[Marxism] Colombia supreme court dismisses Reyes files as evidence
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Very important. Remember that the case against Pérez Becerra was based on these files, as well as the constant media campaign alleging that Venezuela's Bolivarian government was backing FARC terrorists Documents found on computers of slain FARChttp://www.insightcrime.org/criminal-groups/colombia/farc commander Raul Reyes are inadmissible as evidence in court as the material is illegally obtained and provides no evidence, Colombia's Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. According to the court, the military officials who obtained the evidence were not authorized to gather evidence to be used in Colombian courts, because this falls under the responsibilities of the judicial police. Except for the Prosecutor General's Office no other power in the country has the authority to bring evidence from abroad, even less when ignoring foreign authorities, said the court. The validity of the content of what was found on the computers can also not be verified as the alleged emails were copied into Word documents without indication of sender or receiver, the country's highest court said. Full article here: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/16368-supreme-court-dismisses-reyes-files-as-evidence.html 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] SEX AND THE ORGANIZER
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Just some early morning coffee thoughts. And, on coffee, it tastes even better right now since the revelations of the past day or so that add up to its medical benefits, including its role as something of bulwark against male prostate cancer. (Not a problem of mine, I'm glad to add.) But coffee, along with the Human Horrors that grace the world, and natural ones as well such as the rejuvenation of Old Man River, has taken something of a back seat to Sex. Specifically, Sex in New York City and Sex on the West Coast. Brings to mind a pleasant dinner of slightly more than half a century ago. The setting was Wasau, Wisconsin, and the dinner was on the nickel of a good guy and developing friend, Elwood Taub, then research and education director of the International Woodworkers of America -- the CIO lumber workers union. He, a seasoned veteran of a good many extremely tough organizing campaigns in Dixie, much of this in Textile before he took the IWA job, and aware of my developing interest in going South, was trying to maneuver my being hired as an organizer by his international. Though not without influence therein, he -- and I -- were aware that the top leadership, in contrast to the still extant Wobbly spirit that pervaded much of the grassroots in the Pacific Northwest, had grown cautious. In the end, the officialdom balked at me -- and I, of course, found my Dixie door and Destiny at Tougaloo College, just a bit north of Jackson. Elwood and I remained friends and, in time, he found another union. During our leisurely dinner, he looked at me and remarked rather directly, When you go South, always remember this: Keep your pecker in your pants. Actually, I'd heard that advice a bit earlier, not delivered quite so bluntly, by a Mine-Mill organizer and good friend, a Southerner by origin, who'd been through his share of fire fights. I've followed that advice -- obviously figuratively. Hardly a tight personality sort by any remote stretch [and I hate formal suits], I was occasionally tagged cordially by such worthies as my late Dixie [and elsewhere] buddy, some years younger than I, the late J.V. Henry and himself a North Carolinian, as the Puritan of the Civil Rights Movement. A couple of months after Wasau, Eldri and I married. The world is much the better via our four offspring, and the now ten grandchildren. And, decades later, when I penned my little and subsequently much reprinted piece, Just What Makes A Damn Good Community Organizer, the second basic dimension of my eleven point catechism, is this: The Organizer should be relatively pure in the moral sense. But not too pure -- because no one, anywhere, wants a sanctimonious conscience hovering about. Set a good personal example. Do your recreational thing away from the project. Wherever you are, avoid all drugs and go easy on alcohol [if you are even into that sensitivity-dulling stuff.] Remember the old labor adage: You can't fight booze and the boss at the same time. Always a special target, the organizer has to be aware of the consistent danger of frame-ups. http://www.hunterbear.org/just_what_makes_a_damn_good_comm.htm Sometimes, when starting a talk, I hand my Eleven Points out to the audience. Older people read it somberly and younger folk, coming almost immediately to that which I've just quoted, often look up at me, grinning. I always grin back. And no, I am not sanctimonious, But I am very serious. In Solidarity, Hunter [Hunter Bear] HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands. Our Hunterbear website is now eleven years old.. Check out http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm See - Personal and Detailed Background Narrative: http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm See Outlaw Trail: The Native as Organizer: http://hunterbear.org/outlaw_trail1.htm [Included in Visions Voices: Native American Activism [2009] And see Forces and Faces Along the Activist Trail: http://hunterbear.org/forces_and_faces_along_the_trail.htm 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] Translation (Cuba): Guidelines debate 4, Cooperatives
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == From Cuba's Socialist Renewal http://cubasocialistrenewal.blogspot.com To sign up as a follower or receive email updates click link above http://cubasocialistrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/05/translation-guidelines-debate-4.html Cooperatives seem poised to multiply, expand their range of activities and play a critical role in the new Cuban socialist-oriented economic model that is emerging. Here is Part 4 of my translation of the booklet Information on the results of the Debate on the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution, an explanatory document that has been published together with the final version of the Guidelines adopted by the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) Congress in April. 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] Translation (Cuba): Guidelines debate 4, Cooperatives
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 5/19/2011 9:53 AM, Marce Cameron wrote: From Cuba's Socialist Renewal http://cubasocialistrenewal.blogspot.com To sign up as a follower or receive email updates click link above http://cubasocialistrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/05/translation-guidelines-debate-4.html Cooperatives seem poised to multiply, expand their range of activities and play a critical role in the new Cuban socialist-oriented economic model that is emerging. Here is Part 4 of my translation of the booklet Information on the results of the Debate on the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution, an explanatory document that has been published together with the final version of the Guidelines adopted by the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) Congress in April. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin On Cooperation Written: January 4 6, 1923 It seems to me that not enough attention is being paid to the cooperative movement in our country. Not everyone understands that now, since the time of the October revolution and quite apart from NEP (on the contrary, in this connection we must say—because of NEP), our cooperative movement has become one of great significance. There is a lot of fantasy in the dreams of the old cooperators. Often they are ridiculously fantastic. But why are they fantastic? Because people do not understand the fundamental, the rock-bottom significance of the working-class political struggle for the overthrow of the rule of the exploiters. We have overthrown the rule of the exploiters, and much that was fantastic, even romantic, even banal in the dreams of the old cooperators is now becoming unvarnished reality. full: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/06.htm 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] Ethics in International Affairs
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Thu, 19 May 2011 06:36:06 -0700 (PDT) Ismail Lagardien ilagard...@yahoo.com writes: Hi Everyone I will be teaching Ethics in international affairs in August as part of my new position (University of Guyana). The last good texts on the subject were kinda liberal, Terry Nardin and Mervyn Frost. Now that I will design and teach my own course, I would like to take a more Critical approach. You might wish to take a look at the writings of Darrel Moellendorf: http://philosophy.sdsu.edu/Moellendorf.htm http://www.cgu.edu/pages/8859.asp http://philpapers.org/s/Darrel%20Moellendorf I remember him from the time that he published an article on just war theory from a Marxist perspective in Science Society: Marxism, Internationalism, and the Justice of War. Science Society, Vol. 58, No. 3, Fall 1994, 264-286. Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math This is not self-promotion as I have nothing to gain from your visiting the blog I created. I really created it mainly for my family who are befuddled about why I am moving from the US to one of the poorest countries in the world... http://heytaguyana.wordpress.com/ I am thrilled, they are confused, alas. I am fairly comprehensive in my teaching, and there is a lot of literature produced by liberal internationalists and liberals like the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. However, I would like to find more Critical sources. I am not a post-modernist, and share some solidarities with post-colonial theorists (and as the saying goes, Marx never did write anything on International Relations - but Marxists have! - I am open to anything to the left of liberal internationalism. While I have taught IR theory courses and political theory courses - my training is mainly in political economy, especially International Political Economy - this will be the first time, since my first degree that I will read/write or do anything on International Ethics/Ethics in International Affairs. I leave the US on 28 June and would like to get hold of a couple of good books before I leave. Have you any suggestions? ail Ismail Lagardien Department of Politics and Public Administration Elon University Elon, NC 27244 Tel: +1(612) 227-5037 (Personal) Groupon#8482 Official Site 1 ridiculously huge coupon a day. Get 50-90% off your city#39;s best! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4dd524d16413f4f46c3st05vuc 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] Counterpunch fave defends DSK
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yes, but CP did publish good pieces against DSK (like below). Perhaps CP turned down PCR's piece and he found another venue for thoughts? Brian May 18, 2011 Au Revoir, Monsieur Pig Le Rapist is a Socialist? Non! By SHERRY WOLF . . . .that one of the most powerful figures in international finance and politics has assaulted a journalist trying to interview him for a book, manipulated an IMF economist who was his subordinate into sleeping with him at a conference and now raped a maid trying to clean his room tells us another thing about him—and the people and institutions that have covered for him all these years. Strauss-Kahn, and by extension, the French Non-Socialist Party and IMF, all appear to have a curious hostility to working women. None of the incidents we've read about so far in the press took place in social settings, but at the women's place of work, where they were earning a living and being full human beings. Not to psycho-babbleize Strauss-Kahn, but he's a caveman—no offense to Neanderthals intended. Third of all, $3,000 a night?! That's a lot of mints on your pillow. Strauss-Khan calls himself a socialist (exceedingly small s) and heads an organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which pretends to help the poor, but, pardon the parallel, rapes them. full: http://www.counterpunch.org/wolf05182011.html -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect l...@panix.com To: Brian mckenna...@aol.com Sent: Thu, May 19, 2011 12:15 pm Subject: [Marxism] Counterpunch fave defends DSK == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == It is possible that Strauss-Kahn eliminated himself and saved Washington the trouble. However, as a well-travelled person who has often stayed in New York hotels and in hotels in cities around the world, I have never experienced a maid entering unannounced into my room, much less when I was in the shower. In the spun story, Strauss-Kahn is portrayed as so deprived of sex that he attempted to rape a hotel maid. Anyone who ever served on the staff of a powerful public figure knows that this is unlikely. On a senator’s staff on which I served, there were two aides whose job was to make certain that no woman, with the exception of his wife, was ever alone with the senator. This was done to protect the senator both from female power groupies, who lust after celebrities and powerful men, and from women sent by a rival on missions to compromise an opponent. A powerful man such as Strauss-Kahn would not have been starved for women, and as a multi-millionaire he could certainly afford to make his own discreet arrangements. full: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=vaaid=24840 Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/mckenna193%40aol.com 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] The Big Uneasy
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Best known as a comic actor, and especially for his performance as a maladroit heavy metal musician in the mockumentary “This is Spinal Tap”, Harry Shearer is also one of the entertainment industry’s most trenchant social critics. Sometimes he combines comedy and social criticism in the same package. His radio show “Le Show” (is this where Stephen Colbert got the inspiration for the French pronunciation of his last name?) is archived at http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/ls and will introduce you to his sharply honed satire. As a part-time resident of New Orleans, Shearer was understandably traumatized by the Hurricane Katrina flooding and began blogging about it on Huffington Post a while back. On August 29, 2010 he filed an item titled President Obama Speaks to New Orleans From Planet Zarg that pretty much sums up the subject of his powerful documentary “The Big Uneasy” that opens tomorrow at Cinema Village in New York (screening information for other cities is at http://thebiguneasy.com/showtimes.php): Sorry, can’t be sure that’s the planet he’s living on, but this intelligent, well-informed man surely can’t be living on this orb. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to start off his speech at Xavier University Sunday afternoon with this reprise of his town-hall remarks here last October: “It was a natural disaster but also a manmade catastrophe; a shameful breakdown in government that left countless men, women, and children abandoned and alone.” Note that the “manmade catastrophe” and “breakdown” are linked only to the response to the flooding of New Orleans, not the cause, as if this intelligent, well-informed man is unaware that two separate, independent forensic engineering investigations of the disaster, conducted over a period of a year or more, agreed on this conclusion (in the words of UC Berkeley’s ILIT report): the flooding of New Orleans was “the greatest man-made engineering catastrophe since Chernobyl”. full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/the-big-uneasy/ 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] Another B-HLevy Humanitarian Intervention
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == on behalf of DSK's human right' to be a global swinging dick along with the rest of the financial gang-bangers: What I do know is that nothing in the world can justify a man being thus thrown to the dogs. What I know is that nothing, no suspicion whatever (for let’s remind ourselves that, as I write these lines, we are dealing only with suspicions!), permits the entire world to revel in the spectacle, this morning, of this handcuffed figure, his features blurred by 30 hours of detention and questioning, but still proud. [suppressed guffawing] What I know as well is that nothing, no earthly law, should also allow another woman, his wife, admirable in her love and courage, to be exposed to the slime of a public opinion drunk on salacious gossip and driven by who knows what obscure vengeance. (Sob!) the entire world...is not permitted to revel.. - let's not ask why the entire world should take great joy in such a revel. Effing IMF austerity pig. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-16/bernard-henri-lvy-the-dominique-strauss-kahn-i-know/# -Matt 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] Gary Younge on Obama
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == (A pretty decent article by an Obama supporter in 2008.) http://www.thenation.com/article/160782/paradox-hope-obamas-presidency-breaks-racial-barrier-most-black-americans-are-worse The Paradox of Hope: Obama's Presidency Breaks Racial Barrier, But Most Black Americans Are Worse Off Gary Younge | May 18, 2011 When Barack Obama was pondering a run for the presidency Michelle asked him what he thought he could accomplish. He replied,“The day I take the oath of office, the world will look at us differently. And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently. That alone is something.” His victory was indeed something. The world certainly looked at America differently, though this had as much to do with who he wasn’t—George W. Bush—as what he was, black, among other things. Polls show that African-Americans indeed look at themselves differently. A January 2010 Pew survey revealed huge optimism. The percentage of black Americans who thought blacks were better off than they were five years before had almost doubled since 2007. There were also significant increases in the percentages who believed the standard-of-living gap between whites and blacks was decreasing. But for all the ways black America has felt better about itself and looked better to others, it has not actually fared better. In fact, it has been doing worse. The economic gap between black and white has grown since Obama took power. Under his tenure black unemployment, poverty and foreclosures are at their highest levels for at least a decade. Millions of black kids may well aspire to the presidency now that a black man is in the White House. But such a trajectory is less likely for them now than it was under Bush. Herein lies what is at best a paradox and at worst a contradiction within Obama’s core base of support. The very group most likely to support him—black Americans—is the same group that is doing worse under him. This condition was best exemplified by Velma Hart, the black chief financial officer for a Maryland veterans organization, who backed Obama in 2008. She told Obama at a town hall meeting in September, “I’m exhausted of defending you…. My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot-dogs-and-beans era of our lives. But, quite frankly, it is starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we are headed again.” In November Velma Hart was laid off. If it were white Americans who remained this loyal to a Republican president under whom they were doing this badly, the left would be claiming false consciousness. If a Republican president were behind statistics like these, few liberals would be offering that president the benefit of the doubt. So, how do we explain this apparent inconsistency? There would appear to be three main reasons. The first is white people. Not all of them. But enough. Half of white Americans in a Pew survey shared the birthers’ doubt that Obama was born in this country. After the president produced his long-form birth certificate, Donald Trump demanded his college transcripts (claiming he was not smart enough to get into the Ivy League), and Newt Gingrich branded him the “food stamp president.” In the face of such brazenly racist attacks, defending Obama’s right to the office becomes easily blurred with defending his record. Second, the post–civil rights era concept of corporate diversity, which many black people have embraced, is central to his symbolism. Racial advancement is increasingly understood not as a process of social change but of individual promotion—the elevation of black faces to high places. Instead of equal opportunities, we have photo opportunities. “We have more black people in more visible and powerful positions,” Angela Davis told me before Obama’s nomination. “But then we have far more black people who have been pushed down to the bottom of the ladder….There’s a model of diversity as the difference that makes no difference, the change that brings about no change.” Third and perhaps most important, the discrepancy reflects a mixture of realism and low expectations. That black Americans are doing worse than everyone else, and that the man they elected to turn that around has not done so, does not fundamentally change their view of how American politics works; almost every other Democratic president has failed in a similar way. Conversely the fact that a black man might be elected president, that enough white people might vote for him, that nobody has shot him, really has changed their assumptions. In the black commentariat, opinion is divided over whether African-Americans should demand a more overt commitment to racial
[Marxism] oil, wars, Arab spring, etc
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == It’s a complex situation, but here are two pieces of the jigsaw: This article shows how important and widespread inter-imperialist rivalries over oil are (and helps explain why Russia and Italy have been so reluctant to join in the war against Libya): http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/16/2879707/wikileaks-cables-show-oil-a-major.html This article says that in the second wave of the Arab spring, “US hesitance has provided opportunities for other second tier regional players (France, Turkey, Quatar) to take the lead in developing policies, while Germany, Russia, China watch from the wings”: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/20115151582859118.html Paula 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] DSK
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Any number of French people with Internet access are currently active on the bloggosphere, distilling their skepticism regarding various points relating to the DSK case. For my part, I prefer to hedge my bets and just shut up, while I, like the rest of you, wait for more elements to come out. I am aware that the rich and powerful are my masters (my former future president for instance is definitely in that category), my overlords, quite simply MY CLASS ENEMIES. On a more analytic note, the domineering, overbearing, brow-beating nature of social domination by one superior group of people over another, means that extracting sexual favours is universally used by those in a position of power. The CEO will have his harem, as will the politician, the mafia kingpin, the cult leader, the factory overseer, the gulag guard, the university professor, the high-ranking member of the single party, anyone who can have a say over your day-to-day life, your social status and your prospects for the future. This is so universal in fact that I just pooh-pooh any attempt at describing French society as more (or less) inclined to passing a blind eye over using one's status to indulge in sexual gratification as American society. And of course, this is assuming DSK is guilty. But he has a history. More and more reports are coming out in France (former female students of his, members of the SP, secretaries and assistants, etc.) which don't exactly point to someone with a respectful, considerate and non-predatory attitude towards sexual partners. This being said, all the conspiracy theories circulating in Le Figaro and Le Monde are getting to me. Apparently, a lot hinges on the forced oral sexual act which is seen as somehow contradictory with a handmaid trying to escape being groped. And on the fact that she entered the room as he was having a shower. And on the presence of another staff member at the start of the encounter (as reported by Le Figaro). I find all this a bit seedy and have no problem imagining how a high-profile guest as DSK could get his way with an African chambermaid, so I only repeat these doubts with great distaste. Nonetheless, they are currently being aired in the French media. I fear hatred of Sarkozy may bring some of my countrymen (and women) to view any attack on DSK's character as somehow the result of a set up. Not that they really like DSK to begin with, just that they really, really hate Sarkozy and all he stands for. Imagine , not Obama, but Al Gore vs. Bush. 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] DSK
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Dan wrote ... I only repeat these doubts with great distaste. . . . . . Tsk dsk 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] City of Life and Death, China does big budget block buster
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == City of Life and Death is a new film out from China. It's first big budget film, according to the raves. It will also be controversial...not in China so much, but in Japan. It's about the Rape of Nanking. From the synopsis: On December 9, 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army laid siege to the Chinese capital of Nanking, beginning a reign of terror that killed as many as 300,000 civilians -- an infamous tragedy now referred to as the Rape of Nanking. The first big-budget fiction film by the Chinese to deal with this seminal event in their modern history, CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH is a visceral, heartbreaking portrait of life during wartime, and an unforgettable masterpiece of contemporary world cinema. I'm wondering if they will ever show this in Japan? At any rate, for me, what is interesting is that this is a movie not about the People's Liberation Army but about the Kuomintang army's failure to protect it's own capital, yet fighting bravely and they suffering the massacres that accompanied this huge strategic defeat. That is interesting. So...I'm wondering how this movie will be perceived in...Taiwan as well and if THEY shot it. The trailer for it is here: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/cityoflifeanddeath/ David 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] City of Life and Death, China does big budget block buster
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 5/19/11 10:22 PM, DW wrote: City of Life and Death is a new film out from China. It's first big budget film, according to the raves. It will also be controversial...not in China so much, but in Japan. It's about the Rape of Nanking. From the synopsis: Reminder. I reviewed it here: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/burma-soldier-city-of-life-and-death/ Basically I said that it lacked historical context. You have no idea why the Japanese committed atrocities. The movie is based on Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking which a number of historians consider flawed. 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] Scheduled Downtime
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There will be a scheduled downtime at the mailing list server starting in 5 minutes. Don't know how long. Hans 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-Thaxis] Marx and the Non-Western World
Clear statement, chris, of macro Marx, massively missed by most. I agree this macro view is essential not just to accurately getting marx's main contribution but also to using his writings to anticipate and help advance the humanization process of our species' history along Peggy Powell Dobbins Sociology as an Art Form www.peggydobbins.net In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. - Charles Darwin On May 18, 2011, at 11:41 AM, c...@yorku.ca wrote: This truly path-breaking book goes against the grain of the conventional wisdom which reduces Marx to an Eurocentric It seems to me, actually, that Anderson ironically contributes to this general characterization of Marx, even among Marxists, as being eurocentric. In fact, all Anderson does is create a delineation between the young Marx--- still beholden, as Anderson regards it, to the eurocentric legacy of historiography, ethnography, sociology and anthropology during the 19th century--- and an older Marx who allegedly abandoned all notions of dialectical development, historical stages--- in a word, he 'abandoned' the whole of his philosophical basis (which, to me at least, it sees he was committed to until the last breath). Marx was certainly concerned with, and sensitive to, those peripheral social struggle[s] taking place on the margins of European empires, but, by that account alone, he refrained from placing the sort of primacy on these struggles which he did when he emphasized the possibility of social change in England, America, and France. Of course, as Marx says, nothing prevents us from making criticism of politics, participation in politics, and therefore real struggles, the starting point of our criticism. however, from this, we should in no way conclude that struggles in Poland, Russia, Indonesia, India, etc., which raged during Marx's own life (or, for that matter, those which draw our attention today toward places like Nepal, Venezeula, etc.), are the loci around which the future of world-history turns. In the Communist Manifesto, as well as in his first articles on India (1853), one can still find an “Orientalist” — according to Edward Said’s well known criticism — i.e., unilinear and Eurocentric approach, leading to a qualified support for colonialism. I can't accept such a vulgar treatment of Marx's claims. In no way, as Said suggests, was he an Orientalist (in the sense that he provided Europe with qualified support for colonialism). In fact, in his articles on India, letters on Russia, etc., all he insisted upon was that social transformations occur historically...that is, in 'stages'. In fact, he was one of the severest critics of the European mission in India. Aside from a few exceptions like a William Cobbett, I would challenge anyone to find a major thinker who was in any way as critical as Marx was about the British in India. Yes, the British empire brought India into history as it were, but this was no qualified support for imperialism since--- just like the transition from feudalism to a market-society in Europe--- this process of colonization destroyed native industry, broke down the mutual dependency of the old social order, etc. Marx in no way could be said to have shied away from observing the negative impact of the British in India. Marx also believed, however, that this ruthless process of exproproriation and market-expansion would lead to the proletarianization of the Indian peasantry. This wasn't any more of a friendly transition for India than it was for German peasants convicted of stealing dead wood from the enclosed commons. It wasn't friendlyMarx's whole point is that it was necessary though--- 'necessity', that is, in the distinctly hegelian sense of the term. Marx’s writings on Poland and even more so on Ireland reveal an increasing awareness of the importance of movements for national liberation, Certainly it does...but it doesn't change the emphasis and primary loci of the struggle for socialism in advanced industrial countries. These are progressive and positive developments--- national liberation is a necessary movement before the higher movement (for a genuinely human society) can take place. “In the USA … labor in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin” (1866). Again, this only signals that one of the primary arenas for classs struggle is the united states and the white working-class there. Certainly, Marx's progressivism lies in the fact that he links the emancipation of black slaves to the emancipation of the white working-class, but, nonetheless, it doesn't change his general view of historical development. The same can be said for his letters on Russia. Yes, he emphasized new possibilities for Russia, but only as a result of communion with the more
