; but that would not mean that the proletarian dictatorship, as the principle of the structure of the Soviet state as class rule is wrong or mistaken. This is so because the state is the embodiment of the class rule of a class. Nor is the state or government the meaning of bureaucracy. Bad policy only mean that the top leadership is bad, that the policy of the top leadership, the policy of the government, is not in conformity with the dictatorship of the proletariat and must be changed in conformity with the demands of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the rule of a class. Rule of a class is a property relation. The state first and last reason for existence is to protect the property relations of a society, by violent means. The Soviet state and the Soviet government are alike in their class nature, but the government is narrower dimensionally, and does not embrace the whole state. Nor does the state as a whole embrace the government as a whole. They are organically connected and interdependent because the state is an instrument of class rule, but that does not mean that they may be lumped together. The state must not be confused with our government, just as the proletarian class must not be confused with the top leadership of the proletarian class in government or the Soviet party. Our government in America should not be confused with the capitalist class; nor should the Senate and House of Representatives be confused with all the police departments in the country or the Pentagon as the state made organizational. In this sense Marx wrote that government serves as the executive committee - not the state, of the capitalist class, writing its economic and political agenda. The difference between the state and government is the difference between the Senate and the Pentagon. This same distinction existed during the era of Soviet Power. The Senate could be abolished overnight but that would not abolish the state or change one single molecule that is class rule. Likewise to flatten "everything" into the concept "Soviet state" = the state+ the government, + the party, + the class, + the self organization of the workers arising as product/by product of 1905, confuses matters terribly, in my opinion. This "flattening" of everything prevents one from unraveling the essence of the "Soviet form" of government; Soviet form of workplace/territorial organization; Soviet form of Solider's and peasants organizations; which is not identical with the meaning of the Soviet form of the state. American democracy is a bourgeois democracy but this tell us virtually nothing about how the government organizes the democracy and even less about the state. All the above kinds of Soviet organizational forms have the same class essence. Why? Because of the government and states class essence. The government is an executive committee administering on behalf of a class and workers councils define themselves in an environment where proletarian class rule exists. Tyranny, real and perceived, does not define class as a property relations and as class expresses a historically specific stage of development of production. To abolish these forms of organization, i.e., the Soviet form, does not = abolishing the state or the class essence of the state or = changing the property relations. The Soviet form of the state is strictly a question of the rule of a class and how this class blocks the operation of the unrestrictive law and value as an expression of class rule; how it organizes its organization of violence and then . . . then . . .! uses the government as the instrument - committee, to enforce Constitutional laws - the laws, that prevent wealth accumulation from being converted into ownership of the means of production; and unleashing the resultant competition between capital. In addition government, not the state, is charged with all the basic modern functions of any other government. Things like the water supply or the electricity grid, keeping the trains running and so on. These are not the arena or reasonability of the state or expresses it essences as function and reason for existing. The the day-to-day policy of the Soviet government - (not the state), basically amounted to the ways and means by which the class aims of the proletarian dictatorship could be realized in a peasant country. The proletarian state was needed in order to crush the resistance of the exploiters, to organize a socialist economy, to abolish classes, etc. under conditions where abolishing class was not possible. What was abolished was the class antagonism. Here the word antagonism does not mean violence but in the way Marx and Engels used the term. The Soviet government was needed, in addition to all this, to chart the ways and means (the day-to-day policy), without which the accomplishment of these tasks would be unthinkable in a country, where the proletariat constitutes a minority, and the peasantry the overwhelming majority. The reason one section of communists felt the party had replaced the state is because, a). the absolute top members of government also welded/wielded power as party members b.) the power of the state was also wielded by party member, often the same persons. Here is what would becomes a source of and acute expression of bureaucratism, but this configuration is not the source of bureaucracy. "A workers' state is an abstraction. Actually, what we have is, firstly, a workers' state with the peculiarity that the population of our country is not predominantly working class, but peasant; and, secondly, a workers' state with a bureaucratic distortion" (Lenin). Finally Engels wrote: Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of society as a whole, its concentration in a visible corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for its own time, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection ? nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state. The first act by which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society ? the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society ? is also its last independent act as a state." (end quote) The Soviet state as class rule, was not murdered or died or was put to death by the Stalin regime . . . . . Unless one can show in clear simple terms how the class rule of the proletariat was put to death; shattered, and another state was consolidated and released the unrestricted law of value and its operations, reconstructing Soviet society on a capitalist basis in 1939. Something indeed happened in the Soviet Union under the Stalin regime including the loss of the Soviet form, but that is not the meaning of the state and state power. Here is why I am reluctant to address such questions because one must start at the beginning. And this is not even the beginning but explaining my understanding of the difference between the state and government; the Soviet form and why the Soviet form was not the dictatorship of the proletariat but an organizational form of the dictatorship. Please forgive long sentences and bad articulations. Then nothing was said of bureaucracy, its origins and growth and how it is to be combated today. Whew. WL. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000003) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sun Feb 22 19:09:59 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:09:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Review of Sokal's "Beyond the Hoax" Message-ID: <677977.22713.qm@web180106.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Ralph Dumain I thought Proyect hated Sokal. ^^^^^ CB: I don't know about that. I think he doesn't hold much truck with post-modernism ^^^^^ The review is hardly brilliant but it is to the point. I am sure Sokal got all his information about India from Meera Nanda, who has written numerous books and articles on the subject. I haven't read Sokal's books, though I have always been in sympathy with his aims. However, judging from the review, there comes a point where one ends up beating a dead horse to death. ^^^^ CB: Yeah you right, comrade, but there are probably some potential converts to Marxism among among post-modernists who get their heads straight. And some young thinkers who witness the debates may go more directly to materialism. Understanding of truth derives from correction of error. From phil at pwalden.fsnet.co.uk Sun Feb 22 19:36:06 2009 From: phil at pwalden.fsnet.co.uk (Phil Walden) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:36:06 -0000 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? In-Reply-To: <20090221.195318.4256.0.farmelantj@juno.com> Message-ID: <20090223023605.RWZP2093.aamtaout03-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@pwalden> I would agree with Jim F that present day Russia is some form of state capitalism. On the nature of the former Soviet Union I think it was none of the alternatives offered by Jim (and by Trotskyism in the post-war period). It was a bureaucratic bourgeois state in which a surplus was extracted from the peasantry and workers but not surplus value (so it could not have been a form of capitalism). It ceased to be a degenerated workers state when the possibility of a democratic opposition to Stalin within the CPSU based on Trotskyists/Bukharinists expired (1930). I had been thinking of doing work on globalisation since the 1970s because none of the Trotskyist groups seems to understand what has happened or its significance. But then I realized that I have to go even further back to the Cold War, because post-war Trotskyism tried to impose its own schemas onto it and unfortunately no group built a developed understanding of the Cold War. Adam Westoby's COMMUNISM SINCE WORLD WAR TWO is however a good start, despite faults. Phil Walden -----Original Message----- From: marxism-thaxis-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:marxism-thaxis-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Farmelant Sent: 22 February 2009 00:53 To: cdb1003 at prodigy.net; marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Well in Russia the state renationalized most of the energy industry several years ago. Putin, as president, went a long way towards reestablishing the leading role of the state in the management of Russia's economy. The state is a major stockholder in many of Russia's largest companies. One of Putin's big achievements was to rein in the oligarchs who had taken control of much of Russia's economy under Yeltsin. All this course takes us back to a lot of the old debates over the nature of the former Soviet Union: was it socialist? was it state capitalist? a degenerate workers state? a bureacratic collectivism? And to those old debates we can now can add debates over the nature of contemporary post-Soviet Russia. The post-Soviet regimes of Yeltsin and Putin had the avowed aim of restoring capitalism, but it seems that the reality there is perhaps more complex. They never could entirely obliterate Soviet-era institutions and practices, and now, I suspect, that the current world economic practice may force the current government of Medvedev and Putin to revive many of the old Soviet policies. I suppose that we might characterize the current Russian economy as a kind of state capitalism with some socialist characteristics. Jim F. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sun Feb 22 19:53:44 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:53:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: <313610.64664.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> I agree that these are the classical Marxist-Leninist theory, definitions, schema and order of the process, but I'm thinking that actuality, actual history, the concrete truth of this may not "go down" in as linear a fashion, as the a,b,c,1,2,3 of the theory. This would be applying Marx and Engels other warning against "cookbooks" and predictions about socialism and communism to their own sketch of how the state whithers away. So, the process of whithering away may in actuality be a zig-zag , one step whither, one step unwhither of the straightline of the abstract classical formulations For example, the Soviet state was a multinational state. The Russian state does not encompass all of the former Soviet territory. This might be seen as an early aspect of the total whithering away of the state there. Also, notice that there was relatively little bloodshed. The Soviet state did not go down fighting, not with a bang but a whimper ( as that Commie T.S. Eliot put it) Also, Soviet society was substantially without class antagonisms. This is one of the most important theoretical and praise of the Soviet Union points. The peaceful end of the multi-national state is an indicator of the lack of class antagonisms existing in the Soviet Union. Also, notice that the implication of my use of "whithering away of the state " is that some of what is left in Russia is _communism_ not socialism. The whithering away of the state ushers in communism. Obviously, since capitalist imperialist states still exist in the world and the Russian _state_ has nuclear weapons, the state has not totally whithered away. So, it would be a partial and harbinger whithering away that we see. Waistline2 No. The withering away of the state is predicated upon a couple of things: the withering away of the need for massive organized armed bodies of men domestically and internationally; the destruction of the value relations and the resolution of class antagonism. I was reluctant to reply to the question posed by this thread because it seemed to pose matters outside the concept of the state "as the irreconcilability of class antagonisms." For the state to begin its process of withering class antagonism - property as class, must be in the process of withering. Further, in Anti-Duhring, Marx and Engels outline the precondition for the state to wither away as state, founded and predicated on "the concept of the state as the irreconcilability of class antagonisms." The Soviet state as state was overthrown. In their comments, Marx and Engels wrote that only the residual aftermath of value would remain. Thus, riveting the state to the division of labor in society. Although administered by government the social safety net, welfare, housing, etc., is not the state. All government bureaucracies are not the meaning of the state, although the state as state has its bureaucracy, or it could not be an organized structure. I do not understand the Housing agency - HUD, to fall within the scope and meaning for the state as defined above by Lenin and Engels and Marx. Rather, HUD is an agency of the government as a bureaucracy. The Pentagon, a government agency is on the other hand a part of the state because of its function and role in society. WL. From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Sun Feb 22 20:22:46 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:22:46 -0500 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? In-Reply-To: <313610.64664.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <313610.64664.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Total idiocy, delusional nonsense, senseless gibberish, from first word to last. At 09:53 PM 2/22/2009, Charles Brown wrote: >I agree that these are the classical >Marxist-Leninist theory, definitions, schema >and order of the process, but >I'm thinking that actuality, actual >history, the concrete truth of this >may not "go down" in as linear >a fashion, as the a,b,c,1,2,3 >of the theory. This would be >applying Marx and Engels other >warning against "cookbooks" >and predictions about socialism >and communism to their own >sketch of how the state whithers >away. So, the process of whithering >away may in actuality be a >zig-zag , one step whither, one >step unwhither of the straightline >of the abstract classical formulations >For example, the Soviet state was a >multinational state. The Russian >state does not encompass all of >the former Soviet territory. >This might be seen as an early >aspect of the total whithering >away of the state there. Also, >notice that there was relatively >little bloodshed. The Soviet state >did not go down fighting, not >with a bang but a whimper ( as >that Commie T.S. Eliot put it) >Also, Soviet society was substantially >without class antagonisms. This is >one of the most important theoretical >and praise of the Soviet Union points. >The peaceful end of the multi-national >state is an indicator of the lack >of class antagonisms existing in >the Soviet Union. > >Also, notice that the implication >of my use of "whithering away of >the state " is that some of >what is left in Russia is _communism_ >not socialism. The whithering away of >the state ushers in communism. > >Obviously, since capitalist imperialist >states still exist in the world and >the Russian _state_ has nuclear weapons, >the state has not totally whithered away. > >So, it would be a partial and harbinger >whithering away that we see. From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Feb 22 20:56:43 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:56:43 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: Quantifying history and historical progression, all ways get me in trouble, yet this stops no one from quantifying history. I believe that the American state, as we know it is going to change at lightening speed, after a change in the property relations. What happens in America is very important to world history. The state can fall relatively peaceful without the outbreak of Civil War as was the case after the Lenin group seized power. However, the Bolshevik seizure of power was relatively peaceful. The fight came afterwards as the result of invasion. Invasion will not be one of our worry's. What happened with the fall of Soviet Power - 1989, outlines our future more or less. Marx wrote that the proletariat would have to fight for 50, 100, 200 years of wars and international wars not just to achieve power, but to make itself fit for the exercise of power. I am not sure if it is understood that it will take perhaps another 100 - 200 years, just to completely leave the old ritualized agrarian/feudal culture of Russia. One hundred years is nothing. Very much of China today is still feudal in its real actual and ritual behavior. Hundreds of millions of peasants, with an unbroken historical and written culture is mind boggling. Hence the stability of the system no matter what direction it lurches in. I am laughing because Mao had to tell everyone Marxism meant "it is right to rebel." This of course does no excuse or justify state policy one way or another. There is a tendency to forget that the October Revolution was bound up with the transition from agrarian social and economic relations to industrial social and economic relations. Defining the October Revolution of 1917 as a revolution - transition, from capitalism to socialism is in my estimate extremely inaccurate and run against all the statistical data on the Russian - Soviet population from the early 1900's to 1950. One cannot build socialism in a country of peasants, or rather the socialism one builds, cannot overcome the law of value as commodity exchange. One can restrict the law of value in everything fundamental to the industrial infrastructure. What made the Soviet Union socialist rather than capitalism was its industrial infrastructure. The fact of the matter is that no one owned any aspect of heavy industry or light industry before the spread of the second economy unleashed by Nikita. When "the state" owns all the capital and establishes institutions that deploys labor based on a plan and not anarchy of production that is socialism. There of course are zero peasants in America. In Russia, so-called socialist accumulation, a hideous term that tells no one anything, was carved out of the backs of the peasants. What actually took place was the thousand year old battle of the towns - city-states, demand for cheap food stuff running into the culture and ritualized social life of the small producers. I have a bias for Polany on this issue. At any rate, is not the average Russian living on about 3 bucks a day today? I do agree that the process of the withering away of certain features of the state began with the class rule of the proletariat in the Soviet Union. And that Russia was no basket case in the 1960's, 1970's or 1980's. Don't quote me on it but I believe the 1980's rate of growth hovered around 3% of GDP with a lack of statistics in the second economy. WL. I agree that these are the classical Marxist-Leninist theory, definitions, schema and order of the process, but I'm thinking that actuality, actual history, the concrete truth of this may not "go down" in as linear a fashion, as the a,b,c,1,2,3 of the theory. This would be applying Marx and Engels other warning against "cookbooks" and predictions about socialism and communism to their own sketch of how the state whithers away. So, the process of whithering away may in actuality be a zig-zag , one step whither, one step unwhither of the straightline of the abstract classical formulations For example, the Soviet state was a multinational state. The Russian state does not encompass all of the former Soviet territory. This might be seen as an early aspect of the total whithering away of the state there. Also, notice that there was relatively little bloodshed. The Soviet state did not go down fighting, not with a bang but a whimper ( as that Commie T.S. Eliot put it) Also, Soviet society was substantially without class antagonisms. This is one of the most important theoretical and praise of the Soviet Union points. The peaceful end of the multi-national state is an indicator of the lack of class antagonisms existing in the Soviet Union. Also, notice that the implication of my use of "whithering away of the state " is that some of what is left in Russia is _communism_ not socialism. The whithering away of the state ushers in communism. Obviously, since capitalist imperialist states still exist in the world and the Russian _state_ has nuclear weapons, the state has not totally whithered away. So, it would be a partial and harbinger whithering away that we see. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000003) From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Feb 22 21:01:17 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:01:17 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: Total idiocy, delusional nonsense, senseless gibberish, from first word to last. At 09:53 PM 2/22/2009, Charles Brown wrote: >I agree that these are the classical >Marxist-Leninist theory, definitions, schema >and order of the process, but >I'm thinking that actuality, actual >history, the concrete truth of this >may not "go down" in as linear >a fashion, as the a,b,c,1,2,3 >of the theory. Comment Ralph, you have a way with words. WL. **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000003) From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Feb 22 22:41:17 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:41:17 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: Wandering thoughts and notes related to the tread. From Waistline2 at aol.com Sun Feb 22 23:16:15 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:16:15 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? (lenin on class in 1919 Message-ID: Socialism means the abolition of classes. The dictatorship of the proletariat has done all it could to abolish classes. But classes cannot be abolished at one stroke. And classes still remain and will remain in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship will become unnecessary when classes disappear. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat they will not disappear. Classes have remained, but in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat every class has undergone a change, and the relations between the classes have also changed. The class struggle does not disappear under the dictatorship of the proletariat; it merely assumes different forms. Under capitalism the proletariat was an oppressed class, a class which had been deprived of the means of production, the only class which stood directly and completely opposed to the bourgeoisie, and therefore the only one capable of being revolutionary to the very end. Having overthrown the bourgeoisie and conquered political power, the proletariat has become the ruling class; it wields state power, it exercises control over means of production already socialised; it guides the wavering and intermediary elements and classes; it crushes the increasingly stubborn resistance of the exploiters. All these are specific tasks of the class struggle, tasks which the proletariat formerly did not and could not have set itself. The class of exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, has not disappeared and cannot disappear all at once under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The exploiters have been smashed, but not destroyed. They still have an inter national base in the form of international capital, of which they are a branch. They still retain certain means of production in part, they still have money, they still have vast social connections. Because they have been defeated, the energy of their resistance has increased a hundred and a thousandfold. The ?art? of state, military and economic administration gives them a superiority, and a very great superiority, so that their importance is incomparably greater than their numerical proportion of the population. The class struggle waged by the overthrown exploiters against the victorious vanguard of the exploited, i.e., the proletariat, has become incomparably more bitter. And it cannot be otherwise in the case of a revolution, unless this concept is replaced (as it is by all the heroes of the Second International) by reformist illusions. Lastly, the peasants, like the petty bourgeoisie in general, occupy a half-way, intermediate position even under the dictatorship of the proletariat: on the one hand, they are a fairly large (and in backward Russia, a vast) mass of working people, united by the common interest of all working people to emancipate themselves from the landowner and the capitalist; on the other hand, they are disunited small proprietors, property-owners and traders. Such an economic position inevitably causes them to vacillate between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In view of the acute form which the struggle between these two classes has assumed, in view of the incredibly severe break up of all social relations, and in view of the great attachment of the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie generally to the old, the routine, and the unchanging, it is only natural that we should inevitably find them swinging from one side to the other, that we should find them wavering, changeable, uncertain, and so on. In relation to this class?or to these social elements?the proletariat must strive to establish its influence over it, to guide it. To give leadership to the vacillating and unstable?such is the task of the proletariat. If we compare all the basic forces or classes and their interrelations, as modified by the dictatorship of the proletariat, we shall realise how unutterably nonsensical and theoretically stupid is the common petty-bourgeois idea shared by all representatives of the Second International, that the transition to socialism is possible ?by means of democracy? in general. The fundamental source of this error lies in the prejudice inherited from the bourgeoisie that ?democracy? is something absolute and above classes. As a matter of fact, democracy itself passes into an entirely new phase under the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the class struggle rises to a higher level, dominating over each and every form. General talk about freedom, equality and democracy is in fact but a blind repetition of concepts shaped by the relations of commodity production. To attempt to solve the concrete problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat by such generalities is tantamount to accepting the theories and principles of the bourgeoisie in their entirety. From the point of view of the proletariat, the question can be put only in the following way: freedom from oppression by which class? equality of which class with which? democracy based on private property, or on a struggle for the abolition of private property??and so forth. _http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s3_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s3) Economics And Politics In The Era Of The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From farmelantj at juno.com Mon Feb 23 06:59:27 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:59:27 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Erwin Marquit Message-ID: <20090223.085927.23602.1@webmail19.vgs.untd.com> You already list several articles of mine on your web site. As a physicist, my primary field is conceptual foundations of physics so that I have put on my university web site a collection of some of my published articles on dialectical materialism and the philosophy of the nature sciences most of which you probably do not have. You may wish to cross list them. The URL is http://tc.umn.edu/~marqu002 Erwin Marquit Professor Emeritus of Physics University of Minnesota ____________________________________________________________ Click for online loan, fast & no lender fee, approval today http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTIpd4uli2MQ0mh3o5C9ACum9C7H8MGqQ68AQnhyCozh2eARRtJcH2/ From farmelantj at juno.com Mon Feb 23 07:03:19 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:03:19 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein Message-ID: <20090223.090319.23602.2@webmail19.vgs.untd.com> Jim, Essay Thirteen Part Three has finally been published -- on 'Mind', Language and 'Cognition'. It has been delayed many months since it is exceedingly long. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page_13_03.htm Apart from Essay Twelve Part One, it is my most Wittgensteinian essay. Among other things, it debunks Voloshinov and Marcuse. Regards, Rosa! ____________________________________________________________ Need cash? Click to get a cash advance. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTFRJ8wNls6O8GrKp6JENqjNNEiVlyEW7ILedaQT4hMrZbXqLMpyhi/ From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 23 07:05:45 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:05:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: <845907.22929.qm@web180116.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Phil Walden I would agree with Jim F that present day Russia is some form of state capitalism. On the nature of the former Soviet Union I think it was none of the alternatives offered by Jim (and by Trotskyism in the post-war period). It was a bureaucratic bourgeois state in which a surplus was extracted from the peasantry and workers but not surplus value (so it could not have been a form of capitalism). ^^^^^ CB: Why use the term "bourgeois" if it wasn't form of capitalism ? ^^^^^^ It ceased to be a degenerated workers state when the possibility of a democratic opposition to Stalin within the CPSU based on Trotskyists/Bukharinists expired (1930). I had been thinking of doing work on globalisation since the 1970s because none of the Trotskyist groups seems to understand what has happened or its significance. But then I realized that I have to go even further back to the Cold War, because post-war Trotskyism tried to impose its own schemas onto it and unfortunately no group built a developed understanding of the Cold War. Adam Westoby's COMMUNISM SINCE WORLD WAR TWO is however a good start, despite faults. Phil Walden From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 23 07:17:25 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:17:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: <240933.77560.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Ralph Dumain Total idiocy, delusional nonsense, senseless gibberish, from first word to last. ^^^^ CB: This is wishful and lazy "thinking" a childish , whining "critique", because you can't make a good argument. You are stumped, trumped and checkmated. Pitiful really. You should be embarassed. ^^^^^^ From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 23 08:27:35 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:27:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein Message-ID: <854700.64898.qm@web180115.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Interesting that Rosa should mention Lamarckianism in this context, as I have argued that culture and language give humans a Lamarckian-like adaptive mechanism. Culture and language , symboling, allow inheritance of acquired, extra-somatic , characteristics. CB The 'Lamarckian' Origin Of Speech On a related topic, despite the fact that most of what Parrington and Holborow say undermines the role that language plays in communication -- reinforcing the view that language serves to 'represent' things to us in our heads (even if this process is filtered through our own idiosyncrasies, social situations, prevailing ideologies, etc., etc.) --, they appear to believe that human beings developed language because of a "need to communicate". This is how Holborow puts it: "The genesis of language is in human labour?. Communication is not therefore just one of the functions of language; on the contrary, language presupposes both logically and de facto the interaction among people. Language only arises from the need to communicate with other humans. It is quintessentially social." [Holborow (1999), p.20.] Parrington clearly concurs: "Crucially labour?developed within a co-operative and social context. It was this that led, through the need to communicate while engaging in co-operative labour, to the rise of the second specifically human attribute -- language." [Parrington (1997), p.122.]88 While I do not wish to question the role that co-operative labour has played in the development of language and thought (quite the opposite, in fact), several other aspects of the above quotations seem highly dubious, especially the idea that human beings invented language because of a "need to communicate". To be sure, we use language to communicate, but the claim that this arose because of a specific need to do so is highly questionable -- except, that is, for Lamarckians. Of course, the word "need" is ambiguous itself. We use it in a variety of different ways. Consider just a few of these: N1: That cake needs more sugar. N2: This strike needs widening. N3: Car owners need to put oil in their engines. N4: We need a pay rise. N5: The giraffe needs a long neck to browse tall trees. N6: That drunk needs to go home. N7: Plants need water. N8: The state needs to be smashed and the ruling class needs overthrowing. N9: Tony Blair and George W Bush need prosecuting as war criminals. N10: Comrades need to shout louder on paper sales.89 Precisely which of the above senses of "need" these two comrades were using is unclear -- several of them relate to what can only be called felt needs, or conscious needs (e.g., N4, and possibly N2), expressed perhaps as part of an agent's aims, goals or intentions. Others refer to the causal concomitants or prerequisites of a flourishing organism, successful revolution, strike, comeuppance for Bush and Blair, paper sales or well-run engines -- all of which are largely, if not totally, unfelt. Some of course, cannot be felt. Nevertheless, it is patently obvious that human beings could not have invented language as a result of a felt "need to communicate" (unless, that is, we assume they could think before they had developed language -- which would naturally imply that thought is not a social phenomenon, dependent on collective labour), since such a need would presuppose the very thing it was aimed at explaining. The idea that this type of necessity mothered that sort of invention would imply that the first human beings to talk had earlier formed the thought: "I/We need to communicate" (or something equivalent in their proto-language). Clearly, such a felt need to communicate could only be expressed if language already existed. On the other hand, if the thought (or its equivalent) that supposedly motivated the "need to communicate" was not in fact linguistic, then little content can be given to the notion that human beings once possessed such a need without being able to give voice to it. Indeed, how would it be possible to form the thought "We need to communicate" if the individual or individuals concerned had no idea (yet) what communication was. That would be like saying that we can (now) form the thought "We need to schmunicate" when none of has a clue what "schmunicate" means. [In fact, it is worse, since we are already sophisticated language users.] It could be objected to this that such a need could be a biological one (analogous to that expressed, say, in N5). However, there are two problems with this response. First, reference to the biological needs of organisms to explain the origin of adaptation is Lamarckian, not Darwinian. Secondly, and far worse, this alternative in fact completely undermines the view that language is a social phenomenon.89a From Waistline2 at aol.com Mon Feb 23 10:10:02 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:10:02 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: CB: Why use the term "bourgeois" if it wasn't form of capitalism ? ^^^^^^ It ceased to be a degenerated workers state when the possibility of a democratic opposition to Stalin within the CPSU based on Trotskyists/Bukharinists expired (1930). Comment Sometime around 1976, I purchased my first Collected Works of Lenin, all 45 volumes. I gave several Collected Works away to comrades with low wages. At any rate this afforded me to read Lenin as a totality and after a few years the history of the Russian - Soviet, Revolution played in my mind like a major motion picture. The point is that Lenin wrote voluminously on why one should not confuse a). the form of democracy and b). the existence of opposition groups in c). the party system . . . existing vertically and horizontally within the d). framework of the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . as systematic function and essence of e). the state. I never fear looking at reality for what it is and most certainly not Soviet History and the role of Stalin the individual and then the Stalin Regime. Comrade allow themselves to be guided by ideology and their most private individualized conception of democracy and refuse confronting things as simple as the difference between government and the state. The Stalin era evokes animal passions in some comrades, who if asked what is bureaucracy become confused and abandon Marxism all together, by first jettisoning the materialist conception of history. The above means "democratic opposition . . .(as) possibility (transform) workers state." That is to say one can effect a qualitative change in the class essence of the state by changing its form of Constitutional rights. What this in reality means is that the property relations of a society can be changed by changing the form of Constitutional Rights but this explanation is far to generous, because the above does not ascend to the level of Constitutional regimes. Rather the above says that changing the rules governing the essence of opposition group WITHIN THE PARTY . . . . NOT THE STATE, changes the property relations, the law of value and the planning mechanism that blocks the law of anarchy of production: the hallmark of private capital. The Soviet state stopped being a worker state with bureaucratic distortion = degenerate, because party rules were changed. I do not mean to ever talk down to anyone and have struggled over the years to evolve a flat writing style that compresses complex concepts. What I am saying is that it is impossible to effect a qualitative change in any process without altering - injecting quantitatively, a NEW qualitative ingredient into that which is fundamental to the entire process. Then . . . then! everything dependent as interactivity, on that which is fundamental to the process, must in turn change. Not all at one time, but incrementally and change it must. Because democracy is not a defining trait of class essence IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to change democracy and change the state qualitatively with "the qualitative" being defined as the fundamentality being property form and its meaning in the daily life of everyone. Stated another way, the POLITICAL FORM of democracy . . .;-) defines the Constitutional regime. Even this is not saying enough because England and the US are both bourgeois democratic regimes with huge differences, that in the last instance boil down to the role of "common law" in England and its absence in America. This is due to the absence of feudal relations. That is no concept of "noble obligation" which was legalized as mediator of social relations between ruled and rulers. CB, you a damn lawyer, why do I have to write this and continuously explain the most elementary understanding of the Marxist approach to the state!!! (QUESTION: Is the US Constitution, as the law of the land, + the Senate and the House of Representative the government? No! It is the constitutional regime. The party is not the meaning of the Constitutional regime. The Supreme Soviet . . . what's the use. Why not read what Lenin says in addition to Trotsky? Straight off the block I can recall several articles where Lenin deal with this exact issue exhaustingly. Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg diverged on the exact same question a decade before the October Revolution. There is of course a reason why Lenin won and his name is attached to a highly evolved political doctrine. I thought we would at least get a chance to describe the formation of the gulag; the extra legal terrorists organization of the DOP; the role of Beria . . .. :-( WL. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 23 11:50:58 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:50:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: <471861.77814.qm@web180106.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> CB, you a damn lawyer, why do I have to write this and continuously explain the most elementary understanding of the Marxist approach to the state!!! ^^^ Waistline, I'm willing to discuss this with you but , you know, _on the surface_ at least, your discussion doesn't have the appearance of a clear understanding of what you are "explaining". I'm willing to give you the benefit of a doubt , that you have some significant understanding from your many years of study and direct experience with capitalism from the standpoint of a socialist conscious proletarian. But you've got to give some consideration to my many years of experience as a predominantly mental laborer, writer, etc. Yea, I am a lawyer, and a long time student of materialism, so that means I got some good understanding of the state from Marx, Engels and Lenin's point of view. Lenin's fundamental discussion of the state relies especially upon Engels' anthropological book _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_. I'm a lawyer, and a student of anthropology and Marxist political economy and materialism. It was _The State and Revolution_ that was important in bringing me to Marxism. Lenin was a lawyer, etc., etc. So, what is it that you want to explain to me about the state ? And remember. You better come correct. Perhaps we should serialize _The State and Revolution_. Actually, I'm thinking these days the issues Lenin emphasizes in that book, non-electoral path to socialism are significantly turned into their opposite in our concrete circumstance. We might study _The State and Revolution_ to negate its thesis. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is not the path for the U.S. It is _Imperialism_ and _Leftwing Communism_ that are most pertinent to our "right here, right now" The US state is too loaded for bear, including nukes, and the US population is too stupified with anti-Communism from the Cold War travesty/tragedy to build toward insurrection or a direct "assault" to take the state power. The US cannot be confronted into socialism. It will take a backdoor , bourgeois self-negating route. The capitalists will have to be allowed (as if we had a choice, and can stop them , smile) to take capitalism to such an extreme such that it turns into its opposite, on its own. In other words, the super dictatorship of the bourgeoisie/finance capitalists ( and it is important always to discuss the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie when discussing the dictatorship of the proletariat) will self-negate, turn into its opposite. Rather than the capitalists selling us the rope with which we hang them, we "give" them enough rope to hand themselves. We are seeing that now, as super imperialism is "imploding". Amazingly, it is bourgeois and capitalist journalists , economist intellectuals and high bureaucrats who see "we are all socialists now", want nationalization of the financial monopolies, see Marx as rising from the dead and call on him to save themselves from themselves, redbait themselves, almost begging for socialism. The bourgeois bureaucracy is in a mood for suicide, expropriating itself. Marx in "The Historical Tendency of the Capitalist Mode of Production" chapter of _Capital_ , and _Imperialism_ note how the monopoly-centralization-one capitalist kills many of capitalism is preparation for socialism. Emphaisis on discussion of the government function of the state is part of the anti-thesis of that of _The State and Revolution_. Rather than elections only being a measure of the maturity of the working class, they are where its at for, including going into the Democratic Party, that most despised proposition on the childish Left. That's a main lesson of the Obama tactic. More later From phil at pwalden.fsnet.co.uk Mon Feb 23 12:26:36 2009 From: phil at pwalden.fsnet.co.uk (Phil Walden) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:26:36 -0000 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? In-Reply-To: <845907.22929.qm@web180116.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090223192635.TJAK21638.aamtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@pwalden> Phil Walden: It was a bourgeois state because it was part of a world system of bourgeois relations - all states extracting a surplus from their populations. Thus the Soviet Union could not have been some form of workers state. But it wasn't capitalist because the surplus extracted in the Soviet Union was not surplus value. CB: Why use the term "bourgeois" if it wasn't form of capitalism ? -----Original Message----- From: marxism-thaxis-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:marxism-thaxis-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Charles Brown Sent: 23 February 2009 14:06 To: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Phil Walden I would agree with Jim F that present day Russia is some form of state capitalism. On the nature of the former Soviet Union I think it was none of the alternatives offered by Jim (and by Trotskyism in the post-war period). It was a bureaucratic bourgeois state in which a surplus was extracted from the peasantry and workers but not surplus value (so it could not have been a form of capitalism). It ceased to be a degenerated workers state when the possibility of a democratic opposition to Stalin within the CPSU based on Trotskyists/Bukharinists expired (1930). I had been thinking of doing work on globalisation since the 1970s because none of the Trotskyist groups seems to understand what has happened or its significance. But then I realized that I have to go even further back to the Cold War, because post-war Trotskyism tried to impose its own schemas onto it and unfortunately no group built a developed understanding of the Cold War. Adam Westoby's COMMUNISM SINCE WORLD WAR TWO is however a good start, despite faults. Phil Walden _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis From Waistline2 at aol.com Mon Feb 23 12:35:10 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:35:10 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: Sorry CB, I was just jesting. WL. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Feb 23 12:38:06 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:38:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? In-Reply-To: <20090223192635.TJAK21638.aamtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@pwalden> Message-ID: <466864.10485.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 2/23/09, Phil Walden > Date: Monday, February 23, 2009, 7:26 PM > Phil Walden: It was a bourgeois state because it was part of > a world system > of bourgeois relations - all states extracting a surplus > from their > populations. Thus the Soviet Union could not have been > some form of workers > state. But it wasn't capitalist because the surplus > extracted in the Soviet > Union was not surplus value. ^^^^^^^ CB: Extracting surplus use-values ? I don't know if you are analyzing this based on the Marxist classics, but I believe that they contemplate that there are still surpluses generated during socialism, but that these are used to provide for social welfare funds for the eldersly, children, childcare, sick,intellectual workers, soldiers, etc. ^^^^^^^^^ > > CB: Why use the term "bourgeois" if it wasn't > > form of capitalism ? > > > -----Original Message----- > From: marxism-thaxis-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu > [mailto:marxism-thaxis-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On > Behalf Of Charles > Brown > Sent: 23 February 2009 14:06 > To: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away > ? > > > > Phil Walden > I would agree with Jim F that present day Russia is some > form of state > capitalism. > > On the nature of the former Soviet Union I think it was > none of the > alternatives offered by Jim (and by Trotskyism in the > post-war period). It > was a bureaucratic bourgeois state in which a surplus was > extracted from the > peasantry and workers but not surplus value (so it could > not have been a > form of capitalism). > > It ceased to be a degenerated workers state when the > possibility of a democratic opposition to Stalin within the > CPSU based on > Trotskyists/Bukharinists expired (1930). > > I had been thinking of doing work on globalisation since > the 1970s because > none of the Trotskyist groups seems to understand what has > happened or its > significance. But then I realized that I have to go even > further back to the > Cold War, because post-war Trotskyism tried to impose its > own schemas onto > it and unfortunately no group built a developed > understanding of the Cold > War. Adam Westoby's COMMUNISM SINCE WORLD WAR TWO is > however a good start, > despite faults. > > Phil Walden > > > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > Marxism-Thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis From Waistline2 at aol.com Mon Feb 23 13:46:53 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:46:53 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: Phil Walden: It was a bourgeois state because it was part of a world system of bourgeois relations - all states extracting a surplus from their populations. Thus the Soviet Union could not have been some form of workers state. But it wasn't capitalist because the surplus extracted in the Soviet Union was not surplus value. CB: Why use the term "bourgeois" if it wasn't form of capitalism ? Comment Here in a nutshell is the political and ideological divergence. Anyone "truly revolutionary" self appointed task is organize the workers to overthrow the bourgeois state. Since the Soviet state was an organization of violence in the hands of the bourgeoisie, it was the task of those who viewed the Soviet State as bourgeois, to overthrow it. Therefore, the functionaries making manifest the organization of the proletarian state; that did not think it was the organization of violence protecting the value relationship and anarchy of production, hunted down those who sought to overthrow the state and restore . . . exactly what? Such is how the functionaries of the state - not the state as such, thought things out. I do agree that the Soviet state was not a worker state. The workers state is an abstraction, according to Lenin. I would prefer Lenin's language on this matter. It was a proletarian state, "learning on the peasants." The worker-peasant alliance. ("Leaning on the peasants" is Trotsky precise formulation). The task of the proletarian state as state is to protect the proletarian property relations. The role of the government which sits upon the proletarian state - as a superstructure, is to implement the economic and political agenda in conformity with the property relations. And in the Soviet Union this included hunting down the counterrevolution, whose stated aim was the overthrow of the state, rather than changing the government. . WL. Post S. Extracting a surplus does not define the property relations in as much as every society on earth, outside of the initial communist organization of society, extracts a surplus. What was the surplus extracted in the Soviet Union? What was this surplus material physical appearance? Surplus product? If by change some of these "things" that are the "surplus," . . . was food stuff, . . . . then this "thing" . . .had a use-value and exchange-value, or a commodity form; because of the nature of small scale agricultural production, and the law of commodity exchange. Wheat was sold as a commodity in the Soviet Union. However, commodity production predates capitalism, which is to say, all commodity production does not = capitalist commodity production. The surplus extracted was perhaps a . . . . surplus product? Money? That is to say one runs backwards into the theory of value. The bourgeoisie appropriates the SURPLUS PRODUCT, which CONTAINS the value manifestation, over and above, the value equivalent in wages, paid to the total laborers. That is to say, the workers create a total mass of commodities and the bourgeoisie pays them a value well below the value in the total commodities they create. Hence surplus value. There is no other way to extract surplus value outside the surplus product, (that I am aware of) as the act of bourgeoisie production, distribution and circulation of commodities. WL **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From jannuzi at gmail.com Tue Feb 24 03:32:40 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:32:40 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein Message-ID: >>Interesting that Rosa should mention Lamarckianism in this context, as I have argued that culture and language give humans a Lamarckian-like adaptive mechanism. Culture and language , symboling, allow inheritance of acquired, extra-somatic , characteristics.<< I think that would be a genetic mutation, except a genetic mutation really only seems to transcend soma, and doesn't actually (Lamarck and Lysenko weren't completely wrong). The ability to gesture complexly emerged from our biology and brain capacity, and this ability to systematize, embed meaning and communicate symbolically then colonized our well-developed phonetic abilities (we could chatter like the birds and then we learned to communicate). Instead of asking what separates us from the apes, we ought to ask what separates us from a mockingbird or parrot? Corballis's fascinating book could have been made better had he collaborated with an articulatory phonologist, like someone at Haskins Laboratory. I am somewhat skeptical about there ever being an isolated, unitary 'language acquisition device' in humans (such as what Chomsky theorized without really ever elaborating on or ever pursuing in any empirical way). In which case, we would possibly be led down the path of saying individual development of the language recapitulates the species development without really saying what we meant by that. It's just another theoretical black box in linguistics. Rather, I see it as reflecting the plasticity of the brain and the specialization of 'general learning' before puberty (in fact, from the time of development in the womb to about the age of 6). http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=yEd_FchjDDMC&dq=hand+to+mouth+corballis&hl=en&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0 It is often said that speech is what distinguishes us from other animals. But are we all talk? What if language was bequeathed to us not by word of mouth, but as a hand-me-down? The notion that language evolved not from animal cries but from manual and facial gestures--that, for most of human history, actions have spoken louder than words--has been around since Condillac. But never before has anyone developed a full-fledged theory of how, why, and with what effects language evolved from a gestural system to the spoken word. Marshaling far-flung evidence from anthropology, animal behavior, neurology, molecular biology, anatomy, linguistics, and evolutionary psychology, Michael Corballis makes the case that language developed, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, from primate gestures to a true signed language, complete with grammar and syntax and at best punctuated with grunts and other vocalizations. While vocal utterance played an increasingly important complementary role, autonomous speech did not appear until about 50,000 years ago--much later than generally believed. Bringing in significant new evidence to bolster what has been a minority view, Corballis goes beyond earlier supporters of a gestural theory by suggesting why speech eventually (but not completely!) supplanted gesture. He then uses this milestone to account for the artistic explosion and demographic triumph of the particular group of Homo sapiens from whom we are descended. And he asserts that speech, like written language, was a cultural invention and not a biological fait accompli. Writing with wit and eloquence, Corballis makes nimble reference to literature, mythology, natural history, sports, and contemporary politics as he explains in fascinating detail what we now know about such varied subjects as early hominid evolution, modern signed languages, and the causes of left-handedness.From Hand to Mouthwill have scholars and laymen alike talking--and sometimes gesturing--for years to come. http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~jim/corballisrevu.html Michael Corballis is a psychologist with a strong interest in lateralization, handedness, and the origins of language. In this book, he puts these interests together with a solid and comprehensive survey of other background material relevant to the origins of language. The book also pushes Corballis' own specific hypothesis, that human languages were implemented mainly in manual gestures until about 50,000 years ago, at which point largely vocal language took over as an invented cultural innovation. This is an argument about the medium in which linguistic messages were expressed. Corballis believes that the human capacity for generative syntactic language may possibly be as old as one million years. The argument is much less about when true linguistic generativity arose than about the hypothesized relatively recent switch to the vocal medium. While conceding that Corballis succeeds in showing that this late switch to vocal language was possible, it still seems to me to be very unlikely. Corballis claims that the hominins of 150,000 years ago communicated mainly by manual gestures, but were (and here he agrees with the dominant view) biologically essentially the same as modern humans. Thus, they would have had all the potential of modern babies for acquiring skilled vocal articulation and control of complex phonological systems. Vocal language comes very naturally to modern humans. What took our ancestors so long (about 100,000 years!) to `discover' the advantages of vocal language? Corballis believes that vocal language does have advantages over manual language, and this, he argues, accounts for the displacement of the earlier waves of Homo sapiens by later waves of the same species, technologically superior due to possession of the better medium for language. Corballis' argument is a revamping of a position that used to be common among archeologists, especially those concentrating on the European Upper Paleolithic, that truly generative language itself did not emerge until some 45,000 years ago. At least he does not repeat that implausible suggestion. Instead, he has pushed the beginning of generative language back to around the beginning of Homo sapiens, which does seem plausible, while idiosyncratically sticking with a much later switch into the modern preferred vocal medium. From jannuzi at gmail.com Tue Feb 24 03:32:52 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:32:52 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein Message-ID: >>Interesting that Rosa should mention Lamarckianism in this context, as I have argued that culture and language give humans a Lamarckian-like adaptive mechanism. Culture and language , symboling, allow inheritance of acquired, extra-somatic , characteristics.<< I think that would be a genetic mutation, except a genetic mutation really only seems to transcend soma, and doesn't actually (Lamarck and Lysenko weren't completely wrong). The ability to gesture complexly emerged from our biology and brain capacity, and this ability to systematize, embed meaning and communicate symbolically then colonized our well-developed phonetic abilities (we could chatter like the birds and then we learned to communicate). Instead of asking what separates us from the apes, we ought to ask what separates us from a mockingbird or parrot? Corballis's fascinating book could have been made better had he collaborated with an articulatory phonologist, like someone at Haskins Laboratory. I am somewhat skeptical about there ever being an isolated, unitary 'language acquisition device' in humans (such as what Chomsky theorized without really ever elaborating on or ever pursuing in any empirical way). In which case, we would possibly be led down the path of saying individual development of the language recapitulates the species development without really saying what we meant by that. It's just another theoretical black box in linguistics. Rather, I see it as reflecting the plasticity of the brain and the specialization of 'general learning' before puberty (in fact, from the time of development in the womb to about the age of 6). http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=yEd_FchjDDMC&dq=hand+to+mouth+corballis&hl=en&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0 It is often said that speech is what distinguishes us from other animals. But are we all talk? What if language was bequeathed to us not by word of mouth, but as a hand-me-down? The notion that language evolved not from animal cries but from manual and facial gestures--that, for most of human history, actions have spoken louder than words--has been around since Condillac. But never before has anyone developed a full-fledged theory of how, why, and with what effects language evolved from a gestural system to the spoken word. Marshaling far-flung evidence from anthropology, animal behavior, neurology, molecular biology, anatomy, linguistics, and evolutionary psychology, Michael Corballis makes the case that language developed, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, from primate gestures to a true signed language, complete with grammar and syntax and at best punctuated with grunts and other vocalizations. While vocal utterance played an increasingly important complementary role, autonomous speech did not appear until about 50,000 years ago--much later than generally believed. Bringing in significant new evidence to bolster what has been a minority view, Corballis goes beyond earlier supporters of a gestural theory by suggesting why speech eventually (but not completely!) supplanted gesture. He then uses this milestone to account for the artistic explosion and demographic triumph of the particular group of Homo sapiens from whom we are descended. And he asserts that speech, like written language, was a cultural invention and not a biological fait accompli. Writing with wit and eloquence, Corballis makes nimble reference to literature, mythology, natural history, sports, and contemporary politics as he explains in fascinating detail what we now know about such varied subjects as early hominid evolution, modern signed languages, and the causes of left-handedness.From Hand to Mouthwill have scholars and laymen alike talking--and sometimes gesturing--for years to come. http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~jim/corballisrevu.html Michael Corballis is a psychologist with a strong interest in lateralization, handedness, and the origins of language. In this book, he puts these interests together with a solid and comprehensive survey of other background material relevant to the origins of language. The book also pushes Corballis' own specific hypothesis, that human languages were implemented mainly in manual gestures until about 50,000 years ago, at which point largely vocal language took over as an invented cultural innovation. This is an argument about the medium in which linguistic messages were expressed. Corballis believes that the human capacity for generative syntactic language may possibly be as old as one million years. The argument is much less about when true linguistic generativity arose than about the hypothesized relatively recent switch to the vocal medium. While conceding that Corballis succeeds in showing that this late switch to vocal language was possible, it still seems to me to be very unlikely. Corballis claims that the hominins of 150,000 years ago communicated mainly by manual gestures, but were (and here he agrees with the dominant view) biologically essentially the same as modern humans. Thus, they would have had all the potential of modern babies for acquiring skilled vocal articulation and control of complex phonological systems. Vocal language comes very naturally to modern humans. What took our ancestors so long (about 100,000 years!) to `discover' the advantages of vocal language? Corballis believes that vocal language does have advantages over manual language, and this, he argues, accounts for the displacement of the earlier waves of Homo sapiens by later waves of the same species, technologically superior due to possession of the better medium for language. Corballis' argument is a revamping of a position that used to be common among archeologists, especially those concentrating on the European Upper Paleolithic, that truly generative language itself did not emerge until some 45,000 years ago. At least he does not repeat that implausible suggestion. Instead, he has pushed the beginning of generative language back to around the beginning of Homo sapiens, which does seem plausible, while idiosyncratically sticking with a much later switch into the modern preferred vocal medium. From jannuzi at gmail.com Tue Feb 24 03:35:08 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:35:08 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein Message-ID: >>Interesting that Rosa should mention Lamarckianism in this context, as I have argued that culture and language give humans a Lamarckian-like adaptive mechanism. Culture and language , symboling, allow inheritance of acquired, extra-somatic , characteristics.<< I think that would be a genetic mutation, except a genetic mutation really only seems to transcend soma, and doesn't actually (Lamarck and Lysenko weren't completely wrong). The ability to gesture complexly emerged from our biology and brain capacity, and this ability to systematize, embed meaning and communicate symbolically then colonized our well-developed phonetic abilities (we could chatter like the birds and then we learned to communicate). Instead of asking what separates us from the apes, we ought to ask what separates us from a mockingbird or parrot? Corballis's fascinating book could have been made better had he collaborated with an articulatory phonologist, like someone at Haskins Laboratory. I am somewhat skeptical about there ever being an isolated, unitary 'language acquisition device' in humans (such as what Chomsky theorized without really ever elaborating on or ever pursuing in any empirical way). In which case, we would possibly be led down the path of saying individual development of the language recapitulates the species development without really saying what we meant by that. It's just another theoretical black box in linguistics. Rather, I see it as reflecting the plasticity of the brain and the specialization of 'general learning' before puberty (in fact, from the time of development in the womb to about the age of 6). http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=yEd_FchjDDMC&dq=hand+to+mouth+corballis&hl=en&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0 It is often said that speech is what distinguishes us from other animals. But are we all talk? What if language was bequeathed to us not by word of mouth, but as a hand-me-down? The notion that language evolved not from animal cries but from manual and facial gestures--that, for most of human history, actions have spoken louder than words--has been around since Condillac. But never before has anyone developed a full-fledged theory of how, why, and with what effects language evolved from a gestural system to the spoken word. Marshaling far-flung evidence from anthropology, animal behavior, neurology, molecular biology, anatomy, linguistics, and evolutionary psychology, Michael Corballis makes the case that language developed, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, from primate gestures to a true signed language, complete with grammar and syntax and at best punctuated with grunts and other vocalizations. While vocal utterance played an increasingly important complementary role, autonomous speech did not appear until about 50,000 years ago--much later than generally believed. Bringing in significant new evidence to bolster what has been a minority view, Corballis goes beyond earlier supporters of a gestural theory by suggesting why speech eventually (but not completely!) supplanted gesture. He then uses this milestone to account for the artistic explosion and demographic triumph of the particular group of Homo sapiens from whom we are descended. And he asserts that speech, like written language, was a cultural invention and not a biological fait accompli. Writing with wit and eloquence, Corballis makes nimble reference to literature, mythology, natural history, sports, and contemporary politics as he explains in fascinating detail what we now know about such varied subjects as early hominid evolution, modern signed languages, and the causes of left-handedness.From Hand to Mouthwill have scholars and laymen alike talking--and sometimes gesturing--for years to come. http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~jim/corballisrevu.html Michael Corballis is a psychologist with a strong interest in lateralization, handedness, and the origins of language. In this book, he puts these interests together with a solid and comprehensive survey of other background material relevant to the origins of language. The book also pushes Corballis' own specific hypothesis, that human languages were implemented mainly in manual gestures until about 50,000 years ago, at which point largely vocal language took over as an invented cultural innovation. This is an argument about the medium in which linguistic messages were expressed. Corballis believes that the human capacity for generative syntactic language may possibly be as old as one million years. The argument is much less about when true linguistic generativity arose than about the hypothesized relatively recent switch to the vocal medium. While conceding that Corballis succeeds in showing that this late switch to vocal language was possible, it still seems to me to be very unlikely. Corballis claims that the hominins of 150,000 years ago communicated mainly by manual gestures, but were (and here he agrees with the dominant view) biologically essentially the same as modern humans. Thus, they would have had all the potential of modern babies for acquiring skilled vocal articulation and control of complex phonological systems. Vocal language comes very naturally to modern humans. What took our ancestors so long (about 100,000 years!) to `discover' the advantages of vocal language? Corballis believes that vocal language does have advantages over manual language, and this, he argues, accounts for the displacement of the earlier waves of Homo sapiens by later waves of the same species, technologically superior due to possession of the better medium for language. Corballis' argument is a revamping of a position that used to be common among archeologists, especially those concentrating on the European Upper Paleolithic, that truly generative language itself did not emerge until some 45,000 years ago. At least he does not repeat that implausible suggestion. Instead, he has pushed the beginning of generative language back to around the beginning of Homo sapiens, which does seem plausible, while idiosyncratically sticking with a much later switch into the modern preferred vocal medium. From jannuzi at gmail.com Tue Feb 24 04:58:59 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:58:59 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: some kind of hiccup at gmail seems to have caused multiple posts. apologies. cj -- Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ We are Feral Cats http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/ From farmelantj at juno.com Tue Feb 24 07:54:50 2009 From: farmelantj at juno.com (farmelantj at juno.com) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:54:50 GMT Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Erwin Marquit Message-ID: <20090224.095450.13888.1@webmail01.vgs.untd.com> Jim, I apologize for omitting www from the link. I should have written: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~marqu002 since since I did not realize that omission of the ?www? generates an alias that leads to the website of the Marxist Educational Press (MEP), which I also manage. Although I manage both, they are quite different, in fact one is on the university?s server and the other forms an alias for the MEP website on a separate computer in the Physics department. Erwin ____________________________________________________________ Put your loved ones in good hands with quality senior assisted living. Click now! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTJkoLK4IbqmmPCbnAjv02xm5mSiWIUMMRrZ2MRvJQBg2TCOVjkAhS/ From Waistline2 at aol.com Tue Feb 24 17:23:25 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:23:25 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Message-ID: But Lenin wrote (in State and Revolution) that the withering away of the state begins at the very instance when the proletariat ("the armed working class") takes power. The Commune-state is "a state of a new type." The soviet state, alas, though not "strangled at birth" by the Wilsons and Churchills was subjected to grave injuries that led to its violent death at the hands of the Stalinist counterrevolution in the years 1935-1939. Shane Mage Comment Please explain. The form of the state? WL. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From Waistline2 at aol.com Wed Feb 25 08:24:26 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:24:26 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] the bipartisan way Message-ID: I watched and recorded Obama speech last night focusing on three aspects of the economy, "health care, energy and education." I asked the question "what is Obama going to reform," in the system and apparently here is the answer. These three issues contain a deep and complex intersection of class interest for all of American society. Reforming health care, depending on how it is carried out, has the potential to change the living relations between and within classes in America, without changing the property relations, by altering all classes living relations and links to government. Also of interest was Obama stating the military budget will now appear as a regular "line item" on the national budget. Generally speaking, only Senator John McCain has over the past decades been able to attack military spending and survive politically. Still not sure about Obama's meaning about reforming Medicare and no mention of Medicaid. The "aid" in Medicaid means aid to dependent children and welfare recipients and the "care" generally deals with retired workers and the disabled. Obama projected an "up until now" not seen firmness and militancy in his rhetoric. His peculiar "cool" is bound up with the immigrant experience, and not simply "cool" as expressed by the blacks. However that are rules that govern politics and simply being against the bourgeois power because they are bourgeois, is fine, but fails to educate anyone in the "art of the possible." "The possible" is the recognition of where the greatest intersection of class interest runs through all the various classes and class sectors attacking the system from different sides of the social equation. Further, economic crisis cannot be fought out in the economy, only the political superstructure as the colliding and collusion of underlying spontaneous class striving. In my opinion, the weakness of a sector of the communist/Marxist pole, that for very different reasons and considerations as a pole, voted for Obama, with some actively campaigning for him, was a weakness in understanding and articulating an outline of intersecting class interest, making Obama's election possible. The President - any President and any real leader in any organization (from trade union to the local bingo club), inherits certain things: in the case of President a military and administrative bureaucracy, which, is fundamental to and indispensable to governing; and this administrative bureaucracy may not agree with him and dangerously hinder his capability. Most importantly, no one can govern a people who disagree with them. Here is the political context Obama is being tracked within. Obama's Presidency "teeters" on winning a section of the voting workers that have generally and historically voted Republican. Here is why the running stats on what sections of the population ARE NOT hostile to the Obama administration is important as a gage in the art of the possible. It is not falling under the spell of bourgeois politics to track real events with a generalized political equation that keeps ones political pole on track and riveted to the science of society. Last point: Michelle Obama is the point man - no quotes, in the politics of wining the government administrative bureaucracy to the Obama administration and policy change domestically. Her importance and political capacity should not be under estimated. Roughly 10 days ago she gave an impressive speech realigning government policy with respects to the various Indian nations, speaking of developing infrastructure projects like schools and water works. Barack Obama story is that of the immigrant, and his has inspired a huge section of America that contains and embody such history. Michelle historically specific history is that of the Negro in its purity. Surely, no one can mistake the meaning of the word Negro in this context. Such an alignment as the "top" of American government has never occurred in American history. Mr. Cool + Michelle = . . ............."something!!," . . . as a specific method of rule that has not yet come of fruition. Things get interesting. Unite or Perish. WL. >>So a sizable majority wants Obama to pursue his policies with our without Republican support. Meanwhile, a huge majority says that Republicans should emphasize working with Obama in a bipartisan way over pursuing their policy ideas: Which do you think should be a higher priority for Republicans in Congress right now ? working in a bipartisan way with Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress or sticking to Republican policies? << ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From Waistline2 at aol.com Wed Feb 25 10:22:50 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:22:50 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Changing sides, political ideology and a Conversation with Stalin Message-ID: In history and as historical character, I was in the camp of the anarcho-syndicalist deviation (without quotes) in 1919 and 1920 Russia. While I never abandoned this political ideology, several of Lenin articles and the strength of his personality convinced me of the danger of belonging to a political faction. In Russia of 1920 a political faction did not mean comrades with a different view who fought for their views. A political faction meant a separate organization within the party formed on the basis of a political ideology; with a separate press and publishing capacity; a separate dues structure because all distinct political groups must raise money to exist, and more than less secret cells, within the cells of the party. A faction does not mean the existence of different and coherent body's of thought. In history, from 1920 to the early 1990s, my anarcho political orientation, with it romantic and intoxicating visions of industrial workers councils and industrial general strikes storming the citadels of capital, began a fundamental collapse and restructuring. Not as the result of some spiritual like change in political ideology, but because all political ideology - without exception, is connected to and expresses something material, that in the last instance is bound up with the productive forces and the interplay of classes as they collude and collide. I understood Lenin's meaning but my reality ran against the grain of his theoretical underpinning. I most certainly understood myself to be planted firmly within Engels writings and critique of anarchism, and this was expressed by an undying loyalty to the dictatorship of the proletariat as it was expressed as the worker-peasant alliance - government, that gave shape to the proletarian state; the supreme guardian of, and extra legal terrorist organs that protected the new laws of society that prohibited virtually anything from passing to the hands of the consuming workers other than means of consumption. In 1922/4 I could not be part of the Left Opposition because of their program and misunderstanding of industry as a living organism that could not be housed in "militarization of labor." I had read about Mr. Trotsky and the nice things Lenin said. but I had also studied Lenin for years, even before the revolution and knew Mr. Trotsky was never really part of the Lenin Group, and therefore had no real future because the old heads tended to only really support the other old heads. Never being scared to express my views unwaveringly, I was not a factionalist. What would happen 70 years later in 1990's, was experiencing the waves of social consequences that was the destruction and transformation of the industrial system as I had known it and as it had been transferred to me through family and dad working for Ford Motor Company for more than 30 years. The platform on which was erected the "industrial ideology" of anarcho-syndicalism was being furthered shattered by Marx famous "progress of industry." Not all at one time. But when fundamental tings change, everything dependent upon that, which is fundamental, must in turn change incrementally. There will be workers strikes and general strikes to bring down the government and bring society to insurrection. However, until such strikes leap outside of the bounds of just strikes, nothing changes and only momentary concessions can be won. The October Revolution was not a gigantic strike. Most people went to work on the day Lenin seized power. Anarcho-syndicalism is of course a combination of ideological anarchism as an expression of a concept of the state withering away detached from the value relations and the dying off of classes attached to value production; and French syndicalism with it called for the general industrial strike as the supreme weapon to bring down the government. Hence, its over emphasis on trade union forms and self perpetrating workers councils, as the most personalized conception of the meaning of political democracy. I happened to personally know that the real proletarian masses hated these petty bourgeois concepts of democracy because they required endless meetings and after ten years of such meeting, you become aware of the "self contained political logic of meeting." This logic or rule is that you begin to meet to set up the next meeting and every comrade has experienced this. Plus, the real proletarian masses hated rotating leadership and understood democratic centralism to be no more or less that the inherent organization of th factory system. You stand at the political assembly line and contribute. I also discovered the secret to a meeting is 45 minutes and the meeting ends no matter what has not been covered on the agenda. Then you have an after meeting with music drinks, checkers or cards. Anarcho-syndicalism as political ideology is neither good nor bad, in its theoretical roots, as such, but is riveted to a material configuration of the productive forces. Although Marxism is not compatible with anarcho-syndicalism, this does not and never meant both could not coexist in the same organization. If fact all healthy Communists Party's in the industrial countries recruited directly from the workers in large scale industry, and this very act recreated and continuously gave to anarcho-syndicalism. Even if an organization tried to stamp out anarcho-syndicalism as a political ideology it was doomed to ultimate fail because this ideology does not spontaneous spring from ideas detached from material relations of production. By material relations of production is meant the actualized conditions of labor - the division of labor, compelling labor to group itself in large factories. What one ended up doing was purging individuals only to recruit new individuals "suffering" from the same ailment. The state cannot cure a psychosis. What destroys anarcho-syndicalism as a political institution is the revolution in the productive forces, that reconfigures industry and destroys the old industrial shape of production. Specifically, when I entered industry . . . again . . . in 1970, there were 125,000 Chrysler UAW workers. Today, there are 43,000 and rapidly falling and these 43,000 can produce a magnitude of commodities = to the 125,000. This means a 2/3 fall in value - the amount of socially necessary labor. Twenty years later - from 1990 to 2009, anarcho-syndicalism as a political ideology only exists in the minds and hearts of those of another generation and era. Sometime between 1979 and 1983, I was in Chicago, the party's center, and call onto the carpet before basically a tribunal and charged and question about my anarcho-syndicalism. by either 3 or 4 leading comrades whom I deeply respected. I believe in my hear to this day the purpose was my purge on the grounds of anarcho-syndicalism. I basically answered all the question to the affirmative, because I have never felt the need to hide or lie about my political convictions. The leading comrade - Chairman, asked me what I had to say in my defense. By basic attitude and defense was that I am not required to defend my political ideology or convictions to anyone, at any time for any reasons. I will explain the facts. "The fact of the matter is that I have done nothing in violation of the party program. I recruit members, sell more papers than 90% of the party members; volunteer for all assignments; pay more than my dues on a regular basis and I am trying to figure out what part of the party program or policy I am in violation of. The Chairman smiled and said "dammit Comrade Waistline, you are absolutely right. Sorry." And the meeting was ended. It would take me another 15 years to really figure out and grasp what those comrades really meant. In turn I taught them - everyone and I am taking credit for it, that anarcho-syndicalism is not a mistake; the reason it is incompatible with Marxism is because Marxism is a theoretical science and the science of society and anarcho-syndicalism is a political doctrine of combat, that is not hostile to Leninism; a political doctrine. A theoretical science cannot be measured against a political doctrine of combat or Leninism would be called "Marxism2." That is to say Lenin was a Marxist and the doctrine bearing his name is a specific complex of strategy and tactics. Anyway, I would be expelled later for violating party rules. I demanded that my unit demand the tax records of my wife, who had divorced my dumb ass and no one can demand or insists that the party reveal or demand that any individuals personal financial standing be discussed or made public. Sine that time I have been asked if interested in various organizations including one with former lading members in it. My point of course is that if a section of th communist movement cannot get pass the Stalin period then a call must be made to begin reform of the communist movement around those stuck in the old period with nothing new or enlightened to contribute. Stalin is the bone in the throat of the communist movement that can neither be swallowed or coughed up. I take immense pride as history at being in the Stalin Polarity - on the left. When Comrade Stalin called me on the carpet, I listened and when he asked what I had to say for myself, I first sat down because he is only 5'4 and I am 6 feet talk. No one enjoys anyone standing over them. I leaned over with forearm resting on my right leg and said, "The fact of the matter is that I have done nothing in violation of the party program. I recruit members, sell more papers than 90% of the party members; volunteer for all assignments; pay more than my dues on a regular basis and I am trying to figure out what part of the party program or policy I am in violation of. Plus, I brought 3 new plants on line without weighting down the party organizations with the peasant mentality." The Chairman smiled and said "dammit Comrade Waistline, you are absolutely right. Sorry." On the way out the door Beria started at me. Turning around I walked up to Beria, turned and looked at Stalin and said "Boss, I do not mind sitting down at your knee and talking man to man." "But that mutherfuking Beria, I'll gut that mutherrfuker." Boss say, "Comrade Beria, you better pray to your God that not one single hair on Waistline's anarchist syndicalist head is disturbed. I want to see him in 60 days and you are to pick him up personally. He tell the truth." All we have to do is tell the truth and stop leading with political ideology. The benefit of a listserv such as this, with individuals embodying decades of experience is their clarity of conceptions while never fearing to be truthful to themselves and the keyboard. My questions about the meaning of the state, property relations, The Commune form, the meaning of surplus was not meant to offend but honest to the best of my ability. WL. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Feb 25 14:12:54 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:12:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein Message-ID: <646823.36477.qm@web180106.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> CB: On your comments below, notice I said language and culture. Material culture might be thought of as the products of "gestures". In my hypothesis , the nature of symbols as the use of something to represent something it is not is critical. The critical communication is not between living humans, except that between adults and children, but the communication between living and dead generations. More specifically I am thinking symbols allow the dead generation to teach the living generation ( or the living generation to teach the unborn generations) in a way that teaching through imitation cannot occur. Birds and monkeys and humans can learn by imitation - monkey see, monkey do. But only humans can through symbols, whether speech, gestures or material cultural items. Symbols can cross the boundary between the living and the dead ( in a non-mystical sense), in a way that imitations cannot. Why ? Because the dead are no longer present themselves to be imitated. But if the dead are represented, if the experineces of the dead are represented by something that is not the dead, by a symbol, then the something that is not the dead , that is not "dead", can get across the death barrier. Language actually is the most efficient of these "death barrier crossers". However, language need not be _spoken_, it can be gestures, i.e. sign language. Or it could be a form of "written", but non- alphabetical language, as in abstract use of material objects as the symbolic elements, tokens. Anyway, my hypothesis suggest spoken or sign language had to be very early at the origin of our species, because, story tellikng would be the most effective death barrier crosser. This is why I think Rosa's opposition between representation and communication can be "happily" resolved at the origin of language and human thinking, because originally language was representational or symbolic in order to be communicative across generations, between dead and living. CeJ jannuzi >>Interesting that Rosa should mention Lamarckianism in this context, as I have argued that culture and language give humans a Lamarckian-like adaptive mechanism. Culture and language , symboling, allow inheritance of acquired, extra-somatic , characteristics.<< I think that would be a genetic mutation, except a genetic mutation really only seems to transcend soma, and doesn't actually (Lamarck and Lysenko weren't completely wrong). The ability to gesture complexly emerged from our biology and brain capacity, and this ability to systematize, embed meaning and communicate symbolically then colonized our well-developed phonetic abilities (we could chatter like the birds and then we learned to communicate). Instead of asking what separates us from the apes, we ought to ask what separates us from a mockingbird or parrot? Corballis's fascinating book could have been made better had he collaborated with an articulatory phonologist, like someone at Haskins Laboratory. Michael Corballis is a psychologist with a strong interest in lateralization, handedness, and the origins of language. In this book, he puts these interests together with a solid and comprehensive survey of other background material relevant to the origins of language. The book also pushes Corballis' own specific hypothesis, that human languages were implemented mainly in manual gestures until about 50,000 years ago, at which point largely vocal language took over as an invented cultural innovation. This is an argument about the medium in which linguistic messages were expressed. From jannuzi at gmail.com Wed Feb 25 21:51:06 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:51:06 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein Message-ID: >>Language actually is the most efficient of these "death barrier crossers". However, language need not be _spoken_, it can be gestures, i.e. sign language. Or it could be a form of "written", but non- alphabetical language, as in abstract use of material objects as the symbolic elements, tokens. Anyway, my hypothesis suggest spoken or sign language had to be very early at the origin of our species, because, story tellikng would be the most effective death barrier crosser.<< Well have already had the discussion about language being both arbitrary and motivated, with motivation often stemming from how interconnected 'speaking' a language is with our bodies and our gestures. I would suppose in the oral tradition stories crossed individuals, generations and the death barrier because they were enacted and remembered and then enacted again. And enactment might include verbal explanation in narrative form, drawings in the dirt, dance, chanting and song--and cave paintings. I wonder how much practical knowledge survives because we have supplemented our abilities with literacy. But on the other hand, how literacy (and now literacy on computers) means the death of oral traditions (certainly ones that go beyond families into a tribal or nation level). Also, do you think other animals have an ability to use language across generations? It has been noted how groups of animals within a species will display their own 'culture'. CJ From jannuzi at gmail.com Wed Feb 25 21:58:59 2009 From: jannuzi at gmail.com (CeJ) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:58:59 +0900 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Also, do you think ?other animals have an ability to use language > across generations? It has been noted how groups of animals within a > species will display their own 'culture'. I should have stated it more carefully considering what you had written earlier. I mean, do you think animals can do what humans do across generations without imitation? For example, might an ape see the tools another ape has used and seen the results (leftover food) and figured out to use the tools to , for example, crack nuts, without being shown? OTOH, the sort of indirect, transgenerational 'symbolling' you are talking about, how important is it to human culture? It seems important for well developed technologies and some special skills (but most are taught directly). And isn't it really a secondary result of our more primary abilities to communicate using language and symbolic representation (either arbitrary and/or motivated or a mix of both) and more direct interaction (although modern multi-media makes it difficult to say what is and what is not direct). CJ From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 26 07:04:10 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:04:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein Message-ID: <656106.6593.qm@web180106.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Also, do you think other animals have an ability to use language across generations? It has been noted how groups of animals within a species will display their own 'culture'. CJ ^^^^ CB: My opinion on this is that the examples of animals having culture that are given are not "really" culture. The degree to which imitation can simulate culture and language can be seen in parrots' ability to imitate very closely a small number of words. Perhaps these animal "cultures" look like culture because of some complex imitations ? I suppose I should look up the examples. Of course, anthropologists are the ones who have developed this definition of the human species as culture and language bearing, and in doing so examined the reputed animal species example of culture and distinguished them. The distinction is made between the most "primitive" human groups and usually apes and chimps , of course. You would know better than I, but I think Chomsky's discussion were based upon the ability of a human child to learn language very rapidly, thus that hypothesized, black box in the brain ( as you say not found). But no chimp has ever been able to learn beyond a very small number of words, even with intense and extensive training. The recent tragedy of the chimp mauling horribly that woman had attendant news stories describing the abilities of the chimp in everyday life having lived as a pet intimately with his human mistress for 15 years. The chimp could dress himself, use the toilet, bathe himself, drank wine, watched television using a channel changer. Even if he didn't have vocal chords or whatever to be able to speak, if he had language ability, it would seem he would be able to develop a high level of sign language or even writing, even if the writing would not be as small and precise because of no opposable thumb. Seems like he could be taught to type out words, if he had the mental ability to handle words at anything near a human level. I'll try an engine search on animal "culture" From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 26 07:37:16 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:37:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein Message-ID: <196230.56528.qm@web180112.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> This article does not raise the issue of symbols. It turns on imitative learning. But my anaylsis assumes that animals can imitate - monkey see, monkey do. It is symboling that they can't do. They can't understand the concept of representation; or at least not abstractly enough to do it tens of thousands of times readily. A chimp can learn to sssoicate a limited number of words with their referants. Even a dog can learn to associate a few words with referents. It's name, commands like "sit" , "rollover". "fetch". but they don't seem to be able to generalize to the concept of word enough to build the giant vocabularies that humans readily achieve. sit, rollover fetch etc. are built up through conditioned learning links between words and behaviors CJ can help me to elaborate on the characteristics of full language http://animals.howstuffworks.com/animal-facts/animal-culture-info.htm On a grassy slope above the shore of Lake Tanganyika in the east African nation of Tanzania, two male chimpanzees spot a hole in the ground, into which a long column of ants is marching. The chimps pause for a moment beneath the light drizzle of an early morning rain and then amble to the hole?the entrance to the ants' nest?for a closer inspection. The chimpanzees, lifetime residents of Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park, expertly select several long sticks and sit down beside the nest. Slowly, each of them extends a stick into the hole and watches as some of the ants swarm up the probe. As soon as either of the chimps gauges that the lower half of the stick has become covered with ants, he extracts it from the nest. He then quickly gathers the tasty insects from the stick with his free hand and pops them into his mouth. Across the continent in the Tai Forest of western Africa's Ivory Coast, two other male chimps have also discovered a nest of ants. They each find a suitable tool?a short stick, rather than the long probes favored by the Gombe chimps-and begin dipping it into the nest entrance to fish for a meal. After the ants guarding the nest climb up the sticks, the chimps sweep the sticks directly across their smacking lips and, without using their hands, draw the ants into their mouths. At the same time that the chimps are enjoying their morning snacks, two other mealtime rituals are being played out by other primates (the order of mammals that includes humans, apes, and monkeys) far to the west. In St. Louis, Missouri, two human families?one whose ancestors came from Asia and the other whose forebears originated in Europe?sit down to dinner at separate tables in a Chinese restaurant. Both families order their favorite dish of spicy orange chicken. When the food is served, the Asian family begins eating its meal with chopsticks, while the other family picks up forks. Since the dish could be eaten with either chopsticks or forks, the preference for one type of utensil over another is simply a reflection of cultural differences between the two families. There's nothing unusual about that. But what about the differences in the ways the Gombe and Tai chimpanzees perform ant fishing? Could those individual preferences also reflect differences in culture? Since all of the chimps are of the same species, it is unlikely that genetic differences could account for the variations in behavior. Thus, the different approaches to a similar task, ant fishing, are likely to be learned behaviors within the Gombe and Tai social groups. That means that knowledge may have been passed from one chimp to another. In other words, the chimps seem to be exhibiting behavior that could be called culture. Social scientists have long maintained, however, that only humans are capable of possessing culture. Are they wrong? Do chimpanzees?and perhaps even other animals, such as monkeys, whales, and birds?also possess a form of culture? Many scientists in 2000 believed that the answer to that question is yes. But others insisted that culture is a purely human phenomenon. What Do Scientists Mean By ?culture?? Scientists have debated whether animals have culture at least since the late 1800's, when the British physiologist and psychologist George Romanes proposed that some animals display behaviors that indicate a high degree of intelligence and an ability to learn. Other scientists, however, disagreed with this conclusion, believing that animal behavior is hard-wired in the brain. Over the years, scientists on both sides of the issue divided themselves into two camps, the culturalists and the anticulturalists. The culturalists contend that animals are a lot smarter and more adaptable than most people think. The anticulturalists argue that animals, regardless of their intelligence, are incapable of culture. Central to this debate is defining what exactly is meant by culture. One requirement for culture that is accepted by scientists on both sides of the issue is imitation, or learning through observation. Researchers agree that cultural traditions among humans are learned through imitation. An American family in the Midwest may learn to use chopsticks from a daughter who attended school in Japan. In another example, most American teen-agers since the 1950's have learned that rock music is the cool music to listen to. Rock has become a cultural tradition for young people largely through imitation, as teens embrace the predominant musical preferences of their peers. Individual family traditions are yet another type of cultural behavior learned through imitation. A mother follows a particular recipe for a German chocolate cake because her mother did so. A boy learns how to sail the family boat by watching his father. One thing that these traditions have in common besides imitation is that they are not genetically determined. Like these examples from human culture, animal behaviors such as ant fishing are not clearly determined by genes and seem to spread from one individual to another through imitation. However, anticulturalists argue that the definition of culture involves more than just imitation. One of the leading voices of the anticulturalist camp, psychologist Bennett G. Galef of McMaster University in Ontario, maintains that culture must be purposefully taught by an individual with the intention of passing on knowledge to another. And teaching, he notes, is a difficult thing to prove in animals. Another factor that Galef and many other anticulturalists believe is necessary for the spread of culture is a spoken language?something that no animal possesses. Culturalists, however, contend that making a spoken language a requirement for culture amounts to stacking the deck. No shared animal behavior, regardless of how sophisticated it is, could then qualify as culture. Many culturalists, including psychologist Andrew Whiten of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and Jane Goodall, the renowned zoologist who has spent her adult life studying chimpanzees, think culture should be defined more broadly. They believe that the spread of a behavior through a group of animals by observation and imitation qualifies as culture. Under that definition, the transmission of an insect-fishing technique from one chimpanzee to another is indeed a form of culture. Chimpanzee Tool Use and Social Behavior Although other scientists had previously observed chimpanzees in captivity using tools, Goodall was the first scientist to witness chimps in the wild engaged in that activity. On an October day in 1960, soon after she arrived in the area that is now Gombe Stream National Park, Goodall noticed a rustling in the tall grass on a slope. She crouched to the ground, pulled out her binoculars, and watched as a chimpanzee dipped a grass stem into a termite nest to get at the burrowing insects. Over the next several years, Goodall made many observations of termite and ant fishing and discovered that the entire troop of chimpanzees at Gombe engaged in these behaviors. Beginning in the 1970's, other teams of scientists began studies of chimpanzee behavior in different regions of Africa. In 1999, seven research teams, under the guidance of Whiten, pooled their data and published their findings in the British journal Nature. The investigators reported 39 different chimp activities that met their definition of culture as behavior that spreads throughout a social group through imitation. The most significant of these behaviors were the use of simple tools and activities related to grooming and courtship. Most importantly, the different groups of chimpanzees took individualized approaches to similar tasks. These variations could not be explained by either genetic or environmental differences, and so they must have spread through imitation and?possibly?intentional teaching. For example, the scientists described the varying insect-fishing methods used by different chimp groups. They noted that the chimps at Gombe usually use a long stick or stem to extract termites and ants from their nests, and they tend to remove the insects from the probe by swiping their hands along it. Chimps at Tai and at a site called Bossou, in Guinea, are more likely to fish with a short stick and to strip the insects from it with their mouth. Another example of cultural variation in chimpanzees is the use of tools to crack open nuts. At Gombe, though there are plenty of nuts, the chimps haven't learned to open them, despite an abundance of rocks that would be ideal for the task. In contrast, chimps at Bossou use stone ?hammers? to crack open nuts on either stone or wood ?anvils.? Chimpanzees at Tai also open nuts in this manner, and they often use pieces of wood as well as rocks for their hammers. According to the scientists, nut cracking by the Tai chimps provides a good example of a behavior that is learned by young chimps through imitation and then practiced by them as adults. While adult Tai chimps expertly open nuts with their hammers and anvils, the young chimps try pounding on nuts with rotten branches, pieces of fruit, and even chunks of termite mounds. They eventually discover that the stones and hard pieces of wood used by the adults work the best. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 26 08:24:06 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:24:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Symbols as unique in human learning (was Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein) Message-ID: <576314.92048.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> This subsection of the wikipedia article on culture, brings in the concept of symbols as a distinguishing characteristic of human culture. This author distinguishes imitative from emulative Using "imitative" differently than I have been using it. Emulative would be "monkey see, monkey do." The kind of learning characteristic of human children is ?Imitative learning,? which ?means reproducing an instrumental act understood intentionally.?[38] Human infants begin to display some evidence of this form of learning between the ages of nine and twelve months, when infants fix their attention not only on an object, but on the gaze of an adult which enables them to use adults as points of reference and thus ?act on objects in the way adults are acting on them.? [39] This dynamic is well-documented and has also been termed ?joint engagement? or ?joint attention.?[40][41] Essential to this dynamic is the infants growing capacity to recognize others as ?intentional agents:? people ?with the power to control their spontaneous behavior? and who ?have goals and make active choices among behavioral means for attaining those goals.?[42] Culture is ?the imposition of arbitrary form upon the environment.? CB: The following is what I try to get at when I say with a symbol something is represented by something that it is not. There is an arbitrary relation between the sign and the signified: ?In the preparation of the stick for termite-eating, the relation between product and raw material is iconic. In the making of a stone tool, in contrast, there is no necessary relation between the form of the final product and the original material.?[60] CB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture#Biological_Anthropology:_the_Evolution_of_Culture Biological Anthropology: the Evolution of Culture The taxonomic relationships of Hominoidea Discussion concerning culture among biological anthropologists centers around two debates. First, is culture uniquely human or shared by other species (most notably, other primates)? This is an important question, as the theory of evolution holds that humans are descended from non-humans. Second, how did culture evolve among human beings? Gerald Weiss noted that although Tylor?s classic definition of culture was restricted to humans, many anthropologists take this for granted and thus elide that important qualification from later definitions, merely equating culture with any learned behavior. This slippage is a problem because during the formative years of modern primatology, some primatologists were trained in anthropology (and understood that culture refers to learned behavior among humans), and others were not. Notable non-anthropologists, like Robert Yerkes and Jane Goodall thus argued that since chimpanzees have learned behaviors, they have culture.[10][11] Today, anthropological primatologists are divided, several arguing that non-human primates have culture, others arguing that they do not.[12][13][14][15] This scientific debate is complicated by ethical concerns. The subjects of primatology are non-human primates, and whatever culture these primates have is threatened by human activity. After reviewing the research on primate culture, W.C. McGrew concluded, "[a] discipline requires subjects, and most species of nonhuman primates are endangered by their human cousins. Ultimately, whatever its merit, cultural primatology must be committed to cultural survival [i.e. to the survival of primate cultures]."[16] McGrew suggests a definition of culture that he finds scientifically useful for studying primate culture. He points out that scientists do not have access to the subjective thoughts or knowledge of non-human primates. Thus, if culture is defined in terms of knowledge, then scientists are severely limited in their attempts to study primate culture. Instead of defining culture as a kind of knowledge, McGrew suggests that we view culture as a process. He lists six steps in the process: A new pattern of behavior is invented, or an existing one is modified. The innovator transmits this pattern to another. The form of the pattern is consistent within and across performers, perhaps even in terms of recognizable stylistic features. The one who acquires the pattern retains the ability to perform it long after having acquired it. The pattern spreads across social units in a population. These social units may be families, clans, troops, or bands. The pattern endures across generations.[17] McGrew admits that all six criteria may be strict, given the difficulties in observing primate behavior in the wild. But he also insists on the need to be as inclusive as possible, on the need for a definition of culture that "casts the net widely": Culture is considered to be group-specific behavior that is acquired, at least in part, from social influences. Here, group is considered to be the species-typical unit, whether it be a troop, lineage, subgroup, or so on. Prima facia evidence of culture comes from within-species but across-group variation in behavior, as when a pattern is persistent in one community of chimpanzees but is absent from another, or when different communities perform different versions of the same pattern. The suggestion of culture in action is stronger when the difference across the groups cannot be explained solely by ecological factors ....[18] As Charles Frederick Voegelin pointed out, if ?culture? is reduced to ?learned behavior,? then all animals have culture.[19] Certainly all specialists agree that all primate species evidence common cognitive skills: knowledge of object-permanence, cognitive mapping, the ability to categorize objects, and creative problem solving.[20] Moreover, all primate species show evidence of shared social skills: they recognize members of their social group; they form direct relationships based on degrees of kinship and rank; they recognize third-party social relationships; they predict future behavior; and they cooperate in problem-solving.[21] Cast of the skeleton of Lucy, an Australopithecus afarensis One current view of the temporal and geographical distribution of hominid populationsNevertheless, the term "culture" applies to non-human animals only if we define culture as any or all learned behavior. Within mainstream physical anthropology, scholars tend to think that a more restrictive definition is necessary. These researchers are concerned with how human beings evolved to be different from other species. A more precise definition of culture, which excludes non-human social behavior, would allow physical anthropologists to study how humans evolved their unique capacity for "culture". Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus) are humans' (Homo sapiens) closest living relative; both are descended from a common ancestor which lived around five or six million years ago. This is the same amount of time it took for horses and zebras, lions and tigers, and rats and mice, to diverge from their respective common ancestors [22] The evolution of modern humans is relative rapid: Australopithicenes evolved four million years ago and modern humans in past several hundred thousand years. [23] During this time humanity evolved three distinctive features: (a) the creation and use of conventional symbols, including linguistic symbols and their derivatives, such as written language and mathematical symbols and notations; (b) the creation and use of complex tools and other instrumental technologies; and (c) the creation and participation in complex social organization and institutions.[24] According to developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello, ?where these complex and species-unique behavioral practices, and the cognitive skills that underlie them, came from? is a fundamental anthropological question. Given that contemporary humans and chimpanzees are far more different than horses and zebras, or rats and mice, and that the evolution of this great difference occurred in such a short period of time, ?our search must be for some small difference that made a big difference ? some adaptation, or small set of adaptations, that changed the process of primate cognitive evolution in fundamental ways.? According to Tomasello, the answer to this question must form the basis of a scientific definition of ?human culture.?[25] In a recent review of the major research on human and primate tool-use, communication, and learning strategies, Tomasello argues that the key human advances over primates (language, complex technologies, complex social organization) are all the results of humans pooling cognitive resources. This is called ?the ratchet effect:? innovations spread and are shared by a group, and mastered ?by youngsters, which enables them to remain in their new and improved form within the group until something better comes along.? The key point is that children are born good at a particular kind of social learning; this creates a favored environment for social innovations, making them more likely to be maintained and transmitted to new generations than individual innovations. [26] For Tomasello, human social learning ? the kind of learning that distinguishes humans from other primates and that played a decisive role in human evolution ? is based on two elements: first, what he calls ?imitative learning,? (as opposed to ?emulative learning? characteristic of other primates) and second, the fact that humans represent their experiences symbolically (rather than iconically, as is characteristic of other primates). Together, these elements enable humans to be both inventive, and to preserve useful inventions. It is this combination that produces the ratchet effect. Chimpanzee mother and baby Chimpanzee extracting insects The Japanese Macaques at Jigokudani hotspring in NaganoThe kind of learning found among other primates is ?emuluation learning,? which ?focuses on the environmental events involved ? results or changes of state in the environment that the other produced ? rather than on the actions that produced those results.?[27][28][29] Tomasello emphasizes that emulation learning is a highly adaptive strategy for apes because it focuses on the effects of an act. In laboratory experiments, chimpanzees were shown two different ways for using a rake-like tool to obtain an out-of-reach-object. Both methods were effective, but one was more efficient than the other. Chimpanzees consistently emulated the more efficient method.[30] Examples of emulation learning are well-documented among primates. Notable examples include Japanese macaque potato washing, Chimpanzee tool use, and Chimpanzee gestural communication. In 1953, an 18-month-old female macaque monkey was observed taking sandy pieces of sweet potato (given to the monkeys by observers) to a stream (and later, to the ocean) to wash off the sand. After three months, the same behavior was observed in her mother and two playmates, and then the playmates? mothers. Over the next two years seven other young macaques were observed washing their potatoes, and by the end of the third year 40% of the troop had adopted the practice.[31][32] Although this story is popularly represented as a straightforward example of human-like learning, evidence suggests that it is not. Many monkeys naturally brush sand off of food; this behavior had been observed in the macaque troop prior to the first observed washing. Moreover, potato washing was observed in four other separate macaque troops, suggesting that at least four other individual monkeys had learned to wash off sand on their own.[33] Other monkey species in captivity quickly learn to wash off their food.[34] Finally, the spread of learning among the Japanese macaques was fairly slow, and the rate at which new members of the troop learned did not keep pace with the growth of the troop. If the form of learning were imitation, the rate of learning should have been exponential. It is more likely that monkeys the washing behavior is based on the common behavior of cleaning off food, and that monkeys that spent time by the water independently learned to wash, rather than wipe their food. This explains both why those monkeys that kept company with the original washer, and who thus spent a good deal of time by the water, also figured out how to wash their potatoes. It also explains why the rate at which this behavior spread was relatively slow. [35] Chimpanzees exhibit a variety of population-specific tool use: termite-fishing, ant-fishing, ant-dipping, nut-cracking, and leaf-sponging. Gombe chimpanzees fish for termites using small, thin sticks, but chimpanzees in Western Africa use large sticks to break holes in mounds and use their hands to scoop up termites. Some of this variation may be the result of ?environmental shaping? (there is more rainfall in western Africa, softening termite mounds and making them easier to break apart, than in the Gombe reserve in eastern Africa. Nevertheless it is clear that chimpanzees are good at emulation learning. Chimpanzee children independently know how to roll over logs, and know how to eat insects. When children see their mothers rolling over logs in order to eat the insects beneath, they quickly learn to do the same. In other words, this form of learning builds on activities the children already know.[36][37] Mother and child Inuit Family Girls in Xinjiang in northwestern China Children in Jerusalem Children in Namibia The kind of learning characteristic of human children is ?Imitative learning,? which ?means reproducing an instrumental act understood intentionally.?[38] Human infants begin to display some evidence of this form of learning between the ages of nine and twelve months, when infants fix their attention not only on an object, but on the gaze of an adult which enables them to use adults as points of reference and thus ?act on objects in the way adults are acting on them.? [39] This dynamic is well-documented and has also been termed ?joint engagement? or ?joint attention.?[40][41] Essential to this dynamic is the infants growing capacity to recognize others as ?intentional agents:? people ?with the power to control their spontaneous behavior? and who ?have goals and make active choices among behavioral means for attaining those goals.?[42] The development of skills in joint attention by the end of a human child?s first year of life provides the basis for the development of imitative learning in the second year. In one study 14-month old children imitated an adult?s overly-complex method of turning on a light, even when they could have used an easier and more natural motion to the same effect.[43] In another study, 16-month old children interacted with adults who alternated between a complex series of motions that appeared intentional and a comparable set of motions that appeared accidental; they imitated only those motions that appeared intentional.[44] Another study of 18-month old children revealed that children imitate actions that adults intend , yet in some way fail, to perform.[45] Tomasello emphasizes that this kind of imitative learning ?relies fundamentally on infants? tendency to identify with adults, and on their ability to distinguish in the actions of others the underlying goal and the different means that might be used to achieve it.?[46] He calls this kind of imitative learning ?cultural learning because the child is not just learning about things from other persons, she is also learning things through them ? in the sense that she must know something of the adult?s perspective on a situation to learn the active use of this same intentional act.? [47][48] He concludes that the key feature of cultural learning is that it occurs only when an individual ?understands others as intentional agents, like the self, who have a perspective on the world that can be followed into, directed and shared?[49] Emulation learning and imitative learning are two different adaptations that can only be assessed in their larger environmental and evolutionary contexts. In one experiment, chimpanzees and two-year-old children were separately presented with a rake-like-tool and an out-of-reach object. Adult humans then demonstrated two different ways to use the tool, one more efficient, one less efficient. Chimpanzees used the same efficient method following both demonstrations. Most of the human children, however, imitated whichever method the adult was demonstrating. Were chimps and humans to be compared on the basis of these results, one might think that Chimpanzees are more intelligent. From an evolutionary perspective they are equally intelligent, but with different kinds of intelligence adapted to different environments.[50] Chimpanzee learning strategies are well-suited to a relatively stable physical environment that requires relatively little social cooperation (compared to humans). Human learning strategies are well-suited to a complex social environment in which understanding the intentions of others may be more important than success at a specific task. Tomasello argues that this strategy has made possible the ?ratchet effect? that enabled humans to evolve complex social systems that have enabled humans to adapt to virtually every physical environment on the surface of the earth.[51] Tomasello further argues that cultural learning is essential for language-acquisition. Most children in any society, and all children in some, do not learn all words through the direct efforts of adults. ?In general, for the vast majority of words in their language, children must find a way to learn in the ongoing flow of social interaction, sometimes from speech not even addressed to them.?[52] This finding has been confirmed by a variety of experiments in which children learned words even when the referent was not present, multiple referents were possible, and the adult was not directly trying to teach the word to the child. [53][54][55] Tomasello concludes that ?a linguistic symbol is nothing other than a marker for an intersubjectively shared understanding of a situation.[56] Tomasello?s 1999 review of the research contrasting human and non-human primate learning strategies confirms biological anthropologist Ralph Holloway?s 1969 argument that a specific kind of sociality linked to symbolic cognition were the keys to human evolution, and constitute the nature of culture. According to Holloway, the key issue in the evolution of H. sapiens, and the key to understanding ?culture,? ?is how man organizes his experience.? Culture is ?the imposition of arbitrary form upon the environment.? [57] This fact, Holloway argued, is primary to and explains what is distinctive about human learning strategies, tool-use, and language. Human tool-making and language express ?similar, if not identical, cognitive processes? and provide important evidence for how humankind evolved.[58] In other words, whereas McGrew argues that anthropologists must focus on behaviors like communication and tool-use because they have no access to the mind, Holloway argues that human language and tool-use, including the earliest stone tools in the fossil record, are highly suggestive of cognitive differences between humans and non-humans, and that such cognitive differences in turn explain human evolution. For Holloway, the question is not whether other primates communicate, learn or make tools, but that the way they do these things. ?Washing potatoes in the ocean ? stripping branches of leaves to get termites,? and other examples of primate tool-use and learning ?are iconic, and there is no feedback from the environment to the animal .?[59] Human tools, however, express an independence from natural form that manifests symbolic thinking. ?In the preparation of the stick for termite-eating, the relation between product and raw material is iconic. In the making of a stone tool, in contrast, there is no necessary relation between the form of the final product and the original material.?[60] In Holloway?s view, our non-human ancestors, like those of modern chimpanzees and other primates, shared motor and sensory skills, curiosity, memory, and intelligence, with perhaps differences in degree. ?It is when these are integrated with the unique attributes of arbitrary production (symbolization) and imposition that man qua cultural man appears.? [61] I have suggested above that whatever culture may be, it includes ?the imposition of arbitrary forms upon the environment.? This phrase has two components. One is a recognition that the relationship between the coding process and the phenomenon (be it a tool, social network, or abstract principle) is non-iconic. The other is an idea of man as a creature who can make delusional systems work ? who imposes his fantasies, his non-iconic constructs (and constructions) , upon the environment. The altered environment shapes his perceptions, and these are again forced back on the environment, are incorporated into the environment, and press for further adaptation.[62] This is comparable to the ?ratcheting? aspect suggested by Tomasselo and others that enabled human evolution to accelerate. Holloway concludes that the first instance of symbolic thought among humans provided a ?kick-start? for brain development, tool complexity, social structure, and language to evolve through a constant dynamic of positive feedback. ?This interaction between the propensity to structure the environment arbitrarily and the feedback from the environment to the organism is an emergent process, a process different in kind from anything that preceded it .?[63] Arbitrariness Magritte The Treachery of Images Ancient stone tools Simple-Edge Chopper Chopping-tool Unretouched bifaceLinguists Charles Hockett and R. Ascher have identified thirten design-features of language, some shared by other forms of animal connunication. One feature that distinguishes human language is its tremendous productivity; in other words, competent speakers of a language are capable of producing an infinite number of original utterances. This productivity seems to be made possible by a few critical features unique to human language. One is ?duality of patterning,? meaning that human language consists of the articulation of several distinct processes, each with its own set of rules: combining phonemes to produce morphemes, combining morphemes to produce words, and combining words to produce sentences. This means that a person can master a relatively limited number of signals and sets of rules, to create infinite combinations. Another crucial element is that human language is symbolic: the sound of words (or their shape, when written) bear no relation to what they represent.[64] In other words, their meaning is arbitrary. That words have meaning is a matter of convention. Since the meaning of words are arbitrary, any word may have several meanings, and any object may be referred to using a variety of words; the actual word used to describe a particular object depends on the context, the intention of the speaker, and the ability of the listener to judge these appropriately. As Tomasello notes, An individual language user looks at a tree and, before drawing the attention of her interlocutor to that tree, must decide, based on her assessment of the listener?s current knowledge and expectations, whether to say ?that tree over there,? ?it,? ?the oak,? ?that hundred-year-oak,? ?the tree,? ?the bagswing tree,? ?that thing in the front yard,? ?the ornament,? ?the embarrassment,? or any of a number of other expressions. ? And these decisions are not made on the basis of the speaker?s direct goal with respect to the object or activity involved, but rather that they are made on the basis of her goal with respect to the listener?s interest and attention to that object or activity. This is why symbolic cognition and communication and imitative learning go hand-in-hand.[65] Holloway argues that the stone-tools associated with genus Homo have the same features of human language: Returning to matter of syntax, rules, and concatenated activity mentioned above, almost any model which describes a language process can also be used to describe tool-making. This is hardly surprising. Both activities are concatenated, both have rigid rules about eh serialization of unit activities (the grammar, syntax), both are hierarchical systems of activity (as is any motor activity), and both produce arbitrary configurations which thence become part of the environment, either temporarily or permanently. [66] ?productivity can be seen in the facts that basic types were probably used for multiple purposes, that tool industries tend to expand with time, and that a slight variation on h basic pattern may be made to met some new functional requisite. Elements of a basic ?vocabulary? of motor operations ? flakes, detachment, rotation, preparation of striking platform, etc. ? are used in different combinations to produce dissimilar tools, with different forms, and supposedly, different uses ?. Taking each motor event alone, no one action is complete; each action depends on the prior one and requires a further one, and each is dependent in another ay on the original plan. In other words, at each point of the action except the last, the piece is not ?satisfactory? in structure. Each unit action is meaningless by itself in the sense of the use of the tool; it is meaningful only in the context of the whole completed set of actions culminating in the final product. This exactly parallels language.[67] As Tomasillo has demonstrated, symbolic thought can operate only in a particular social environment: Arbitrary symbols enforce consensus of perceptions, which not only allows members to communicate about the same objects in terms o space and time (as in hunting) but it also makes it possible for social relationships to be standardized and manipulated through symbols. It means that idiosyncracies are smoothed out and perceived within classes of behavior. By enforcing perceptual invariance, symbols also enforce social behavioral constancy, and enforcing social behavioral constancy is a prerequisite to differential task-role sectors in a differentiated social group adapting not only to the outside environment but to its own membership.[68] Biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon, in a synthesis of over twenty years of research on human evolution, human neurology, and primatology, describes this "ratcheting effect" as a form of "Baldwinian Evolution." Named after psychologist James Baldwin, this describes a situation in which an animal's behavior has evolutionary consequences when it changes the natural environment and thus the selective forces acting on the animal.[69] Once some useful behavior spreads within a population and becomes more important for subsistence, it will generate selection pressures on genetic traits that support its propagation ... Stone and tymbolic tools, which were initially acquired with the aid of flexible ape-learning abilities, ultimately turned the tables on their users and forced them to adapt to a new niche opened by these technologies. Rather than being just useful tricks, these behavioral proshteses for obtaining food and organizing social behaviors became indispensible elements in a new adaptive complex. The origin of "humanness" can be defined as that point in our evolution where these tools became the principle source of selection on our bodies and brains. It is the diagnostic of Homo symbolicus.[70] According to Deacon, this occured between 2 and 2.5 million years ago, when we have the first fossil evidence of stone tool use and the beginning of a trend in an increase in brain size. But it is the evolution of symbolic language which is the cause ? and not the effect ? of these trends.[71] More specifically, Deacon is suggesting that Australopithecines, like contemporary apes, used tools; it is possible that over the millions of years of Australopithecine history, many troops developed symbolic communication systems. All that was necessary was that one of these groups so altered their environment that "it introduced selection for very different learning abilities than affected prior species."[72] This troop or population kick-started the Baldwinian process (the "ratchet effect") that led to their evolution to genus Homo. The question for Deacon is, what behavioral-environmental changes could have made the development of symbolic thinking adaptive? Here he emphasizes the importance of distinguishing hmans from all other species, not in order to privilege human intelligence but to problematize it. Given that the evolution of H. sapiens began with ancestors who did not yet have "culture," what led them to move away from cognitive, learning, communication, and tool-making strategies that were and continued to be adaptive for most other primates (and, some have suggested, most other species of animals)? Learning symbol systems is more time consuming than other forms of communication, so symbolic thought made possible a different communication strategy, but not a more efficient one than other primates. Nevertheless, it must have offered some selective advantage of H. sapiens to have evolved. Deacon starts by looking a two key determinents in evolutionary history: foraging behavior, and patterns of sexual relations. As he observes competition for sexual access limits the possibilities for social cooperation in many species. Yet, Deacon observes, there are three consistent patterns in human reproduction that distinguish them from other speices: Both males and females usually contribute effort towards the rearing of their offspring, though often to differing extents and in very different ways. In all societies, the great majority if adult males and females are bound by long-term, exlusive secual access rights and pronibitions to particular individuals of the opposite sex. They maintain these exclusive sexual relations while living in modest to large-sized, multi-male, multi-female, cooperative social groups.[73] Moreover, there is one feature common to all known human foraging societies (all humans prior to ten or fifteen thousand years ago), and markedly different from other primates: "the use of meat ... The appearance of the first stone tools nearly 2.5 million years ago almost certainly correlates with a radical shift in foraging behavior in order to gain access to meat."[74] Deacon does not believe that symbolic thought was necessary for hunting or tool-making (although tool-making may be a reliable index of symbolic thought); rather, it was necessary for the success of distinctive social relations. The key is that while men and women are equally effective foragers, mothers carrying dependent children are not effective hunters. They must thus depend on male hunters. This favors a system in which males have exclusive sexual access to females, and females can predict that their sexual partner will provide food for them and their children. In most mammalian species the result is a system of rank or sexual competition that results in polygyny, or life-long pair-bonding between two individuals who live relatively independent of other adults of their species; in both cases male aggression plays an important role in maintaining sexual access to mate(s). What is unique about humans? Human reliance on resources that are relatively unavailable to females with infants selects not only for coopartion between a child's father and mother but also for the cooperation of other relatives and friends, including elderly individuals and juveniles, who can be relied upon for assistance. The special demands of acquiring meat and caring for infants in our own evolution together contribute to the underlying impetus for the third characteristic feature of human reproductive patterns: cooperative group living.[75] What is uniquely characteristic about human societies is what required symbolic cognition, which consequently leads to the evolution of culture: "cooperative, mixed-sex social groups, with significant male care and provisioning of offspring, and relatively stable patterns of reproductive exclusion." This combination is relatively rare in other species because it is "highly susceptible to disintegration." Language and culture provide the glue that holds it together.[76] Chimpanzees also, on occasion, hunt meat. In most cases however males consume the meat immediately, and only on occasion share with females who happen to be nearby. Among chimpanzees, hunting for meat increases when other sources of food become scarce, but under these conditions, sharing descreases. The first forms of symbolic thinking made stone-tools possible which made hunting for meat a more dependable source of food for our non-human ancestors, while also making possible forms of social communication that make sharing ? between males and females but also among males, decreasing sexual competition: So the socio-ecological problem posed by the transition to a meat-supplemented subsistence strategy is that it cannot be utilized without a social structure which guarantees unambiguous and exclusive mating and is sufficiently egalitarian to sustain cooperation via shared or parallel reproductive interests. This problem can be solved symbolically.[77] For it is symbols and symbolic thinking that make possible a central feature of social relations in every human population, reciprocity. Evolutionary scientists have developed a model to explain reciprocal altruism among closely related individuals. Symbolic thought makes possible reciprocity between distantly related individuals.[78] From Waistline2 at aol.com Thu Feb 26 09:13:54 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:13:54 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1 Message-ID: Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2 Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By El?ades 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 a destitute proletariat, gravitating in and out of employment; merging one moment with a population permanently cast as temporary worker (30% of our working class and still growing); along side a mass of overaccumlated capital, whose over accumulation means it seek wealth expansion outside the boundary of investment in production or as it is understand and articulated at this moment; the brave new world of financialization, securitization or credit capitalism. Financialization is not a preferred policy of capital but the inexorable logic of the unheard of development of the productive forces and the scrabble to realize maximum profits at any cost, including institutional wealth creation outside the production of commodities. Some speak of the emergence of a new non-banking financial architecture - regime. What is clear is wealth creation detached from surplus value is a valueless form of wealth. This does not mean productive capital has mysterious vanished or no one works. Economic collapse in its revolutionary meanings implies the foundation of the old society faces collapse as society strains to reconstruct a new social/economic order based on the revolutionary new machinery of production and new forms of wealth. This new form of wealth creation has its infrastructure and political architects, who write the political agenda for American finance capital. 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. Just as the living memory of Marti (Jos? Juli?n Mart? P?rez, January 28, 1853 ?May 19, 1895) inspires masses to action and greatness, the peoples of America possess their inspiring ideas articulated in symbols. Some of those inspiring symbols expressed in the words freedom, emancipation, liberty and justice, have in our history worked at cross purpose and at loggerhead. During the entire period of the Civil Rights Movement, "freedom" and "emancipation" more often than not collided with notions of "liberty" and "justice." For reasons of our own history, our real culture, the Second and First American Revolutions continue to stir profound feelings in the peoples of America, precisely because they call forth noble ideas, promise activated, rooted in old Europe?s revolutionary wars against political feudalism, horrible defeats and partial realization in America. When Lincoln called America humanity last great bastion of hope, he was referring to the promise of the French Revolution - 1848, and the waves of reaction sweeping Europe. That American history is written on a parchment of genocide inked with Indian blood and chattel slavery, does not eclipse revolutionary logic and the dialectic of history as interlinked generations? revolution. Successful revolutions achieve their cause, but the conditions are never quite ripe to achieve the scope of revolutionary vision, the mobilizing, social, subjective side of imagination that is human history as assertion. On the scale of history, the vision of one revolution becomes the cause of the next. The spontaneous movement of people/classes/form of the laboring class and their enlightened elements keep demanding the same thing over and over, under changing conditions and each time the demands advance the revolutionary process. In this sense, there is chain of demands from one revolution to the next, weaving history together culminating in revolutionary warfare. "The vision of one revolution becomes the cause of the next." The fight to realize "the cause" by implementing social structures to ensure its stability, give rise to a new vision. On this basis the system itself is driven through all its quantitative boundaries. The cause in our Revolutionary War was independence. The vision was stated in the Declaration of Independence as competing forms of democracy. Jeffersonian democracy rest on the idea of a nation of independent small land owners. The vision of democracy espoused by slave holders, in the form of Jeffersonian democracy, contradicted itself. Since the vision was not fulfilled, another revolution was inevitable. Yet, "The Revolution of 1776" was a new thing in history. The French and British had revolutions to free themselves of feudalism. America was different, with no feudal classes and consequently no feudal relations. America was founded as a colony owned by England. Its purpose was to ship goods and resources back to the mother country. For the first time in history, a revolution for national liberation was bound up with "the revolution" in the mode of production itself, against feudalism. The Americans bourgeoisie wanted freedom from the restraints of feudal England for a complex of reasons, including the preservation of slavery. America was much different from Canada and one can see the remnants of Canada?s acceptance of a colonial regime, imprinted on her currency. As a result of feudalism, the culture of Canadians - the real culture, manifest a "noblesse oblige," - (noble obligation) of the Queen or ruling class to help her subjects. Not so in America. This in part accounts for a profound belief by the American workers in possessing a job and asking the government for nothing. America is perhaps the only country on earth never tainted by feudalism. When people cannot find work things polarize very quickly. Thus, a social and political shift, realignment is underway as the crisis deepens. What constituted the revolutionary kernel of 1776 was that it ushered in the historical epoch of national liberation, which would run its course for another 200 years, peaking between 1940 and the 1970s, and as a political epoch being closed out with the 1976 establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRVN). This does not mean that every inch of earth was wiped clean of feudal residue. What is meant is that a distinct period charactering history came to an end. What is of interest is that the paramount leader of the first Revolution was the country?s largest slave holder and richest man: George Washington. Jeffersonian democracy could not be realized because of slavery, Washington and Jefferson in the flesh. The seed was planted for the battle to be fought out again. The vision of one revolution becomes the cause of the next. Another revolution was inevitable. The clearest thinking revolutionaries of 1776 understood this, and knew without national liberation emancipating the slaves, the revolution would have to fight again. WL. end 1 of 6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From Waistline2 at aol.com Thu Feb 26 09:23:20 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:23:20 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The elec... Message-ID: Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2 Part 2 of 6 The cause in the Civil War was to preserve the Union. Implicitly, that meant under the domination of the Northern industrial capitalist. But the "big picture" vision articulated by Lincoln was a Nation (not a Union) conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. The changing economic base that that created the legs for the revolution to stand upon, had not yet been sufficiently developed for the revolution to realize its vision. It must then fight again, even if this fight cannot be waged for another twenty, fifty or one hundred years. The revolutionary dialectic, the Marti who never dies, reveal itself in the undying real life: the vision of one revolution becomes the cause of the next. Interestingly enough, the paramount leader of the Rebellion and formation of the Confederate States of America (CSA), was also the largest slave owner and the richest man in United States. When the Civil War began, Jefferson Davis was the biggest slave holder; the Confederates George Washington fighting the same fight, but from the next rung up on the ladder of history. A CSA George Washington at a higher level, fighting to implement the US Constitution, with Lincoln having to abandon the frame work of the constitution to wage the revolutionary war. Lincoln, a great leader, is vilified by his critics on the left and the right as the US president who suspended civil liberty, destroyed free markets, trampled on the Constitution, a white supremacist, and when all else fails criticized because he was not Karl Marx. Elected by narrow pluralities, Lincoln preserved the Union and emancipated the slaves under his watch, as the slaves rushed the Northern warfront lines demanding their emancipation in their hundreds of thousands. Lincoln?s leadership overthrew the Slave Oligarchy in what at that time was one of the bloodiest and most devastating war in history and most certainly the first modern industrial war. Because of Lincoln in the flesh, the United States moved closer to a fuller implementation of the promise that was contained in the Declaration of Independence: that all men are created equal. Although the most forward thinking individuals always sense the moment as part of their larger vision, the ever spiraling loop of logic, embed with intersecting class interest, meant that 1865 and the realizable vision of Lincoln would have to be fought out again, the better part of one hundred years later. On the next rung of history. Back to the future. To say that the revolution of 1776 was a democratic revolution is not saying enough. It was an agrarian bourgeois national revolution. That revolution could only be completed when the foundation for an industrial bourgeoisie was completed and they assumed political power. The United States, unlike England with its common laws has a rigid constitution, with a distinct lack of historical feudal culture in the form of noble obligation. This rigid constitution makes it difficult, if not impossible, to quantify social progress, outside of social explosions that reform and realign our society. Finding our moment in history has given American Marxists, militant communists and Presidents alike a devil of a time. Change could only take place by a war to complete the 1776 revolution. Being unable to quantify social progress presents itself as a problem for eve ryone in American society and to the world outside America, it seems that Americans spend their life groping in the dark. Interestingly, American Marxism groped upon the spiraling loop of revolutionary logic and the dialectic of revolutionary chains passing from one generation to the next. In this meaning America remains the most revolutionary country on earth. Our next political revolution is inevitable and shall change the earth itself. Still we grope. The degree America has advanced in its post Jim Crow history, is Obama elected President. Something unthinkable until the voting section of the working class, proved to itself its collective thinking by crossing the color line. Forever the muscular over weight fighter, our working class delivered a punch to itself that caught much of the left flatfooted. Yet, fight we must in a complex battle with self that now seems to strip the from the "body" of the working class all its fat "quantitative distinctions." Civil Rights disturbances of the 1950s reawakened an interest in revolutionary Marxism and stimulated the growth of the student movement; ignited the anti war movement. The struggle of women as women exploded and quickly superseded the female bourgeois right to access to the check book; then the Gay liberation movement exploded with a chin blow sending the class on its heels. Black Power as electoral politics, environmental concerns, disabled American?s and the "handicap," - (which I am sure is not the proper term), seemed as something of a "distraction," but the further we move into living history, the more it seems as if our working class, literally is fighting and dumping quantitative fat in the shape of differences. "Dumping" in the sense of winning the partial victory that allows for a further advance. The working class in the flesh of its symbolic self is Rocky Balboa, inspired by and fighting for ideals; taking it on the chin repeatedly, but fighting for ideas that strain to be realized and quantified at each rung of the historical ladder. People fight for their vision even when they cannot achieve it. Each time they gain at least part of what they fought for. As technology advances, the further development of the means of production becomes the material for creating new causes, new visions and new demands amongst the new generations. They cannot be satisfied with the partial victory their parents had won. They again go about intellectually and organizationally preparing for revolution. Nowhere is this clearer than in American history. This social process defines and then with each advance redefine the meaning of quantitative boundaries in the system or what Marx wrote as: "No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the tasks itself arises only when the material conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation." (_http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface -abs.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm) ) Today we can better define as specific quantitative boundaries - political, social and economic, the meaning of "No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed." Our own loop of logic, revealed as process logic becomes clearer. The Civil War completed the cause of 1776 and in the process destroyed four (4) billion dollars worth of capital in the form of human chattel. The vision of the Civil War was not realized in post Civil War America. The revolution would have to be fought out again at a higher level of development of the productive forces. Cuba and American share much history and many things in common. Perhaps, the greatest shared loop of logic - the dialectic of emancipation, is that "no form of the working class can truly emancipate itself until its labor energy is able to be replaced by a more efficient form of energy." ?Dijo bastante! Going into the Civil War and most certainly afterwards, subtle changes were taking place in America. The development of agricultural machinery was making the farm more capital intensive rather than labor intensive, meaning the farmers were becoming more dependent on the banking system to purchase this enslaving machinery and to market larger cash crops. There were emerging struggles going on in the North between a fast developing industrial proletariat to later be given impetus by war production. Also, was the struggle by the banks to dominate industry and their final merging to become financial capital as described by Lenin . . . 50 years later. This process of emergence of finance capital was accomplished through financing our Civil War and later altered our entire history, as a new sector of capital rewrote the political and economic agenda. This merging of industrial and financial capital and then the domination of banks - finance, over all capital, reshaped the social struggle in America at the front of the curve of world financial-industrial capital. The same process, and the inability to quantify social progress, took decades in other countries but not so in America. At the end of the war, there was wide spread seizures of abandoned and vacant land by the land hungry freedmen. The transition from slave to yeoman farmer could have been possible and taken place. There was plenty of abandoned and vacant land, but it wag grabbed by banks at tax sales. The means of production were still applicable to small farming as the sharecropping system would later prove. The new reality emerged as a Northern industrial ruling class dominated by finance capital. The increasing world demand for cotton and tobacco, with the absence of a revolution in the infrastructure and productive machinery of the South, was the economic condition for the political alliance between the mercantile elite and the planters of the Deep South. The rule of the "Bourbons", the mercantile elite of the Confederacy, who shared more affinity with Northern moneyed interests than with its blasphemous marriage with the plantation aristocracy of the old South, allowed the planters to administer the South, recast the political order and re-enslave the black masses in the new system of sharecropping. Southern capital and its political caste ruled at the behest of Wall Street financial capital, or good ole Yankee Doodle imperialism. The pejorative term - bourbon, is analogous to the restored bourgeois French monarchists after the fall of Napoleon. The Southern Bourbons adopted a laissez faire economic policy, reduce taxes and cut public spending on education and social welfare. Their reactionary and fascists policies revived the collapsed Southern economy minimally in the short term and condemned the South to the fate of an underdeveloped region - colony, for more than a century. In fact the core South became and to this very day remains Wall Street imperialism first and most prized colony. Year 2000 and the election of George W. Bush possessed all the same stark political features that define the peculiar character of American electoral national politics. Bush W, further up the spiraling loop and rung of the historical ladder. King George W. Bush W. alleged Southern takeover of American government was no allegation. The culture of the Mississippi river gambling, big hat Texan bravado; oil men and finance, and my daddy?s honor - (the CIA recast as congenial Southerner); and treating my slaves proper and honor, honor and more honor; damn Yankee, is the murderous blends of Wall Street financial imperialism, with its hands in government pocket. Again the sectarian battles within capital appear as the North/South divide. This divide and its historic political features is being broadcast daily on all news channels as the face of the political divergence facing President Obama, with the solid South grouped as the Republican Party. What if finance capital had not emerged in the United States and the industrial capitalist continued to write the economic and political agenda for the United States? Then the proposal by Secretary of War Stantson and this group of red Republicans would have been implemented. They would have broken up the plantation South into the "forty acres and a mule" called for by the "Jefferson democrats," with no slaves. That was the only way to obliterate the shattered slave oligarchy from history. The interest of the Northern financial oligarchy lied and lay in absorbing (metabolizing) the core South as it was, and stripping it of the Slave Power, as an institution, and maintaining any kind of slavery suited to their economic and political bootlick lapdogs and lackey? s. The Reconstruction governments were overthrown as proof of Southern honor and defense of Ms. Belle?s soiled panties. The world?s first fascist state system, Hitler without mustache, was constructed in the core Southern areas housing the majority of the nation?s blacks. In 1890 the Black population was 7,488,676 (11.9% of total pop.) with overwhelming majority concentrated along the old plantation system. Reducing the blacks to the level of slaves, and below, required sinking the entire region into wretched poverty for decades to come. A new rigid system of Jim Crow segregation was set in place with the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court decision (1896), and this decision would not be legally overturned until the 1960?s. How much it had been overthrown throws everyone back into groping and quantifying progress, based on their generations own sense of things. The historical mirror in the form of the black political representative became a gage; an instrument to view the process denied to the naked I - eye. The revolution and the vision contained in the meaning of "towards a more perfect union" and "a nation conceived" in ideas of democracy would once again have to be fought out and won. The emergence of Lenin unto history and Soviet Power, realigned the earth?s politically conscious elites; enlarged their vision and compelled the realignment of American communism as an ideological movement, but could not and did not change the task of reshaping our history along the lines that was the vision articulated by Lincoln. The October Revolution ushered in the general crisis of capital, meaning that all the contradictions of capital were no longer just internal to and arising on the basis of its internal metabolism; the existence of Soviet Power on I/6 of the earth established a beachhead, political region and zone in political antagonism with capitalism. However, the economic foundation of Soviet socialism - it material configuration of the productive forces, were identical with and compatible with industrial capitalisms material configuration of productive forces. The existence of Soviet Power probably benefited the American working class more than any other group of workers on earth, other than the Soviet workers. The existence of Soviet Power forces deep changes in our society as American imperialism competed with Soviet Power for the hearts and minds of the world? s people. Without question Soviet Power forced doors to be opened domestically in America, that had been slammed shut and bolted in the face of the blacks, seemingly forever. President Obama has "something to do" with so-called "race relations" in America, or so it would seem. The problem is that there is no such thing as biological races amongst the great humanities. Concessions to the Marxists section of the theorist of race are unwarranted because they no longer have the upper hand, precisely because of Obama as symbol and flesh. The color factor and color line has been crossed. (end part 2 of 6) WL. Post WWII America. . . . . . with the existence of Soviet Power, was a beautiful thing. Part 3 This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Thu Feb 26 10:05:20 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:05:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1 Message-ID: <29223423.1235667920964.JavaMail.root@whwamui-ascend.pas.sa.earthlink.net> 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: Waistline2 at aol.com >Sent: Feb 26, 2009 8:13 AM >To: marxism-thaxis at 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 El?ades 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. From Waistline2 at aol.com Thu Feb 26 11:02:56 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:02:56 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The elec... Message-ID: 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? Reply I hope that by the end - part 6, Obama's characterization is for informative. Perhaps, you are still reeling from the impact of "Right America." The political basis for "Right America" was introduced in parts of section 1 and repeated in section 2. My intent - which perhaps was not achieved, was to unfold American history in layers, as an outline, with one layer overlapping the other and then place - locate, Obama as this history and this stage of financial and economic crisis. Ralph, you an autodidactic, meaning whatever I write is going to fall short, because you are way beyond the basic underlying concepts of this series - in the main. Yet, this series contains some theoretically challenging propositions, hopefully in a popular form. The whole series was written some time ago and run on Marxist Debate, but it was a first version and this rewrite and editing try and clarify Obama more. I will definitely go over 3 and 4 several more times and run them tomorrow. 5 and 6 on the last day of the month. " the whitest people you ever saw," ;-) Ralph, I live in Florida for Christ Sake, a place I vowed to never in life visit much less live and this was because of the historical treatment of the Seminoles, perhaps the only tribe not signing a peace treaty and their intertwining history with escaped slaves. Where I am at in not a Detroit or Philly by a long shot. Now U C why I B say'in Unite or Perish! ;-) WL. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From Waistline2 at aol.com Thu Feb 26 12:12:34 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:12:34 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The elec... Message-ID: Well Ralph . . . I hope U R are to B damn happy because U jus expanded the word count on section 3, which ain't rewritten yet. Ain't it enough to just say the world first fascist form of state, which most "Marxist" historians call "a racist state" in appeasement with the historic Southern political establishment. I am laughing my as off. Right America tore your ass up. Whatnnat like a scary movie, with monsters and gobbling and shit? What you wrote was "Man, I don't Thing You know what the F**K is happening out there?" I'm laughing because you can only dance to keep from crying for so long. Yes, in order to hold 7 million people in absolute poverty and ignorance requires roughly 9 - 11 million people and climb into the shit hole and sit on top of the 7 million. "We don't need government aid" is voiced the loudest by the very people that need such aid the most. We don't need new schools, mean your kids are going to end up suffering more when they do enter the market. "But I do not care because I am just not ready for change." "We don't need bridges" and "We don't want change" is voiced in America in those exact words. Talk about a throw back to the 1890's Obama won a section of traditional Republican voting workers outside the South - notably the Mid West, and his administration hinges on this. "Shake it off." :-) WL **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 26 18:19:46 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:19:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] =?utf-8?q?Putting_The_Social_Back_Into_Language?= =?utf-8?q?=3A_Marx=2C_Volo=C5=A1inov_and_Vygotsky_reexamined?= Message-ID: <724289.71232.qm@web180110.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Putting The Social Back Into Language: Marx, Volo?inov and Vygotsky reexamined Marnie Holborow Dublin City University Studies in Language & Capitalism 1, 2006: 1 ? 28 [Studies in Language & Capitalism is a peer-reviewed online journal that seeks to promote and freely distribute interdisciplinary critical inquiries into the language and meaning of contemporary capitalism and the links between economic, social and linguistic change in the world around us. http://languageandcapitalism.info ] Abstract: Language as autonomous system, cut free of the social world, is seeing a revival through the popularity of genetic explanations about the origins of language. It is therefore timely to reassess the input of society into language. This article seeks to do this through a reexamination of the writings of Marx on the subject of language and consciousness. Within this framework, it then examines the contribution of the Russian linguist, Volo?inov who took Marx?s initial insights further and developed a rounded social theory of language which included the interplay between language and ideology and the making of language through social relations. Finally, the article briefly examines the contribution of another early twentieth century Russian Marxist, Vygotsky, who identified linguistic signs as the social tools of communication. The article makes the claim that these interpretations of the social nature of language are necessary to account for the dynamic and unpredictable nature of language. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Thu Feb 26 18:40:23 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:40:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Symbols as unique in human learning (was Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein) Message-ID: <739583.85982.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> In this famous passage, Marx distinguishes human labor from that of animals by the existence of imagination, plan and purpose. This fits with the very interesting wikipedia article on culture, which claims that human children's learning in imitation of adults is focused on learning the intent and mental purpose of the adult, in contrast with chimp children who focus on the objective activities of the adult they imitate. If Marx is correct about the the uniqueness of imagination and mental purpose in the human labor process, this supports the idea that that process is mediated by symbols unlike animal labor processes. Charles ^^^^^ "We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman?s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be." From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 27 06:25:52 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:25:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1 Message-ID: <547148.15661.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> 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 ? From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 27 06:35:16 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:35:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1 Message-ID: <541551.92636.qm@web180106.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> 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" ? From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 27 06:38:55 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:38:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1 Message-ID: <339111.94703.qm@web180104.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> 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. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 27 06:49:39 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:49:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1 Message-ID: <638490.33742.qm@web180105.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> 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 ? From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 08:54:43 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:54:43 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 3A Message-ID: Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2 Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By El?ades 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) Part 3A As the saying goes, "the North won the Civil War and the South won the peace." The South "winning the peace" shapes all our political institutions to this very day. The violence of the counterrevolution against the blacks was the condition for condemning more whites than blacks to the sharecropping system,. By concentrating the attack against the blacks, the planters, acting with the open and hidden support of Wall Street financial imperialism, made it appear that the majority of poor whites were out of the line of fire. Centuries of white supremacy led most of the poor whites to believe that uniting on the basis of color would give them privileged status over the blacks. After the disfranchisement of the African American, the laws supposedly passed against the black tenant farmer were then applied to the white. The ever present North/South political divide, reemerge with a vengeance, now constituted as a fascist state structure in the South and a bourgeois democratic state form in the North, with the growing areas of Northern black concentrates ruled on the basis of a reactionary form of bourgeois democracy - police state violence. The color factor - white supremacy, buttressed by an indescribable bloody violence, made it seem as if there was a South African-like white settler regime dominating a black nation rather than Wall Street financial imperialism dominating and enslaving an area, politically and economically administrated by the shattered Slave Oligarchy reconstituted as a reactionary planter class. The hostility of most Southern whites to the Northern political establishment remains to this very day. In the core South - the old plantation system, rather than the South defined as a region, the tools productive forces, changed very little from 1870 - 1940. 1940 was one of the target dates in a compromised agreement Lincoln proposed for freeing the slaves. The invention of the cotton picker in that year, the mass production of the tractor and the development of weed killing chemicals in the early 1950?s was the economic legs - revolution, for the social and political revolution of 1864 to stand upon. The social revolution then moved forward to completion. The death of the sharecropping system was followed by a massive freedom movement and the outlawing of segregation and discrimination as a path was cleared for the entry of a mass of blacks into the lower bowels of the industrial system. The vision of one revolution becomes the cause of the next. However for this dialectic of "the revolution in permanence" to unfold, and usher in the emancipation of a class, a revolution in the means of production, or the emergence of a new boundary in productive force development is required that displaces the energy of the labor force and changes the form of laboring. Classes are liberated - displaced, from history incrementally and always on the basis of changes in the means of production rather than by political fiat or "revolutionary ideology." The emancipation of the sharecropper as a class, or the so-called "liquidation of the small producer," take place on the basis of revolution in the machinery of society that literally "kicks" an entire class out of its circumstance that makes it a historically specific class. This "inner law" of revolution reveals itself as a theoretical axiom: no class can be fully liberated or fully emancipated until its labor can be fundamentally replaced by a more efficient form of energy. Political emancipation is not enough. Class are truly emancipated in correspondence to the development of the division of labor in society. Further, the political and ideological superstructure can swing and lurch between terrorist legal, extra-legal and illegal violence and democratic parliamentary form of rule without changing the underlying property form of a society. In a different way and under different economic and political conditions, this same law of social revolution played itself out in the Russian (Soviet) countryside during the exact same timeframe; between 1870 and 1940 into the early 1950s. Back to the Future II. To say all this is not yet enough in defining the specific domestic/political context of the Obama election and the sectarian wars in Congress being waged on the political axis of North/South. Today, the Republican Party is by all estimates a "Southern Party," with its core political/social base in the "Bible Belt" or the old plantation area. To no small degree, the unleashing of the Southern political establishment inexorably leads to unleashing the cutting edge of America?s historical fascist movement. The appeal to "small town America" is not an appeal to folks living in smaller towns but an euphemism for white supremacy and "the far/ultra right" - fascistic rule. And all of America understands this with most political fascists, scared to openly show their political hand. The North/South divide - axis, needs to be outlined. America was basically Southern at its inception. Its core areas were Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia. The New England states were the shipping and manufacturing appendages of the slave system of the South. Economic and political interest and centers of gravity slowly shifted to the "lower South" as slavery became an industry of cotton and tobacco production. Seven "Deep" - core, South cotton states would secede from the Union by February 1861, starting with South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. These seven states formed the Confederate States of America (February 4, 1861), with Jefferson Davis as president, and a governmental structure closely modeled on the U.S. Constitution. The remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy. Later four states in the upper South (Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Virginia), which had rejected Confederate overtures, declared their secession, and joined the Confederacy, bring the CSA to a total of eleven states. Here is the South in its owns words, aspiration, and historical configuration as a state . By the late 1840?s, the political leaders of America or rather the Southern political leaders of America, viewed the population and the industrial growth of the North with apprehension. They realized that the shift from manufacturing to industry was creating a new nation in the North. This new nation was being formed a waves of European immigration created an industrial proletariat in what a few years earlier had been the north western frontier. A new relationship was being formed as the industrial cities produced agricultural machinery; the necessities for the slave system and in turn were fed, not by the slave system and its production of cash crops, but the Anglo American family farmers. The North was different in its way of life from the South. The evolving culture of the slave labor force combined with a certain aristocratic Bourbon like sensibility of the South?s ruling class, with its ideological glorification of the "agrarian way of life," has already made the South "Southern." "Southern" is far more than a geographic description. It is a cultural disposition with its distinct linguistic rendering. The South was clearly culturally distinct from the North. As the US grew, the North entered into an economic revolution from manufacturing to industry. The South had a strangle hold on political power. It became known as the "slave power," not because it had slaves, but because of the constitutional provision that slaves counted as 3/5 of a person for appropriating representation in Congress. The growth of the North meant it would only be a little time before the political battle in America would be shifted from the House of Representatives to the Senate as the South?s last stand. In the sixty-two years between Washington's election and the Compromise of 1850, for example, slaveholders controlled the presidency for fifty years, the Speaker's chair for forty-one years, and the chairmanship of House Ways and Means [the most important committee] for forty-two years. The only men to be reelected president - Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson - were all slaveholders. The men who sat in the Speaker's chair the longest - Henry Clay, Andrew Stevenson, and Nathaniel Macon - were slaveholders. Eighteen out of thirty-one Supreme Court justices were slaveholders. The "strong military and strong local police force," "little government," anti-government and anti-federal government" posturing was always the political calling card of the Slave Oligarchy, as it lost one political battle after another. The North fought to implement government and tariff policy advantage to the growth of Northern industry. _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War) The Southern political establishment began the preparation for the irrepressible political conflict. They understood that the mass of whites who did not have slaves would not fight simply to preserve slavery and the Constitutional right for the individual to own slaves; an economic institution that did not benefit them as a class. The southern whites could see with their own eyes this social relations of production, with the Slave Oligarchy possessing the rights to the best lands, the best of the limited roads, water ways and water rights. The Slave Oligarchy understood it had to separate from the Union and create a Southern nation with a distinct national-state based on slavery, but with social and cultural institutions benefiting all whites. Then the whites could be compelled to defend their institutions. Remarkable economic progress was made between 1850 and the outbreak of war and much of this progress can be traced on the basis of railroad lines - tracks, and the budding steel works in Alabama. More importantly was the opening up of the slave system as a realizable aspiration and means to get out of the grinding poverty with $250. The small and growing banking and insurance system was opened up. The state of Alabama guaranteed the loan to make basically any white man a small slave owner and tie him to the system. A man in Alabama with as little as $250 could buy a slave, a wagon, a mule and elementary framing equipment. The mortgage on the slave covered the whole damn thing. The harder the slave was driven the greater the productivity. If you had forty of fifty acres of cotton you were on your way to getting rich. There was so much money in cotton at that time. The whole industrial world revolved around cotton, which of course is why Marx "Capital" and most of his economic writing in riveted to the cotton industry and spinning gins. You had to do some pretty brutal things, but you could get rich and many a Northerner - Yankee, with means most certainly took advantage of this. One hundred years later, the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, would emerged as the national spokesperson for preserving segregation under the banner of States Rights. The model for the Southern leaders and nation was to be the Greek and Roman slave democracies, pivoting on an ideology and body politics of "State Rights." The concept of democracy without liberty for all, and opposed to such, exactly suited their purpose. To this very day this conception of democracy and rights, which denies liberty for some - the ideological "other," is the ideological underpinning for much of the core political South and the hallmark of the Southern political establishment. (Constitution of the Confederate States of America at: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSA_Constitution_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSA_Constitution) ) It is this specific ideology that Barack Obama acutely understands and finds himself in combat with. It is for good reason in his "Audacity of Hope," - written before becoming President, Obama reopens the question of population count as a basis for the Senate rather than simply two Senators from each state. The political argument and demand to place Senate seats upon a basis of population count, is aimed at breaking the historic fascists current in the Senate, by placing the core Southern states in an absolute minority. (Section 3A was added from the original on Marxist Debate. Information as source from taken from "The Future Is Up To Us" by Nelson Peery and "African American Liberation and Revolution in the United States," by Nelson Peery) **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 08:56:28 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:56:28 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 3B Message-ID: Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2 Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By El?ades 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) Section 3B The African American Question (AAQ) has undergone great changes since WW II. Few people today even attempt to describe the question in its long tortured historical features. The "quantify thing" and viewing progress through mirror images, 300 million mirrors, is enough to give one tired hands. Historically, the description of the AAQ, was one of caste; a special question of class because of the color question; a national or national-colonial question, because the blacks suffered a pretty obvious oppression. The most visible change the African American people and all of America have lived is the destruction of Jim Crow; the mechanization of agriculture; the impact of the technological revolution and the reformation of relations between and within classes - without changing the property relations. American society has been reformed in my lifetime. Descriptions of the African American Question were based on observation over a long period of time. The first observation was that since the color line was the dominant factor of their oppression and isolation, all African Americans regardless of their education and economic status, were subject to the same or similar exploitation, segregation and oppression. Second, that this material oppression, supported and held in place with passive and aggressive support of the Anglo American peoples and layers of the working class itself, produced all the essential features of a distinct culture of the Negro, existing as a distinct people in American society. The general conclusion of this observation by Marxists was that racial discrimination - the color line, was a form of class exploitation and therefore could not be fundamentally overcome short of the overthrow and destruction of the capital and the reorganization of society on the basis of economic communism. Life has proven this political projection wrong. The relations between and within classes has been reformed. The idea of America electing a black President did not exist as a sober thought as little as 24 months ago. Yet, there it is. Someone asks "Our we free yet?" How far have we advanced? How is freedom, emancipation or political liberty to be quantified short of the overthrow of the power of capital? Four distinct elements have intervened to change the situation of the African American since WWII. First and foremost is the determined struggle of the African American people themselves. Very seldom in history has such a small group, roughly 12 -15% of the population, waged and carried out such an unbroken, determined and militant , brutal and bloody struggle against such a pervasive and brutal ideology justifying second class citizenship and a violent state apparatus. Without this element none of the other elements could have brought about change. The individual as masses makes a difference in shaping history and creates the various shades and shapes of social relations that arise in correspondence to production relations. The second element was the mechanization of Southern agriculture and the tractoring off the land of eleven million sharecroppers - six million white and five million black. This distinct process - changes in the productive forces, was the economic and social basis of the Civil Rights Movement, inasmuch as this mass had to go somewhere in their quest for a livelihood. Sharecropping might not sound like a real job and class category but it is. The share of the sharecropper is legal ownership of a portion of the commodity, rather than the very straight forward sale of ones labor ability to institutional capital. Third, the Cold War was the context for the totality of all the previous stages - phase, of struggle. The intense struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union opened doors that would have remained shut to blacks, as both competed for the hearts and minds of the colonial peoples. The existence of newly liberated Peoples China was the greatest world wide blow against the deadly ideology of white superiority, ever delivered in world history. China?s existence was a beacon of hope to the hundreds of millions of slaves of modern imperialism. Tiny Cuba, who population is that of New York City, overthrew the slave master and Batista. After the 1965 Watts Rebellion and then Detroit 1967, emancipation had to be "just around the corner." Talk about the longest city block. A complex combination of Soviet power + Peoples China and the emergence of the "Third World" movements force the hand of the state department. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, were forced by the state department to "clean up" America?s domestic act and take steps in dismantling legal segregation; Jim Crow had to go. Dismantling Jim Crow would be much easier than burying the force of habit and white superiority in the ideological realm. The Southern political establishment rebelled, because their seats of political power and control of Senate committee seats was based on the exclusion of the blacks and the seniority rule. Nevertheless, Jim Crow had to go for America to have an ounce of credibility amongst the majority of humanity whose subjugation was justified by white superiority ideology. Further, America could not consolidate it international political hegemony and complete it?s post war economic expansion without drawing tens of millions of Negroes into the industrial infrastructure as proletarians. American had to change: be reformed. Within American society an incremental merging with the distinct culture of the blacks was taking place. The invention of the radio allowed this to happen. It is a significant cultural journey from 1932 when the "Wings Over Jordan," came on the radio and to 1968 when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir recorded a whole album of "Negro Spirituals." These songs can no longer be said to belong solely to the Negro people - African Americans, because these songs belong to America. You can be certain that more whites than blacks have been watching Soul Train and MTV forever. I believe it was Michael Jackson?s video?s that desecrated or rather desegregated MTV a couple of decades ago. The fourth element in the drama was the introduction, incremental injection of a new quality - electronic computerized production processes, within the productive forces as the means to overcome the absolute and unyielding law of the falling rate of profits, with its surplus of capital seeking profitability and the subsequent globalization of the financial, commodity and labor markets. The salient feature of this process, up to 2009, is the emergence of a new non-banking financial architecture, increasingly dominating the life or rather death, of the world?s people, while writing the political and economic agenda of capital. The next rung of the historical ladder. The history of the African American is intertwined into the fabric of everything that makes America, well America. Intertwined is such a way that the heart of American history is black history in the body of America: fusion. The apparent fact is that Jim Crow America has been shattered and superseded by non-Jim Crow America. This indisputable and undeniable new America does not mean that white supremacy and fascist currents has vanished from the landscape. No one can deny that a series of laws, brought into play as the result of the struggle of the black masses, have forever changed America. The groping and quantifying progress reappears. Laws in America often collide with "rights" with both colliding with fact of class because without money, it is virtually impossible to exercise ones rights in accordance with the law. The laws and rights run into a rigid Constitution. What the Constitution grants with one hand, state laws and historical rights can "take it" away with the other; ergo the 13, 14t and 15th amendments of the Constitution. Let?s look at the African-American community. One of the ideological hangovers from the period of Jim Crow segregation is the tendency to see the African Americans as a category rather than a scattered grouping of some 40 million individuals who have different histories, ideals, and goals and who belong to various economic classes. Today there is no such thing as the "Negro people," as they existed under Jim Crow segregation, in say 1939 America. This characterization was correct years ago when the pressure of Jim Crow segregation isolated the African Americans from the rest of society. This isolation allowed for the creation of a common culture, internal class stratification, and a common political agenda. America?s official view of this culture throughout much of the 1930 and 1950? s was a caricature of the black as the darky; singing and dancing down cities streets, happy, broke as hell without a dim, but happy. Movie director/ producer Spike Lee?s "Bamboozled" gives a generous view of this history collapsed as an intertwining fusion of American history in the black. As the economic basis of Jim Crow segregation weakened, so did the social and political cohesiveness of the Negro community. To the degree that segregation weakened, the Negro community, as such, disintegrated. As possibilities developed, the better situated Black uppermost class moved away from the ghetto and became a part of the bourgeoisie. Actually, the two classes have little in common, and both sides are accelerating the drift toward class orientation. A broad strata of civil, military, and police officers and corporate, educational, and government officials are Black, giving the impression that there is an end to segregation, and the struggle around class has taken the place of the struggle around "race." Some revolutionaries hold to the idea that race is still the predominant factor. Unable to grasp the color factor and color line in our history, others are dropping the question of race and declaring that the today there is only the question of class. Race and racism are political weapons to facilitate class exploitation and should never be placed in opposition to class. It is not a question of either/or. Both factors are at play, and the question is which factor predominates under what circumstance and in which direction the general motion is going. There is no question that the old-style segregation and lynch-mob extra-legal struggles have declined. Race is a political/ideological factor and must change its form - color, to function in changing circumstance. Today, the salient aspect of the social struggle is the intensifying war against the new proletarian class created by electronics. For historical reasons, the most vulnerable sector is Black. The draconian slashing of the so-called safety net has been accomplished by presenting it as a "Black thing." The attacks against education and health care are always carefully couched in terms of color. This political maneuvering is taking place within the reality of a growing social consciousness within this new proletarian class, as more than three million people have been laid of in the space of a couple of years, and estimated of official unemployment running as high as 13.9%. The ruling class cannot totally abandon the weapon of "biological race," since it is historically evolved and an integral part of American politics, sustaining the North/South divide in the political and ideological realm. . While remaining fully conscious of the viability of the color factor, we revolutionaries concentrate on the question of class, which is the arising and progressive aspect in need of nurturing. The decline of the color designation of work and the commonality of unemployment is creating opportunities for class solidarity on an entirely new level. Previously, what unity there was, was built around common problems in the shop. Today we can speak of building class unity ? something far beyond workplace problems and in the arena of political struggle. Political struggle is an art. All art contains its own symbols of expression. Art requires more than an adherence to theory or doctrine. It requires the ability to sum up, to make decisions on the basis of the temporary relationship of subjective and objective forces. Obama is - expresses, this changed reality, and was called forth to do the improbable; to reform America on the basis of a proletarian class, more than less shut outside of productive laboring. Obama supersedes and leaps over the long night that was the era of the rise and fall of "the black political leader." A peculiar political phenomenon brought to life by 90 years of Jim Crow segregation. Part 4 Obama: Change and Continuity? Death of a Salesman. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 09:48:48 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:48:48 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The elec... Message-ID: 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 ? Reply Thanks for the correct that should be can't - cannot. You are correct. The entire world is entering and firmly within a revolution in the mode of production with some countries more advanced than others. Development of and revolution in the productive forces are always uneven and combined as a law of development. Actually, every single improvement in the productive forces - quantitative or qualitative, are eventually spread throughout the world. I will be more careful so as not to give the impression that talking about America means "only in America." The inside of a computer is different - a different technology, from machines founded on the principles of mechanical motion using a structure of mechanical gears, levers, fly wheels and transfer bars. Find an old adding machine used by H&R block - from 30 years ago, disassemble it, lay all it parts on a table; then take your computer , disassemble it, lay all its parts on the table and the difference your eyes are looking at is the difference between a system of mechanical gears, levers, fly wheels and what you see as the components of your computer. That is how one can see the difference. I did describe the "why" and "how" in a critique of an article by John Case, writer of Political Affairs some time ago. The process is extremely interesting because each incremental grafting onto an existing system, a qualitatively new technology runs into barriers that are the "pathways" of the old system. At a certain stage of development a further grafting "onto" is not possible and the entire system one is dealing with is totally reconfigured. The difference between the old memo printing machines, all radical groups had in the 1960's and 1970's and modern printers is profound. The new printing machines are not modified Gestetners. The long history of transition from Gutenberg cold type press, modified by the industrial revolution with complex gears and levers, to today's printing machines is breathtaking. I was trained in the 8 th and 9 th grade to set cold type and become a printer, only to become aware of the change wave when our "group" purchased one of IBM's new typesetting machines in 1969/70. By 1980 Compugraphic over took IBM in the typesetting field. Apple 1984 Computer - with its famous 1984 won't be 1984 commercial, was a turning point and this technological regime sunk companies like Compugraphic, more or less. Then the welding and paint shops in plants began change and the first generation of advance robotics were introduced. The current generation of advanced robotics are not inhibited in their movement and motion like the first. The devices I play music with today are fundamentally different from my old Maranx 2045 and Technics turntables. Turntables still exist, but even today'e 1970ish CD players are being replaced. You basically cannot tune up your car today. I tried because the number 3 piston was misfiring. Today's automobile engines could not be designed like this 25 - 35 years ago. Boy was I pissed. There goes $150 bucks. We crossed the threshold separating mechanical driven motion some time ago. Grafting on the new technological regime to the existing system is the meaning of revolution in the machinery of society. All revolution in the machinery begin with the incremental - quantitative, grafting onto, the existing machinery, a qualitatively new kind of or enhanced device, instrument, tool, energy source, machine, or technology. Such was the exact same case with the revolution from simple manufacture to industry. Eventually a new or enhanced external energy source has to come into existence for the further expansion of the new technology. We are not driving my fathers "old" Oldsmobile. If you are implying that society is not going through a revolution in the machinery of society, bringing to an end expansion on the old basis of that, which made the industrial revolution, well industrial - founded on mechanical motion principles, then how does one explain the technological regime of the computer and this stage of advanced robotics? The semi-conductor - integrated chip, is truly revolutionary. WL. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 10:31:21 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 12:31:21 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 Message-ID: Obama is - expresses, this changed reality, and was called forth to do the impossible. Obama supersedes and leaps over the long night, that was the era of the rise and fall of the black political leader. A peculiar political phenomenon brought to life by Jim Crow segregation. Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2 Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By El?ades 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) Part 4 Death of a Salesman. The election of Barack Obama closes out a period of American history and opens the door to the Third American Revolution: proletarian revolution, because of time, place and space outlined in part 1. Barack Obama has the demeanor, oratory and uses much of the language symbols of the black leader in American history. Or does he; or is it American history, with its persistent recycling of "Give me liberty or give me death?" Obama, rather than President Barack Obama, has a personal familiarity to it that can be quite discomforting, but is called forth due to his personal qualities and living link as momentary American history. Obama resurrected the dead undying Lincoln. "Towards a more perfect Union." Communists rooted in American history fail to appropriate this same history at their peril. Obama collected the dreams and realized dreams of an older generation that is our nation of immigrants. And former slaves. "Don?t matter what kind of ship carried you to America, we are all in the same boat." Who lacks the courage or manliness to apply this formula on a class basis and bias? Here is the real cultural war being waged against a certain infantile 1960ish counter culture amongst the left. Obama?s wielding of the "politics of change" is not reducible to demagogy, although electoral politics and much of all politics involves demagogy in the shape of the inspiring but unachievable driving vision. This includes communist politics and the demand for economic communism, whose emancipation of the proletariat is forever blocked, from full realization by an existing material configuration that is division of labor and productive force development; even after the criminal bourgeoisie has been swept from the furthers corner of earth. Even Jesus wept. . . . . Over the barriers. . Marx shifted his projection of world revolution as a doctrine of combat. Marx faced his very own quantifying dilemma. Engels explained why the programmatic demands of the Manifesto were obsolete. Lenin?s lament, built iron and steel socialism. Then the loop of logic carries us back to the future/present Marx; world revolution for this generations. It is precisely because Marx himself could not quantify the progression of the proletarian revolution the he and Engels wrote numerous prefaces to the Communists Manifesto, after the fact. These prefaces alone are worth their weight in good to the communist revolution. Voting America expressed its desire for real change, which it cannot yet define or articulate as a coherent vision because of its lack of class consciousness. At least this is how the American people understand their own actions expressed in Obama?s election, I would dare say. Therefore Obama is to be quantified, with instruments from the previous configuration of American history. To do such is to leave - liquidate (Lenin?s word) the last period, this time forever. Peering through the surface of the process dialectic of vision, cause and change; is the machinery of society; the outer expression of the underlying revolutionary process, felt and experienced as the fight in the political sphere. What Marxists generally call the superstructure, the ideological battle and what Americans once and generally call - with contempt, politics and "arguing religion." Politics in our country at all times express shifting political alliances and shifting structural relations or the living institutions that hold together the unity of the productive forces and the social relations - (if you will), of living economic and political America. This shifting always is bound up with the North/South political axis, due to slavery. Obama in the flesh completes a social and political process, which actually matured with the Clinton administration. This period actually begins with Bush 1, but he was quickly silenced after floating the concept of the "new world order." No political grouping or social movement in America can accomplish any of its goals without impacting and carrying with them 50 - 70 million people as a political and social base. Obama must be quantified. He will be quantified. The last period liquidates itself on the basis of itself. That Obama is an American left social democrat to the world outside and inside of America for some is beyond dispute. I use this term/concept. Until one looks at American history on its own basis. I am not sure if the political categories from a Europe being rocked and pregnant with bourgeois revolution and political strife between bourgeois and proletariat in combat - antagonism, with the classes of the feudal order are proper to America. Lenin marched along the same boulevard as the bourgeoisie, while preserving his independence as a distinct political trend and insurrectionary force. A section of the bourgeoisie and communism itself, were social democratic in relationship to Lenin. Lenin overthrow the bourgeoisie after both overthrew the feudal political establishment. That is to say, bourgeoisie and proletariat, as the new class fought against the Nobility as power holder, with the serf/[peasants loyalty being vied for. In a country with no feudal history where is the left bench of the bourgeoisie? Just asking this question is to leap beyond political Leninism. Perhaps, . . . maybe, this question, might be the first step in seeking a Marxist theoretical framework to place, "Obama's . . . "left lite" close to social-democracy," within. The left bench and Social democracy. Really? "Yes, I?m sitting on a bench, With my back up against the fence,. Wondering if I?ve got any sense. Sometime tells me I?m a fool, To let you treat me so cruel, Nevertheless you got me waiting. Sitin? In the park. Waiting for you." (Billy Stewart: "Sitting in the Park") Daily thousands, hundreds of thousands of individuals interact "on-line," struggle with catching up with an accurate vision of America as it exists, as it is becoming and, as it is understood by a new generation, to give full context to Obama?s electoral victory. What is being grappled with is a new form of social - class, struggle still out of everyone?s reach because it has not come of fruition. All statistical data suggests that a full 70% of the people of America do not trust large institutions, political institutions and government, with only roughly 35% taking part in electoral politics. America?s back is not against the fence. Rather America - a huge section of it, sits on the fence, tittering and teetering to the side of fascism and non-fascism. Nor is 2009 America akin to 1930 ?s Germany and its aftermath where one could be anti-fascism and anti-communism as a political equation. What has changed is the world. Today, the world proletariat faces the world bourgeoisie, without a feudal social and political backdrop or waves of anti-colonial revolutions. World wide the "political middle" and the small producer as a political force, has all but been eliminated. Slowly but inexorably the proletariat, with a huge and growing sector of it is being pushed out of social production and cast out of the civic society of the bourgeoisie. In this political equation a left social democracy, that is anti-communist cannot for long stand as being "left." Obama?s campaign momentarily created a gravitational pull strong enough to pull a large section of our working class spontaneously gravitating to the right, as their first political impulse. This is due precisely to the fact that labor is tied to capital by a thousand threads and the impulse to recapture economic security - a job, means spontaneously recreating the capital-labor bond. The spontaneous impulse to recapture a lost past and stability. Here is where we meet the fascist danger in the flesh. This does not mean pushing Obama to the "left," but rather establishing economic communism, devoid of its historic ideology as a form of Sovietism, as a political pole. Obama and no one else is to be "pushed to the left." Rather, establishing a communist polarity will compelled everything in the middle to seek refuge with this pole as a consistent fighter against fascism. Obama has to be quantified while knowing such quantification is bound to be wrong, outside stating he is the chief political representative/executive of imperial capital. This of course is no quantification but a qualification or quality. Obama is capital personified. Knowing this and a "dime" "won't even shine ones shoes, on Broadway." Obama also brings to an end the peculiar phenomenon of the black leader. A historical character that pushed himself unto history as the product result of open fascism in the Jim Crow South and his police state cousin in the North?s Negro conclaves. At the close of the Civil War the blacks began their spontaneous drift throughout American society. With the overthrow of Reconstruction and the institution of fascism and Jim Crow the structural relations within and between classes in America were recast. The black leader emerges as the "go between" - navigator, between the structures separating black society from white. Between 1865 and the 1890?s there were leaders and political leaders in government that were black. These leaders were not the peculiar phenomenon of the black leader. The counter revolution was the condition for the birth of the Black leader. Let?s be clear. Back to the Future III The South as the Confederate States of America, expressed desire was to complete it development as a nation with a state system to protect its economic and political interest. That is why it seceded from the Union in the first and last instance. What made the South culturally different from the North was slavery and "the antebellum culture" that emerged from the melting pot of slavery, with it?s seemingly feudal like attributes. The blacks of the South did not constitute a separate nation but were the primary labor force of a nation struggling to emerge into the light of day. The South lost the war sustaining a horrible and humiliating defeat. The Northern interests controlled the South by politically controlling the blacks. This control was the basis for breaking the political independence of the Southern elite. As that independence was broken, the Southern elite was forced to unite with their new economic masters. At that point, the goals of Reconstruction were accomplished and it could be dismantled as a political and military institution. But cotton still had to be picked. The unity of Northern and Southern political and economic interest was the foundation of the counterrevolution that drove the African Americans back into a near slave-like conditions, pulling the entire region down. First the blacks were given the vote, momentarily shattering the planters political power, then the vote was taken away once the planters were political subdued. The violence of the counterattack by the planters against the blacks was the condition for condemning more whites than blacks to the sharecropping system. By concentrating the attack against the blacks, the planters made it appear that the majority of poor whites were out of the line of fire. Centuries of white supremacy led most of the poor whites to believe that Not uniting on the basis of class interest, even that of sharecroppers and small dirt poor farmers, would give them privileged status over the blacks. The legalization of segregation and discrimination against the blacks guaranteed that the whites could not escape the slavery of sharecropping. After the disfranchisement of the African Americans, the laws supposedly passed against the blacks, were then applied to the white. From this complex of events arose a historical man, a black man, who could talk to a man, the white political and economic man, on behalf of and as spokespersons for the mass of blacks. Someone who could "talk to the man," on behalf of the prostrate black masses is different than one who spoke to power on behalf of the newly freed slaves and destitute masses of the South. The black leader. And indeed he was the man who talked to "the man." Who would have known that this historical man who talked to "The man" would become "The man" who now talks to the man or rather all men and women? Obama is not an "Uncle Tom." His social and political position within the superstructure, production relations and more importantly his moment in time as the post Jim Crow era, is not analogous to that of Uncle Tom in the fiction novel "Uncle Tom Cabin." Barack Obama is President of the United States of America, which as American history presuppose the destruction and eradication of structural and ideological Jim Crow. The man who did the talking to "The Man," broke into history as Booker T. Washington existing in symbiotic relations with Dr. Dubois, who when viewed through Chinese history and culture were dubbed the comprador and national bourgeoisie within the Deep South, as Negro. This man could not speak for the whites of the South due to structural Jim Crow and its accompanying ideology. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (February 23, 1868 ? August 27, 1963), historically expressed the latter, joining the CPUSA in 1959. These concepts wielded by Chinese Communist/Marxists, leaves much to be desired, but seemed to capture the spirit of Mr. Washington forever changed with genuflecting toadyism. Genuflect = Chinese kowtow and toadyism is kowtowing to the 2nd power. end part 4 WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Fri Feb 27 11:07:56 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:07:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 Message-ID: <30188034.1235758077257.JavaMail.root@whwamui-ascend.pas.sa.earthlink.net> As much as I love Billy Stewart, even he's not helping draw whatever conclusions I'm supposed to draw from Obama. I'm not seeing anything here but a political vacuum for the communist alternative you're talking about. Everybody in America believes in capital, jobs, and wage labor. -----Original Message----- >From: Waistline2 at aol.com >Sent: Feb 27, 2009 9:31 AM >To: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu >Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 >................. Obama?s campaign momentarily created a gravitational pull strong enough to pull a large section of our working class spontaneously gravitating to the right, as their first political impulse. This is due precisely to the fact that labor is tied to capital by a thousand threads and the impulse to recapture economic security - a job, means spontaneously recreating the capital-labor bond. The spontaneous impulse to recapture a lost past and stability. Here is where we meet the fascist danger in the flesh. This does not mean pushing Obama to the "left," but rather establishing economic communism, devoid of its historic ideology as a form of Sovietism, as a political pole. Obama and no one else is to be "pushed to the left." Rather, establishing a communist polarity will compelled everything in the middle to seek refuge with this pole as a consistent fighter against fascism. Obama has to be quantified while knowing such quantification is bound to be wrong, outside stating he is the chief political representative/executive of imperial capital. This of course is no quantification but a qualification or quality. Obama is capital personified. Knowing this and a "dime" "won't even shine ones shoes, on Broadway." Obama also brings to an end the peculiar phenomenon of the black leader. A historical character that pushed himself unto history as the product result of open fascism in the Jim Crow South and his police state cousin in the North?s Negro conclaves. At the close of the Civil War the blacks began their spontaneous drift throughout American society. With the overthrow of Reconstruction and the institution of fascism and Jim Crow the structural relations within and between classes in America were recast. The black leader emerges as the "go between" - navigator, between the structures separating black society from white. Between 1865 and the 1890?s there were leaders and political leaders in government that were black. These leaders were not the peculiar phenomenon of the black leader. The counter revolution was the condition for the birth of the Black leader. ........ From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 11:14:29 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:14:29 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 5 Message-ID: Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2 Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By El?ades Acosta Matos raises a question whose answer is "both!" (http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=800&Ite) Obama: Change or Continuity? Part 5 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (November 29, 1908 ? April 4, 1972) was a pastor who represented Harlem between 1945 and 1971. In 1944 Powell was elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives, representing the 22nd congressional district, which included Harlem. He was the first black Congressman from New York, and the first from any Northern state other than Illinois in the Post-Reconstruction Era. As one of only two black Congressmen, Powell challenged the informal ban on black representatives using Capitol facilities reserved for members only. He took black constituents to dine with him in the "whites only" House restaurant. He clashed with the many segregationists in his own party. As one of the modern "first," the story of the black leader as politician basically begins here, but (!!!) becomes a political force - summed up in the cry, "Black Power," in the mid 1960?s, with the election of Carl Stokes as Cleveland Ohio and America?s first big city Mayor. Carl Burton Stokes served as the 51st mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. Elected on November 7, 1967, but took office on Jan 1, 1968, he was tied to be the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city with Mayor Richard G. Hatcher Gary Indiana. Fellow Ohioan Robert C. Henry was the first African American mayor of any U.S. city. Thus Stokes becomes a marker - boundary, in the opening of the "Black Power Movement," and what would later become "the post Jim Crow era." It would seem that the post Jim Crow era, as an era emerges after the era of "Black Power," whose closing some date with the 1983 election of Harold Washington as Chicago Mayor. Still "other" point to the 1990 election of David Norman Dinkins, as the first black elected Mayor of New York City from 1990 through 1993, as the definitive close of "Black Power." Lets look at one of the quantitative boundary Obama completes. Breaking into any point in history is a tricky business. Let?s examine an outline of the migration of blacks from South to North. Let? s take away the color factor. Blacks have basically improved their economic status in the North at the same rate as any other immigrants, and probably a little better than the Italian immigrant first arriving in the US. The improvement of the economic and then the social conditions of these blacks has proceeding in a pretty normal way consistent with our history. At certain point of Irish immigration, suddenly there was Irish domination of politics in their areas of concentration. Similarly for the Italian, the Norwegian, the Polish, Mexicans and the process is taking place in real time with the "Arab" immigrants. Likewise, there was an emergence of black politics as the blacks moved into the slums previously occupied by various white ethics at the bottom of the industrial social ladder. The difference is that the black politician?s influence and electability was limited to the so-called "Black ghetto," while the ethnic white influence merged into the exiting nationwide ideological and political sphere or more importantly the nationwide political infrastructure. American politics call this "going national." The concentration of blacks in the proletarian slums was the condition for the rise of black politics and black politicians, and the meaning of the "Black Power Movement." More often than not the black politicians interest resided more with the maintenance of segregation (not Jim Crow) and isolation of their constituency - (the basis of their power), than with the striving of the masses they were to represent. Not for one moment could the historic Daley machine in Chicago exist for ten minutes, without the support of the black political criminals, who cries for public housing hides the segregation implied in black politics. 3,000 people concentrated into a segregated conclave, be the y white, black, brown or Red is a dream for all bourgeois politicians: a captive market. This dynamic reveals the exact same path of the black trade union leaders and was the base for emergence of groups like the CBTU (Coalition of Black Trade Unionists) in the mid 1970s. Obama entered this world of Chicago politics while it was in flux, but this story is not really about Obama, but why he expressed a specific definable process in our history. A process filled with intersection of class interest, intrigue, sex, drugs and murder. Obama as the man from the land of Lincoln? His mother born in Kansas . . . "Bloody Kansas," the line drawn in the battle against the Slave Oligarchy and the cause of the birth of the Republican Party! Obama is smart and class conscious. A bourgeois politician, but class consciousness with awareness of the details of American history. Hollywood central casting and screenwriters could not have written a more detail description of political shifting and the crossing of a definable quantitative boundary, more real than the reality of Obama as history. The blacks went into the factory, improved their economic lot at the same rate as any other immigrants arriving in the North and at a certain point of their concentration "black politics" become a force entering the political and ideological sphere. What is different is that Jim Crow segregation and then white chauvinism blocked the emergence of truly national black politics or rather, blocked the black politician from merging into the general stream - infrastructure, of American politics. In 1960 only 280 blacks held office across the entire United States (Jaynes and Williams 1989). Today there are over 9,000 black elected officials in America (JCPS 2003). Blacks have won the mayoralty in most of the nation?s big cities, there are roughly 600 African Americans in state legislatures nationwide, and blacks now hold about 10 percent of the seats in the U.S. Congress. African Americans are still underrepresented at most levels of government, but undeniably they play a role among America?s political elite. However the long night - the era, of the black leader as the leader of blacks has given way to a new political era and a new political reality first signified with the ascendancy of Colin Powell. Colin Powell was not a black leader, arising from within the ranks of the military and totally divorced from the black political structures, civil rights organizations, black trade union groupings and anything else that can be called "black." Something has changed in America that made it possible for Obama?s victory. Quantifying this change must shift and be done of the basis of white voters and how class intersects in this process. Specifically, the black voters have for much of post WWII America been the "swing vote" sought after as votes or exclusion. Hence, the constant penning away by Republicans over voter registration, ACORN, and allegations of voting fraud. It is no longer enough to exclude two or three million black voters for the historic fascist current to achieve victory in national politics. In the Obama campaign the "swing vote" was a section of traditionally white Republican votes. That is different. Obama won Iowa on the basis of a solid base of white voters cutting across all classes. Obama defeated Senator Clinton on the basis of a white swing vote. In fact it was the huge movement of white voters that drew the black vote from Senator Clinton, given the black voters unreasonable love affair with the Clinton machine. President Obama?s persistent and consistent demand that there is only one America, is designed to hold the "white working class" and traditionally Republican voters in place. That is different. I deeply felt that Obama?s run for president was to set up an infrastructure for a "serious" bid in 2012 or 2016, and in the blink of an eye 118 years of history was collapsed in front of everyone eyes. That is the juncture Obama is. The marker that is Obama has cast to the side not only black politics, but ushers in the practical end of the era of "the peculiar phenomena of the Black Leader," and signify a political shift in national politics beyond the color line. The question "Obama: change or continuity" is answered, "both." end of part 5 of 6 WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 11:20:43 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:20:43 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 Message-ID: As much as I love Billy Stewart, even he's not helping draw whatever conclusions I'm supposed to draw from Obama. I'm not seeing anything here but a political vacuum for the communist alternative you're talking about. Everybody in America believes in capital, jobs, and wage labor. Reply Most in America passively and aggressively supported Jim Crow until than magnificent struggle broke out on DECEMBER 4, 1955 in Montgomery Alabama. Then it would take a decade of intense struggle to outlaw lynching and get the Voting Rights Act and later fair housing legislation. Then it would take another twenty years for blacks to become fused into the national political sphere. Then it would take another 20 years to get our first Black President. We are at the very beginning and Obama's election might be analogous to something like Montgomery 1955. To optimistic? WL. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 11:40:08 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:40:08 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 Message-ID: As much as I love Billy Stewart, even he's not helping draw whatever conclusions I'm supposed to draw from Obama. I'm not seeing anything here but a political vacuum for the communist alternative you're talking about. Everybody in America believes in capital, jobs, and wage labor. Reply Yo . . . what is meant by a communist pole - polarity is a politic held together by the simple belief that society most provide for people who have little or no money and cannot pay their bills. That's it. The only way for people to have socially necessary means of life, when people cannot buy them due to lack of money, is for society to give them these things. That it! All that cramp about glorious workers, and workers councils and workers democracy; Stalin vs Trotsky and so on is useless and means nothing. The masses themselves are going to strive for greater political liberty as a spontaneous impulse. As a fight I am feeling economic communism as stated above. Everything else as political ideology is more or less useless. I believe this is the stage we are at. WL WL. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From rdumain at autodidactproject.org Fri Feb 27 11:55:36 2009 From: rdumain at autodidactproject.org (Ralph Dumain) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:55:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 Message-ID: <7455070.1235760937945.JavaMail.root@whwamui-ascend.pas.sa.earthlink.net> All of these marxist reference points are of historical value, only. And the various political sects are only good for distributing literature to the tiny number of people interested in these perspectives, plus coalition action which everyone does anyway. This financial crisis points the way towards the obsolescence of capital as the engine of jobs, prosperity, and wage labor, but nobody is prepared to go there. The very notion is taboo. Yet this ridiculous stimulus package opens up the entire system to scrutiny. But that also means we are at a juncture of great danger. The bourgeoisie itself is probably divided between the thugs of the far right and the sensibly bourgeoisie that wants to see Obama succeed, sensitive to the severe consequences of his failure. Obama will hold the class structure of America together as best he can, and his self-deceiving ideology is the engine by which he got there and will proceed, with all the ridiculous Americanist rhetoric intact. The most noteworthy aspect of taking the "high road" is that Obama can appear, and probably believes he is, totally nonpartisan, bipartisan, or whatever, all along being forced to take more liberal or social democratic measures to correct the heinous state of affairs he has bequeathed. A shift in the overall political direction of the country won't depend on him, but if popular pressure forces him to move to the left, he would do so. And that's the only way any president gets anything done, whether it be Lincoln, FDR, or LBJ, the only presidents good for anything since the "Founding Fathers". -----Original Message----- >From: Waistline2 at aol.com >Sent: Feb 27, 2009 10:40 AM >To: marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu >Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 > >As much as I love Billy Stewart, even he's not helping draw whatever >conclusions I'm supposed to draw from Obama. > >I'm not seeing anything here but a political vacuum for the communist >alternative you're talking about. Everybody in America believes in >capital, jobs, >and wage labor. > > >Reply > > >Yo . . . what is meant by a communist pole - polarity is a politic held >together by the simple belief that society most provide for people who have >little or no money and cannot pay their bills. That's it. The only way for people >to have socially necessary means of life, when people cannot buy them due to >lack of money, is for society to give them these things. That it! > >All that cramp about glorious workers, and workers councils and workers >democracy; Stalin vs Trotsky and so on is useless and means nothing. The masses >themselves are going to strive for greater political liberty as a spontaneous >impulse. > >As a fight I am feeling economic communism as stated above. Everything else >as political ideology is more or less useless. I believe this is the stage we >are at. From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 12:17:30 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:17:30 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 6/end Message-ID: 6. Cultural nuances/end Barack Obama is/as a black man, keenly aware of the color factor in American and world history and sensitive to the nuances of culture. I own and have read his autobiography "Dreams From My Father," written in 1995 at the age of 33 at the same time of purchasing and reading Sidney Poitier "Measure of A Man." Mr. Poitier introduced the #16 quotes of the "100 Years . . . .100 Movie Quotes" in the movie "In The Heat of The Night," where he plays the role of a Northern Black detective sent South to unravel a murder. His famous line was: "They call me Mister Tibbs." Both of these men, proud, determined and elegant in their own right and individuality, manifest the story of the American melting pot, as America?s little discussed and little understood "black underbelly." In 1963, Poitier became the first black man to win a USA Academy Award for "Best Actor," and of course Obama is the first black man to become President. Neither are Negro, but most certainly black, in the same way that a second and third generation English man or German immigrant lives the metamorphosis in America, that is the American melting pot and emerges as Anglo American. The same can be said of say Minister Louis Farrakhan, Marcus Garvey and even WEB Du Bois. Let?s isolate Minister Louis for a moment to examine how the American story has played itself out and unravel a quantifying of American history and individuals that seem to defies logic. Farrakhan was born in New York, Bronx, and raised as Eugene Walcott within the West Indian community in the Roxbury section of Boston Massachusetts. His mother, Sarah Mae Manning, had emigrated from Saint Kitts and Nevis in the 1920?s; his father, Percival Clarke, was a Jamaican cab driver from New York. As a child, he received training as a violinist. At the age of six, he was given his first violin and by the age of thirteen, he had played with the Boston College Orchestra and the Boston Civic Symphony. A year later, he went on to win national competitions, and was one of the first black performers to appear on Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, where he also - naturally, won an award. A central focus of his youth was the Episcopal St. Cyprian's Church in Boston's Roxbury section, a part of Boston which also produced the great Leonard Bernstein. All of these men, noble and elegant in their own right and historical experience, manifest the striving and realization of the American Dream, to one degree or another, rather than the plight and circumstance of the Negro; meaning those people emerging from the melting pot of slavery and then formed under 90 years of structural Jim Crow. All these men are African American but that tell one virtually nothing, in the same way that whites as Anglo American informs one of next to nothing. Basically, Anglo American and African American means Americans with "white" and "black" skin, when in fact the individual has a real history. The experience of Jim Crow + white chauvinism, NOT Southern slavery + Jim Crow + white chauvinism, also shaped and impacted all of these men, but their experience mirrors, that of the European immigrant, to a vast degree, including Malcolm X. Malcolm?s mother Louise Little was born in Grenada, with Malcolm stating, "she looked like a white woman," because of her Scottish father. Interesting yes? Barack Obama wonderful book, "Dreams from My Father," is the immigrant story, a black immigrant, rather than the history of the Negro People, and his acute awareness of this living history accounts for his unique and individual ability to cross the color line. When Obama writes, "My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn?t, couldn?t, end there," what is meant is that my identity is not defined on the basis of the color factor in American history. The words of Obama reveals why no self respecting Marxist, born and reared as part of the "baby boomers," can deploy the concept race, other than the petty bourgeois intellectuals unable to fully digest dialectics without opportunist sauce. The very concept of race is an ideological trap designed to obscure not just classes and class intersection, but prevents disclosing that, which is specific and critical to American society. Actually, lumping all blacks together under the rubric "race" is to lump all European ethnic together as a "dominating race," rather than a historically oppressing peoples with classes amongst them; classes that began polarizing in a different manner the moment the barriers of Jim Crow began falling. It is accurate to insist that the election of Obama inaugurates the class struggle in America, with a section of the intelligentsia as black, fighting its last pitched battle to impose the concept of race on the emerging fighting section of our fighting proletariat. I have the most personal responsibility to escort the black leader from the historical stage and add weight to the fight to deliver a catastrophic defeat to the theorists of race; a defeat from which they shall never recover. No because of "me," but rather, because a juncture of history has been closed out definitively. It is a good thing to momentarily grasp ones moment of history. On the other hand, the "First Lady," is of course a "sister," meaning Negro rather than simply black. The obviousness of this is such that it requires no mention amongst the descendants of Southern slavery and indigenous Southern whites. "First Lady" Michelle's great-great grandfather Jim Robinson, was born in the 1850s, and was a slave on the Friendfield plantation in South Carolina. The family believes that after the Civil War he remained a Friendfield plantation sharecropper for the rest of his life and that he was buried there in an unmarked grave.[3] _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Barack_Obama#Fraser_Robinson_III_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Barack_Obama#Fraser_Robinson_III) First Lady Michelle walks with the nuance of the former slave. Her body reeks with tension from head to toe. The expressions carved into her face is unmistakable. Here is the real American culture and subtly of the cultural war, both bourgeoisie and revolutionaries seek to appropriate. Michelle, rather than President Barack completes the spiraling loop of logic that is American history. It is Michelle that serves as something of a flesh and blood block, anchor and brunt instrument against a historical Southern reaction, whose political institutions serves as the institutional platform for the resurgent fascist movement, momentarily stunned, and compelled to seek its realignment. Michelle?s story is that of the Southern black immigrant migrating North. President Obama has adopted the "Negro" culture in a manner no different than any other American. The content of his vocalizing the aspirations of the American peoples are better understood in this context. Obama speaks of the American Dream, hard work and lifting oneself up with their bootstraps, not from the standpoint of the verifiable history of the Negro People, but as the dynamic of the American melting pot. This is not a bad thing, simply one side of our history. Obama stated in his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, "There is not a Black America and a White America and a Latino America and Asian America?there?s a United States of America." Two years later in his book, "The Audacity of Hope," he wrote, "when I hear commentators interpreting my speech to mean that we have arrived at a ? postracial politics? or that we already live in a color-blind society, I have to offer a word of caution. To say that we are one people is not to suggest that race no longer matters?that the fight for equality has been won, or that the problems minorities face in this country today are largely self-inflicted." Yet, he concludes that "the overwhelming majority [of white Americans] these days are able - if given the time, to look beyond race in making their judgments of people." Here, President Obama is not speaking on a symbolic level. "Categories such as "social justice" and "change" were never before wielded with such force by any U.S. politician of Obama's level," because there has never been anyone quite like Obama as President. In the individual meaning as well as the implications for American society and its history of grappling with the color factor, Obama is a new thing. Obama expresses one side of the African American "people" - (even this language is outdated) more than less one to two generations America. Negroes in America are not immigrants, but a home grown product incubated in the chambers of slavery. Everyone in America faces the same issue of quantifying social progress. From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 12:20:23 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:20:23 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 Message-ID: All of these marxist reference points are of historical value, only. And the various political sects are only good for distributing literature to the tiny number of people interested in these perspectives, plus coalition action which everyone does anyway. This financial crisis points the way towards the obsolescence of capital as the engine of jobs, prosperity, and wage labor, but nobody is prepared to go there. The very notion is taboo. Yet this ridiculous stimulus package opens up the entire system to scrutiny. But that also means we are at a juncture of great danger. The bourgeoisie itself is probably divided between the thugs of the far right and the sensibly bourgeoisie that wants to see Obama succeed, sensitive to the severe consequences of his failure. Obama will hold the class structure of America together as best he can, and his self-deceiving ideology is the engine by which he got there and will proceed, with all the ridiculous Americanist rhetoric intact. The most noteworthy aspect of taking the "high road" is that Obama can appear, and probably believes he is, totally nonpartisan, bipartisan, or whatever, all along being forced to take more liberal or social democratic measures to correct the heinous state of affairs he has bequeathed. A shift in the overall political direction of the country won't depend on him, but if popular pressure forces him to move to the left, he would do so. And that's the only way any president gets anything done, whether it be Lincoln, FDR, or LBJ, the only presidents good for anything since the "Founding Fathers". Reply Agreed. 100% This thing about the "founding fathers" and their wisdom is not everyone's story. :-) WL. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 27 12:32:59 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:32:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 Message-ID: <236915.92827.qm@web180104.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The most noteworthy aspect of taking the "high road" is that Obama can appear, and probably believes he is, totally nonpartisan, bipartisan, or whatever, ^^^^ CB: Well isn't he ? That's basically what you say here. all along being forced to take more liberal or social democratic measures to correct the heinous state of affairs he has bequeathed. A shift in the overall political direction of the country won't depend on him, but if popular pressure forces him to move to the left, he would do so. ^^^^^^ CB: Which is what he says. Changes comes from the bottom up. ^^^^ And that's the only way any president gets anything done, whether it be Lincoln, FDR, or LBJ, the only presidents good for anything since the "Founding Fathers". From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 16:00:18 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:00:18 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 Message-ID: Obama has not been in office very long and his bipartisan rhetoric, will in practice be jettisoned; is being jettisoned as he pointedly state "I won the election," and the real Obama will emerge. The real Obama is of course the CEO for capital, and everything he stated and promised in the election campaign. His job is to institutionalize the new/changing social relations of production, expressing this new stage in the decay of capital and the technological revolution. As a traditional Roosevelt type Democrat he will expand the social safety net, primarily for what in all his campaign speeches, he calls the hard working middle class and sections of the poorest workers. Interestingly, Bush W. and Reagan's administration "busted the budget" and "expanded government," only directing government funds where they wanted them. The Democrats want a different direction. Only social revolution can stop certain things. The huge mass that was once dubbed the reserve army of labor, was called such precisely because it was a reserve to be thrown into the battle for production during peak period of production. No level of production and consumption today can throw this huge mass of labor into the production process, because of what Marx called "the progress of industry." This mass of labor has been rendered superfluous to the production of capital as an expanded value in the absolute sense. Here is the 800 lb. gorilla in the living room many deny exist, with other claiming it is not really a gorilla at all. From reserve army to a permanent caste of proletarians shut out the civic society of the bourgeoisie. Change most certainly must be from the bottom up. Here is the bottom. Below is how the late Comrade Mark Jones described this mass Oct. 1998 - a description I agreed with and wrote about alongside him in 1999/2000. "The precocious success of 'decarbonisation' and dematerialisation has produced this outcome, one where the greatest reserve army of labour in history -- more than half of humankind: confronts the greatest accumulation of productive power known to history, across a social nomansland which leaves each inaccessible to the other and has resulted in locking the majority of humankind out of the benefits of production and indeed out of society and in a sense, out of history. (Note: "inaccessible to the other and has resulted in locking the majority of humankind out of the benefits of production" = locked out the civic society of the bourgeoisie = from reserve of industry to permanent outcast) "Any real new upswing or serious resumption of production (I do not mean the kind of illusory boomlets which always occur within real depressions, and did for example throughout the 1930s, when the 'turning of the corner' was monotonously proclaimed and always proven wrong within days or weeks) is certain to be short-lived since it must press against the absolute limit of valorisation inscribed within the mode of production itself, and which history has now as it were brought to the surface." (end quote) (Note: "is certain to be short-lived since it must press against the absolute limit of valorisation inscribed within the mode of production itself," = the historical limit of capitalist production). WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) The most noteworthy aspect of taking the "high road" is that Obama can appear, and probably believes he is, totally nonpartisan, bipartisan, or whatever, ^^^^ CB: Well isn't he ? That's basically what you say here. all along being forced to take more liberal or social democratic measures to correct the heinous state of affairs he has bequeathed. A shift in the overall political direction of the country won't depend on him, but if popular pressure forces him to move to the left, he would do so. ^^^^^^ CB: Which is what he says. Changes comes from the bottom up. ^^^^ **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 27 16:15:06 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:15:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Definition of symbolic Message-ID: <785638.71177.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Another crucial element is that human language is symbolic: the sound of words (or their shape, when written) bear no relation to what they represent.[64] In other words, their meaning is arbitrary. That words have meaning is a matter of convention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture#Biological_Anthropology:_the_Evolution_of_Culture Linguists Charles Hockett and R. Ascher have identified thirten design-features of language, some shared by other forms of animal connunication. One feature that distinguishes human language is its tremendous productivity; in other words, competent speakers of a language are capable of producing an infinite number of original utterances. This productivity seems to be made possible by a few critical features unique to human language. One is ?duality of patterning,? meaning that human language consists of the articulation of several distinct processes, each with its own set of rules: combining phonemes to produce morphemes, combining morphemes to produce words, and combining words to produce sentences. This means that a person can master a relatively limited number of signals and sets of rules, to create infinite combinations. Another crucial element is that human language is symbolic: the sound of words (or their shape, when written) bear no relation to what they represent.[64] In other words, their meaning is arbitrary. That words have meaning is a matter of convention. Since the meaning of words are arbitrary, any word may have several meanings, and any object may be referred to using a variety of words; the actual word used to describe a particular object depends on the context, the intention of the speaker, and the ability of the listener to judge these appropriately. As Tomasello notes, From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 16:55:05 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:55:05 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Number of Unemployed Tops 5 Million Message-ID: Number of Unemployed Tops 5 Million By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP posted: 22 HOURS 21 MINUTES WASHINGTON (Feb. 26) - As bad as it is already, the economy keeps getting worse ? and government figures Thursday provided more evidence that the downward spiral won't end anytime soon. The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits topped 5 million for the first time since record-keeping began in 1967. And the number of first-time claims hit 667,000, the highest level in more than a quarter-century. Both figures were worse than experts expected. Orders for cars, computers, machinery and other durable goods plunged a larger-than-expected 5.2 percent in January as global economic troubles reduced demand from customers at home and abroad. "We have been looking for signs that the economy's rate of decline might be slowing, but can't find any," said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at the IHS Global Insight consulting firm. (_http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/number-of-unemployed-tops-5-milli on/359638_ (http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/number-of-unemployed-tops-5-million/359638) ) This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 27 20:46:00 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:46:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 Message-ID: <509615.20822.qm@web180113.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The huge mass that was once dubbed the reserve army of labor, was called? such precisely because it was a reserve to be thrown into the battle for? production during peak period of production. No level of production and? consumption today can throw this huge mass of labor into the production process,? because of what Marx called "the progress of industry." This mass of labor has? been rendered superfluous to the production of capital as an expanded value in? the absolute sense.? Here is the 800 lb. gorilla in the living room many? deny exist, with other claiming it is not really a gorilla at all. From reserve? army to a permanent caste of proletarians shut out the civic society of the? bourgeoisie. ^^^^^^ CB: True. But there never is a time when there hasn't been mass unemployment, even in the boom phase of cycles. Bourgeois economics defines "full"employment as 4% unemployment. Maybe the? lowest percentage will get bigger under your analysis From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Feb 27 21:43:34 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:43:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 6/end Message-ID: <525709.71230.qm@web180114.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Barack Obama wonderful book, "Dreams from My Father," is the immigrant? story, a black immigrant, rather than the history of the Negro People, and his? acute awareness of this living history accounts for his unique and individual? ability to cross the color line. When Obama writes, "My identity might begin? with the fact of my race, but it didn?t, couldn?t, end there," what is meant is that my identity is not defined on the basis of the color factor in American history. The words of Obama reveals why no self respecting Marxist, born and reared? as part of the "baby boomers," can deploy the concept race, other than the petty? bourgeois intellectuals unable to fully digest dialectics without opportunist? sauce. ^^^^^ CB:? Obama's words don't mean that. Unlike most Black people he was raised by White parents and grandparents. This gave him an unusual ability to understand both aspects of his Duboisian double consciousness. It allows him to be a uniter, not a divider. Obama is not an immigrant. He had little contact with his immigrant father. He was raised by US natives From Waistline2 at aol.com Fri Feb 27 23:26:09 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 01:26:09 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity 6/end Message-ID: Obama as a "uniter" is an interesting Marxist approach. Perhaps if all of us was raised by a white parent and white grandparents, we too would be "uniters." Why not just read his book - "Dreams from my father?" And then describe how being raised, during his formative years, where he was raised mirror the life of blacks in American Northern or Southern cities and country side. I do not write Obama is an immigrant. His story - meaning the story that he tells, and to a large degree the live he has lived, is that of the story of the immigrant and their first generation offspring. If you disagree with an interpretation why not simply state something to the effect "that my interpretation is" unless you are saying what Obama means is "I was raised by one white parent and white grandparents and therefore I am a "uniter," with the small physiological disposition of the descendants of Southern slavery. Without question he is African American, but that does not really tell much. "Uniter!" Trust me on the following: Obama is CEO for the capitalist class. WL. >> Barack Obama wonderful book, "Dreams from My Father," is the immigrant story, a black immigrant, rather than the history of the Negro People, and his acute awareness of this living history accounts for his unique and individual ability to cross the color line. When Obama writes, "My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn?t, couldn?t, end there," what is meant is that my identity is not defined on the basis of the color factor in American history. The words of Obama reveals why no self respecting Marxist, born and reared as part of the "baby boomers," can deploy the concept race, other than the petty bourgeois intellectuals unable to fully digest dialectics without opportunist sauce. << ^^^^^ CB: Obama's words don't mean that. Unlike most Black people he was raised by White parents and grandparents. This gave him an unusual ability to understand both aspects of his Duboisian double consciousness. It allows him to be a uniter, not a divider. Obama is not an immigrant. He had little contact with his immigrant father. He was raised by US natives **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 28 07:33:15 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 06:33:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lenin's discussion of monopoly and speculation Message-ID: <279611.56471.qm@web180102.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Brown ________________________________ http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htm ?Even in the purely economic sphere,? writes Kestner, ?a certain change is taking place from commercial activity in the old sense of the word towards organisational-speculative activity. The greatest success no longer goes to the merchant whose technical and commercial experience enables him best of all to estimate the needs of the buyer, and who is able to discover and, so to speak, ?awaken? a latent demand; it goes to the speculative genius [?!] who knows how to estimate, or even only to sense in advance, the organisational development and the possibilities of certain connections between individual enterprises and the banks. . . .? Translated into ordinary human language this means that the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still ?reigns? and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the ?geniuses? of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialised production; but the immense progress of mankind, which achieved this socialisation, goes to benefit . . . the speculators. We shall see later how ?on these grounds? reactionary, petty-bourgeois critics of capitalist imperialism dream of going back to ?free?, ?peaceful?, and ?honest? competition. " Half a century ago, when Marx was writing Capital, free competition appeared to the overwhelming majority of economists to be a ?natural law?. Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. Today, monopoly has become a fact. Economists are writing mountains of books in which they describe the diverse manifestations of monopoly, and continue to declare in chorus that ?Marxism is refuted?. But facts are stubborn things, as the English proverb says, and they have to be reckoned with, whether we like it or not. The facts show that differences between capitalist countries, e.g., in the matter of protection or free trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in the form of monopolies or in the moment of their appearance; and that the rise of monopolies, as the result of the concentration of production, is a general and fundamental law of the present stage of development of capitalism." -clip- "Thus, the principal stages in the history of monopolies are the following: (1) 1860-70, the highest stage, the apex of development of free competition; monopoly is in the barely discernible, embryonic stage. (2) After the crisis of 1873, a lengthy period of development of cartels; but they are still the exception. They are not yet durable. They are still a transitory phenomenon. (3) The boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03. Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of economic life. Capitalism From Waistline2 at aol.com Sat Feb 28 08:43:05 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:43:05 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The tiger we need to tame Message-ID: _http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=835&Item id=1_ (http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=835&Itemid=1) The tiger we need to tame By Luis Sexto Read Spanish Version In Cuba, people say, bureaucratic attitudes respond with a problem for every solution, with a "no" to a "yes." They dilute every initiative in papers and meetings. And they see reality through the color of their windowpanes, or from their balconies, usually high and distant from the street or the factories. Or through reports that are usually adulterated by those who do not wish their errors to be known. Therefore, any project to renew and improve socialism in Cuba -- in addition to facing the opposition generated in Miami, Washington and Madrid, and by those inside the country who try in various ways to push Cuba into capitalism -- will first have to annul bureaucratic resistance. That's because everything that appears to be a limitation of the bureaucracy's interests, its privileges, its ability to delegitimize every constructive decision and every freedom will meet with bureaucratic hostility, in the form of indifference, extremism or distortion. There is more than enough proof of this. For example, why did the countryside fill with government offices after Fidel Castro once denounced (and President Ra?l Castro condemned again) the spread of the marab? weed? Not long ago, a Havana newspaper published a complaint from a reader. A train and a truck crashed at some railroad crossing and, to prevent a repetition of the accident, the local functionaries shut down the crossing with two concrete barriers. Now, if sick people need to drive to the clinic on the other side of the former crossing, 30 yards away, they'll have to make an 8-kilometer detour. Sounds like a joke, but it is an administrative decision. We see it clearly: the greatest danger of the bureaucratic mentality and norms may be that they impede the self-regulation of socialism. Usually, we do not speak about that mechanism, which we attribute to capitalism. Why does any rectification cost so much and take so long? Living organisms tend to persist in their existence; therefore, to reject reshaping and correction implies the probability of that purpose. And recent history confirms this. The so-called real socialism was born with the bacteria of self-destruction buried deep in its structure. And those corrosive germs are essentially related to the vertically rigid organization that facilitated the birth and hierarchy of a bureaucracy that, according to Marx scholars such as the Mexican Adolfo S?nchez V?zquez, became a system of class -- if not in itself, then for itself, I might clarify -- and politically fed from the surpluses produced by the workers, who, paradoxically, received their salaries in the socialist organization that followed Red October. Soviet and European socialism, therefore, dissolved thanks to the bureaucratic distortions that forced political discourse to float in the air, dazzled by its own vision of itself, even as it didn't recognize reality on the streets. It will not be necessary to continue to invent enemies other than those we already recognize. In summary, the principal causes of the extinction of 20th-Century socialism, the socialism that failed, were within itself. It incubated the mentality (not to say the class) that discarded the use of power that was truly exercised by the workers in socialism by using an unbridgeable dichotomy: verticality vis-?-vis a democratic horizontality. And, let's admit it: where democracy is absent and centralism expands at the expense of both sides, bureaucracy prospers. And with it, dogma and corruption grow. Definitions of the term "bureaucracy" have filled huge books. No need to recall them all. Let us restrict ourselves to the most basic definitions. According to the Spanish Dictionary of the Royal Academy, bureaucracy means an ensemble of public servants; always the excessive influence of functionaries in public affairs; and lastly, inefficient management, hampered by paperwork, rigidity and superfluous formalities. Jos? Mart? foresaw the dangers of an uncontrolled bureaucracy that had taken over the reins of power. He branded "the bureaucratic life" as "a danger and a scourge" and hoped to see the Cuban republic free from the "plague of the bureaucrats." Evidently, the Apostle of Independence and Unifier of the Nation suspected that bureaucracy, as a representative of the people's interests, might at some time ignore those interests and protect its own interests as a group or caste. In that sense, Mart? anticipated the opinions of S?nchez V?zquez and other theoreticians. Today in Cuba, the rigidity, red tape and inefficient management attributed to bureaucracy by the Royal Academy dictionary has been a sort of Fairy Godmother in reverse: everything her magic wand touches becomes a caricature of socialist aspirations. It mistreats and infects every creative achievement Fidel Castro's Revolution brought to Cuba. Adapting an image by the acerbic Italian writer Giovanni Papini, bureaucracy -- transformed into a mentality, an ideology -- holds the secret of an alchemy that turns gold into excrement. In that sense, it has been an unconscious or involuntary accomplice of the U.S. blockade. Maybe, also unconsciously, it is to bureaucracy's advantage that the blockade will endure, as a guarantee of bureaucracy's interfering and anarchical existence. In Cuba, then, an ideological and political confrontation also seems inexcusable. On the table are two cards: the survival of the Revolution, with its string of goals and aspirations still not fulfilled or deteriorated by almost 20 years of limitations; or its detour along paths that will denaturalize it. Because they are improvisational, cumbersome, limiting and alienating, bureaucratic indifference and inefficiency tend to liquidate the cause of socialism in the heart of the people. And the antidote would be the same people using more democratic spaces and controls, even in the economy. Formulas don't exist, of course, except for the now-useless ones. Socialist solutions in Cuba will have to find their own way. And, in these circumstances, that is almost paradoxical. Can bureaucracy, with its pseudo-revolutionary affectations, its reluctance to consider any new idea, execute and support a process of readjustment that is careful but bold and timely? It seems that, first, it will have to be reduced to the dictionary definition: an ensemble of public servants. That's its ideal state. But will we be brave enough to oblige it -- like the tamer to a tiger -- to walk, head low, to the corner where it belongs? Luis Sexto is a journalist and professor at the School of Communications of the University of Havana. Last week he was named recipient of the 2009 Jose Marti National Journalism Award. He writes for several national publications and has contributed to foreign publications. Now he contributes to Progreso Semanal. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 28 09:54:37 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:54:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Evgeny Pashukanis Message-ID: <59462.51407.qm@web180116.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Evgeny Pashukanis From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Evgeny Bronislavovich Pashukanis (February 23, 1891[1] ? 1937) was a Soviet legal scholar, best known for his work The General Theory of Law and Marxism. Contents[hide] * 1 Early life and October Revolution * 2 The General Theory of Law and Marxism * 3 Latter years * 4 Notes * 5 External links [edit] Early life and October Revolution Pashukanis was born in Staritsa, in the Tver Oblast in ?the Russian Empire. Influenced by his family, particularly his uncle, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSLDP) in Saint Petersburg at the age of 17. In 1909, he started studying jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg. As a result of his socialist activism, the Czarist police threatened Pashukanis with banishment, so he left Russia for Germany in 1910. He continued his studies in Munich. ?During World War I, he returned to his native Russia. In 1914, he helped draft the RSLDP resolution opposing the war. Following the 1917 October Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union, Pashukanis joined the Russian Communist Party, the Bolshevik wing of the RSLDP, after its founding in 1918. In August 1918, he became a judge in Moscow. Meanwhile, he launched his career as a legal scholar. ?He also held a post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was an adviser to the Soviet embassy in Berlin, helping to draft the Rapallo Treaty of 1922. In 1924 he was transferred to full-time academic duties as a member of the Communist Academy.[2] He was a cousin of publisher Vikentiy Pashukanis (1879-1920). [edit] The General Theory of Law and Marxism In 1924, Pashukanis published his seminal work, The General Theory of Law and Marxism. This is best knows for Pushkanis' formulation of the "Commodity Exchange Theory of Law." This theory was built on two pillars of Marxist thought: ?(1) in the organization of society the economic factor is paramount; legal and moral principles and institutions therefore constitute a kind of superstructure reflecting the economic organization of society; and (2) in the finally achieved state of communism, law and the state will wither away. If communism is achieved, morality as it is typically understood will cease to perform any function. [edit] Latter years From 1925 to 1927, Pyotr Stuchka, another Soviet legal scholar, and Pashukanis compiled an Encyclopedia of State and Law and started a journal named Revolution of Law. In 1927, he was elected a full member of the Communist Academy, eventually becoming its vice-president. He and Stuchka started a section on the General Theory of State and Law at the Academy. However, in 1930, Nikolai Bukharin was attacked by Stalin, because he insisted that the state must wither away to bring ?forth communism, as Marx had advocated, and stripped of all his political posts. Pashukanis soon came under pressure from the government as well. As a result, Pashukanis started to revise his theory of state. He stopped working with his friend Stuchka. It is unclear ?whether Pashukanis's transformation was simply the result of fear for his safety, or whether he actually changed his mind. He was rewarded by being made director of the Institute of Soviet Construction and Law in 1931. In 1936, he was nominated Deputy Commissar of Justice of the USSR and was proposed for membership in the Soviet Academy of Sciences.[3] However, Pashukanis, like Nikolai Krylenko and others, was denounced as part of a "band of enemies" by Andrey Vyshinsky, the Prosecutor General of the USSR and mastermind of Stalin's Great Purge. The philosopher ?Pyotr Yudin was also active in attacking Pashukanis. In 1937, Pashukanis was arrested and Vyshinsky replaced him at the Institute of Soviet Construction and Law. ?Alfred Krishianovich Stalgevich, a longtime critic of Pashukanis, took over his courses at the Moscow Juridical Institute.[4] Pashukanis, after publishing many 'self-criticisms', was eventually denounced as a "trotskyite saboteur" in 1937, and executed.[5] [edit] Notes From Waistline2 at aol.com Sat Feb 28 13:15:31 2009 From: Waistline2 at aol.com (Waistline2 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 15:15:31 EST Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The tiger we need to tame Message-ID: "The Tiger We Need to Tame," or "studies in the role of bureaucracy and the bureaucratic mentality and how to defeat it," was extremely insightful and enlightening. Today, I believe we can further define bureaucracy; place it in a historical context, environment and chart its further demise. "The Tiger We Need to Tame" defines bureaucracy as: "Definitions of the term "bureaucracy" have filled huge books. No need to recall them all. Let us restrict ourselves to the most basic definitions. According to the Spanish Dictionary of the Royal Academy, bureaucracy means an ensemble of public servants; always the excessive influence of functionaries in public affairs; and lastly, inefficient management, hampered by paperwork, rigidity and superfluous formalities." "bureaucracy means an ensemble of public servants; always the excessive influence of functionaries in public affairs; and lastly, inefficient management, hampered by paperwork, rigidity and superfluous formalities." A standard American English definition of bureaucracy is: "administrative system: an administrative system, especially in a government, that divides work into specific categories carried out by special departments of nonelected officials." Encarta ? World English Dictionary ? & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Both definitions wed bureaucracy to property relations and its governmental agencies as management - administrations. The English definition injects the concept of a "system of administration" (administrative system) which begs the question "administration of what?" There are only two categories of reality that can be administered; people and things, as systems. Therefore, the bureaucracy as "administrative system composed of an ensemble of public servants," is the indispensable condition for the success, stability and growth of the revolution and simultaneously the basis for the death of the revolution. The self perpetuating nature - character, of administration is impossible to activate by the individual and requires groups of people, as the revolutionary class to organized themselves in a certain way to make administration possible in the first place. This is so because of the inherent quality of social production - cooperation, requiring different people to do different things to meet society needs. Thus, administration - bureaucracy, as a social phenomenon has one foot planted in property relations as government/state (organization of people to accomplish a definite need/end) and secondly, productive forces as the division of labor in society or a specific state of development of the productive forces and its underlying technological regime. Organization involves vertical and horizontal administration or "up and down," and "side to side," administration as every factory or office worker knows. This vertical and horizontal organization as a principle, is rooted in the division of labor as fundamentality rather than the property relations, or the "revolutionary party" because there is no other way for millions of people, committing hundreds of millions of daily acts and actions, to achieve a collective end. In the first and last instance bureaucracy has its taproot in the division of labor, which since the break up of the society of primitive communism, has appeared as a product of the property relations and class rule. Class rule constructs and consolidates bureaucracy but is not the taproot of bureaucracy. Modern bureaucracy taproot sinks beneath the productive forces as an abstract category, into the historically specific configuration of the productive forces - machinery of society or is fused with an industrial form and industrial time frame references, "sitting" on cooperation. Today, as America passes deeper and deeper into revolution in the productive forces - mode of production, the industrial form of organization and consequently industrial bureaucracy is being shattered, displaced and incrementally regulated to history. Specifically, the new technological regime does not destroy cooperation but "folds it into and unto" the new configuration of industry, that is witnessed as displacement of labor and the destruction for the need of layers of individuals to administer. Little by little the phenomenon of bureaucracy end game appears, with primarily the property relations appearing as its last refuge. Bureaucracy poses itself as the gravest of danger to the revolution because it cannot be vanquished from history on the basis of revolutionary vigilance. Until a development in the productive forces occurs rendering bureaucracy historically and practically obsolete, vigilance and ideological fortitude is a premium. Cuban society does not have the material foundation for communism. Until they achieve this material foundation, which is in the distant future and bound up with either revolution in the US, or revolution through South America: preferably both, ideological firmness is the key to the revolution withstanding the tremendous pressure of the counterrevolution exerted against it. Thus, bureaucracy emerges a key battlefront because it separates the revolutionary class from the masses and then the revolutionary leaders from both, while blocking and stymieing the achievement of practical goals. These achievable practical goals are sensed and understood by the masses and their realization or non-realization verifies - is proof of, the correctness of the revolution. "The tiger we need to tame," is an excellent concept of the fight against bureaucracy. Tamed rather than destroy, because it is not possible to wipe bureaucracy from history on the basis of "furious and passionate struggles," ill conceived calls for "democratic organization of the revolutionary class," that runs counter to the principles of cooperation and collide with the indispensable vertical organization of the revolution. These ill conceived notions of democracy become the hotbed for counterrevolution and the ideological recruiting ground for primarily youngsters, whose youthfulness has not yet afforded them the opportunity to be tempered - steeled, on the basis of the principle of cooperation. The real revolutionary democratic organization of the revolutionary class is dependent upon the advanced culture of the citizens, ideology and the revolutionary leaders. The relationship that is mutual dependence between leaders, the revolutionary class and masses; culture and ideology shifts in relative weight with the deepening of cooperation; the material and technological basis of production. While all revolutionaries feel world revolution is desirable, the world is only going to go into the subjective dimensions of revolution when it is ready. In the mean time the revolution where it has achieved victory has to proceed based on an estimate of its own forces. Advanced culture does not mean "high culture," "literary studies," or "ritual custom attuned to the period of bourgeois enlightenment," but "cooperation," an awareness of the individual as producer; their ritual habit as producer and "place" in the system of production; an awareness of "why" and "how" bureaucracy poses itself as indispensable and dangerous to the revolution. Certain people convert the meaning of advanced culture into a notion of "bourgeois enlightenment;" the endless penning away at their most personalized and individual meaning of democracy and the ideological notion that all vertical leadership is inherently wrong. Certain people want to be holier than the Pope and more democratic than the popular masses, who long ago made the decision that the revolution needs leaders, which is why the leaders who come forth tend to be the best the collective will can produce at any given moment. Over and over Lenin warned that the October Revolution would pay for its ignorance and lack of culture. Rather than "bookish high culture" or anarchist definitions of the "vertical leaders," being the source of bureaucracy; or "bourgeoisie enlightenment," Lenin meant the cooperative culture the proletariat, as a class, acquires as a commodity producer and its corresponding expression in self organization. The seedbed of bureaucracy is in the division of labor. Consequently, bureaucracy as a historical phenomenon, rather than form and methods of administration, decays and withers away in unison and correspondence to the withering away of the state. The vision of American communists can be filled with optimism because with the destruction of the power of capital; the cultural conditioning of our proletariat (high brow, low brow and above all as commodity producer) when combined with our advanced means of production long ago rendered obsolete the need for certain layers of vertical government and non-government forms of organization. We most certainly do not need any vertical national agencies to tell people to go to school; to mobilize and deploy labor and direct where to build housings or what occupation the individual must choose. In the hands of the revolutionary class, no matter what forms of struggle and creative/democratic institutions are shaped, we possess the technological basis to make our society a gigantic learning and cultural institution, where laboring as we have known it vanishes in the space of a few years. Advanced culture ushers in human happiness, but both must have a basis in the productive forces and division of labor. The foundation of human happiness is contentment and its foundation is the elimination of strife. Strife as we have known it is a negative thing 40 centuries deep. Contentment grows when you are no longer troubled. Our troubles arise and arose from material scarcity. When we do away with that and its current class form as control of scarcity, we begin to build on the positive things in society. Happiness is an emotion that arises with positive contribution. This happiness can be in the form of creating a new song, raising a child, painting a picture, building an organization or neighborhood. Happiness is a social thing. The idea is to have a full life. This always demands we struggle to create the conditions for a full life, with the unbreakable understanding that individual death is not the end of life. The continuation of life is to be experienced and gleamed in the eye of ones child, any child, the eyes of loved ones and a positive outlook that really understands that the revolutionary class cannot be derailed from our long struggle for human happiness. Bureaucracy is unhappiness, strife, demoralization, bad attitude infesting the flesh and made manifest. Bureaucracy is a psychosis. The state as state, cannot cure a psychosis. In each stage of this struggle for human happiness bureaucracy appears as a drag on the revolution threatening to separate the revolutionary class from the masses and the leaders from the revolutionary class, because it ritualizes old custom, ritualizes the culture and psychology of scarcity and its behavior; blocks the attainment of practical goals, and fails to grab hold of the indispensable aspects of the culture of value relations, which changes with every juncture in the development and evolution of the revolutionary process. Victory to the Revolution. Unite or Perish. WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) (http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=835&Item id=1) The tiger we need to tame By Luis Sexto Read Spanish Version In Cuba, people say, bureaucratic attitudes respond with a problem for every solution, with a "no" to a "yes." They dilute every initiative in papers and meetings. And they see reality through the color of their windowpanes, or from their balconies, usually high and distant from the street or the factories. Or through reports that are usually adulterated by those who do not wish their errors to be known. Therefore, any project to renew and improve socialism in Cuba -- in addition to facing the opposition generated in Miami, Washington and Madrid, and by those inside the country who try in various ways to push Cuba into capitalism -- will first have to annul bureaucratic resistance. That's because everything that appears to be a limitation of the bureaucracy's interests, its privileges, its ability to delegitimize every constructive decision and every freedom will meet with bureaucratic hostility, in the form of indifference, extremism or distortion. There is more than enough proof of this. For example, why did the countryside fill with government offices after Fidel Castro once denounced (and President Ra?l Castro condemned again) the spread of the marab? weed? Not long ago, a Havana newspaper published a complaint from a reader. A train and a truck crashed at some railroad crossing and, to prevent a repetition of the accident, the local functionaries shut down the crossing with two concrete barriers. Now, if sick people need to drive to the clinic on the other side of the former crossing, 30 yards away, they'll have to make an 8-kilometer detour. Sounds like a joke, but it is an administrative decision. We see it clearly: the greatest danger of the bureaucratic mentality and norms may be that they impede the self-regulation of socialism. Usually, we do not speak about that mechanism, which we attribute to capitalism. Why does any rectification cost so much and take so long? Living organisms tend to persist in their existence; therefore, to reject reshaping and correction implies the probability of that purpose. And recent history confirms this. The so-called real socialism was born with the bacteria of self-destruction buried deep in its structure. And those corrosive germs are essentially related to the vertically rigid organization that facilitated the birth and hierarchy of a bureaucracy that, according to Marx scholars such as the Mexican Adolfo S?nchez V?zquez, became a system of class -- if not in itself, then for itself, I might clarify -- and politically fed from the surpluses produced by the workers, who, paradoxically, received their salaries in the socialist organization that followed Red October. Soviet and European socialism, therefore, dissolved thanks to the bureaucratic distortions that forced political discourse to float in the air, dazzled by its own vision of itself, even as it didn't recognize reality on the streets. It will not be necessary to continue to invent enemies other than those we already recognize. In summary, the principal causes of the extinction of 20th-Century socialism, the socialism that failed, were within itself. It incubated the mentality (not to say the class) that discarded the use of power that was truly exercised by the workers in socialism by using an unbridgeable dichotomy: verticality vis-?-vis a democratic horizontality. And, let's admit it: where democracy is absent and centralism expands at the expense of both sides, bureaucracy prospers. And with it, dogma and corruption grow. Definitions of the term "bureaucracy" have filled huge books. No need to recall them all. Let us restrict ourselves to the most basic definitions. According to the Spanish Dictionary of the Royal Academy, bureaucracy means an ensemble of public servants; always the excessive influence of functionaries in public affairs; and lastly, inefficient management, hampered by paperwork, rigidity and superfluous formalities. Jos? Mart? foresaw the dangers of an uncontrolled bureaucracy that had taken over the reins of power. He branded "the bureaucratic life" as "a danger and a scourge" and hoped to see the Cuban republic free from the "plague of the bureaucrats." Evidently, the Apostle of Independence and Unifier of the Nation suspected that bureaucracy, as a representative of the people's interests, might at some time ignore those interests and protect its own interests as a group or caste. In that sense, Mart? anticipated the opinions of S?nchez V?zquez and other theoreticians. Today in Cuba, the rigidity, red tape and inefficient management attributed to bureaucracy by the Royal Academy dictionary has been a sort of Fairy Godmother in reverse: everything her magic wand touches becomes a caricature of socialist aspirations. It mistreats and infects every creative achievement Fidel Castro's Revolution brought to Cuba. Adapting an image by the acerbic Italian writer Giovanni Papini, bureaucracy -- transformed into a mentality, an ideology -- holds the secret of an alchemy that turns gold into excrement. In that sense, it has been an unconscious or involuntary accomplice of the U.S. blockade. Maybe, also unconsciously, it is to bureaucracy's advantage that the blockade will endure, as a guarantee of bureaucracy's interfering and anarchical existence. In Cuba, then, an ideological and political confrontation also seems inexcusable. On the table are two cards: the survival of the Revolution, with its string of goals and aspirations still not fulfilled or deteriorated by almost 20 years of limitations; or its detour along paths that will denaturalize it. Because they are improvisational, cumbersome, limiting and alienating, bureaucratic indifference and inefficiency tend to liquidate the cause of socialism in the heart of the people. And the antidote would be the same people using more democratic spaces and controls, even in the economy. Formulas don't exist, of course, except for the now-useless ones. Socialist solutions in Cuba will have to find their own way. And, in these circumstances, that is almost paradoxical. Can bureaucracy, with its pseudo-revolutionary affectations, its reluctance to consider any new idea, execute and support a process of readjustment that is careful but bold and timely? It seems that, first, it will have to be reduced to the dictionary definition: an ensemble of public servants. That's its ideal state. But will we be brave enough to oblige it -- like the tamer to a tiger -- to walk, head low, to the corner where it belongs? Luis Sexto is a journalist and professor at the School of Communications of the University of Havana. Last week he was named recipient of the 2009 Jose Marti National Journalism Award. He writes for several national publications and has contributed to foreign publications. Now he contributes to Progreso Semanal. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 28 15:49:59 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:49:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity 6/end Message-ID: <353761.85779.qm@web180111.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Waistline2 Obama as a "uniter" is an interesting Marxist approach. ^^^^^ CB: Marxist as in Workers of all nations and races , unite ! ^^^^^ ?Perhaps if all of??us was raised by a white parent and white grandparents, we too would be?? "uniters." ^^^^^ CB: Makes sense. It would engender ?need for unity on a personal level?for peace of mind.?His mother seems to have taught him Black history type respect for Black people. He seems to have somewhat consciously constructed a Black identity of high integrity. Going to the hood to live, like an anthropologist joining his own culture. Now he's an interesting character. To coin a phrase, he seems to be in the Presidential world , but not of it. Somehow he comes across as confident in the sense of not worried, in the face of an extraordinary mess but not arrogant and not aloof. Engaged with horrific crises, but not scared and? not in the bliss of ignorance. I'm like "more power to ya, Barry". So far, so good. ^^^^^^^ Why not just read his book - "Dreams from my father?" ^^^^^ CB: I did. ^^^^^ ?And then describe how?? being raised, during his formative years, where he was raised mirror the life of??blacks in American Northern or Southern cities and country side. I do not write??Obama is an immigrant. His story - meaning the story that he tells, and to a??large degree the live he has lived, is that of the story of the immigrant and??their first generation offspring. ^^^^^ CB:? Maybe sort of half, but the other half is pretty American native. I will say that he's sort of like "a brother from another planet". More like an "immigrant" from ancient Egypt or something, somekind of higher civilization than America. His mother was an anthropologist, and he lived in Indonesia for a while, which might give him some ability to view American culture objectively like an immigrant, but his grandfather was a traveling salesman and his grandmother worked in a bank, real regular Americans from Kansas He's _sui generis_, a phenomon, breaking through a new "quantitative boundry" in personality type. He's got a lot of character, and, well../\. intelligence social intelligence and abstract intelligence. ^^^^^^^^ If you disagree with an interpretation why not simply state something to??the effect "that my interpretation is" unless you are saying what Obama means is?? "I was raised by one white parent and white grandparents and therefore I am a "uniter," with the small physiological disposition of the descendants of?? Southern slavery. Without question he is African American, but that does not?? really tell much.?? ^^^^ CB: See above "Uniter!" Trust me on the following: Obama is CEO for the capitalist class. WL. ^^^^^^ CB: So were Lincoln and FDR. From my observations, that's dogmatic ,formulaic thinking ,and in this situation, there? keep arising more?indications that something new is?going on here.?Need to try to?think dialectically on this one. Again the first indicator is getting all those White people to vote for him.?That's breaking a quantitative barrier. Then his?first?month as Pres?is realistic , but?making some changes that are possible in this context , despite all the?left haters say. I could list the actions?, but?I'm not going to exert myself?for the haters. Fuck em.? The big crisis/problem is Afghanistan, and ,of course Palestine?He's going to have to be Houdini on that. I can't see how he'll do it. Unless he just?pretty soon?, after this assessment he can get something like broker?both?a treaty with Hamas and a treaty with ?the Taliban et al?not to facilitate,?and?to hinder?any attack on?the US?by the bin Laden group.? I don't know how he gets out of the obligation to capture bin?Laden,? >> Barack Obama wonderful book, "Dreams from My Father," is the??immigrant?? story, a black immigrant, rather than the history of the??Negro People, and his?? acute awareness of this living history accounts??for his unique and individual?? ability to cross the color line. When??Obama writes, "My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but??it didn?t, couldn?t, end there," what is meant is that my identity is not??defined on the basis of the color factor in American history. The words of Obama reveals why no self respecting Marxist, born and??reared?? as part of the "baby boomers," can deploy the concept race,??other than the petty??bourgeois intellectuals unable to fully digest??dialectics without opportunist??sauce. << ^^^^^ CB:??Obama's words don't mean that. Unlike most Black??people he was raised by White parents and grandparents. This gave him an??unusual ability to understand both aspects of his Duboisian double??consciousness. It allows him to be a uniter, not a divider. Obama is not an immigrant. He had little contact with his immigrant??father. He was raised by US natives From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 28 17:03:18 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:03:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Massacre of Chilean students in Florida panhandle Message-ID: <725369.13696.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> [Marxism] Massacre of Chilean students in Florida panhandle ????* Subject: [Marxism] Massacre of Chilean students in Florida panhandle ????* From: "Joaquin Bustelo" ????* I guess xenophobic murder is becoming so common in the United States it's become a dog-bites-man non-story -- at least for the Anglo press. This time the victims were Chilean students ?participating in a work-study program and staying at the Florida panhandle seaside town of Miramar Beach. They were having a social when someone ?opened up on the people inside house through a window. Two were killed, three more injured, one remained in critical condition according to the most recent information. The perp was one Dannie Baker, a white 60-year-old Bush-Cheney volunteer in the 2004 election campaign who also appears to have been active in religious affairs. It took place 48 hours ago as I write this, shortly before 2AM Thursday morning, but the first report in the U.S. outside local media came out early Friday morning, and that only on Spanish language TV. At that point there are exactly eight stories on the event on the web in English that Google News knew about, but only three appeared to be original reporting, the others are rewrites. There are now 8 more articles in English, pretty much all updates by the same news outlets. If you look at the web site stories on the case, you will see how gingerly they dance around the motive. The perp is described as having written radical and disturbing emails, being eccentric, and various other things. But only if you read to the very end of one dispatch (or watch the video) do you get some clear idea of what went down: "Neighbor Crystal Lynn says 'he did come up ?to me one time and asked me if I was ready for the revolution to begin and if I had any immigrant in my house to get them out," channel 7 WJHG reported. By contrast, a Google News search in Spanish (news.google.es) reveals a couple of hundred articles, including coverage by various news agencies, AFP, Notimex and Prensa Latina among them. There are articles in Spanish language newspapers from LA to Tierra del Fuego and from New York to Patagonia in Argentina. And unlike the English stories, most had no problem describing what happened *accurately* -- a ?murderous attack on Latinos by an Anglo ("American.") Nor placing it in context, explaining this was one MORE in a series of murders and other attacks on ?Latinos that have taken place recently in the United States. Most striking to me is that the U.S. outlet ?that has had the most coverage has been CNN's Spanish-language network, but I can find no trace of CNN's main domestic (English-language) network ?or web site having even mentioned the story. Similarly, El Herald had a substantial story, the English-language Miami Herald ignores the story. Joaquin From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Feb 28 17:08:06 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:08:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] John Bellamy Foster interview on the financial crisis Message-ID: <215480.44098.qm@web180115.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ________________________________ http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/foster270209.html