[Marxism] The gender pay gap in Australia - an update
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == An argument has broken out in Australia about the graduate gender pay gap. It misses the real point. The gender pay gap for all women, graduates or not, is systemic, and can only be overcome by militant industrial action. http://enpassant.com.au/2013/01/08/the-gender-pay-gap-an-update/ 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] Why India wants to sell medicines to Iran.
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/OA09Ak01.html Sent from Planet Earth (maybe) 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] Support colleagues striking for press freedom at Southern Weekend newspaper, Guangzhou
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Please add my name to the Media Alliance letter to show my support to my colleagues at Southern Weekend in their fight for press freedom and the fundamental principles of journalism. http://enpassant.com.au/2013/01/08/support-colleagues-striking-for-press-freedom-at-the-southern-weekend-newspaper-guangzhou/ 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] Why we need a socialist revolution
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Contrary to the popular stereotype, revolution is a result, not of the mass of the population spontaneously becoming Marxist revolutionaries, but of the failure of the allegedly more realistic project of reforming the system write Tom Bramble and Ben Hillier in Socialist Alternative. http://enpassant.com.au/2013/01/08/why-we-need-a-socialist-revolution/ 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] Serbo-croatian (China? Again?)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 d.koech...@wanadoo.fr wrote: The situation is very different from the one that prevails in China. In the former Yugolsvia, the SAME LANGUAGE is transcribed using two different alphabets, meaning Croats and Serbs understand each other perfectly. Still curious why China is getting brought up again. It is neither in parallel nor is it in contradistinction, as I tried to point out in my previous post. 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 disservice done by Lincoln
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://socialistworker.org/2013/01/08/disservice-done-by-lincoln The disservice done by Lincoln January 8, 2013 ALAN MAASS' review of Spielberg's Lincoln (The great uncompromiser [2]) has added some complexity to the discussion of this excellent film--but profoundly flawed account of history. Maass is absolutely correct that Lincoln, neither in the film nor in history, was a great compromiser. The parallels with Obama, despite screenwriter Tony Kushner's desires (see his revealing interview with Bill Moyers [3]), are not accurate. As recent biographies, in particular James McPherson's Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution and Eric Foner's The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, demonstrate, once Lincoln had come to a political position, he never wavered. However, we should be clear that Lincoln was, in McPherson's words, a reluctant revolutionary. Lincoln was a pragmatist. He responded to facts on the ground--in particular, the mass flight of slaves during war (what W.E.B. DuBois called the general strike) and the resulting collapse of slavery. It is precisely Lincoln's reluctance to lead a thoroughgoing revolution in the South during the Civil War--and the decisive role of the mass flight of slaves from the plantations--that is missing from Spielberg and Kushner's hagiographic portrayal. It is simply not enough to argue Lincoln isn't about everything that happened during the Civil War. Spielberg and Kushner's decision to focus solely on the parliamentary machinations surrounding the Thirteenth Amendment, while making for a magnificent film, produces a vision of emancipation that is profoundly flawed. First, Lincoln is presented as a consistent advocate of the uncompensated, immediate and permanent abolition of slavery--a position he had only come to embrace in mid-1862. Before his decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln promoted, unsuccessfully, various schemes for graduate emancipation, with the compensation of masters (especially those in the border states) and the colonization of African Americans to Central America, the Caribbean or Africa. Second, the film greatly exaggerates the impact of the Thirteenth Amendment. Much of the historical research of the past 20 years has shown that by late 1864, slavery as the basis of production in the South was dead. While some Confederate political leaders may have believed that the peculiar institution could be revived, the former slaves themselves--through joining the Union army as spies, laborers and soldiers and the self-organization of proto-trade unions, seizure of abandoned plantations and the like--had destroyed slavery. (According to Kevin Anderson, the author of Marx at the Margins, Marx adopted the notion of self-emancipation from the struggle of the slaves during the U.S. Civil War.) Put simply, the Thirteenth Amendment legally recognized the reality of the class struggle in the South. Imagine how we on the left, especially those of us in the tradition of socialism from below, would have reacted to a film on the organization of industrial unions in the 1930s that looked only at the deliberations of the U.S. Supreme Court in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones Laughlin Steel Corporation, the 1937 case that upheld the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935? Rather than depicting the self-activity and self-organization of industrial workers who launched city-wide general strikes in Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco in 1934, the waves of strikes in basic industry in 1935 and 1936, and the sit-down strikes of 1936-37, we would be treated to lengthy discussions between the Supreme Court justices debating whether or not the inter-state commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution applied to unions. I would be surprised if anyone in our political tradition would argue that such a film was not about everything that happened in the 1930s, rather than condemning its fetishizing the at the expense of mass working class struggles. Charlie Post, New York City - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Published by the International Socialist Organization. Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [4] license, except for articles that are republished with permission. Readers are welcome to share and use material belonging to this site for non-commercial purposes, as long as they are attributed to the author and SocialistWorker.org. [1] http://socialistworker.org/department/Readers%27-Views [2] http://socialistworker.org/2012/11/29/the-great-uncompromiser [3] http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-what-we-can-learn-from-lincoln/ [4]
Re: [Marxism] Serbo-croatian
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I do rather like the idea of Serb and Croat soldiers talking in their identical languages via a translator; it has a wonderfully surreal feel to it. The idiocy doesn't stop there. Although Serbo-Croat was spoken in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina -- albeit with, I believe, a different dialect around Zagreb and another one on the Dalmatian coast -- there are now three languages in the now-disintegrated Yugoslavia -- Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian. Furthermore, although Serbs in the past used the Cyrillic script, many young Serbs these days use the Latin script that is used in Croatia and Slovenia, thus making the splitting of one language into three even more daft. Paul F 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] Sol Yurick 1925-2013
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/07/sol-yurick Sol Yurick obituary American novelist best known for The Warriors, a tale of gangs and street violence in New York Eric Homberger The Guardian, Monday 7 January 2013 11.36 EST The American novelist Sol Yurick, who has died aged 87, was too radical, too extreme and too violent for the respectable literary establishment of New York, yet no writer more fully embodied the city's anguished spirit in the 1960s. His novels The Warriors (1965), Fertig (1966) and The Bag (1968) constitute a trilogy of vibrant energy, biting satire and high, though irreverent, artistic seriousness. The Warriors, a tale of gangs and street violence, was rejected by 27 publishers before it finally appeared. With its carefully crafted parallels with Xenophon's Anabasis, it was more literary than Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964), but shared its gritty feel for the city's underclass. In 1979 it was made into a stylish film by Walter Hill. Vincent Canby in the New York Times considered the film a mish-mash of romantic cliches, moods and visual effects. Yurick, who thought it trashy and sentimentalised, agreed. After the New York premiere, his daughter, Susanna, said: It's all right, daddy, the kids will love it. And they did. The Warriors became a cult classic, later embraced by hip-hop acts including the Wu-Tang Clan, spoofed in a Nike commercial and adapted as a PlayStation 2 game. Hill's movie drew upon comic-book characterisation but Yurick, who came out of the proletarian belly of New York, knew better. His parents, Sam and Flo, immigrants from eastern Europe, were communists and trade-union activists. Marx and Lenin, strikes and demonstrations, were regular topics of dinner-table conversation. His earliest political memory was, at the age of 14, the anguish he felt at the Stalin-Hitler pact. Yurick enlisted in the US army in 1944 and trained as a surgical technician. A long illness led to a medical discharge in 1945. The GI bill enabled him to attend New York University, where he studied literature. He read James Joyce with intensity and conceived (half-seriously) the Joycean idea of using the Anabasis of Xenophon as a way to tell the story of a gang battling through the city towards their home at Coney Island. He went to work as a social investigator in the department of welfare in 1954. Life within the welfare bureaucracy led Yurick to conclude that such programmes were designed solely to control the poor. He later wrote an angry essay on welfare which he submitted to Commentary, a leading Jewish magazine with intellectual pretensions. It was repeatedly rejected by the editor, Norman Podhoretz. Yurick had committed the unforgivable sin of writing with too much passion, of violating the canons of civility and detachment. He was sure that the rejection was political. Despite the critical success of Elia Kazan's harsh film On the Waterfront and the romantic ethnic ghettos of West Side Story, Yurick felt that writers were ignoring the city's streets. He wanted to bring night-time New York, after the shoppers and men in grey-flannel suits went home to the suburbs, back to the centre of culture. While working with poor families, he encountered children who were members of street gangs. He found it impossible to talk to them directly about gang life; they would tell him only what they believed he wanted to hear. A rented panel truck gave him a way to observe them secretly. He walked the streets where the gangs ruled, and once went on foot through the subway tunnel between 96th Street and 110th Street. It was a scary experience. He wanted to show that street gangs, universally seen as a symptom of social dysfunctionality, gave to the poor a structure of loyalty and a sense of community. They were neither sick, nor bad, only poor. Fertig, Yurick's second novel, was a scathing commentary on the American healthcare and legal system. He spent several years doing research for the book in Kings County and Bellevue hospitals in New York, taking mental notes, as he tried to figure out the way a grieving father might take revenge upon those whose indifference led to the death of his son. Fertig was made into the film The Confession (1999), featuring Alec Baldwin and Ben Kingsley. Its feelgood ending was false to the spirit of the novel. From the mid-1960s Yurick became increasingly involved in street protests against the war in Vietnam. As the protests accelerated into free speech confrontations with liberal educational establishments such as Columbia University, he worked with Students for a Democratic Society, contributing to the SDS tract Who Runs Columbia? and
[Marxism] John Brennan's extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA Director nomination
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Glenn Greenwald commentary: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/07/john-brennan-dishonesty-cia-director-nomination 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] An exchange on Sol Yurick
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == From Marxmail, November 1999: At 11:58 AM 11/17/99 -0500, Michael Yates wrote: The issue of ironic writing and discussion has come up on various lists. We had an interesting discussion of this and related topics last night in my prison class. The subject was the drug trade, a subject about which my students knew a great deal. The assigned article for discussion was The Political Economy of Junk, written by novelist Sol Yurick and published many years ago (1970, Dec. issue) in Monthly Review. I haven't seen hide nor hair of Sol since the early '80s when I took a class on Great Literature with him at the Brecht Forum. This was one of the most outstanding classes I've ever taken on or off campus, including my days in the SWP when I had a chance to study labor history with the guy who trained Jimmy Hoffa how to organize over-the-road truckers. Sol's survey basically looked at the canon from the point of view of how ruling class attitudes are projected, from the Old Testament to Shakespeare. While much of the specifics are dimmed by the passage of time, I remember the general sense of glee I felt at seeing all the great books exposed as propaganda. I suspect that Sol was being deliberately overstated and provocative, but he certainly had a way of making you look at things critically. He wrote the classic 60s novel Bag, which dealt with his experiences as a welfare worker. I too had put in some time with the Welfare Department, which led to my radicalization in 1967. In more recent years, he had turned his attention to the sort of cyber-espionage thrillers that people like William Gibson turned out, but with a lot more intelligence. I particularly recommend Richard, which deals with a plot to take over the world using artificial intelligence. Here is an item from a conference sponsored by Brown University's Unspeakable Practices: === The death of avant-garde? Vanguard writers debate New styles, new content, but also the ability to make straight society tremble is gone, Sol Yurick tells Unspeakable Practices session By Richard P. Morin Novelist Sol Yurick leaned into the microphone and made a simple, yet powerful, statement: The avant-garde is dead. It was a peculiar judgment given the fact that it was spoken during a vanguard narrative festival. Yurick made his seemingly prophetic remark at last week's Unspeakable Practices III, a literary conference constructed by Robert Coover, adjunct professor of English, which called together more than 40 writers from around the world for five days of readings, performances and symposia. Events included hypertext, cyberfiction and transoceanic readings, and conversations among American and British writers via a teleconference with London. There were readings from major American, Spanish, Philippine, British and Latin American authors whose prose often pushed the bounds of style and imagination. There was even an all-night finale filled with readings, performances and music. It seemed as if the avant-garde was alive and well. What we used to call the avant-garde is dead, said Yurick at the symposium titled Dumping the Century, a fin de siècle judgment of this century's literary achievements and prospects for the next. New styles, new content, but also the ability to make straight society tremble is gone. At the Oct. 3 session, Yurick asserted that there isn't the possibility for anything truly new in modern literature. Everything is theme and variation, he said. Are we in some way limited by biology? The conference was co-sponsored by the Program in Creative Writing, the Department of Hispanic Studies and the John Hawkes Fund. --Louis Proyect 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] Oil Sands Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == (This article is a reminder that peak oil is not about the absolute disappearance of fossil fuels but the increasing costs associated with the search for new sources that lead inexorably to climate change, carcinogens, and war.) NY Times January 7, 2013 Oil Sands Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level By IAN AUSTEN OTTAWA — The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed. For the study, financed by the Canadian government, the researchers set out to develop a historical record of the contamination, analyzing sediment dating back about 50 years from six small and shallow lakes north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the center of the oil sands industry. Layers of the sediment were tested for deposits of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, groups of chemicals associated with oil that in many cases have been found to cause cancer in humans after long-term exposure. “One of the biggest challenges is that we lacked long-term data,” said John P. Smol, the paper’s lead author and a professor of biology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. “So some in industry have been saying that the pollution in the tar sands is natural, it’s always been there.” The researchers found that to the contrary, the levels of those deposits have been steadily rising since large-scale oil sands production began in 1978. Samples from one test site, the paper said, now show 2.5 to 23 times more PAHs in current sediment than in layers dating back to around 1960. “We’re not saying these are poisonous ponds,” Professor Smol said. “But it’s going to get worse. It’s not too late but the trend is not looking good.” He said that the wilderness lakes studied by the group were now contaminated as much as lakes in urban centers. The study is likely to provide further ammunition to critics of the industry, who already contend that oil extracted from Canada’s oil sands poses environmental hazards like toxic sludge ponds, greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of boreal forests. Battles are also under way over the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move the oil down through the western United States and down to refineries along the Gulf Coast, or an alternative pipeline that would transport the oil from landlocked Alberta to British Columbia for export to Asia. The researchers, who included scientists at Environment Canada’s aquatic contaminants research division, chose to test for PAHs because they had been the subject of earlier studies, including one published in 2009 that analyzed the distribution of the chemicals in snowfall north of Fort McMurray. That research drew criticism from the government of Alberta and others for failing to provide a historical baseline. “Now we have the smoking gun,” Professor Smol said. He said he was not surprised that the analysis found a rise in PAH deposits after the industrial development of the oil sands, “but we needed the data.” He said he had not entirely expected, however, to observe the effect at the most remote test site, a lake that is about 50 miles to the north. Asked about the study, Adam Sweet, a spokesman for Peter Kent, Canada’s environment minister, emphasized in an e-mail that with the exception of one lake very close to the oil sands, the levels of contaminants measured by the researchers “did not exceed Canadian guidelines and were low compared to urban areas.” He added that an environmental monitoring program for the region announced last February 2012 was put into effect “to address the very concerns raised by such studies” and to “provide an improved understanding of the long-term cumulative effects of oil sands development.” Earlier research has suggested several different ways that the chemicals could spread. Most oil sand production involve large-scale open-bit mining. The chemicals may become wind-borne when giant excavators dig them up and then deposit them into 400-ton dump trucks. Upgraders at some oil sands projects that separate the oil bitumen from its surrounding sand are believed to emit PAHs. And some scientists believe that vast ponds holding wastewater from that upgrading and from other oil sand processes may be leaking PAHs and other chemicals into downstream bodies of water. 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] John Brennan's extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA Director nomination
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == ==**==**== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ==**==**== Glenn Greenwald commentary: http://www.guardian.co.uk/** commentisfree/2013/jan/07/**john-brennan-dishonesty-cia-** director-nominationhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/07/john-brennan-dishonesty-cia-director-nomination This is an oddly tepid piece by Greenwald. Brennan-directed and Obama-approved drone policies in Pakistan and Yemen are classically terrorist in nature. See, for example, this report on Pakistan: http://livingunderdrones.org/. To call Brennan, or Osama bin Laden, or anyone, an extremist, as Greenwald does, is question-begging. Extremely what? The point is that Brennan supports killing and terrorizing civilians and torturing prisoners. Extremism and dishonesty just muddy matters. 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] Sol Yurick 1935-2013
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Sol Yurick wrote a great article in the Dec. 1970 issue of Monthly Review, one I used to use in classes: The Political Economy of Junk (junk as in heroin). 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] Ex-Maoist believes that Chuck Hagel appointment would be good for antiwar movement
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.thenation.com/blog/172061/will-chuck-hagels-appointment-actually-help-left 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] The disservice done by Lincoln
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I recently saw the movie and I'm happy to recommend that others should see it. I have benefited a great deal from the discussion on this list and i understand that a wide-spread slave revolt was forcing the hand of government. Even within the narrow scope of this movie, would it have been more accurate it it portrayed some acknowledgement of this revolt within Lincoln's circle and in the House of Representatives? ken h 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] Sexual predation and a splitting UK SWP
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Looks likely that the UK's SWP is on the way to a split, with some ructions already in evidence. National Secretary, Martin Smith, has been accused of being a sexual predator, with a session at the SWP's recent conference taking a report of a rape allegation. One commentary is here: http://www.2ndcouncilhouse.co.uk/blog/2013/01/06/misogynists-and-the-left/ -- Jim Moody (j...@redunity.org.uk) on 08/01/2013 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] Sexual predation and a splitting UK SWP
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 08.01.2013 23:36, Jim Moody wrote: snip Looks likely that the UK's SWP is on the way to a split, with some ructions already in evidence. National Secretary, Martin Smith, has been accused of being a sexual predator, with a session at the SWP's recent conference taking a report of a rape allegation. One commentary is here: http://www.2ndcouncilhouse.co.uk/blog/2013/01/06/misogynists-and-the-left/ In the interests of accuracy I'd like to point out that Martin Smith hasn't been national secretary of the SWP or a member of the leadership for the last two years - this is at least partly the result of the allegations which were first raised and discussed within the organisation two years ago. It would be nice if people taking potshots at the SWP could at least be up to date with their information! Whether there will be a split and, if so, on what basis and how large remains to be seen - however I tend to feel that reports of the SWP's demise are rather premature. This week's Socialist Worker contains a report on the conference including a brief discussion of the factions: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=30285 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] How real was 'real socialism'? Michael Lebowitz's 'Contradictions of Real Socialism'
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Review by Doug Enaa Greene The Contradictions of Real Socialism: the Conductor and the Conducted By Michael A. Lebowitz New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012. 221 pages Even though the dominant capitalist system is experiencing its worst crisis in decades, those in search of Marxist alternatives are often scared off by this regular refrain from the system's defenders: “Well, what about the USSR? Things didn't work out quite so well there.” Indeed. The popular memory of the USSR is one of bureaucratic red tape, long lines for basic necessities and harsh repression. If the Marxist answer is that the inevitable outcome of any revolution is merely the drab and misery of the USSR, then it is best to accept capitalism (with all its warts). Or so we are led to believe. http://links.org.au/node/3176 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] Why Progressives Should Oppose Hagel
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == My piece posted on the Progressive webzine... http://www.progressive.org/why-progressives-should-oppose-hagel 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] How real was 'real socialism'? Michael Lebowitz's 'Contradictions of Real Socialism'
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I believe the best response to the question What went wrong with the Soviet Union is What went wrong with the rest of the world? Why didn't it emulate and improve on the Soviet revolution, to show what socialism was capable of in more industrially advanced countries? isn't the best criticism to show how it should have been done? Who among us can offer that? Lester S. On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 3:04 PM, Douglas Greene greene.doug...@ymail.comwrote: == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Review by Doug Enaa Greene The Contradictions of Real Socialism: the Conductor and the Conducted By Michael A. Lebowitz New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012. 221 pages Even though the dominant capitalist system is experiencing its worst crisis in decades, those in search of Marxist alternatives are often scared off by this regular refrain from the system's defenders: “Well, what about the USSR? Things didn't work out quite so well there.” Indeed. The popular memory of the USSR is one of bureaucratic red tape, long lines for basic necessities and harsh repression. If the Marxist answer is that the inevitable outcome of any revolution is merely the drab and misery of the USSR, then it is best to accept capitalism (with all its warts). Or so we are led to believe. http://links.org.au/node/3176 Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/schonbrun%40gmail.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] Why Progressives Should Oppose Hagel
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == My piece, posted on the Progressive webzine... ...The problem today is that neither Hagel’s detractors nor his supporters have really fully laid out who he is or why progressives should firmly oppose his appointment as the Pentagon’s top gun. Certainly, those to the left should not fall into the trap of cheering on Obama’s latest War Department pick, solely because the Right stands opposed… Entire piece at: http://www.progressive.org/why-progressives-should-oppose-hagel 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] What's new at Links: Lenin and Luxemburg, Allende SWP, Spanish United Left, war on terror, Bolivia 2012, USA 2012, No to violence against women, Nigeria, Comintern, Marxism in China, Afric
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == What's new at Links: Lenin and Luxemburg, Allende SWP, Spanish United Left, war on terror, Bolivia 2012, USA 2012, No to violence against women, Nigeria, Comintern, Marxism in China, Africa * * * 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 on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to linkssocial...@gmail.com *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links. *Comments welcome on all articles *Return daily for new articles * * * Paul Le Blanc: Lenin and Luxemburg through each other's eyes http://links.org.au/node/3174 /August Thalheimer, a revolutionary who knew and worked with both of them, insisted on the formulation not Luxemburg *or* Lenin -- but Luxemburg *and* Lenin, explaining that each of them gave ... what the other did not, and could not, give/. By *Paul Le Blanc* (Talk presented**at the International Conference on Lenin's Thought in the Twenty-First Century: Interpretation and Its Value, Wuhan University, October 20-22, 2012.) January 3, 2013 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg first met in 1901 but actually got to know each other amid the revolutionary workers' insurgencies sweeping through Russia and Eastern Europe in 1905-1906. * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3174 Salvador Allende, Cuba and internationalism, 1970--73 http://links.org.au/node/3175 By *John Riddell* January 6, 2013 -- 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the US-inspired rightist coup in Chile that overthrew the leftist government of Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. The coup was a historic disaster for working people in Latin America and globally. Socialists worldwide saw it coming. How did they attempt to counter this danger? * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3175 United Left national convention: 'This is the Spanish SYRIZA!' http://links.org.au/node/3173 By *Dick Nichols*, Madrid January 4, 2013 -- On the last day of the 10th federal convention of the Spain's United Left (Izquierda Unida, IU), Juan Peña, young IU organisation secretary for the Castilian town of Valladolid, summed up his view of the impact of the /indignado/ (15M) movement on the IU, one of the oldest broad left formations in Europe: 15M brought IU good news and bad news. The good news was that our programmatic proposals hit the mark, shared by the people who poured into the streets. The bad news was that the people thought that these proposals were new, their own. * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3173 Is the war on terror going to end? Obama says no... http://links.org.au/node/3171 By *Rupen Savoulian* January 7, 2013 -- The US /National Defense Authorisation Act/, updated by the administration of US President Barack Obama for 2013, has been signed into law. It provides for the indefinite detention of any person suspected of terrorism offences, prohibits the transfer of the remaining Guantanamo Bay detainees from that facility and allows the US military to detain any person, even US citizens without any recourse to civilian courts and legal access. * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3171 Bolivia's 'process of change': the balance sheet for 2012, challenges to come http://links.org.au/node/3170 By *Katu Arkonada*, translation and notes for /Bolivia Rising/ by *Richard Fidler* December 18, 2012 -- 2012 has been a year of transition for the process of change in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, notwithstanding the many events, problems and contradictions encountered by the executive branch during the last 12 months of its administration. A year of transition because we have left behind the 2010-2011 biennial of consolidation following the 64% victory of President Evo Morales in the December 2009 election and are now entering a new biennial, 2013-2014, which will take us very rapidly to the presidential elections of December 2014. * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3170 No to sexual assault! Socialist Alliance statement in solidarity with the international movement against violence against women http://links.org.au/node/3169 January 5, 2013 -- The *Socialist Alliance* (Australia) stands in solidarity with the growing movement in India fighting violence against women. Progressive forces in that country have braved police brutality and repression, mobilising massive turnouts at protests against gender violence. * Read more http://links.org.au/node/3169
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Chuck Hagel Defense: The Combustible Politics Of Obama's Clearest Break From Bush
Hagel seems to have expressed the same opinions as former-Bushie, Powell. Basically, not that covert and even overt regime change policies were wrong or counter-productive, but rather, a bilateral USuk invasion and occupation was ill-advised. In other words, like the current litmus test with Syria, so to speak, don't force a vote on NATO but if they agree to it behind the scenes, bombs away for the entire DC choon gang. And let's remember that Obomber, onced a member of Congress, never opposed the funding of the Iraq occupation. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
