[Marxism] New WORLD HISTORY SERIES featuring ERNEST MANDEL, LUCIEN FEBVRE, ROBIN BLACKBURN
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == THE VERSO WORLD HISTORY SERIES To commemorate its fortieth anniversary in 2010, Verso launched the World History series. These attractive new editions of classic works of history aim to make landmark texts available to a new generation of readers. Covering a time span stretching from Ancient Greece and Rome to the twentieth century, and with a global geographical range, the series will also include thematic insights into such topics as the spread of print cultures and the history of money. Titles in the WORLD HISTORY SERIES: Published in September 2010 THE MAKING OF NEW WORLD SLAVERY: FROM THE BAROQUE TO THE MODERN, 1492 – 1800 by ROBIN BLACKBURN THE COMING OF THE BOOK: THE IMPACT OF PRINTING, 1450 - 1800 by LUCIEN FEBVRE and HENRI-JEAN MARTIN THE PERSISTENCE OF THE OLD REGIME: EUROPE TO THE GREAT WAR by ARNO MAYER Published in May 2011: THE MEANING OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR by ERNEST MANDEL THE HISTORY OF GOLD AND MONEY:1450-1920 by PIERRE VILAR THE OVERTHROW OF COLONIAL SLAVERY:1776-1848 by ROBIN BLACKBURN --- THE MAKING OF NEW WORLD SLAVERY: FROM THE BAROQUE TO THE MODERN, 1492 - 1800 By ROBIN BLACKBURN ‘Sombre, dark and masterly.’ Linda Colley, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY ‘An exhaustive, powerfully written and compelling book.’ Anthony Padgen, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT THE MAKING OF NEW WORLD SLAVERY argues that independent commerce, geared to burgeoning consumer markets, was the driving force behind the rise of plantation slavery. The baroque state sought—successfully—to feed upon this commerce and—unsuccessfully—to regulate slavery and racial relations. To illustrate this history, Blackburn examines the deployment of slaves in the colonial possessions of the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the English and the French. Plantation slavery is shown to have emerged from the impulses of civil society, not from the strategies of the individual states. Robin Blackburn argues that the organization of slave plantations placed the West on a destructive path to modernity and that greatly preferable alternatives were both proposed and rejected. Finally he shows that the surge of Atlantic trade, predicated on the murderous toil of the plantations, made a decisive contribution to both the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West. ROBIN BLACKBURN teaches at the Graduate Faculty of the New School University, New York, and in the Sociology Department of the University of Essex. He is the author of THE OVERTHROW OF COLONIAL SLAVERY, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 and, most recently, AGE SHOCK. ISBN: 978 1 84467 632 3 / £60 / $95 / Hardback / 608 pages ISBN: 978 1 84467 631 6 / £19.99 / $29.95 / Paperback / 602 pages --- THE COMING OF THE BOOK: THE IMPACT OF PRINTING, 1450 - 1800 By LUCIEN FEBVRE and HENRI-JEAN MARTIN ‘It ranks easily among the most consequential works of recent French scholarship.’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ‘It is one of the most exciting scholarly books ever written on printing … This book is serious work – marvellously rich and stimulating.’ Hugh Trevor-Roper, TIMES At a moment when the future of the printed page seems far from certain, and the death of the book is predicted with increasing regularity, this is a timely reissue of the classic study on the birth of the book. The emergence of the book was not merely an event of world historical importance, but the dawn of modernity. In this much praised work, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin mesh together economic and technological history, sociology and anthropology, with the study of consciousness itself to root the development of printing in the changing social relations and ideological struggles of Western Europe. AUTHOR: LUCIEN FEBVRE, who died in 1956, was cofounder of the influential journal ANNALES, and is widely recognized as one of the foremost historians of the twentieth century. HENRI-JEAN MARTIN is a distinguished historian of the development of early printing. ISBN: 978 1 84467 634 7 / £60 / $95 / Hardback / 384 pages ISBN: 978 1 84467 633 0 / £16.99 / $24.95 / Paperback / 378 pages --- THE PERSISTENCE OF THE OLD REGIME: EUROPE TO THE GREAT WAR By ARNO MAYER ‘A seminal book - extremely challenging. The historical and political implications of the 'Mayer thesis' will be widely discussed in years to come - certainly not only by specialists.’ Carlo Ginzburg ‘A revolutionary book about an era that was without doubt different than we believed. In Europe on the eve of 1914, imperialism did not represent the “supreme state of capitalism”, but rather its first murmurings mixed in with the long persistence of
Re: [Marxism] Call for arrest warrants against Gaddafis escalates war (Guardian ite
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 16.05.2011 22:47, Lüko Willms wrote: == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect (l...@panix.com) wrote on 2011-05-16 at 14:34:18 in about Re: [Marxism] Call for arrest warrants against Gaddafis escalates war (Guardian ite: Right. I am going out drinking with Michael Berube tonight to celebrate. Yawn. You are really getting desperate. I strongly suspect that you're suffering from irony deficit! Einde O'Callaghan Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Obama more secretive than Nixon
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer A Reporter at Large The Secret Sharer Is Thomas Drake an enemy of the state? by Jane Mayer May 23, 2011 On June 13th, a fifty-four-year-old former government employee named Thomas Drake is scheduled to appear in a courtroom in Baltimore, where he will face some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen. A former senior executive at the National Security Agency, the government’s electronic-espionage service, he is accused, in essence, of being an enemy of the state. According to a ten-count indictment delivered against him in April, 2010, Drake violated the Espionage Act—the 1917 statute that was used to convict Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. officer who, in the eighties and nineties, sold U.S. intelligence to the K.G.B., enabling the Kremlin to assassinate informants. In 2007, the indictment says, Drake willfully retained top-secret defense documents that he had sworn an oath to protect, sneaking them out of the intelligence agency’s headquarters, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and taking them home, for the purpose of “unauthorized disclosure.” The aim of this scheme, the indictment says, was to leak government secrets to an unnamed newspaper reporter, who is identifiable as Siobhan Gorman, of the Baltimore Sun. Gorman wrote a prize-winning series of articles for the Sun about financial waste, bureaucratic dysfunction, and dubious legal practices in N.S.A. counterterrorism programs. Drake is also charged with obstructing justice and lying to federal law-enforcement agents. If he is convicted on all counts, he could receive a prison term of thirty-five years. The government argues that Drake recklessly endangered the lives of American servicemen. “This is not an issue of benign documents,” William M. Welch II, the senior litigation counsel who is prosecuting the case, argued at a hearing in March, 2010. The N.S.A., he went on, collects “intelligence for the soldier in the field. So when individuals go out and they harm that ability, our intelligence goes dark and our soldier in the field gets harmed.” Top officials at the Justice Department describe such leak prosecutions as almost obligatory. Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General who supervises the department’s criminal division, told me, “You don’t get to break the law and disclose classified information just because you want to.” He added, “Politics should play no role in it whatsoever.” When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.” But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years. Gabriel Schoenfeld, a conservative political scientist at the Hudson Institute, who, in his book “Necessary Secrets” (2010), argues for more stringent protection of classified information, says, “Ironically, Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history—even more so than Nixon.” (clip) Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] George Soros contributes $60 million to Bard College colonial ventures
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/george-soros-contributes-60-million-to-bard-college-colonial-ventures/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] JP Morgan's hunt for Afghan gold
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/11/jp-morgan-hunt-afghan-gold/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Trotskygrad on the Altiplano
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Interesting stuff. *** https://nacla.org/article/trotskygrad-altiplano Reviews Trotskygrad on the Altiplano by Bill Weinberg Bolivia’s Radical Tradition: Permanent Revolution in the Andes by S. Sándor John, University of Arizona Press, 2009, 320 pp., $55 (hardcover) Bolivia, notoriously landlocked and impoverished, is today at the forefront of forging a post–Cold War anti-imperialism—emphasizing an indigenous vision rather than European ideologies. But it was generations of bitter struggle that culminated in the 2005 election of the Aymara peasant leader and declared socialist Evo Morales to the presidency. As elsewhere in South America, world ideological contests, including the schisms within the socialist camp, played themselves out in Bolivia during the years between the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The way they did, however, made Bolivia unique. Alone on the South American continent, Bolivia saw the emergence of a militant (at times, even revolutionary) labor movement that aligned with Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, and rejected Joseph Stalin and his Kremlin successors. In Bolivia’s Radical Tradition: Permanent Revolution in the Andes, S. Sándor John explores the roots of this exceptionalism. To his credit, he resists the temptation of mechanistic explanations—but the answer is pretty clearly rooted in sheer oppression. Faced with a nasty, brutish, and short life in the tin mines of the altiplano (chronic silicosis made for an average lifespan of 40 years), Bolivia’s miners had little patience for the Moscow-mandated line of “two-stage” revolution, which urged subordination to the “bourgeois-democratic” political process until feudalism was dismantled and modern capitalism established. The Trotskyist doctrine of permanent revolution referenced in John’s subtitle, in contrast, emphasized unrelenting hostility to the ruling class and no postponement of the struggle for socialism. . Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Trotskygrad on the Altiplano
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 5/17/11 6:05 PM, CallMe Ishmael wrote: https://nacla.org/article/trotskygrad-altiplano Reviews Trotskygrad on the Altiplano by Bill Weinberg Bolivia’s Radical Tradition: Permanent Revolution in the Andes by S. Sándor John, University of Arizona Press, 2009, 320 pp., $55 (hardcover) Bolivia, notoriously landlocked and impoverished, is today at the forefront of forging a post–Cold War anti-imperialism—emphasizing an indigenous vision rather than European ideologies. But it was generations of bitter struggle that culminated in the 2005 election of the Aymara peasant leader and declared socialist Evo Morales to the presidency. As elsewhere in South America, world ideological contests, including the schisms within the socialist camp, played themselves out in Bolivia during the years between the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The way they did, however, made Bolivia unique. So I’m sitting in the third row at the Brecht Forum last Thursday night waiting for Michael Yates to begin his talk on his new book “Why Unions Matter” and guess who I run into? None other than Red Jackman, the barfly and Shachtmanite I haven’t seen since 1975 from Club 55 down on Christopher Street in the Village. The Club 55 was where Red held court. It was a hangout for beatniks and 1950s radicals, especially those with connections to the Trotskyist movement. I used to drink there with my friend Nelson, who was editor of the Trotskyist newspaper The Militant, whose offices were 5 blocks away on the Hudson. Red was a raconteur and a ne’er-do-well charmer, who was either being thrown out of his apartment by a girlfriend or wife, or out of the Club 55 by the bartender. After Michael’s talk, Red went up to him and told him how much he appreciated it. He told a funny story about some Shachtmanites he knew who had ended up in the International Department of the AFL-CIO reporting to Jay Lovestone. When the Bolivian revolution broke out in 1953, these two ended up down there like Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern trying to promote AFL-CIO influence, even though they were still left-wingers. They ended up getting kidnapped by the miners, who took them back to their clandestine headquarters. They plead their case with the miners, in fear of their lives. Who could blame them for being scared, since the miners were fierce-looking Quechuans who carried around dynamite sticks to throw at the army. When the miners learned that the two Americans were Shachtmanites, the mood changed completely. Drinks were served and a convivial debate opened up which lasted through the night about the class nature of the Soviet Union, with half the miners insisting in orthodox Trotskyist fashion that it was a degenerated workers state and the other half defending Shachtman’s “third camp” position. It turned out that the miners union was a Trotskyist stronghold. full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/red-jackman/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Chávez and the Arab dictators
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://socialistworker.org/2011/05/17/chavez-and-the-arab-dictators Chávez and the Arab dictators by Lance Selfa Venezuela's Hugo Chávez is respected as a left opponent of U.S. imperialism--but he is lending support to Middle East despots who are trying to suppress popular uprisings. May 17, 2011 WHEN THE revolution sweeping the Arab world struck Libya and Syria, the governments there chose to act in the same way that the Bahraini monarchy did against its internal opposition: Open fire on unarmed crowds, arrest large numbers of people and outlaw demonstrations. These actions have rightly received widespread condemnation from supporters of the Arab revolutions. But they have received at least tacit support from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who is widely considered an important figure on the international left. I don't know why, but the things that have happened and are happening there remind me of Hugo Chávez on April 11, Chávez told reporters, comparing the democracy rebellion in Libya to the U.S.-backed right-wing coup against him in April 2002. A mass outpouring of Venezuelan workers and poor people defeated the coup and returned Chávez to office. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro went even farther than Chávez, declaring the Libyan government's suppression of the uprising there to be essential to peace and national unity. Needless to say, these statements of support for the suppression of a popular uprising are disconcerting for those who support the democratic awakening in the Middle East--especially coming from Chávez and his government. In fact, the popular uprisings in the Middle East have more in common with the mass resistance that defeated the 2002 coup than with the coup. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SINCE HE was first elected in 1998 with widespread support from Venezuela's workers and the poor, Chávez has attempted to offer a challenge to the reigning neoliberal orthodoxy. Much of the international left has praised his paradigm of 21st century socialism as a model for achieving social justice in today's world economy. So how is it possible that the originator of 21st century socialism can support dictators like Libya's Muammar el-Qaddafi and Syria's Bashar al-Assad, who are ordering the shooting down of ordinary people demanding freedom and equality? Of course, the international right has an easy answer to this question. To it, Chávez is nothing more than a dictator himself--so his backing of Qaddafi, Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is of a piece. The Miami Herald, whose views on Latin America track closely with the right-wing anti-Castro lobby, editorialized on May 2: With dictators toppling like dominoes across the Middle East, Venezuela's president-for-life, Hugo Chávez, is signaling worry about his own despotic rule. Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan diplomat who identifies with the right-wing opposition to Chávez, told a small demonstration at the Libyan Embassy in Caracas: Hugo Chávez is complicit with Qaddafi's regime of tyranny. If his friendship with Qaddafi is greater than his responsibility as head of state, then he should go to Tripoli and help him there, but not in the name of Venezuela. Before accepting these condemnations of Chávez, consider their source. The Venezuelan right--which operates with much more freedom in Venezuela than does any opposition in Libya or Syria, or Saudi Arabia for that matter--can hardly tout its democratic credentials. These were the same people who launched the failed coup against Chávez in 2002, and who cheered the 2009 coup in Honduras against Chávez's ally, President Manual Zelaya. What's more, it's hypocritical for anti-Chávez forces to point out Chávez's support for Syria's Assad while ignoring that other world leaders hoping for Assad to prevail include Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia's monarchy, which supports the Syrian regime as a bulwark of stability in the region. Clearly, Chávez doesn't have much in common with these reactionary players in the Middle East. But in lending his credibility to figures like Qaddafi and Assad, he's undermining the support he had gained for championing 21st century socialism. When Chávez denounced Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon and expelled its charge d'affairs from Venezuela, ordinary Arabs and activists cheered him. Back then, Dima Khatib, Al Jazeera's Latin American correspondent, wrote: Today on many Arabic Internet sites, one can read comments such as: 'I am Palestinian, but my president is Chávez, not Abu Mazen.' Or: 'I don't want to be an Arab. From now on I shall be Venezuelan.' Also, to millions of Arabs, Venezuela's use of its oil wealth to fund
[Marxism] Freedom for Joaquín Pérez Becerra!
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Dear Friends, Published on my website today, Freedom for Joaquín Pérez Becerra! which considers the urgency of defending this political refugee, now held in Colombia, in the broader political context of his deportation from Venezuela and incarceration. See http://johnriddell.wordpress.com. Coming next: Clara Zetkin and the Communist Womens International, a look at pioneer socialist feminism in the first years after the Russian revolution. To be notified of new posts, type your email into the box in the websites right-hand column. John Riddell Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Australia: Greens' BDS stance widens debate over boycott of Israel's apartheid | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == After months of pressure from apologists for apartheid Israel, eight Marrickville councillors, including two Greens councillors, voted on April 19 to rescind the council’s near unanimous December 2010 decision to support the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. However, an important national discussion about Australia’s responsibilities to help Palestinians win their rights has begun. Full article + videos at http://links.org.au/node/2318 * Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism Or join the Links Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
