WSWS is a lunatic asylum disguised as a political party. David North is a charlatan, he actively busted the attempt to form a union in the factory he owned prior to his reincarnation as the aspiring eminence grise of a Trot cult. Glen Ford wrote a brilliant takedown of his chicanery a few years ago that remains potent <https://blackagendareport.com/yes-white-people-are-also-killed-mass-black-incarceration-regime>:
A long-delayed grassroots movement finally emerged to confront the Mass Black Incarceration regime and its killer cops, under the umbrella of Black Lives Matter. The ruling class has attempted to co-opt this movement ever since, with varying degrees of success. But the WSWS critique of Black Lives Matter is bogus and ideologically driven, with numbers sprinkled in to give the illusion of social science. WSWS is opposed to independent Black political activity, including Black political self-defense against state oppression, which the WSWS brand of Trotskyists deems as narrow nationalist and objectively (or even consciously!) in league with the capitalist rulers. Which would be a great slander, if the WSWS were considered as serious Marxists. But, they are not. Although WSWS does some good work, they are also, unfortunately, crazy. The operative question of racial slavery as opposed to indentured servitude, in the research that I have done, is twofold. First, one must have an international survey of the legal statutes. OK, so maybe we can say that the British didn’t have a legal edifice for the chattel bond slavery system until later on. But that is unfortunately not taking into consideration the Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and French systems, which DID have those systems in place as early as the 15th century. There also was an international component of the trade because of how the Caribbean colonies serviced the mainland throughout the entire period. As the British overtook the Atlantic seaboard, they absorbed many preexisting legal codes from their former enemies and integrated/“grandfathered” them into their legal system. Second, there’s now research showing that the original gestures of racialization, imposing supposition onto humans based on phenotype, has antecedents in the Crusades and Catholic antisemitism. https://Blackagendareport.com/white-supremacy-goes-back-crusades Iago opens OTHELLO with a jaw-droppingly racist rant that has little variation from what Dixiecrats said about inter-ethnic marriage: 'Zounds, sir, you're robb'd; for shame, put on your gown; Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul; Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Is topping your white ewe. Arise, arise; Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you: Arise, I say. -Act I Scene I Right there you have Iago equating a Black man with a farm animal, a ram or male sheep. That’s not very different from what we get from Breitbart today. Ergo I don’t read the play as “pre-racial,” a text predating racism. Instead I see it as grappling with Renaissance racism, a variant that was not equivalent to the “scientific racism” of the 19th and 20th centuries but one that was still potent. Yes, Shakespeare had contradictions here, there’s no denying that Shylock is anti Semitic and that the playwright profited from investment in the Virginia slave trade. Best regards, Andrew Stewart - - - Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1861): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1861 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/77034114/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
