[Marxism] Adams' arrest- a calculated gamble

[Gary MacLennan]

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Before giving my, somewhat random, thoughts on the Adams arrest, let me
recommend that everyone read Joe Craig's post. Its characterization of Sinn
Féin is very convincing IMHO.  I was also hoping that Phil might contribute
a comment, as no one on the list knows more about Irish politics, than he
does.

Firstly, as Joe points out, this arrest had to have been given the go ahead
at the very highest of levels. Sinn Féin knows this as well.  Their initial
response, that the arrest was designed to limit the Party's performance in
the EU elections was also pretty accurate, in all probability.

Sinn Féin retreated from this position when they advanced a conspiracy
theory of the "dark side" inside the police force.  That such a rump exists
goes without saying and Sinn Féin have always known of its existence.
Always.

They also know that the dogs were let out by the Cameron Govt with an ok
from the Obama administration.   But the question remains "Why?" Why did
they take the gamble? (The 'they' would be the ruling elites in the North,
the South, and in Britain.)  My immediate response is, that, in these
cases, there is always an element of they did it to show they could.

At a deeper level, we can ask were they asked to do this by the Southern
Irish govt worried at the rise of Sinn Féin in the South?  Possibly.

The arrest was never a serious exercise in crime investigation.  Without
the aid and assistance of the torturers, they would have known that Adams
would never break. They have merely served to restore some of his lost
revolutionary credentials, in the North that is.  But I am inclined to the
view that the audience, they were aiming for, were the Southerners.  To be
labelled as a murderer of the mother of 11 children, was the setting up of
a red line, and telling Adams that they did not want him to cross it, at
the current level of compromise.

The whole affair also demonstrates the lengths that Sinn Féin  will go to
stay part of the government in N. Ireland.  Therefore, we should not be at
all surprised if additional compromises were not forthcoming from Sinn Féin.


As Joe's post more or less acknowledges, the Irish situation remains locked
in a stasis.  But that situation is almost world wide.  The missing
historical agent, the  working class, stubbornly refuses to take centre
stage. Within N. Ireland, though, no one should doubt their loyalty to Sinn
Féin.

What will break the current stasis?  I have repeatedly predicted a European
uprising, and I think that even I have stopped listening to myself.

But it remains true, that only a genuinely class-for-itself uprising, will
transform the current conjuncture.

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] thoughts on Anzac Day

[Gary MacLennan]

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Today is a public holiday and it is officially devoted to the memory of the
Australian and New Zealand troops, especially the disastrous Gallipoli
campaign.

I do not attend official services and as a Marxist  I remain extremely
alienated from the construction of the cult of the warrior and the notion
of sacrifice. Having said that, my father fought at the battle of the Somme
as a boy of 16, pretending to be 18.  He died believing, I think, that he
had fooled them about his age.  Of course, they did not care.  All just
cannon fodder to the old lie, *Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori*.

So it is with mixed feelings I see the old soldiers or Diggers, as they are
known as here, parade out to remember. They are carefully orchestrated and
anti-war sentiment when it is expressed is drowned out by the offical line
of gratitude for sacrifice.

But sympathetic, as I am,  to the old soldiers, I have no such feeling for
the royals who are currently visiting Australia, the Duke and Duchess of of
Cambridge and their wee'one.  The spectacle of Australians crowding around
to try and touch the royals is too painful for this old republican.  I am
though happy to say that apparently the public enthusiasm is much less than
expected.  The Cambridges, though, are star material in terms of royalty.
If they cannot woo us, then the king-to-be Charles, does not have a chance.

But when are the English ever going to throw off the feudal legacy and
become a republic?  Never I fear.  That is one reason, why I am hoping the
Scots vote for an independent republic in September.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] re [marxism] Venezuela: Chavistas debate pace of change

[Gary MacLennan]

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I actually suspect that they are the same thing, Michael.  The *festina
lente* approach is probably at the bottom of it all, a plea for the master
class to reach a reconciliation with the slaves based on forgiving the
slave for being a slave.

The difficulty is that the master class has no interest in such an outcome.
They want it all and cannot be compromised with.

I have read carefully Joaquin's post about Fidel and Chavez response
following the coup, where the decision was not to put the plotters to the
sword. The two great revolutionaries (use the words carefully and with
total respect) decided that did not make sense.

And now we see the result. I am convinced that it is only the armed
neighborhoods of the poor that prevent a coup.  That I am convinced is
Chavez' greatest legacy.

Tanks and planes and artillery will be needed to subdue them, and when the
capitalist class can secure that outcome, then I believe it is very likely
they will give the go ahead for another attempt.

I may be wrong of course, and there are many comrades who know so much more
than me about Venezuela, who would say so.  Let us hope they are right and
Maduro is not destined to be another Allende.

comradely

Gary


On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 12:22 PM, michael a. lebowitz wrote:

> ==
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> ==
>
>
> pace or direction?
> michael
>
> --
> -
> Michael A. Lebowitz
> Professor Emeritus
> Economics Department
> Simon Fraser University
>  University Drive
> Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
> Home:   Phone 604-689-9510
> Cell: 604-789-4803
>
>
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
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>

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[Marxism] Thoughts on the neo-liberals in Australia

[Gary MacLennan]

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The recent half senate election in Western Australia proved to be quite
interesting. WAers were forced to the polls again because ballot papers had
gone missing during the general Election count.

The multi-millionaire Clive Palmer spent a fortune to secure one Senate
seat.  The ruling Liberals got two.  The interesting news was that the
Greens candidate got a big swing of over 6% and was easily elected.  the
bad news was for the Labor Camp.  They had selected an ultra right
candidate Joe Bullock.  He is from the same source as the former Catholic
Democratic Labor Party that split the Labor vote in the Cold War years.

Bullock has a history of right wing Catholic student activism.  A past he
shares with the conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott.  The Leader of the
Labor Party right winger Bill Shorten described Bullock as the type of
person that was needed in the Labor Party.  The people of WA did not
agree.  When Bullock's anti-homosexual rant to a fundamentalist Christian
group was leaked just prior to the election, the result was a disastrous
drop in the Labor vote.

So it would seem that there is a progressive vote even In WA and that it is
no longer an electoral advantage to be a homophobe and a bigot. Good.


Perhaps, the most interesting aspect of it all is that the Greens would
appear to be tentatively positioning themselves to the left of Labor.
Previously they had campaigned around the inane slogan of "Neither Left nor
Right but out in front".  But the WA election showed that the political
space to be filled is to the Left of Labor. That is where the vacuum is.
Should the Greens move into that space in a principled way, Australian
politics could be transformed. Whatever is going on in the ranks of the
leadership of the Greens, they must be aware that they outflanked Labor on
the left in the WA election and that could be repeated, I believe, in other
polls.

regards

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Venezuela: 'Colectivos' scare campaign demonises the poor

[Gary MacLennan]

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Sorry, Stuart.  I misread your original article.  In any case a plague on
the media in Venezuela (and elsewhere).

comradely

Gary


On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Stuart Munckton wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> As they are prone to do, the private media have invented a new thing. In
> both English and Spanish, they are calling it the *colectivos*.
>
> They are meant to be irrational, cruel, grotesque armed motorbike riders
> who "enforce" the revolution in Venezuela and are responsible for most of
> the violence afflicting the South American nation, which has left more than
> 30 people dead since February.
>
> The opposition barricaders are presented as the innocent victims of these
> collectivos, who apparently work with the National Guard and have the
> support of President Nicolas Maduro's government.
>
> The private media use the concept to demonise the real collectives in
> Venezuela -- feminist collectives, community groups, environment and
> education collectives, cultural groups, mural painters and so on. With the
> government of Hugo Chavez and now Maduro, these have grown, multiplied, and
> united around general support for the Bolivarian revolution.
> https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56219
>
> --
> "Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity's
> original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
> through disobedience and through rebellion." -- Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man
> Under Socialism
>
> "The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
> dummy?" -- Jarvis Cocker
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
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>

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Re: [Marxism] Venezuela: 'Colectivos' scare campaign demonises the poor

[Gary MacLennan]

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Stuart,

The media seldom invent a label or name for a struggle.  What they do is to
raid the armory of the Left and borrow shamelessly from it.  These are the
avatars of possessive individualism, who have seemingly have suddenly
discovered the collective good. Rubbish.  Look at this for an example from
the GLW archives.




*By Anne-Marie Donnellyand Brendan Greenhill*


*BRISBANE -- The Queensland Criminal Justice Commission decided late on
Friday, March 3, not to charge the "Pinkenba Six" with official misconduct
after they were cleared of criminal charges in Brisbane Magistrates Court
on the previous Friday 23.*

The six police had been charged with deprivation of liberty relating to the
dumping of three Aboriginal boys, aged 12, 13 and 14, at the deserted outer
Brisbane suburb of Pinkenba on May 10, 1994.

The police had the nerve to describe themselves in the way that the Left
traditionally does when on trial.

Comradely

Gary


On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Stuart Munckton wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> As they are prone to do, the private media have invented a new thing. In
> both English and Spanish, they are calling it the *colectivos*.
>
> They are meant to be irrational, cruel, grotesque armed motorbike riders
> who "enforce" the revolution in Venezuela and are responsible for most of
> the violence afflicting the South American nation, which has left more than
> 30 people dead since February.
>
> The opposition barricaders are presented as the innocent victims of these
> collectivos, who apparently work with the National Guard and have the
> support of President Nicolas Maduro's government.
>
> The private media use the concept to demonise the real collectives in
> Venezuela -- feminist collectives, community groups, environment and
> education collectives, cultural groups, mural painters and so on. With the
> government of Hugo Chavez and now Maduro, these have grown, multiplied, and
> united around general support for the Bolivarian revolution.
> https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56219
>
> --
> "Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity's
> original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
> through disobedience and through rebellion." -- Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man
> Under Socialism
>
> "The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
> dummy?" -- Jarvis Cocker
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
> http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/gary.maclennan1%40gmail.com
>

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Re: [Marxism] If I lived in Western Australia, I'd vote Socialist Alliance

[Gary MacLennan]

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Amen to these sentiments, John.  Actually what is interesting is that the
ALP has been forced into an anti-Austerity position.  One of course not
well thought out nor one having any moral or intellectual depth.  An ALP
govt would in all probability cut services and raise the consumption tax,
but for the moment they are acting out the part of contrarians.

The reason for this is that the electorate at large is anti-austerity,
especially in Qld and Victoria.  The Northern Territory Govt is also
staggering from crisis to crisis.

"All in all the times are delightful"

comradely

Gary


On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 8:52 PM,  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> To all those who struck or demonstrated for public education this week in
> Western Australia, for all those there who marched in March, for all those
> who want to be active and make the world better, even change the world, one
> small step would be to vote for Socialist Alliance on Saturday in WA as
> part of building a fighting opposition to neoliberalism and more generally
> to capitalism.
>
>
> http://enpassant.com.au/2014/04/03/if-i-lived-in-western-australia-id-be-voting-socialist-alliance/
>
> 
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[Marxism] waiting for the revolution

[Gary MacLennan]

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I read the David Harvey interview with a good deal of interest.  It goes
nicely with Graeber's piece in the Guardian on the weakness of the working
class in that they are willing to take a bullet for what they perceive to
be the collective good.

If one brackets off the TRPF argument and looks at the growing inequality
case as Harvey appears to do in this interview, it reads very much like the
Marxist economists, not able to get on the field themselves, have settled
for cheering on the Keynesian team.  Go Krugman!  Go Stiglitz!

I should say here in parenthesis that I have been faithfully following
Roberts' blog and, within the very pronounced limits  of my understanding
of economics, I feel he puts a very good case for TRPF.

The problem, that I see with cheering on the Keynesians, however, is not
simply  that they will not accept the notion that capitalism is fatally
flawed by a tendency of the rate of profit to fall, or even of the
ecological limits to growth.

The problem remains in essence political. Krugman and Stiglitz will get no
real purchase, until the working class breaks with the ideological fusion
that makes them think that the interests of the 1% or 10% if you like, are
the same as the collective interest.   When that happens the ruling class
will turn to the Keynesians in fear and desperation.

In the meantime, Harvey's metaphor of the volcano is thought provoking.
Eruptions happen but then settle down.  That fits phenomena like the Occupy
movement and above all of the anti-war demonstrations before the Iraq
invasion and probably the Arab Spring as well. But I tend to think that
like all metaphors, the volcano one has its limits.  It is not some
Krakatoa that will break the present impasse, but rather some seemingly
trivial event.  Somewhere, somehow, there will be angry voices raised over
a minor detail.  Someone will shout out "That's not fair!" the call will be
recognized and hey presto we will have our war of maneuver.

& then we *philosophes* will fly in with the owl of Minerva to paint our
grey on grey.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] "The poor are celebrating and the rich are protesting": decent coverage of Venezuela from the AFP

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Interesting, Joseph.   For me, over all this lurks the shades of Allende
and Pinochet and a lesson learned by the people.  It is very much a case of *El
Pueblo Armado jamas sera vencido*, is it not?  It will take planes, tanks
and heavy artillery to dislodge the *collectivos*.   It would seem that he
balance of forces does not permit such an onslaught. So Capriles plays the
medium to long game, while the students, from the born to rule families,
seek to create an atmosphere of crisis in the short term.

I am far from an expert on Venezuela, but it would seem to me that the
ruling party should do all it can to foster the spread the
*collectivos *ideologically
and politically.

comradely

Gary


On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 3:45 AM, Joseph Catron  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> "In the capital, the ideological divide is also split geographically
> between east and west -- the defiant middle-class on one side, a socialist
> slum on the other ...
>
> "Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who lost last year's presidential
> election by a whisker, says the protest movement will not force any
> political change as long as the country's poor stay home."
>
> http://yhoo.it/1lC4s4o
>
> --
> "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
> lytlað."
> 
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[Marxism] Tell me where is hegemony bred?

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Just finished reading Richard's piece on hegemony and the workplace and
particularly the Chatanooga defeat of t he UAW.  His piece touches upon the
nature of work, and of course that is a very complex issue.  I have seen
too much of Indigenous communities without work to have anything other than
a very pro-work attitude, but that's another topic for another day.  There
was one remark of Richard's that gave me pause though.  That was the
throwaway line about a "neo-liberalism of the soul" explanation for the
anti-union vote.   I won't even consider the possibility of that
explanation. Mainly because I have a view of human nature as being
intrinsically social, and a corresponding view of neo-liberalism as being
built around acquisitive individualism.  So for me there are natural limits
to the neo-liberal project of the creation of a new subject, something
which as Richard has pointed out, Foucault brought up in 1979.  Richard
would disagree strongly here, I suspect, but that's ok.

The other point which I wish to make is that if my reading of Richard's
post is accurate he attributes the defeat of the UAW initiative to the role
of extra-factory forces, specifically right wing evangelistic god
botherers.  I am sure he is correct here, but is this not the importation
of a hegemonic force into the factory? For me the evangelists are
hegemonic, largely because of their Utopian striving.  If we use Richard
Dyer's pioneering work on the Utopian elements in the Hollywood musical,
then we can see that the evangelists promise community, abundance,
transparency, intensity and energy  (If you doubt what I say, google Dr
Lance Watson and watch one of his performances).

Can the UAW compete with that?  Well not as they are presently constituted,
but there is a rich history of Utopian striving within the Labour movement
and even, Gawd helps us, on the Left. Within Dyer's analysis the Utopian
qualities are seen as compensation for the fragmentation, scarcity,
manipulations, boredom and alienation of capitalist modernity.  What is
needed of course is a move beyond compensation towards transformation.  I
remained convinced that we are on the cusp of just such an upheaval.  Then
we will find again where hegemony is bred.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Fw: Unprecedented events have taken place in the Indian Parliament yesterday

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Dear Vijaya

no offence taken whatsoever. Absolutely none.  I agree with your comment
about the fixations with Europe and America.  I am in Australia, after all
 Somewhere though there will be a break in the current log jam and wherever
it is we will both rejoice as true internationalists.

warm comradely regards

Gary


On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 10:47 AM, Marla Vijaya kumar wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Gary,
>  I am sorry, I have no intention of belittling the glorious Irish
> struggle. As a communist and internationalist, I fully support their long
> drawn struggle.
> My point is only that people in the West are bothered little when it comes
> to India. My argument is that India with its 1/6 of World's population
> deserves more attention from Marxmailers.
> My feeling is that an average educated Indian is more well versed with
> current and past events the world over, but is not the case with Europeans
> and Americans. In school, we were taught Indian history and along with
> European, American, Japanese and Chinese history in much detail.
> As far as the Bifurcation Bill is concerned, what is humiliating to us,
> Communists in Andhra Pradesh is that, one of the two CPs, the CPI is fully
> committed to bifurcation of the state and the other CP, the CPM wants a
> united state, but does nothing about it.
> The same CP had waged an armed struggle against the Nizam, the autocratic
> ruler of Telangana (then called Hyderabad State) in 1948 and in the 3 years
> of struggle, nearly 2 thousands of communists ( from both Telanagana and
> Andhra regions) had died fighting. But sadly, the same CPI wants the state
> to be divided. What a comedown for the CPI!
> I am a member of CPI for the last 42 years, that is right from my High
> School days. I am committed to my ideology and am a second generation
> member of the CPI in my family (my parents were in the CPI). My commitment
> is to Marxist ideology and I continue to fight with the top leadership of
> CPI against their support for bifurcation, while working in the Party.
> Vijaya KUmar Marla
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 3:55 AM, Gary MacLennan <
> gary.maclenn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Dear Comrade Vijaya,
>
> I understand your feelings.  My last post received no comment and it came
> from my heart.  But I know it was read and sometimes there is nothing to
> say but to offer solidarity and that can be done in silence.
>
> I confess that I have generally been remiss in not following Indian
> politics nearly as closely as I follow Indian cricket (fanatically!).  But
> I was astonished at your complaint about posts on Ireland.  Traditionally
> Indian revolutionaries were  very interested in Ireland and Nehru addressed
> the Irish parliament in what was seen as a gesture of solidarity.
> Somewhere in my library is a booked stamped with "Deannta in Eireann"
> [made in Ireland] and it was published during the boycott of English goods
> organised by the Irish revolutionary movement, Sinn Fein.  That boycott
> movement inspired Indian comrades in the formation of the Swadeshi
> movement.
>
> Sri Aurobindo, before his mystical vision in prison, knew Sister Nivideta
> (nee Margaret Noble in Dungannon, Ireland) the disciple of Vivekananda.
> Moreover Aurobindo wrote the following poem about the Irish Leader Parnell
>
> Charles Stewart Parnell
>
> 1891
>
> O pale and guiding light, now star unsphered,
>
> Deliverer lately hailed, since by our lords
>
> Most feared, most hated, hated because feared,
>
> Who smot'st them with an edge surpassing swords!
>
> Thou too wert then a child of tragic earth,
>
> Since vainly filled thy luminous doom of birth.
>
>
> BTW It would  interesting to compare the current agitation with the
> opposition to the proposed division of Bengal by Lord Curzon in 1905.
>
>
> Comradely
>
>
> Gary
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 1:15 AM, Marla Vijaya kumar  >wrote:
>
> > ==
> > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text

Re: [Marxism] Fw: Unprecedented events have taken place in the Indian Parliament yesterday

[Gary MacLennan]

==
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==


Dear Comrade Vijaya,

I understand your feelings.  My last post received no comment and it came
from my heart.  But I know it was read and sometimes there is nothing to
say but to offer solidarity and that can be done in silence.

I confess that I have generally been remiss in not following Indian
politics nearly as closely as I follow Indian cricket (fanatically!).  But
I was astonished at your complaint about posts on Ireland.  Traditionally
Indian revolutionaries were  very interested in Ireland and Nehru addressed
the Irish parliament in what was seen as a gesture of solidarity.
 Somewhere in my library is a booked stamped with "Deannta in Eireann"
[made in Ireland] and it was published during the boycott of English goods
organised by the Irish revolutionary movement, Sinn Fein.  That boycott
movement inspired Indian comrades in the formation of the Swadeshi
movement.

Sri Aurobindo, before his mystical vision in prison, knew Sister Nivideta
(nee Margaret Noble in Dungannon, Ireland) the disciple of Vivekananda.
Moreover Aurobindo wrote the following poem about the Irish Leader Parnell

Charles Stewart Parnell

1891

O pale and guiding light, now star unsphered,

Deliverer lately hailed, since by our lords

Most feared, most hated, hated because feared,

Who smot'st them with an edge surpassing swords!

Thou too wert then a child of tragic earth,

Since vainly filled thy luminous doom of birth.


BTW It would  interesting to compare the current agitation with the
opposition to the proposed division of Bengal by Lord Curzon in 1905.


Comradely


Gary



On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 1:15 AM, Marla Vijaya kumar wrote:

> ==
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> ==
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Friday, February 14, 2014 11:31 AM, Marla Vijaya kumar <
> marl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
> Dear Comrades,
>I am surprised and also hurt that no one
> responded to the mail I had posted regarding incident in the Indian
> Parliament. The truth is slowly trickling out, that the ruling party
> (congress Party which is running a minority government) and specifically
> the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mr Kamal Nath had orchestrated the
> attack on protesting MPs who are opposed to the bifurcation of the Indian
> State of Andhra Pradesh. Please understand that 65 million people of the
> state are fighting against the denial of access to Hyderabad, the only
> source of jobs and income for young people of the state.
> I wonder why so much discussion takes place about small events in US or
> Syria  or Ireland, but no one bothers about India! Perhaps India is not on
> your radars. The fight is for safeguarding their lingustic state (of 85
> million Telugu speaking people) from being broken to pieces by the ruling
> minority party just for electoral gains. We are fighting with our back to
> the wall and the government is all Parliamentary procedures and even the
> Indian constitution. We have no other recourse, but to approach the Supreme
> Court of India.
> Please understand my hurt feelings
> Vijaya Kumar Marla
> It really hurts me!
> Vijaya Kumar
>
> Original message:
> The ruling Congress Party, the main constituent of United Progressive
> Alliance wanted to introduce a bill for the bifurcation of the state of
> Andhra Pradesh (pop. 85 million) and carve out Telangana State from it,
> with the Capital city of Hyderabad going to it. This has been strongly
> resisted by the people of the other two regions of the state, Coatal Andhra
> and Rayalaseema. 65 million people living in the two regions and the
> Telangana region were agitating against bifurcation as they argue that
> their lives will be adversely affected with the loss of Hyderabad. Almost
> half the population of Telangana are people from the other two regions. The
> movement demanding the carving out of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh is
> spearheaded by a regional fascist party, TRS which began threatening that
> they will kick out the 15 million  Seemandhraites (Coatal Andhra + Rayala
> Seema people) from the new state and will seize their properties.
> The Andhra Pradesh legislative Assembly has majority members from
> Seemandhra region and the Assembly has categorically rejected the Central
> Government's proposal for bifurcation of the state. The resolution of the
> affected State Assembly was ignored by the Center and they had decided to
> introduce t

[Marxism] The spiritual dimension

[Gary MacLennan]

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I have just returned from Mornington Island,- a remote Indigenous community
in the Gulf of Carpentaria. I have been reading Bhaskar's analysis of the
global financial crisis as a triple dis-embedding - the dis-embedding of
money from the economy; of the economy from society and of society from its
spiritual base.  Leftists like myself are never very comfortable with
concepts like spiritual.  All too quickly it reeks of the opiate of the
masses.  But what precisely does Bhaskar mean by "spiritual"?  Well it
seems to have a full interpretive  range from a secularist emphasis on
love, solidarity, care and nurture to a quasi mystical  or religious
experience.  Bhaskar himself leaves open to his readers to choose where to
place the emphasis.

On the Island, I had a couple of minor epiphanies.  I watched Socrsese's
The Wolf of Wall Street.  I don't like Scorsese films.  I have long hated
the fact that in his imaginary even the gangsters aren't likable.  Humanity
is simply "*une merde*". So not surprisingly I loathed The Wolf.
 Nevertheless if I was asked for the meaning of Bhaskar's triple
dis-embedding account, I would point to Scorsese's film and say that it is
what it looks like.

The Di Caprio character begins as Faustus to McConaghy's Mephistopheles,
who lectures him on the necessity for drugs and to improve his "rookie
numbers" i.e. the number of times he jerks off.  At the end of the film, Di
Caprio's character has morphed into Mephistopheles, going around, holding
seminars where he begins by asking the wannabes to "Sell me this pen".  We
have entered one of the circles of Hell and there is no escape.  Whatever
the spiritual base of society might be, it has been thoroughly obliterated
by a flood of greed and lust.

So somewhat depressed by Scorsese's film I stood meditating on all this at
the Mornington Island airstrip.  There was a handful of us waiting to catch
the light plane out.  I noticed a young to middle aged mother carrying a
baby of about 10 moths.  His head was hanging back and he appeared to be
blind.  Cerebral palsy or fetal alcohol syndrome?  The woman and the baby
were part of a family, A man and two young boys were clearly about to head
on to the plane.  Just as we were called the family split up amid goodbyes,
and then suddenly one of the boys turned round and kissed the little baby
on the forehead.  The child showed no sign of understanding what was done.
 But the kiss was a gesture of such ineffable tenderness, that I was
embarrassed to see it.  Yet I also realized that what I had seen was the
spiritual base in action.  The boy will never get to sniff up drugs on Wall
Street, make millions, bang hookers by the dozen, live in a mansion, drive
luxury automobiles, dine on lobster and champagne or get to feature in a
Scorsese movie, but he had more decency and humanity in his little finger
than all of the wolfs of Wall Street.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Why aren’t the poor storming the barricades?

[Gary MacLennan]

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Very interesting.  The Cato institute's analysis that in terms of
consumption we are all equal.  Australia's richest person, or one of them,
the mining magnate Gina Rinehart has assets worth 18 billion or so.  The
gap between narrows when we discuss consumption.  It would seem.  She is a
great porker of an individual, so I am not entirely convinced by that
analysis.  I also suspect that the quality of the wine we both consume is
somewhat different.  But let's allow that Gina and I are almost equal in
terms of consumption.

Where is the difference then pray tell?  Well of course there is power. I
rave and rant about the vileness and the stupidities of the ruling class
and the politicians. I almost wept when I saw the videos that accompanied
Lou's blog on Mercedes Sosa: such poverty and such misery and there is
nothing I can do about it.  Rinehart meanwhile is busy buying up an
important newspaper and when she clicks her fingers politicians come
running. She talks disgraceful rubbish about the poor and gets away with it
all. She would have an IQ of around 80 on a good day with the sun shining
and the wind behind her. Still she is Ms Powerful here in Oz.

There is also the difference in security. Like most people my age I dwell
in Precaria.  I manage (well), but am just like most people a hop, skip and
a jump away from economic misery. Rinehart on the other hand is like to
survive the coming plunge.  That is what the super rich do. In fact they
emerge stronger from crises. Ask the Mellon family about the Great
Depression.  It is only if the economic crisis becomes a political one that
there will be a danger to the likes of Rinehart.

Which brings me to the key question,  not "Why aren't the poor out in the
streets?", but why is *The Economist* asking it.  A subsidiary question
here might be "why has a conservative organization like Oxfam highlighted
the fact that 85 people own 50% of the world's wealth?"  For me that answer
is two fold.  Always and always , power and privilege and the ability to
dominate is accompanied by fear.  No rulers are without fear of those they
rule.
the second answer for me brings us back to consumption.  the other side of
the Cato analysis is that there is not much of a consumption gap between
the rich and the poor, means in fact that there is under-consumption.
Imagine those 85 trillionaires pigging out all day long and I am sure they
do.  There would still be a short fall in consumption.

Now I can almost hear the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF)
folk getting restless.  And before I scuttle back into the
under-consumptionist closet, I want to share briefly an experience I had at
the recent Post Keynesian conference at the University of New South Wales,
December 2013. It was attended by great figures like Professors Harcourt
and Neville and Kriesler.  I was lucky enough to have time to talk to
them.  They were incredibly erudite yet very gracious with it.  I confessed
that I was an economic ignoramus and that when I read Michael Roberts or
Andrew Kliman I became a believer in the TRPF, but that when I read Krugman
and co I became an under-consumptionist. But they assured me it was a case
of both explanations being valid.  So there!

Comradely

Gary


On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 6:48 AM, Marv Gandall  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> (The focus should have more properly been on the demise of the once
> powerful international trade union and socialist movement and the resulting
> power imbalance between the classes only fleetingly mentioned in the last
> paragraph.)
>
> Why aren’t the poor storming the barricades?
> The Economist
> Jan 21st 2014
>
> MATT MILLER of the Washington Post has a hunch: there hasn’t been a
> “broader revolt” of the underclass against rising income inequality, he
> writes, because the poor don’t experience inequality as intolerable.
> Pointing to a Cato Institute report by Will Wilkinson from 2009, Mr Miller
> suggests that “technology’s impact on quality and prices complicates the
> way people perceive these matters and how we should judge them”:
>
> That’s because the surging income gap often masks a narrowing difference
> in the actual consumption experiences of the rich and the rest of us. 'At
> the turn of the 20th century, only the mega-rich had refrigerators or
> cars,' Wilkinson wrote. 'But refrigerators are now all but universal in the
> United States, even as refrigerator inequality continues to grow.'...The
> difference between the rich man’s $11,000 Sub-Zero 'monument to food
> preservation' and the poor man’s $550 fridge from IK

[Marxism] a tale of two snips

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


1. By framing the future as a stark choice between hard environmental
limits and unlimited human possibility, Ehrlich and Simon did us a
disservice. Values, trade-offs, and compromises are at the heart of
societal solutions. Polemics may excite and instruct, but collegial debate,
negotiation, and respect for a diversity of perspectives are prerequisites
for solving the perpetual problems of humans and their environment (snipped
from The Chronicle of Higher Education Review
January 20, 2014 By Erle C. Ellis)



2. You would think it possible to take ideas from both sides and put them
to work together. In order to agree that America’s schools ought to be
better (Ravitch), we don’t have to believe that they are worse than ever
(Rhee). We don’t have to think, as Rhee does, that “great” teaching is a
magic bullet in order to agree with Ravitch that the training of teachers
ought to be more rigorous and that our nation needs “a stable workforce of
experienced professional educators” who receive good compensation and
respect. Rhee is right that our schools could use some shaking up. Ravitch
is right that “the wounds caused by centuries of slavery, segregation, and
discrimination cannot be healed by testing, standards, accountability,
merit pay, and choice.”

Perhaps a starting point would be to acknowledge, as Ravitch does, that the
golden age of master teachers and model children never existed, and, as
Rhee insists, that the bureaucracy of our schools is wary of change. One
thing that certainly won’t help our children is any ideology convinced of
its exclusive possession of the truth (snipped from Andrew Delbanco’s The
Two Faces of American Education, New York Times Review of Books).

My comment: What struck me most about reading these two pieces on one the
education wars and the other on the environmental wars was the conclusion
by both authors.  Like classic petty bourgeois intellectuals they sought
compromise and were terrified of polarisation.  I was also struck by my own
rejection of the call for middle ground and the whine that polarisation was
bad for humanity.  My years as a Catholic and a Leninist no doubt stand me
in good stead here.  Although I hasten to add that it is not that I am
unwilling to compromise, far from it, but that I reject automatically the
premise that the truth must be in the middle.  Sometimes one side is just
wrong and one side is just right. In these two disputes, Ravitch for me is
100% right and so is Erlich and to suggest that they are somehow to blame
for fighting for their beliefs is also 100% wrong.


comradely

Gary

.

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Re: [Marxism] At Davos, guarded relief about world economy, concern about global mass protest and rise of the anti-euro right

[Gary MacLennan]

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Interesting indeed.  I subscribe to China Spectator and it too had an
article about the distribution or rather non-distribution of wealth in
Australia and saying it was a bad thing. What is the meaning of this?  Is
the intelligentsia of the right getting alarmed and trying to coax their
masters into less greed?  Perhaps.

But nothing will take the fingers of the rich from their hoards of wealth,
noting short of a true revolutionary upsurge.  Only the specter of red
terror will allow even a modest opening to the Keynesian alternative.

What is happening it seems to me is that the bottom 20% who were rusted on
to the Social Democrats and Labour have had a gut full of over 30 years of
the most stark betrayal.  They are beginning to drift and the first move is
to the far right. In Australia the party of Billionaire Clive Palmer could
also makes gains in the present set up.

Now I may be wrong, but I think none of that worries the ruling class. Not
a bit. The ruling classes  will find their Hitler like sycophants among the
far right and use them.  The rise of the fascists will only pull Labour and
the Social Democrats further to the right. If necessary as in Greece they
will go into government with the right.

Re the economic upsurge: I do not know enough to be sceptical, but I
seriously doubt that we are in for good economic times.  If Brazil, India
and China hit any kind of wall, that will put an end to any upturn.

There are some crucial by-elections coming up in Oz, at the federal and
state (Qld) level and then there will be a series of state elections.  The
ruling conservatives might lose the by-elections and that would show that
there is resistance to the politics of austerity among the working class.
Not of course that the Murdoch press will allow that conclusion to be
easily formed.

comradely

Gary


On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 11:49 PM, Marv Gandall  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Populism puts global elite on alert
> By Gideon Rachman
> Financial Times
> January 21 2014
>
> This year’s meeting of the World Economic Forum, which begins Wednesday,
> will be the first “normal” Davos for five years. Ever since the collapse of
> Lehman Brothers, in September 2008, a sense of crisis has hovered over the
> annual event.
>
> The nature of the fears bothering Davos man – and woman – changed slightly
> from year to year as worries about the collapse of the global financial
> system gave way to a fear of another Great Depression, and then to more
> specific concerns about the collapse of the eurozone.
>
> This year, however, the clouds have thinned, the terrors have lifted – and
> genuine optimism has returned. The threat of financial collapse now seems
> reassuringly remote. The US economy is strengthening and could grow 3 per
> cent this year. A strong rebound is also under way in the UK. And both the
> eurozone and Japan will also grow this year, albeit at slower rates.
>
> An economic rebound has also led to a modest recovery in political
> confidence. Talk of the “decline of the west”, which has been ubiquitous in
> recent years, is less common. Instead, it is becoming fashionable to argue
> that emerging markets are due for a correction – and to highlight political
> problems in rising powers such as China, India and Brazil.
>
> Genuine economic and political turmoil in the Bric nations or other
> emerging markets would be a source of deep concern. But a modest
> correction, if combined with a western revival, is not enough to disturb
> the “good news” story that is likely to dominate this year’s Davos.
>
> But while optimism has returned for the bankers, businesspeople,
> politicians and random celebrities who like to assemble at the WEF, their
> overarching narrative about the way the world works is now more complicated
> than it was in the pre-crisis era.
>
> Before the financial crash, Davos was essentially a festival devoted to
> celebrating the virtues of globalisation. While anti-globalisation
> protesters were occasionally given a voice (or more often confined to the
> “Open Forum”, well away from the posh hotels), their arguments about
> inequality were seen as pretty marginal.
>
> In 2014, however, the sense that something is wrong with the way the
> rewards of globalisation are distributed has entered mainstream debate.
>
> One common trend in recent years – linking the rich economies of the west,
> with the emerging powers – has been outbreaks of large-scale social
> protest, highlighting inequality and corruption.
>
> The examples keep piling up: the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, the
> 

[Marxism] more on Nietzsche

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Shaun has once again defended Nietzsche against the charges of being a
nationalist and an anti-semite. I repeat here no one, absolutely no one, in
this thread has accused Nietzsche of nationalism or anti-semitism.


He also has accused me of being ideological.   Frankly I do not understand
that at all.  My approach to Nietzsche is simply to read him and to assume
he means what he says. So I believe him when he writes in *The Will to
Power* 734 - “Sympathy for decadents, equal rights for the ill-constituted
– that would be the profoundest immorality,  that would be antinature
itself”.  In the same aphorism he calls for these “decadents” to be
“excised”.


In methodological terms what is one to make of this?  One could try the
tack of saying that Nietzsche must just have had a bad day at the office.  This
won’t work, because his corpus has other instances of talk of the “botched”
and arguing that one should dispose of them.  Besides his whole work is
full of aristocratic elitism and attacks on anyone who would wish to succor
the disabled. Now if I were sitting opposite to Shaun right now and Mark
popped in, I would ask them to respond in a non-ideological way to WP 734.


So what am I saying here?  Well there is what Berkowitz calls a “bloody
Nietzsche” – no doubt at all about it. If I am challenged on this I will
reply with quote after quote – so don’t go there.  What is one to do with
this Nietzsche?  Williams calls him “embarrassing”.  Warren tries his best
to rescue Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power and to suggest that it
has nothing to do with domination. For Warren the Will to Power is about
agency.  But this won’t fly at all, because every time Nietzsche talks
about power he uses the metaphors of domination.  More difficult is the
point that Nietzsche was such an elitist that he endorsed the role of the
hermit and the abandonment of any role as a ruler.  But this rejection of
domination as Berkowitz points out is a rejection of the people, or as
Nietzsche would have it of the “botched”, and not of the politics of
domination.


I am currently going through the Gay Science, and if I have time I will
take up Nietzsche and laughter. I will content myself for the moment with
pointing out this view of human nature:

“Even the most hurtful man is still perhaps in respect to the conservation
of the race, the most useful of all; for he conserves in himself, or by his
effect on others, impulses without which mankind might have long ago have
languished or decayed.  Hatred, delight in mischief, rapacity and ambition,
and whatever else is called evil – belong to the marvelous economy of the
conservation of the race; to be sure a costly, lavish and on the whole very
foolish economy; - which has, however, until now preserved our race, as is
demonstrated to us” (GS 1).


This is wrong on so many levels. Its morality is revolting. Logically also
it is deeply flawed.  Bhaskar is quite correct when he points out that the
world of what Nietzsche terms, so endearingly as “hatred, rapacity and
ambition” depends on the world of love and care and solidarity.  If the
latter were not the ground state of humanity we would long ago have
perished as a species.


So let me throw down a final challenge to comrades Mark and Shaun.  I say
to them the “botched” of the world are more important to our survival than
all of Nietzsche’s “blond beasts”.  Tell me how I am being ideological when
I say that.


comradely


Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Nietzsche on MLK

[Gary MacLennan]

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Well Shaun,

this is the first, if I may so, false note in this thread. You simply
repeat Kaufman's defence and then describe those who do not agree with you
as producing  "effluent". No one has made the simple mistake of saying
Nietzsche was anti-semitic. No one.  Yet you simply trot out the bit about
the sister. As my post this morning pointed out I addressed Nietzsche on
truth, morality and power.  On all of which he was wrong and often
revoltingly so. Defend him on that territory if you can and I won't hold my
breath while I'm waiting.


comradely

Gary


On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 7:44 PM, shaun may  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> That old chestnut, once again, of Nietzsche's work as a philosophical
> source of anti-semitism and fascism. I am disappointed to hear such
> hackneyed effluent and misrepresentation tediously rolled out on this list.
> (Yawn, yawn)
> Nietzcshe himself was virulently opposed to anti-semitism ("anti-semitic
> canaille") and nationalism in his lifetime. It was sister Elizabeth and
> others who doctored his writings which served the purposes of Fascism.
> There is no direct road from FN to Fascism. Just as there is no direct
> road from Marx to Stalin. If the writings of great thinkers are
> sufficiently twisted, and dogmatically and doctrinally relocated out of the
> historical conditions of their creation, it is entirely possible to make a
> stinking and decaying pig's ear out of an embroidered philosophical silk
> purse.
> http://shaunpmay.wordpress.com
> http://spmay.wordpress.com
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
> http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/gary.maclennan1%40gmail.com
>

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Re: [Marxism] Nietzsche on MLK

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Hi Jim,

It is 33 degrees C here in Brisbane at 10.30 am and I feel as if my brains
are frying.

I think there are two elements to this thread.  My original contribution
addressed Nietzsche on truth where he confuses truth and meaning and
therefore was wrong; on morality where he substituted emotivism for
personalism, again wrong; and power where in Bhaskar's terms he championed
Power2, that is exploitation, domination and exploitation, again wrong.

There other element in the thread and the one that has gotten the most
attention is that he had a large and distinguished number of followers on
the left. The implication here being, I suspect, that he couldn't have been
all bad. If we were to hear precisely what the left find attractive or
useful about Nietzsche then this thread could be advanced.

comradely

Gary


On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 11:42 PM, Jim Farmelant  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
>
> Clearly, there were many aspects of Nietzsche's message that would make
> him an appealing figure to the far right. Nietzsche was an unabashed
> elitist. He was outspokenly contemptuous of Christian ethics, especially of
> its softer side which counselled compassion and taught that all people were
> equal before God. Nietzsche taught that hierarchies of all sorts were
> inevitable and desirable.  On the other hand, much of his appeal to the far
> right also came as a result of the distortions of his writings that were
> perpetrated by his sister who was indeed a supporter of Fascism, and later,
> National Socialism. To do that, she had to cover up Nietzsche's
> philo-semitism and his occasional rejections of biological racism, as well
> as his contempt for the Prussian Junkers and indeed, often expressed
> contempt for the German people (Nietzsche seems to have thought, perhaps
> incorrectly, that he had some Polish ancestry).
>
> And yes, we are still left with the fact that he has long been, and
> continues to be, widely admired on the left. I have already mentioned that
> even in his own lifetime he had admirers in the SPD, and supporters among
> Russian Marxists, including Bolsheviks like Lunacharsky. Mention has been
> made of Lukacs, whose own relationships with Nietzscheanism, were, to say
> the least, complicated. The young Lukacs, who was one of Max Weber's bright
> young men, was very much an admirer of Nietzsche. After Lukacs became a
> Marxist, he repudiated his previous support for Nietzsche. Yet, arguably,
> Nietzsche had left an indelible mark on the Hungarian philosopher.
>
> As you say, Foucault was an interesting case. After he was expelled from
> the PCF and he repudiated Marxism, Foucault proclaimed himself to be a
> Nietzschean, yet his relationships with both Marxism and Nietzscheanism
> were complicated. Foucault's Nietzscheanism was apparent, such as when in
> works like, Discipline and Punish, he wrote about pursuing a genealogical
> analysis of the rise of imprisonment as the chief means for punishing
> criminals. Yet, in that same book, he also made extensive use of Marxist
> analysis too when he attempted to delineate the social functions of
> punishment.
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> http://www.foxymath.com
> Learn or Review Basic Math
>
>
> -- Original Message --
> From: Gary MacLennan 
> Subject: Re: [Marxism] Nietzsche on MLK
> Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 13:38:46 +1000
>
> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Hi Jim,
>
> Well you are softer on Nietzsche than I am. I admit though one has to
> account for his influence on the left. One could point out that reading and
> interpretation are creative acts and so it is not easy to predict what one
> will get from a writer.
> But that seems something of a cop out to me.
>
> Warren has argued that like Hegel, Nietzsche writings are politically
> indeterminate and so can have followers across the political spectrum. The
> problem is that I do not think that Nietzsche's politics are politically
> indeterminate at all.  They leap out at one from every page.
> 
> Do THIS before eating carbs (every ti

Re: [Marxism] Nietzsche on MLK

[Gary MacLennan]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Hi Jim,

Well you are softer on Nietzsche than I am. I admit though one has to
account for his influence on the left. One could point out that reading and
interpretation are creative acts and so it is not easy to predict what one
will get from a writer.
But that seems something of a cop out to me.

Warren has argued that like Hegel, Nietzsche writings are politically
indeterminate and so can have followers across the political spectrum. The
problem is that I do not think that Nietzsche's politics are politically
indeterminate at all.  They leap out at one from every page.  Nor am I at
all certain that it is correct to say, as most people do, that his
philosophy is not very systematic. He is a proto-fascist through and
through. The genocidal butchers in Germany's colony of South West Africa,
were true Nietzscheans.

Yet the facts are there.  Nietzsche's first followers were on the left.
Feminists too used his ideas, unbelievable as that seems.

I have dipped into Geoff Waite's strange book *Nietzsche's Corps/e* and
what I get from it is the suggestion that the Left were seduced by
Nietzsche's revolutionary fervour.  He was of course a revolutionary of the
right.  Yet in my own time I have seen, leftists try to make cause with the
fascistic right in N. Ireland, and some have even tried that tack in Greece
with the Golden Dawn.

Finally though I settle for the explanation, admittedly not a very good
one, that those who suffer from the pain of "knowledge without power" and
who are isolated from the people/masses/working class, are prone to the
Nietzschean temptation.

Your last point about Foucault and Nietzscheanism, is the very reason why I
took up the study of Nietzsche's work and why I always insisted that
students should read Nietzsche, before going anywhere near Foucault.

comradely

Gary


On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 11:59 AM, Jim Farmelant  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
>
> Here is an old post of mine that I wrote on Nietzsche some years ago. (
> http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2007w27/msg00166.html).
>
> I think that any discussion of Nietzsche and politics has to take into
> account the fact that he has long been a popular figure on the left as well
> as the right. Even in his own lifetime, German Social Democrats were
> already striving to integrate his ideas into their brands of Marxism.  In
> Russia, following the failed 1905 revolution, certain Russian Marxists like
> Anatoli Lunacharsky began to take a great interest in him. Trotsky wrote a
> famous polemic against Nietzsche but one can't help feeling that the Old
> Man himself was influenced by Nietzsche.
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> http://www.foxymath.com
> Learn or Review Basic Math
>
>
> -- Original Message --
> From: Jeff Rubard 
> To: farmela...@juno.com
> Subject: [Marxism] Nietzsche on MLK
> Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 14:03:52 -0800
>
> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> The essay on Bhaksar and Nietzsche by Gary McLennan is very interesting. I
> personally have never read Bhaksar, since I haven't seen his works in
> bookstores since my days in Pittsburgh, but Nietzsche himself is now
> available in his (German) entirety at a new "munificent" website, Nietzsche
> Source [http://www.nietzschesource.org/], and so there is perhaps no way
> around the confrontation between "populist reason" and a couple of
> varieties of postmodernism.
>
> A
> 
> How Cruise Lines Fill All Those Unsold Cabins?
> (HINT: You will want to book a cruise after you read this...)
> http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/52ddd4acd3f1f54ac3d29st01vuc
>
> 
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Re: [Marxism] Nietzsche on MLK

[Gary MacLennan]

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Hi Jeff,
Glad you found it of interest.  I intend to expand this piece into a proper
confrontation between critical realism and Nietzscheanism, that is if I
ever get time from trying to hustle a living together.

Now I agree that it is very interesting how they managed to make
unrespectable any statement of the oh so obvious links between Nietzsche
and the Nazis.  I suspect Kaufman's role in rehabilitating Nietzsche was
crucial here. Certainly Lukacs seems to think so.

The tactics the apologists employ are actually worth a separate study & I
may get round to that.

comradely

Gary


On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 8:03 AM, Jeff Rubard  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> The essay on Bhaksar and Nietzsche by Gary McLennan is very interesting. I
> personally have never read Bhaksar, since I haven't seen his works in
> bookstores since my days in Pittsburgh, but Nietzsche himself is now
> available in his (German) entirety at a new "munificent" website, Nietzsche
> Source [http://www.nietzschesource.org/], and so there is perhaps no way
> around the confrontation between "populist reason" and a couple of
> varieties of postmodernism.
>
> Although we have all been carefully instructed not to say so, I think it is
> simply patent that Nietzsche was the philosopher of fascism, both in its
> virulent manifestation 1920-1945 and in attenuated forms approaching or
> joining neoliberalism afterwards (Niklas Luhmann once drew attention to the
> fact that the Freie Demokratische Partei had absorbed the most old Nazis
> out of the postwar parties, and I think this bears some thinking upon).
>
> When we look at "what Nietzsche really says", not only about the extant
> socialist movement of the 19th century but really about anything, it is
> like peering into the mind of, if not Hitler, at least definitely
> Mussolini. His vaunted atheism of course contains the anti-Semitism he is
> supposedly free of (Judaism appearing as a 'revolt against reality'; we
> know since Erich Auerbach this is not philologically justified, at any
> rate) and he never misses a chance to speak against "equaliberty" in any
> form.
>
> Certain later statements of Nietzsche's foreshadow the EU (seriously), and
> so the problem is not that he is "out of date"; the problem is that his
> views offer a seductive congener of genuine emancipation. In an era where
> the newly trendy Francois Laruelle can say a Nietzschean politics is the
> only genuine anti-fascism, spending more time in Friedrich's attic with the
> ultramontanes, the egoists of "genuine culture", the misogynists up to
> saying women can't cook well, and other detritus of the 20th century is
> perhaps not optional.
>
> Jeff Rubard
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
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Re: [Marxism] Adolfo Olaechea is dead

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


De mortuis nihil nisi bonum I suppose, but I cannot forgive him for his
attitude towards the Embassy siege.

Gary


On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 11:11 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> I just discovered from a notice on his Facebook page that he has succumbed
> to cancer of the pancreas. He was a Peruvian Maoist who I had some
> memorable flame wars with on the mailing list that preceded this one and
> that actually forced its creation. He was a larger than life character that
> I developed some affection for after we no longer were fighting within the
> confined space of a listserv. I will be posting a longer piece about him
> later today.
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
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[Marxism] thoughts on Nietzsche

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


I am currently reading through Mervyn Harwig's series of interviews with
Roy Bhaskar (The Formation of Critical Realism: A personal Perspective,
Routledge, 2010).  It is I believe the ideal introduction to Bhaskar's
thought and I recommend it highly.  I was though particularly impressed by
Bhaskar and Hartwig's positioning of critical realism as anti-Nietzschean.

I have been meaning for some time to do a proper study of Nietzschean
thought, but it is such a huge undertaking and the more I read Nietzsche,
the more disgust I feel for him. But still, his influence persists and
every generation throws up its Nietzscheans.  I have just completed going
through Lukacs' polemic against Nietzsche and I recommend it highly.  It is
an oasis of sanity and political clarity, and helps locate and explain
Nietzsche's appeal.  I especially like his comments on the faux radicalism
of Nietzsche and how his stance on morality appealed to a layer of isolated
intellectuals.

Lukacs reads Nietzsche as the forerunner of imperialism and I am sure he is
correct in that. The heroic water boarder, Maya of *Zero Dark Thirty*, is a
classical Nietzschean figure.  We are meant to see her as beyond good and
evil in a frightening magnificent way. The truth is closer if we regard her
as the purveyor of tawdry and banal perversions.

Yesterday, I picked up a second hand copy of Dusan Zarac's little pamphlet
On Nietzsche - which is based on a series of lectures he gave in Western
Australia.  Zarac's a Croatian Australian philosopher. His book is
remarkable for its emphasis on the dangers to one's health of reading
Nietzsche.  What is the meaning of this?  Personally I think Nietzsche
appeals to the isolated intellectual, someone who is vulnerable to mental
stresses in any case. But it is also meant to convey an element of danger
and excitement to Nietzschean thought.  It is meant to give the impression
to the reader of Nietzsche that he or she is boldly going.

But what is there when one finally reaches the destination?  The attack on
Christianity that so excites Dusan is aimed at that element which justifies
Christianity -its intermittent championing of social justice. The will to
power is of course at the heart of Nietzschean thought and perhaps is its
most harmful legacy.  Unless we move dramatically in the opposite
direction, we will not survive as a species.

Then there is what Lukacs' terms Nietzsche's epistemology which so
undergirds poststructuralist thought.  Yet as Bkaskar pointed out in 1994,
Nietzsche here confuses truth and meaning when he says "truth is a mobile
army of metaphors".  It was Foucault's great mistake to take up this
confusion, weld it to the will to power and come up with "truth regimes".
If he had thought instead of meaning regimes, then we might have gotten
somewhere.

Finally in one of my last lectures, I told my students that if they ever
heard a lecturer say "There is no such thing as the truth" or "There is no
absolute truth", they should know that they were in the presence of the
intellectually inferior and they should immediately ask "Is that true?", or
"Is that absolutely true?"

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Re: [Marxism] back to taking power?

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Hi Andrew I read this carefully.  You are correct when you say there is
confusion there.  For me, the problem is the legacy of libertarian thought
heavily inflected by post structuralism.  Thus we had "rhizomes" and "empty
signifiers":.  Jayzusss Krayst but I hate that crap.

What we are seeing is a situation that calls for a class analysis.  The
role of the rural masses, i.e. the peasantry, is very significant in the
Arab world especially, but I suspect not only there.

The priests still seem to have the edge in organizing the rural masses.
What is needed is for the Left to advance demands that meet the needs of
the peasants.  Where is Mao when you need him?

In any case, the question of the seizure of power is coming to the fore.
In a crisis of this magnitude, the Right will seize power if the Left does
not.  In is in that context that the Libertarian strain, is for me a woeful
distraction.  I think that what we are seeing is that the 2011 wave of
libertarian organizing has exhausted itself and for once and at long last
the problem is emerging of how to directly challenge state power.

Talk of diagonals, verticals and horizontals is just so intellectual
fluff.  The situation is becoming too serious for all that nonsense.

comradely

Gary




On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 1:11 AM, Andrew Pollack  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Although some of the formulations are confusing, this piece seems to be
> rejecting the "don't take state power" line, and argues for linking up
> local, national and transnational efforts through democratic assemblies as
> a way of taking, or at least pushing aside, the State.
>
> And his notion of "diagonal" organizing might prove helpful in overcoming
> the horizontalist fetish.
>
> Note also his belief that the level of anger and potential for mobilization
> in Europe, especially the southern tier, is still high (more on that
> later).
>
> Andy P.
>
> http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/922.php
> “Which Way to the Winter Palace, Please?” Transnational Echoes and Blocked
> Transformations
>  Mario Candeias
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
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Re: [Marxism] ALP icons: Abbott not enough of a neo-liberal extremist for our likings!

[Gary MacLennan]

==
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==


I was about to post something on this story.  I will not buy or read
Murdoch's Australian, but I caught the headline in a shop.  I cannot stop
feeling disgusted at the Labor Party Right. My first response is the Irish
one.  I think of them as "traitors", but truly Hawke and Keating and the
likes are simply being true to their natures.  They feel their master's
voice in their very being and can give expression to it without being asked
to.  they have not gone over to the enemy.  They are the enemy.

This means that we are austerity bound in Australia.  The Tory government
wants to slash and slash but is a little anxious.  The Labor Party
campaigned in the election on an anti-cuts platform, and that is what saved
them from an electoral wipe out, and narrowed the conservative victory to
such an extent that an austerity offensive contains electoral dangers for
the government.  What Hawke and Keating are attempting to do is to ensure
that the Labor Party does not mount an anti-austerity campaign, that could
in fact destabilize the government.

So the Australian public must be  softened up.  They have to be told the
"economy" needs austerity.  The economy - that disembedded phenomenon that
somehow floats in the ether apart from society. And who better to come out
with that message than the Labor stalwarts - Hawke and Keating, who
presided over the  first wave of neo-liberalism.  Now they are trotted out
by the Murdoch press as tame little pets to say what the master wants said.

We are in then for vampire capitalism in Oz.  Only a political storm in
Europe, can save us.  May 2014 be the year of the European Spring.  That
would give the phrase "Happy New Year" some real content.

comradely

Gary


On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 11:05 AM, Michael Karadjis wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Bob Hawke and Keating tell Tony Abbott to slash spending
>  a.. by:TROY BRAMSTON
>  b.. From:The Australian
>  c.. January 01, 201412:00AM
> http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/cabinet-papers/
> bob-hawke-and-keating-tell-tony-abbott-to-slash-spending/
> story-fnkuhyre-1226792796760?from=public_rss&utm_source=
> The%20Australian&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&
> net_sub_uid=75858467
>
>
> 
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Re: [Marxism] Why celebrities love twitter and I hate it

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


I have never tweeted, and doubt if I ever will.  Yet I have followed tweets
at certain times>  When the Occupy Oakland movement was at its height I
followed tweets from the participants.  It gave me a feeling for the
unfolding drama.  Leastways I thought it did. Richard Seymour tweets from
demos, as well, and you do get the excitement of the eye-witness account,
But Louis above all lives for analysis and dialogues and that you cannot
get from tweets.

Clay thinks they are the haikus of today.  I tend to think that they are
more like the aphorisms of yesteryear.  Tweets do have the appeal of the
cryptic, but if it is understanding we want rather than the spontaneity of
recording, then tweets are woefully inadequate.

comradely

Gary


On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 1:42 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> I've been paying more attention to twitter lately more out of an attempt
> to understand it as a phenomenon than to participate.
>
> I started following whoever is recommended--who knows what algorithm is
> used. So I see that if you follow Glenn Greenwald, you don't have the
> privilege of replying. No wonder celebrities love it. They can dispense
> their 140 character words of wisdom without having to put up with the
> riffraff answering them.
>
> Bhaskar Sunkara, a minor celebrity, is kind enough to allow his followers
> to reply to a tweet. So just a few minutes ago I see his series of snide
> tweets on Kshama Sawant, Ty Moore and Socialist Alternative. I thought
> about trying to explain to him why it is important for the left to rally
> around such campaigns even if you understand what is wrong with Socialist
> Alternative. How do you do that in 140 characters? Impossible. That is why
> Sunkara prefers Twitter. It is basically a unidirectional medium that
> impedes serious conversation. When you stop and think about it, twittering
> is exactly the right word to describe what is going on there.
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
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Re: [Marxism] Ian Birchall resigns from SWP.

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


This is actually very sad.  I know that perhaps some on the list will not
believe me here as I am such an anti-"vanguard party builder". But I know
Birchall gave a life time to the SWP and now it is gone along with the
dream.  It is people like Birchall who are the saddest victims of the
Comrade Deltas of this world.
The Deltas are cynical opportunists.  They put me in mind of the Vatican
bureaucracy, full of rat cunning but no heart.

The Birchalls and the Seymours are the true believers and the real dupes of
the revolutionary bureaucrats.


Even farces become too painful in the end.

comradely

Gary


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 1:34 AM, andrew coates  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> 2013: Letter of ResignationLetter sent to the National Secretary of the
> SWP on 15 December 2013 at the close of the party’s annual conference. To
> the National Secretary,SWP:Dear Charlie,It is with very great sadness that
> I have decided to resign my membership of the SWP.It is over fifty years
> since I first joined the International Socialists. As Cliff used to say, it
> takes many streams to make a river, and I have never seen the organisation
> as more than one stream among many – but for fifty years it was my stream,
> the context in which I made my small contribution to the socialist cause.
> More:
> http://grimanddim.org/political-writings/2013-letter-of-resignation/
>
> And, Ian Birchall resigns from SWP: Central Committee has “heavy
> responsibly” for damage.
> Ian Birchall has resigned from the SWP.
> Ian is one of the best writers and activists on the British left.
> Recently his work on the review,  Revolutionary History, notably European
> revolutionaries and Algerian independence 1954-1962  Revolutionary History
> Vol 16, No4: Ian Birchall (guest editor), has made a great contribution to
> the study of the movement. The related, Third World and After New Left
> Review 80, March-April 2013 is another illustration of his exemplary
> intellectual activity, informed by his deep knowledge of the French and
> European left in particular.
>
>
> http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/ian-birchall-resigns-from-swp-central-committee-has-heavy-responsibly-for-damage/
>
>
> ndrew Coates
> 
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Re: [Marxism] a thought on a quote in Lenin's Tomb

[Gary MacLennan]

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Hi Arto,

Thank you for taking the trouble to respond to my post.  It was good to
hear about Foucault's support for the students. & you points about the
"effects" of capitalist rule are well taken.

Nevertheless my post was quite specific and it aimed to target the
Nietzschean element in Foucault's thought ("le choc philosophique") and in
particular Foucault's adoption of a Heraclitean ontology.

I could go on about the effects of Foucault's thought for which he must
take at least a little responsibility. But I will leave the last word on
this with you if you wish.

comradely regards

Gary

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[Marxism] a thought on a quote in Lenin's Tomb

[Gary MacLennan]

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“The state does not have an essence. The state is not a universal nor in
itself an autonomous source of power. The state is nothing else but the
effect, the profile, the *mobile* shape of a *perpetual* statification or
statifications, in the sense of *incessant* transactions which *modify*, or
*move*, or drastically *change*, or insidiously *shift* sources of finance,
modes of investment, decision-making centres, forms and types of control,
relationships between local powers, the central authority, and so on. In
short, the state has no heart, as we well know, but not just in the sense
that it has no feelings, either good or bad, but it has no heart in the
sense that it has no interior. The state is nothing else but the
*mobile*effect of a regime of multiple governmentalities.” [my
emphasis]



This is from Foucault’s 1979 lectures on bio-politics.  There Foucault
outlined the creation of a new subject by what we now think of as the
forces of neo-liberalism.  Dufour has brought these lectures to public
attention and Richard has also put them on the Marxist agenda. And we owe
him a debt of gratitude for that.

I will try to leave to one side my hostility to Foucault and the terrible
damage his views have done to a generation of students. He was the conduit
out of radicalism for thousands via the faux radicalism of postmodernism.


What I do want to draw attention to is the ears of the Nietzschean donkey
that pop out from behind the lines above. There is first of all the
emphasis on flux.  Nietzsche got this from Hearaclitus, he of the river
that one could not step into twice because new waters were always closing
around one.  Nietzsche exaggerated the flux to the extent that one could
not analyse anything because it was artificially extracted from a flux.
There was no concept of a depth ontology with relatively enduring
structures, tendencies and mechanisms in Nietzsche’s thought.


So let us get back to the quote above. Of course states move, shift and
change, but underneath it is the deep relationality rooted in the class
system. That is the core and it has not shifted or morphed since the rise
of the modern state. So talk of flows here and there and shifting all
distract from the reality of the generative core of class relations. Now if
we want to use that metaphor, the core could be thought of as constituting
the heart of the state. Certainly it constitutes the essence of the state,
and no amount of Heraclitean thought can gainsay the reality of class
power.

And a final thought on the ubiquitous plural as in “governmentalities”.
This is a favourite trope of the postmodernists. Everything is to be
pluralised and/or accompanied with scare quotes as in ‘truths’. The intent
is to destabilize analysis and explanations and to emphasis instead that we
are dealing only with a plurality of perspectives. As always the onlie
begetter of this line of thought is Nietzsche who claimed science describes
but does not explain.  Of course it is explanations that we need if we are
ever to liberate ourselves from the rule of the bourgeoisie.


comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] the imperfect future in the present

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Bhaskar, too has an injunction somewhere to live in the present as much as
one can.  But I think he enters a caveat about our need to take care of the
future.  Certainly anyone with an ecological consciousness needs to have a
strong sense of the future in the present.

In my encounters with Indigenous and non-indigenous youth I have been
struck by how their future-in their-present can often be so negative and
destructive.  I often tell my audience of teachers in the workshops I
participate in that they must win the 'battle for the future in the
present' with their students.

It is true that there abideth these three faith, hope and love, but I tend
not to agree with the apostle.  For me 'hope' is the greatest of these and
inevitably it is tied up with a positive future in the present.

I snipped the lines below.  Has anyone met a Marxist lately that fits this
portrait? I certainly haven't

comradely

Gary

"Marxists can be filled with smugness, from their belief that they know
history's script for the delivery of their heaven, and they need only await
for history's train to pull events past them till their boarding call is
sounded and they can take their seating in the vanguard coach; no point
wasting time in the here and now with "reformism" for a capitalist system
that will only be swept away, and "soon."

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[Marxism] Kohler on deflation - a thought as much as a query

[Gary MacLennan]

==
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 The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Alan Kohler in China
Spectator. He is a mainstream economist who appears nightly on the public
broadcaster the ABC.

"The range of cheap services available from the Third World on
freelancer.com is huge and represents another wave of the cost deflation
that began with the entry of China into the World Trade Organisation in
2001, as a result of which the prices of tradeable manufactured goods like
TVs and cars have been falling for ten years.

Now the prices of previously non-tradeable services will fall as another
billion or two low-cost workers are ushered into the global trading system
by freelancer.com and other platforms like it.

The rapidly developing “internet of machines”, or M2M, is also deflationary.
Within China, the relaxation of the Hukou system, or household
registration, will bring a new wave of cheap rural labour into urban
factories and, so the government hopes, stem the increase in China’s labour
costs."


Kohler's thesis for some time has  been that the central banks are
striving, and failing, to keep inflation at 2%.  Third world provision of
services and manufactured goods is driving down prices.

He appears to think that is a good thing. I suppose if I were rich I would
too.  If we are on the cusp of a deflationary abyss, as he appears to
believe, isn't that the worst thing there is?

Won't falling prices eventually destroy production, as good and services
are only produced for a profit. Is there something I'm missing?

Comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Interesting factoid

[Gary MacLennan]

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HI Alan,

Greetings and good to hear from you again.

I understand the Greens are monopolists. Only the Socialist Alliance isn't.
But they do have a left wing, unfortunately not much of one in Queensland
and that is the legacy of the Anarchist clique around Drew Hutton, that
took an ultra sectarian attitude towards the Marxist Left.

Of course the struggle to build a cooperative relationship with the Greens
is difficult.  But can you honestly say that it is more difficult than
negotiating with Armstrong & Co?  If you think so you are sadly deluded.
They are the ultimate monopolists.

I agree with your thoughts on the Resistance wing of the Socialist
Alliance.  All this unity talk is mere wishful thinking, unfortunately.  I
deeply wish it were not so.  We could do with unity on the Left, or to be
more accurate the reconstruction of the Left along the kind of lines that
Shyriza have pioneered in Greece.

But I cannot see that happening unless there is a catastrophic outbreak of
crises on the social, economic and political fronts. So, given that
scenario,  I too would prioritize work in the youth area before anything
else- Greens or Socialist Alliance.

As to the political context in which any talk of unity should be set.  I
think we should meditate on today's papers report that Labor has gone up in
the polls.  This is in response to the offer of a United Front with the
governing Tory Alliance. When the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, spoke of a
"team Australia moment" in reference to the diplomatic row with Indonesia,
I nearly vomited, and the Australian people reacted with approval.  That is
the political reality in which the Socialist Alternative go on about
"insurrection" as a litmus test for unity.


comradely

Gary


On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Alan Bradley  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> From: Gary MacLenna
> > They
> mystery for me is, I repeat, why the Socialist Alliance, bothers. All our
> efforts should address the Greens as an essential element in building a
> broad formation.
>
> The Greens have no interest in being part of a broad formation. They are
> monopolists in the field of politics. They don't even like their own left
> wing very much.
>
> Socialist Alternative are on the ground in the same places as Socialist
> Alliance, and on the same side. They are natural allies.
>
> It boils down to the following two options:
>
> a. Turf war. That is, petty bourgeois shopkeeper politics.
> b. Unity.
>
> Pick One.
>
> Now, for the moment, unity is on hold. Does that mean the other choice has
> to come to the fore? Well, not really. The cooperation agreement, if
> followed through, will hopefully tone that down.
>
> Mind you, if I was a Socialist Alliance leader, I would be looking at what
> resources could be redirected into building Resistance. (Conveniently, the
> Resistance conference is in Brisbane in about three weeks time).
> Strengthening Socialist Alliance's youth work would have all kinds of
> benefits.
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
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>

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Re: [Marxism] Interesting factoid

[Gary MacLennan]

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Well Lou

I still remember Sandra.  Together she and Mick Armstrong make what one
could call a formidable team along a certain narrow line of action. The
problem is that over 30 years of accumulated empirical evidence shows that
it is not working. Duh!

Both of them have, though, given their life times to building what they
think of as the revolutionary party.  This is the kind of commitment that
only a cataclism could shift towards the broader grouping strategy.

What I think is happening in Australia with these unity talks, is that for
the first time the party-builders are having to confront the demand for a
broad grouping on the Left. That an a reflex desire to pull off a clasical
Trotskyist entrist manoeuvre are the most probable explanations for these
"unity" talks.


In the mean time all talks should address the political situation in
Australia, as it is now. To talk of insurrections and secret cells would
appear to be madness in the current conjuncture.  But neither Sandra nor
Mick is mad.  They are just using a very shop worn metaphorical framework,
as you do if you are committed to the strategy of 'from little things, big
things grow'.


They mystery for me is, I repeat, why the Socialist Alliance, bothers. All
our efforts should address the Greens as an essential element in building a
broad formation.

comradely

Gary


On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 12:15 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> There's an article titled "Lenin versus 'Leninism'" in issue number five
> of Marxist Left Review (marxistleftreview.org) by Sandra Bloodworth (love
> that moniker). Here is the number of times the word intervene,
> intervention, or interventionist occurs: 21.
>
> Footnote 8:
>
> Tom Freeman, Lenin’s Conception of the Party: Organisational Expression of
> an Interventionist Marxism, PhD Thesis, Department of Political Science,
> University of Melbourne, 1999, Chapters 3 and 5. Freeman was a long term
> member of the International Socialist Tendency. The information about the
> early years of students and workers is from this thesis.
>
> Interventionist Marxism? Gosh, just what the world has been waiting for.
>
> That was a favorite word of ours in the SWP, to "intervene". After I broke
> with sectarianism, I always cringed when I heard socialists using it in
> light of its Latin root 'intervenire', which means to come between. Yes, we
> used to "come between" all the time back in the 60s.
>
> Bloodworth's article is filled with observations via Freeman that have
> about as much relevance to Australian politics today as the man on the moon:
>
> "We see an activist with extraordinary determination and a preparedness to
> pay attention to the smallest details when it came to finding ways around
> state repression in order to build a party. Lenin’s argument for
> conspiratorial methods is prosecuted in minute detail. Division of labour
> is essential so that when someone falls foul of the state, they can be
> replaced more easily than if they were carrying out multiple tasks, all of
> which someone has to learn. And the removal of one small task is less
> disruptive to the wider chain of actions. It’s true that operating in small
> cells that know little of each other leads to isolation of individuals. So
> this is another argument for a party."
>
> Another argument for a party?
>
> Yes, let's break out the champagne, noisemakers and the paper hats. New
> Year's Eve is rapidly approaching.
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
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Re: [Marxism] Australian amoebaism

[Gary MacLennan]

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Hi Greg,

I do not know if you have ever met Mick Armstrong - Australia's Jack
Barnes.  It is impossible to stick anything to him.  Trust me on this.  I
read your letter to an old friend John Boyd who is seriously ill and he and
I got a good laugh out of the idea that anything we said would flash on
Armstrong.  I am quite sure he does not remember me at all. And even if he
did nothing I said would make any impression on him.

For what it is worth I am quite fond of the idea of Mick.  I recall two
stories of Mick.  One was how Andrew Milner got up at a conference and
denounced Mick
as an inveterate entrist, wrecker and splitter who could build nothing.
Armstrong said nothing and sat quietly smiling throughout the speech and
then did Andrew with the numbers.  I voted with Mick then.  When my own
turn came, Mick, god bless him was the same silent and smiling assassin.

As Michael Corleone said:  "It's not personal, Sonny.  It's strictly
business."

The second story was told to me by Tom O'Lincoln.  It was of how he went to
Athens with Mick and had to insist that Mick left his hotel room to look at
the Parthenon.  Tom believed that Mick needed to have some idea of the
wonderful achievements of humanity if he was going to be a leader in the
Australian revolution. Somehow the sheer nihilism that Mick displayed is
quite endearing.  As far as I know, he has never worked a day in his life
and has always been a "professional revolutionary leader".

And now he thinks that you can have nothing to do with people who do not
believe in the necessity of a mass insurrection of the Australian working
class.

Lou is quite right about all this, and I want to acknowledge here what he
has taught me over the years about "Leninism".

What surprises me though is that the Socialist Alliance would have anything
to do with Socialist Alternative. For me that organisation exists only to
draw in and spew out the idealistic young. It is the most audacious
hypocrisy of Socialist Alternative to complain that Socialist Alliance do
not consult their members: this from a hyper Leninist bureaucracy.

I venture to say that if the membership of the Socialist Alliance were
polled they would be totally opposed to any discussions with the Socialist
Alternative. I know I am because even if unity with the Socialist
Alternative were to be achieved it would signal the death knell of the
dream of a mass organization on the Left..  We would join Mick in muttering
the sacred mantra, "From little things big things grow" and we would go on
muttering that until the crack of doom.

comradely

Gary


On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 10:40 PM, Gregory Adler wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> The correspondence between Socialist Alternative and the Socialist Alliance
> and the posts from comrades Alan and Gary
> seem to me to show what is wrong with the organised socialist movement in
> Australia now.
>
> On S Alt part there seems to be a worry about revolutionary purity when a
> real push for action on the left would be most appropriate right now. On
> the part of S All the desire to stay away from public discussion and to
> restrict things to the national leadership seems a sad throwback to past
> practices.
>
> All sides also seem to have a desire to ensure that any blame to be had
> falls on some one else. If socialists are not up to pulling together in the
> current world situation and that which applies in Australia I think we can
> be assured that there will be plenty of blame to share in down the track
> but by then it will all be a little too late-but at least we will have
> really stuck it to Mick Armstrong.
> Greg Adler
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 8:47 PM, Gary MacLennan
> wrote:
>
> > ==
> > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> > ==
> >
> >
> > Comrade Armstrong is very much like the Bourbons were supposed to be.  He
> > forgets nothing and he learns nothing. He is the original hardliner and
> to
> > put him in charge of "unity" talks is actually a joke. He sees the world
> in
> > a lens made up of fantasies that could be described as Bolshevik
> dreaming.
> > To talk of 'mass insurrection' of the working class as being the
> touchstone
> &g

Re: [Marxism] Down with amoebaism

[Gary MacLennan]

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Interesting Alan, well moderately interesting.  Of course Socialist
Alternative feel they have the wind in their sails.  Once upon a time, we
in IS in Brisbane had 39 members and a sizable periphery, then came the
split of 81 and we were all scattered to the winds.
It is impossible to foretell what will happen, but hubris cannot be denied
and my best guess for future developments is for some broad front to
emerge, especially if the Central banks abandon their current strategy of
keeping inflation going around 2%. If instead of fighting deflation the
central bankers yield to those capitalists who want to bring on deflation,
then we will be in a qualitatively different period.  It will be brutal and
hard and then new leaders may emerge.

Some of us shall see.

comradely

Gary


On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 11:33 AM, Alan Bradley  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> From: Gary MacLennan
> > Those still built on "party" building are in a hole and they are digging
>
> > frantically.
>
> Socialist Alternative don't see it that way. From their perspective they
> are taking the lead, increasing their influence, and growing.
>
> Of course, part of that is that Socialist Alliance is largely keeping out
> of their way and actually helping them in many cases.
>
> And that is one of the interesting aspects. To an extent, and largely
> unconsciously, Socialist Alliance is sacrificing its own growth in favour
> of helping SAlt. (At least, that's my impression from Toowoomba). The unity
> process *was* Socialist Alliance's party building strategy.
>
> It's not over yet, either. Even without the formal process, the
> collaborative approach can and should continue. At worst, much of the
> remnants of Socialist Alliance will end up collapsing into SAlt. Boo hoo.
>
> But, of course, that raises the question of what would happen to the
> others. In fact, we have seen a degree of amoebaism in Australia recently.
> Only about half of the original membership of the Revolutionary Socialist
> Party joined Socialist Alternative. The rest ended up scattered all over
> the landscape. None of them seem to have formed new groups - although there
> seems to have been a half-hearted attempt in Brisbane.
>
> There have even been a degree of scattering from the Socialist Alliance as
> well. Again, this has been largely unorganised individuals, but there has
> been a specific case of an individual joining a crypto-Stalinist Spartoid
> sect that could probably fit it's entire membership in a phone box.
>
> Yes, the Australian left is growing new sects. Just what we need.
>
>
> 
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Re: [Marxism] Down with amoebaism

[Gary MacLennan]

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So unity talks between the Alliance and the Alternative have broken down.
Well I can't say I am surprised.  I am very much on the margins these days,
but the Socialist Alternative grouping represents the (last?) hope of the
Leninist party builders. While the Socialist Alliance as far as I
understand it has an entirely different approach to growing the Left.

The Socialist Alternative will look at re-groupment around a core of
beliefs, whereas the alternative approach is that of building a movement
which has many mansions. The metaphor for the Leninists is something like
'by cutting it grows'.  We have had many such 'cuts' or splits and there is
precious little to show for it.

For the Socialist Alliance, the primary impulse should be to create the
"swamp", where many things will proliferate.

Of course to use the metaphor of the swamp is to invite a sneer from the
'From little things, big things grow' mob. But it is nearly 40 years since
I joined the Liga Communista. The what, you may well ask. Gone into the
ether, like so many other Trotskyist endeavours.

Those still built on "party" building are in a hole and they are digging
frantically.

What is needed is a broad formation that contains a revolutionary element.
And that element must be one that is genuinely committed to the broad
grouping and is not executing a classical Trotskyist entrist manoeuvre.
There are of course no guarantees with the broad movement approach, but it
has not been seriously tried by the Revolutionary Left here in Australia
and certainly not by my former comrades in the Socialist Alternative.

comradely

Gary


On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Alan Bradley  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> From: Louis Proyect
>
> > We are far more interested in unity and have keen interest in
> initiatives being taken in that
> > direction in Australia and Britain.
>
> Bad news about that.
> ---
>
> Unity talks stall, but collaboration to continue
> Saturday, November 9, 2013
>
>
> By Peter Boyle & Susan Price
>
>
> Unity negotiations between Australia's two largest socialist organisations,
> the Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative, ended after the
> latter's National Committee decided on October 26-27 that the unity
> process had “reached an impasse and consequently we are for ending the
> negotiations with the Alliance”.
> ...
>
> Rest at: https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/55341
>
> I can't find a statement from Socialist Alternative at this point.
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
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Re: [Marxism] Saturday's socialist speak out

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Would they make him wear pink as well, like he said he would do to bikies?

Gary


On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 11:50 AM, En Passant with John Passant <
en.pass...@bigpond.com> wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Given Queensland Premier Campbell Newman's public direction to judges to
> harden the fuckup (or words to that effect) why isn't he in the slammer for
> contempt of court? No trial necessary, just a decision by a judge that he
> is in contempt and off he goes for a few days or weeks or months in jail.
> No trial, no jury, no evidence. Sort of doing a Newman to Newman.
>
> http://enpassant.com.au/2013/11/02/saturdays-socialist-speak-out-109/
> 
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Re: [Marxism] On me & Shingles, Capitalism and the Superbug, and Diane Sawyer and the Blonde Roma Child

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


I had a burst of shingles last year and unfortunately I was very late in
diagnosing and even spotting what it was all about.  I still get after
-tingles (like now!).  Really really painful.
comradely

Gary


On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 5:29 AM, Clay Claiborne  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> I've got a lot to cover since I last wrote you. Part of the reason is
> that I've had to deal with a case of the Shingles. I blogged about that
> and the struggle to develop new drugs  to fight the new diseases in:
>
>
>   Fault is with Capitalism, not the Companies it keeps!
>   <
> http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2013/10/fault-is-with-capitalism-not-companies.html
> >
>
> > One of the reasons you have not heard from me in a few days is that I
> > have been dealing with a mild case of shingles. Fortunately, I got
> > good care at the Venice Family Clinic [in Santa Monica], so it looks
> > to be of very short duration.
> >
> > VFC tells me that the so-called shingles vaccine, while a real money
> > maker, isn't all that effective and probably not worth the cost, but
> > quickly getting on an antiviral after an outbreak can make a big
> > difference, including greatly shortening the course of the disease,
> > and most importantly, mitigating the chances of long-term nerve damage.
> >
> > They gave me an appointment the day after the rash broke out and
> > immediately put me on antibiotics and antivirals. They had me come
> > back the next day and confirmed shingles. That was 16 days ago, now
> > its just about gone.
> >
> > Funny thing I discovered about shingles. The /'baby-boomer'/
> > generation may be its last big hurrah, rid willing. Shingles, may also
> > be called /"chicken-pox's revenge"/ because it is caused by the same
> > virus that gave you chicken pox as a child. To get shingles, you have
> > to have had chickenpox. While, you may have thought you cleared your
> > system of the chickenpox virus long ago, more than fifty years in my
> > case, it has all the while been lurking in the roots of nerves,
> > waiting for an opportunity.
> >
> > /"Moles bury very deep into the fabric of Western society and they
> > are very dear to Moscow Center because it may be ten on even
> > twenty years before they are use."/
> >
> > They don't know exactly what causes the virus to turn on again,
> > although age obviously has something to do with it. Moscow Center has
> > nothing to do with it. I just like John LeCarre.
> >
> > Shingles was less prevalent in the past because as children got
> > chickenpox. Exposure to them acted as something of a booster shot to
> > adults that had chickenpox before, making it less likely that they
> > would suffer from shingles later on. Children who now receive the
> > chickenpox vaccine, won't get chickenpox and can therefore never get
> > shingles. I, and maybe you, on the other hand, are in the /"got you"/
> > generation. Having had chickenpox as a child, I was shingles eligible,
> > but since my children got the chickenpox vaccine, I never got my
> > booster, making me a candidate for the new class of very expensive
> > anti-virals.
> >
> > Medicine is full of such contradictions. Another, much more serious
> > one is how our very success in treating all kinds of aliments with
> > antibiotics is coming round to haunt us.
> >
> > Why Capitalism can't kill the Superbug
> >
> More ...
> <
> http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2013/10/fault-is-with-capitalism-not-companies.html
> >
>
> I published that the day before my birthday and today I published this:
>
>
>   Blonde on Blonde: Diane Sawyer's racism shows in Roma child
>   abduction
>   <
> http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2013/10/blonde-on-blonde-diane-sawyers-racism.html
> >
>
> <
> http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2013/10/blonde-on-blonde-diane-sawyers-racism.html
> >
> > <
> http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4jXuOh-1Cvc/Um0wDtiZBgI/BDM/K2gXug7o1DY/s1600/roma_maria_mugshot.jpg
> >
> >
> > The look on her face after being "saved"
> >
> > The four-year-old little blonde-haired, blue-eyed gypsy girl living in
> > a Roma camp near Larissa, Greece, that the world has come to know as
> > Maria, was abducted from the only family she has ever known by Greek
> > authorities on 16 October 2013.
> >
> > In a era were a dozen children are murdered every day in Syria without
> > notice, the plight of little Maria quickly became an international
> > headline. This is the way Diane Sawyer introduced the story on ABC
> > World News on Monday
> > <
> http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/year-girl-named-maria-found-greece-20640584

[Marxism] Engelmann's Direct Instruction

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Here in Queensland Siegfried Engelmann's Direct Instruction has been
championed by the Indigenous leader Noel Pearson as the magic bullet to end
Indigenous disadvantage in education.

Does anyone know of contemporary critiques of Engelmann's work in the
States and elsewhere?

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Norman Geras, RIP

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


I once attended a conference where Geras delivered a paper.  He was a
shambling and inarticulate figure - obviously an academic.  He would have
understood of course that one could condemn the bombings but also set their
actions within the context of imperialism.   Absolutely he would have known
that. After all it is the ABC of Marxism.  But he would also have
understood the needs of imperialistic propaganda and its need to channel
causality away from any consideration of their role, and that was the
imperative he followed.  It was a feat of outstanding stupidity, but it is
the price you pay for becoming the servant of the ruling class.  You must
humiliate yourself and deny your intelligence.  & what did he get for his
treachery and betrayals, a few million hits on a blog! Jeezzuss, at least
Faust got to kiss Helen of Troy!

Comradely

Gary





On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 6:01 AM, Jim Farmelant  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
>
> What was probably his best book, Marx and Human Nature, can be downloaded
> as a PDF file from:
>
>
> http://www.mediafire.com/view/ih287ue0843shu6/Geras+-+Marx+and+Human+Nature.pdf
>
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> http://www.foxymath.com
> Learn or Review Basic Math
>
>
> -- Original Message --
> From: Louis Proyect 
> To: farmela...@juno.com
> Subject: Re: [Marxism] Norman Geras, RIP
> Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 15:17:29 -0400
>
> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> On 10/18/13 1:36 PM, Glenn Kissack wrote:
> > What is the Euston manifesto?
>
> http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/Euston.htm
>
> 
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
> Set your options at:
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> 
> 30-second trick for a flat belly
> This daily 30-second trick BOOSTS your body's #1 fat-burning hormone
> http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/526193d1c091e13d16991st01vuc
>
> 
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[Marxism] thoughts on a tweet from Murdoch- the prince of darkness

[Gary MacLennan]

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Lou's recent posts have set me thinking, especially his repost of the Judge
Scalia interview.  If I were to meet Scalia and was able to control the gag
reflex I would try to reassure him and settle down his anxieties about the
contemporary shortfall in the belief in the Devil.  I would come out to the
good judge as a true believer.

'Yes there is a Devil and yes it is a problem that more people do not
recognize his existence" I would say.

Having put his Honorship at ease, I would then claim to know who and where
the devil is and I would tender in evidence a tweet. - 'From whom?' he will
ask.

Why from a good old Aussie bloke who now lives in New York.  I expect that
might terminate my meeting with the judge. But if he hung around for a
while I would try to argue that the tweet that Murdoch sent on press
regulation in England was a real piece of communication from the Beast -
old 666 himself.

Murdoch there complained that plans to regulate the media were a plot by
left wing journalists in the BBC and the Guardian. I don't expect that
would phase Scalia.  But what about Murdoch's claims to be fighting the
'toffs"?  This from a multi-millionaire who lives in a luxury apartment in
Manhattan and has god knows how many homes around the world. He also went
to Geelong Grammar and Oxford University!  Doesn't that make him a "toff'?
I know that hypocrisy is not included int he Seven Deadly sins, but Matthew
23: 27 does say


Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto
whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within
full of dead *men's* bones, and of all uncleanness.

So although the Good Judge Scalia is quite right when he says that the
devil is all over the New Testament, so are hypocrites and among them can
be included a man who owns some of the papers the judge loves to read.

But all this is maybe too complicated for someone who loves to go back to
origins.  Far better to tell him if he is concerned about the absence of
demonic possession in today's world, he just has to look in a mirror and be
reassured.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Strange bedfellows

[Gary MacLennan]

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I don't know if it is intentional or not Lou, but these articles and the
Scalia interview all make me feel incredibly sane.  That's the good news
but they also have deepened my sense of alarm.  There is a wing of the
ruling class that is going insane.   Yipes!!

comradely
Gary

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[Marxism] Scalia

[Gary MacLennan]

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I got as far as the devil stuff and honestly could not make myself read on.
This man is like seriously out of kilter with basic reality. He is a
medievalist walking around and I suspect dreaming of being able to burn
heretics.

The devil was all over the New testament and oopsee daisy he is not around
at the moment.  Where has he gone.  Ah the clever devil he is making us not
believe in him.

And this is on the Supreme Court.

Sheesh!! The Trotsky quote is exactly right for this creature.

cpomradely

Gary

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[Marxism] Down memory lane

[Gary MacLennan]

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Richard Seymour has posted a piece by Golden Dawn, the Nazi party in
Greece.  Golden Dawn denounce him: quite a badge of honour actually.

This brought to mind my own run in with the Nazis in Brisbane long years
ago (c. 1980).  My good friend John Boyd, who alas is very unwell at
present, came up to a group of us Internationals Socialist as we were
attending a rally.  He announced there was a Nazi information table just
around the corner from the rally, and we should not permit that.

Well that was a provocation we could not ignore.  So a group of us led by
Ian Rintoul descended on the Nazis and dispersed them with maximum
politeness and thoughtfulness.

That night on going home I noticed the most horrible smell coming from my
kitchen.  I discovered that someone had secreted rotting meat all around my
house.

I got rid of it and went to bed.  In the middle of the night I was awakened
by the arrival of a hearse looking for the body of Gary MacLennan.  I
assured them in my usually witty and classical reference way that the
information they had was greatly exaggerated.

The hearse lot went away not too dissatisfied I hope. Just a few hours
later I was awakened by a stream of young people knocking on my door
inquiring whether my house was still to rent.  Someone had put my place up
to rent for a ridiculously cheap rate and scores of people got there with
sunrise.

There was no sequel to these events.  The next lot of harassment I received
was to come from supporters of the British Army, but that is a tale for
another day. The Nazis never turned up in public again, and still have not
as far as I am aware.

I have always had a thought that the Nazis are a last option for the
capitalist class.  & we are a long way from needing that option here in Oz.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Why I Am Cancelling My Documentary on Hillary Clinton | Charles Ferguson

[Gary MacLennan]

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For what it's worth a late friend of mine once attended a reception where
Clinton was the main speaker. He told me that Clinton had enormous charisma
and that when he worked the room, everyone at the reception was convinced
that Clinton cared deeply about them.


What is that, I wonder?  Is it Nietzschean's prophecy of our age as the age
of the actor come true?

Comradely

Gary


On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 10:31 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> ==**==**==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==**==**==
>
>
> In June, I attended a dinner for Bill Clinton, which was educational.
> Clinton spoke passionately about his foundation, about African wildlife,
> inequality, childhood obesity, and much else with enormous factual command,
> emotion, and rhetorical power. But he and I also spoke privately. I asked
> him about the financial crisis. He paused and then became even more
> soulful, thoughtful, passionate, and articulate. And then he proceeded to
> tell me the most amazing lies I've heard in quite a while.
>
> For example, Mr. Clinton sorrowfully lamented his inability to stop the
> Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of private
> (OTC) derivatives trading, and thereby greatly worsened the crisis. Mr.
> Clinton said that he and Larry Summers had argued with Alan Greenspan, but
> couldn't budge him, and then Congress passed the law by a veto-proof
> supermajority, tying his hands. Well, actually, the reason that the law
> passed by that overwhelming margin was because of the Clinton
> Administration's strong advocacy, including Congressional testimony by
> Larry Summers and harsh public and private attacks on advocates of
> regulation by Summers and Robert Rubin.
>
> Wow, I thought, this guy is a really good actor. And I also saw one reason
> why Hillary Clinton might not be thrilled about my movie. I discovered
> others. In Arkansas, she joined the boards of Walmart and Tyson Foods. One
> of the largest donors to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation
> is the government of Saudi Arabia. The Clintons' personal net worth now
> probably exceeds $200 million, and while earned legally, both the money's
> sources and the Clintons' public statements indicate a strong aversion to
> rocking boats or making powerful enemies.
>
> full: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/**charles-ferguson/hillary-**
> clinton-documentary_b_4014792.**html
>
>
> __**__
> Send list submissions to: 
> Marxism@greenhouse.economics.**utah.edu
> Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.**
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[Marxism] comment on the Running Rabbit

[Gary MacLennan]

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I share John's anger and distress at the deaths aboard the boat full of
asylum seekers.  I also agree with him that this is the politics of
distraction.

Yet we are in Carl Schmidt territory here.  The Australian State has always
been built around the Friends-Enemies dialectic.  John knows this as the
following quote from his fine post shows

'Certainly it appears to have been part of the Howard and Rudd/Gillard
governments’ operational realities that Australian authorities did not
always act quickly. Whether this is policy or operational would of course
hopefully come out of any enquiry into responses but that won’t happen in a
climate of secrecy and *vote winning*' (my emphasis).

The horrifying truth is that brutality towards asylum seekers is a vote
winner here in Oz.  Of course I do not draw any conclusions about this in
terms of the essential nature of Australians.  They could be brought to a
level of minimum decency- absolutely. But the major political parties have
no interest in doing so. Instead we had the obscene spectacle before the
last election of the Labor Party competing with the Tories to see who could
be more brutal with the refugees.

We have then a society here whose moral impulse is being attacked every
day. For those of us who like me believe in the existence of a basic  human
decency, this is not easy to observe. Yet a society without a moral impulse
cannot survive.  To think otherwise is to indulge in a Nietzschean-type
fantasy.

The death of the 22 asylum seekers may not mark a turn in the tide, but
someday soon the horrors that are being visited on humanity by the
political parties will cause a revulsion.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] thoughts on the Australian election

[Gary MacLennan]

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>
> Thanks for this update, Sree Gary.. what are your thoughts on the
> prospects of the Wikileaks party?
>
> Hi Rajesh,

Stuart's excellent post has saved me from admitting my total ignorance.  My
own thoughts on wikileaks party is to guess that the impulse behind it is
in many cases libertarian.  My long experience of working with libertarians
is that they can be as we say "all over the place". You get the full range
from good to very bad.

I  also think that the impulse to build a new party is not what we need
right now.  We have to find our way to a multi-tendency unity. If the
revolutionary sects can only see sense and stop this "from little things
big things grow" nonsense and actively seek non-sectarian co-operation then
maybe we can act as a pole of attraction for all those people who are going
to be targeted by the incoming conservative government.
I would have thought Qld and NSW would be good places to begin, because in
both instances the Labor Party is very weak, although for different reasons.
comradely

Gary

>
>
>
> 
>  From: Gary MacLennan 
> To: rajeshcher...@yahoo.co.in
> Sent: Thursday, 5 September 2013 3:22 AM
> Subject: [Marxism] thoughts on the Australian election
>
>
> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
>
>
> Saturday's poll looks set to give the conservative/ radical Right a big to
> huge victory over the right wing Labor Government.
> 
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> Set your options at:
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[Marxism] The Irish vessel lies emptied of its poetry

[Gary MacLennan]

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I had been meaning to work up a piece on Auden's poem on the death of W. B.
Yeats and interesting reactionary speech and a piece of pompous rhetoric
disguising a move to the right.  I might get round to it yet.

then the news of Seamus Heaney's death came and I thought I would at lest
acknowledge that.  I knew Heaney vaguely while at Uni.  He then taught me
English in my post graduate year at the teacher's college.  I last saw him
in 64.

It would be worthwhile investigating his writing from a political point of
view. And again that is a project for another day.

For the moment I will simply record my sadness at the passing of a very
decent friendly man.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Cognitive dissonance

[Gary MacLennan]

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Yes of course Paul.  Without trying to be controversial I think this is the
legacy of Stalinism & its promotion of Marxism as a weapon to beat down
dissent and left wing thought. I found the students that I taught
literature to, were hostile to any discussion of the  social context of a
poem.  What they wanted were analyses of the formal features of the poem.
The kind of stuff that used to bore us all to death.

Interesting I heard of how Ginsberg's reading of Blake's "Tyger tyger
buring bright..." was a great success in Beijing because he read it with
great emphasis on the rhythm. I did not hear that reading of course and I
don't know if Ginsberg ever recorded a reading, but I did try and deliver
the poem in the way that I thought Ginsberg might.  For once I was a great
hit with the students.  They thought I had come to my senses and abandoned
finally all that Marxist nonsense.

What I understand now though was that they were seeking a refuge from
Maoist aesthetics with its suffocating utilitarianism  and absolute refusal
of any notion of artistic autonomy..

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Cognitive dissonance

[Gary MacLennan]

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Hi Lou

This reminded me of my time in China lecturing at one of the university
(1990).  I came out to the staff and students as a "Marxist".  It was a
dreadful moment. It was as if I had soiled my pants or something.  The last
thing they wanted to hear anything about was Marxism or how Marxist
thought.  Though they were all members of the CCP.   In reality all that
year in my travels to many places in China and talking to many
intellectuals, I did not find a single Marxist.  I am aware they existed of
course, but this was just before Deng Xiao Ping deepened his opening to the
West, and Marxism was anathema.  Of course it was associated with the
Cultural Revolution and the intellectual inflexibility associated with
Maoism did not help either.

Let me say, there is no condescension intended in what I have said and I
failed to detect any in what you said either.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] SWP: more suspensions - leading members boycott ‘Marxism’ festival - Communist Party of Great Britain

[Gary MacLennan]

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Well the news that the suspensions have been lifted is very welcome.  Still
some on the CC obviously have a death wish.  Kimber, Comrade Delta,
Callinicos et al have a lot to answer for.  To win the faction struggle
they let loose the attack dogs on their own members and now the dirty work
is done, they have to hunt around for a lot of muzzles.

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] Fwd: Thoughts on Kraken, China Mieville and fantasy

[Gary MacLennan]

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Subject: Thoughts on China Mieville's Kraken and the fantasy genre


I regarded and still regard the recent SWP (UK) split as nothing less than
a disaster, nonertheless one of the positive spin offs for me was my
introduction to the work of China Mieville, who played an honourable role
in the dispute.  The discovery that he was a writer of "weird fiction" and
fantasy intrigued me because I have long been a voracious reader of the
genre.  The guilt associated with indulging myself in a genre which has
long been politically suspect, was probably also a sop to my Irish Catholic
need to feel guilty about something, anything!

In political terms the fantasy genre seems to be divided into the Tolkien
and ant-Tolkien camps.  The former is generally denounced as reactionary.
 The problem for me is that I loved Lord of the Rings and really, like the
Godfather, I won't apologise for that.  I would in my own post-hoc defence
point to the element of little- people as the true heroes of the fiction
and to the romanticisation - yes, but also the approval of the virtues that
communities spontaneously create.

If we deploy Tamas' distinction between the Rousseauian and Marxist strains
in the radical tradition, it seems to me that there is an element of
Rousseau in Tolkien's oeuvre. The distinguishing mark of the Rousseau
approach is, of course, a faith in the abiding virtues of the people, and
what are the Hobbits, pray tell, but the "people" writ large (or should
that be small?).

Yet it is also true that Tolkien's imagination strives towards the
restoration of feudal order. At the end of all the upheaval and uncertainty
the king is restored and the dynasty is secured.

The alternative is an imagination that does not strive towards the
restoration of order but rather  invites chaos onto the scene and rejoices
in the reign of the Lord of Misrule.  This is of course the negative aspect
of imagination that Zizek has drawn our attention to.  He quotes very
effectively from a passage in Hegel about the 'night of the world' -


'here shoots a bloody head - there another white ghastly apparition,
suddenly here before it, and just so disappears.  One catches sight of this
night when one looks human beings in the eye - into a night that becomes
awful'.

There is a tradition of fantasy which holds to this negative imagination.
 Mervyn Peake springs to mind and I feel Mieville does too but I have
reservations about that verdict. There are it is true horrors aplenty in
Kraken.  Some of the bloodiest and scariest villains in the entire world of
fantasy are here-  Subby & Goss and Tatoo are the very stuff that night
mares are made of.  Tatoo's world, in particular the "creations" of his
workshop, reads like a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life in 3D.

Yet there is much more to Kraken than the splatter of body parts, though
Goss's murder of the chameleon, Jason, is particularly harrowing. There is
also the display of the enormous symbolic, social and political capital at
Mieville's command. There is for instance his love of words.  He savours
and plays with them to such an extent that I was convinced that he just has
to have Irish blood in him somewhere.

There is also in this book a love for the city of London.  Not since
Dickens, I suspect, has there been a writer so able to take the pulse of
that city and make it beat so.  For me the obvious parallel is what Joyce
did for Dublin.

Still though it was the way in which Mieville wielded his political capital
as a Marxist that was a source of such delight for me.  His creation of the
"polybodied" union militant, Wati, who organises a strike of the wizard's
familiars is a source of both great humour but also of a serious
understanding what it is like to lead a struggle against brutal odds. Wati
does not have a body of his own and has to flit from statue to statue etc
to organise his members.

No other writer of fantasy that I have come across could integrate insights
from Marxist militancy and make them so convincing.  Certainly there is
nothing like it in the entire output of the Tolkien camp.  Nonetheless I
want to make a case, briefly of course, that Mieville and Tolkien may have
more in common than would appear on the surface.

The dark imagination, and the horrors of the night are present in Mieville,
as they are to an extent in Tolkien too. Yet there is also, in Kraken, a
straining towards the Rousseuian vision.  Tamas argues that Marx and Engels
have a demonic vision of the working class in that it was their degraded
status that motivated Marx and Engels to fight for the abolition of the
class system.

The heroes of Kraken are the very ordinary museum worker Billy, his best
friend Leon's girlfriend Marginalia, and Paul the hapless host of the evil
Tatoo. They overco

Re: [Marxism] LiveLeak.com - Heavy Clashes Between The Turkish Police and the Protesters!

[Gary MacLennan]

==
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==


Lou

What is your feeling about this?  Is Richard Seymour correct?  Are we
seeing the seeds of a Turkish Spring? The article by the journalist that
you linked to was interesting but she definitely thought that it could not
be a revolutionary situation because Erdogan was elected and would go to
elections.  She said he was no dictator.  There was also the thought that
the economy was in good shape.

I am not at all sure that the factors she mentioned rule out the
possibility of a revolutionary situation developing.  For instance if we
take the axis of Impoverished Affluent, is this a revolt on  the
affluent side of the continuum?  If so then would it not be more like the
uprisings in the 60s than what is happening in Europe at present?

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] Remote Aboriginal Community

[Gary MacLennan]

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Comrades might be interested in the following youtube clip.  It is set in a
remote Aboriginal community in North Queensland. I have not been there
myself but have met people who have.  The film represents an interesting
attempt to use  rap to address cyber bullying which is something of a
problem in the community. The tape itself  gives one a very good idea, I
think, of what these remote communities look like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R950qk-8SNU


comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Bhaskar Sunkara’s vain hopes | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Gary MacLennan]

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This is a really important topic and not only for the US of A.  Something
similar could be written about Australia.  Now what Sankara obviously wants
is a return to a putative Golden Era - that of FDR etc.  As | have said
repeatedly, the reason we do not have such an era today despite the
economic chaos is that we are missing the threat of the Bolshevik take
over.  For moderates (liberals) to have any purchase with the ruling class
there has to be among the bourgeoisie a fear of red ruin.

Badiou says somewhere that Lenin and Mao genuinely scared the ruling class.
Whatever one thinks of Mao, the point is a very valid one.  It is fear and
fear alone that will lead a member of the ruling class to get up and say
"We have nothing to fear, but fear itself".   So the task of the Left is to
strengthen the Left and not to seek an alliance with moderates on their
terms.  If we do so we weaken our usefulness to the moderates, not of
course that that should be our intent.

However, and this is the tricky bit, for the Left to grow we have to move
into broad alliances and for once and for all abandon the model of
bureaucratic centralism- that  Zinoviest party building nonsense which
leads to the rise of mountebanks like Kimber and Comrade Delta and endles
splits, disillusionment, and burn out.

A side comment about Doug Henwood and celebrity.   If we want to move into
a period of broad alliances, and we should, we need to abandon the
begrudging mind set. Doug is one of the good guys.  We need a thousand more
like him and if he becomes a celebrity - good on him I say.
comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] blaming the yahoos

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Andrew

what you wrote is so true.  In the report on Australian TV this morning the
announcer referred specifically to the refusal of people to follow
regulations and to build underground shelters. He also waffled about the
lack of 'capacity to manage' house improvements.  He just would not say
"these are poor people, living in a rich country and they cannot get help".
Instead he talked about how the full capacity of the country would be
brought to bear to help them.

Bullshit!

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] Zombie Politics was There is a huge surplus - in the hands of the rich

[Gary MacLennan]

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(Apologies I appear to have posted half of this message already)

I was hoping John would post something on the Australian situation and I
welcome the Hillier article.

I feel that we are in a period here in Oz that I would nominate as "zombie
politics".  The people of Australia will in September vote in a right wing
government that will plunge head first into austerity economics and
politics.  Eyes wide open millions will go to the ballot and vote in the
butchers.  The media of course are largely doing the herding of the masses
into the booths.

Yet we have a situation where the personal fortune of just one capitalist,
Gina Reinhart, is bigger than the government's budget deficit.

So a right wing Labor government will make way for a more right wing
conservative coalition. There is an unreal air about it all.  The Labor
Party have clearly given up.  The only question is over the size of their
coming defeat. I personally am betting on a tsunami that will devastate
them.

At the heart of it all is the Labor Party's embrace of the neo-liberal
phase of capitalism with an at times slower tempo than that practised by
the conservatives.  For instance the Labor treasurer stupidly bought into
the crap about the budget deficit begin harmful.  He promised a surplus but
the capitalist class did not pay their taxes and the result was a deficit.

We are though not dealing with "a failure to communicate".  It is not that
the Labor Party has not got the message out.  Rather they have embraced the
centre and the right to such an extent that there is little difference
between the major political parties.  As a consequence politics have made
way for aesthetics and the people are bored with Labor.  "Time for a
change" is now the slogan.  And a change they will get.  We are then in for
a very difficult period politically here.  Queensland has already got a
right wing state government and so that will set the federal-state scissors
to work on us.

The sources of hope must be that the Left which is severely marginalised
can take the issue of regroupment sseriously and sincerely. Perhaps.

Also internationally the struggle against austerity in Europe may yet take
a dramatic pre-revolutionary turn in Europe. Then we would have a very
different game in town. In the mean time we need to keep saying there is an
alternative but that it is a very radical one.  It is not for us to try and
reinvent the social democratic project based on a revival of Keynesianism.
Only the emergence of a strong revolutionary anti-capitalist force will
make Keynesianism attractive to a section of capital.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] There is a huge surplus - in the hands of the rich

[Gary MacLennan]

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I was hoping John would post something on the Australian situation. I feel
that we are in a period here in Oz that I would nominate as "zombie
politics".  The people of Australia will in September vote in a right wing
government that will plunge head first into austerity economics and
politics.  Eyes wide open millions will go to the ballot and vote in the
butchers.  The media of course are largely doing the herding of the masses
into the booths.

Yet we have a situation where the personal fortune of just one capitalist,
Gina Reinhart, is bigger than the government's budget deficit.

So a right wing Labor government will make way for a more right wing
conservative coalition. There is an unreal air about it all.  The Labor
Party have clearly given up.  The only question is over the size of their
coming defeat. I personally am betting on a tsunami that will devastate
them.

At the heart of it all is the Labor Party's embrace of neo-liberalism with
an at times slower tempo than that practised by the conservatives.  The
Labor treasurer stupidly bought into the crap about the budget deficit
begin harmful.  He promised a surplus but the captialist class did not pay
their taxes and the result was a deficit.

We are though not dealing with "a failure to communicate".  It is not that
the Labor Party have not got the message out.  Rather they have embraced
the centre and the right to such an extent that there is little difference
between the major political parties.  As a consepolitics have made way for
aesthetics and the people are bored with them.  "Time for a change" is now
the slogan.

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Re: [Marxism] Niall Ferguson’s Latest Gay Bashing is the Least of His Problems | New Economic Perspectives

[Gary MacLennan]

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This man is a thorugh piece of shit.  A couple of things interest me though
in this story.  Firstly he made the anti-gay remarks in front of an
audience that he was certain would sympathize.  However not for the first
time did a petty bourgeois misread the likely reaction of the upper
classes, and silence greeted his attempts at "humour"..  The bourgeoisie
have no essential interest in homophobia.  That is the terrain of those
mired in resentment.  Ferguson forgot that he was speaking to those who
like to think of themselves as the  "beautiful people" and he served them
up this shit. No wonder they were annoyed.

Secondly Ferguson's target is Krugman and neo-Keynesianism.  That in itself
tells us a lot abouit the epoch we are trekking through.  You can tell that
the world would be a much better place if the principal enemy of the right
wing intelligentsia was not Keynes but Marx.

comradely

Gary
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 3:34 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> ==**==**==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==**==**==
>
>
> By UMKC's Bill Black.
>
> http://**neweconomicperspectives.org/**2013/05/niall-fergusons-**
> latest-gay-bashing-is-the-**least-of-his-problems.html
>
> __**__
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>

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Re: [Marxism] Letter from Italy: While the old is dying, the new cannot be born

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


>
>  Meanwhile, the party that should have opposed austerity, the PD, didn't
> do so, and was destroyed. The Grillini specifically attacked austerity and
> so did very well.
>
> Why is it so gawdawful [predictable that the social democratic left
> including ex-communists would not oppose austerity? Along with Pasok and
> British Labour and Australian Labor, etc they have formed the real clowns
> of this capitalist crisis, but only the capitalists are laughing.


comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Niall Ferguson trashes Keynes for homosexuality

[Gary MacLennan]

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But she has gallantly stuck up for marriage - between man & woman only as
the Good Book says (or does it?).  What a champion!

Comradely

Gary

On Monday, May 6, 2013, wrote:

> ==
>
>
> Sad to say this is not a new argument. Here in Australia the Australian
> Labor
> Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been attacked for being childless
> and for 'living in sin' on a number of occasions by the more
>

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Re: [Marxism] Marx, Russia, and India

[Gary MacLennan]

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Bravo, Louis!  Bravo!

I beleive Marx was so convinced of the coming revolution in Russia that he
started to learn Russian.

comradely

Gary

On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 12:51 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> ==**==**==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==**==**==
>
>
> Dear Professor Gordon,
>
> In your New Republic review of Sperber's new bio of Marx, you write:
>
> "The outbreak of Bolshevik revolution a little more than three decades
> after his death would have struck him as a startling violation of his own
> historical principle that bourgeois society and industrialization must
> reach their fullest expression before the proletariat gains the
> class-consciousness that it requires to seize political control."
>
> Despite your Harvard credentials (or perhaps in light of them, given Niall
> Ferguson's foot-in-mouth disease), you show a shocking unawareness of
> Marx's late writings on Russia. In letters to Danielson and Zasulich, he
> warned exactly against the interpretation you proffer to New Republic's
> readers.
>
> In an 1881 letter to Zasulich, he stated:
>
> "Theoretically speaking, then, the Russian 'rural commune' can preserve
> itself by developing its basis, the common ownership of land, and by
> eliminating the principle of private property which it also implies; it can
> become a direct point of departure for the economic system towards which
> modern society tends; it can turn over a new leaf without beginning by
> committing suicide; it can gain possession of the fruits with which
> capitalist production has enriched mankind, WITHOUT PASSING THROUGH THE
> CAPITALIST REGIME, a regime which, considered solely from the point of view
> of its possible duration hardly counts in the life of society. But we must
> descend from pure theory to the Russian reality."
>
> You can find out more about this in Teodor Shanin's "Late Marxism", a book
> you would find most edifying, I'm sure.
>
> You also state: "In one of his many columns for  The New York Tribune, he
> reasoned that British imperialism, however regrettable, was a historical
> necessity: only via modernization could India overcome its heritage of
> 'Oriental despotism'.”
>
> Once again you demonstrate a shocking unfamiliarity with Marx's later
> thinking. I would refer you to the chapter in Aijaz Ahmad's "In Theory:
> Classes, Nations and Literatures" titled "Marx on India: a Clarification."
>
> Even in Marx's earlier writings, he qualified the benefits of capitalist
> modernization by saying in 1853: "The Indian will not reap the fruits of
> the new elements of society scattered among them by the British
> bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the new ruling classes shall have
> been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindus
> themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke
> altogether."
>
> And, more to the point, in an 1881 letter to Danielson that reflects his
> total break with the "stagism" you attribute to him, he noted:
>
> "In India serious complications, if not a general outbreak, are in store
> for the British government. What the British take from them annually in the
> form of rent, dividends for railways useless for the Hindoos, pensions for
> the military and civil servicemen, for Afghanistan and other wars, etc.
> etc., -- what they take from them without any equivalent and quite apart
> from what they appropriate to themselves annually within India, -- speaking
> only of the commodities that Indians have to gratuitously and annually send
> over to England -- it amounts to more than the total sum of the income of
> the 60 million of agricultural and industrial laborers of India. This is a
> bleeding process with a vengeance."
>
> A bleeding process with a vengeance.
>
> This, Professor Gordon, notwithstanding your and Sperber's insistence that
> Marx belongs to the 19th century, is what makes him very much a 21st
> century figure since "A bleeding process with a vengeance" is a perfect
> description of the garment factory disaster in Bangladesh and the suicide
> epidemic in India of small farmers who have no future. I understand, of
> course, that a magazine owned by a Facebook billionaire rests on the
> assumption that there is no alternative to capitalism, but in the interests
> of serious Marx scholarship I would urge you to do your homework.
>
> Yours truly,
>
> Louis Proyect, moderator of the Marxism mailing list
>
>
>
>
>
>
> __**__
> Send list submissions to: 
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> 

Re: [Marxism] 15 years of marxmail

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Gosh 15 years.  Eheu fugaces anni.  I enjoyed Lou's account of the original
Marxmail list.  I often think of those flame wars.  In the early days of
the Internet one often breathed fire and made all sorts of threats.  I even
once threatened to go to New York and rip some one's head off - young Jerry
Levy I believe.

But what is really important is the future in the present and the future.
Here the Marxmail list comes into its own.  It is open, it is non-dogmatic
and I like to think it heralds the future Revolutionary International.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Chris Burford obituary

[Gary MacLennan]

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I am sorry to hear this.  He was very sympathetic to myself and my family.
Politically we were at odds over the Stalin thing.  In Ken Loach's film on
the Spanish Civil war the long scene where the peasants debate seizing the
land of the rich found Chris opposed to the seizures.  That threw me and
when the Marxism list died we never communicated again.  As always I regret
that.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] There's no need for all this economic sadomasochism | David Graeber | Comment is free | The Guardian

[Gary MacLennan]

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I am inclined to take this column more seriously than Andrew does.  Though
to begin with it does seem strange that the best an anarchist can come up
with is a return to Keynes and that is what the Modern Monetary theory is
in essence, I believe.  Equally strange is Graeber's choice of the metaphor
of sado-masochism.  Those who are imposing austerity are doing very nicely
thank you.  If that is masochism then I would not mind a dose of it.

However what is really in play as far as I can detect is the attempt by the
Keynesians to make a come back.  Graeber for his own reasons is using
the Reinhart and Rogoff spread sheet error to get on board and to boost the
return to Keynes.  That brings me right back to my first point.  How
unrevolutionary of him!  I have already said that a revival of Keynesianism
is not on the cards at the present time. Still I do not think any great
harm is done by attacking the legitimacy of the Austerians and that is what
the discrediting of R.& R. is all about IMHO.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Cynical Thoughts On A Pleasant Rainy Morning In Idaho

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


>
>
>
> What's next, a self-imposed ban on the sale of backwards baseball caps?
>
>
Gosh I hope not. I like those caps with the peak at the back.

Gary

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[Marxism] tension in the British Labour Party(?)

[Gary MacLennan]

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The Guardian had this report on the spat developing between Union leader
and the far-right of the Labour Party.


"Ed Miliband  risked a civil
war in the Labour  movement on
Wednesday evening when he denounced the leader of Britain's largest trade
union for a "reprehensible" attempt to divide the party after warning of
the dangers of being "seduced" by supporters of Tony
Blair
.

In his strongest attack on any union leader, Miliband tore into Len
McCluskey  hours after
the Unite  general secretary
claimed that the Labour leader would be "cast into the dustbin of history"
unless he abandons support for David Miliband's campaign managers, Jim
Murphy and Douglas Alexander.

"Len McCluskey does not speak for the Labour Party," a spokesman for
Miliband said. "This attempt to divide the Labour Party is reprehensible.

"It is the kind of politics that lost Labour many elections in the 1980s.
It won't 
work.
It is wrong. It is disloyal to the party he claims to represent."

The strongly worded statement follows a warning by a member of the shadow
cabinet that Britain's largest trade
unionshave been taken
over by a new "Bennite tendency" which must be fought by
Labour. McCluskey has been identified as one of the most disruptive
forces..."



I struggle to maintain coherence when it comes to the Milliband Brothers.
Theirs is the worst kind of snotty treachery.  Nevertheless I think it is
important to pay attention to the "row" within the British Labour Party.
The far-right known as the Blairites or New Labour have been stirring
lately, including getting Blair himself to take time off from making
millions sucking up to dictators to make a call for the Labour Party to
stay "electable" i.e. to stay on the side of Murdoch et the captialist
class.

This notion of keeping to the right so one can win an election is deeply in
the consciousness of the British Labour Party, although the Blairites
express it in its most fanatical form. BTW much the same can be said of the
Australian Labor Party.

The problem is that the economic crisis is so deep in the UK, that
increasingly people are abandoning support for the ruling
Conservative-Liberal Coalition.  The Labour Party is 10% in the polls,
virtually without doing anything. If they were to come up with a serious
alternative to Austerity then the gap would widen.

However even though the Keynesians are making much of the Reinhart Rogoff
spread sheet error, there will be no return to Keynseianism until the
specter of communism appears once more at the banquet table and shakes its
gory locks.  Then and only then will a section of the capitalist class move
to Plan B.

I remain convinced that a pre-revolutionary firestorm is a very real
possibility and not just a consummation devoutly to be wished. A European
political crisis worthy of the name is what we need.  Then surprise,
surprise suddenly we would get Keynesian solutions coming out of the mouth
of "good cop" Ed and maybe even from his "bad cop" brother David.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] re fraud claims of the venezuelan opposition

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


I was very struck by the finding that some switched to vote for Capriles
because they felt they needed a change.  Here in Queensland we got an
austerity drive for similar reasons when the governing Labor Party was
smashed and the Tories came into government.  People it seems felt they
needed a change. Well we certainly got one with thousands of public
servants sacked. So the word "change" tends to make me twitch not just a
little.

That people did not consider what kind of change they might need is hardly
surprising in Australia the land of political apathy, but one would have
hoped for more in Venezuela.  Nevertheless if Capriles overplays his hand
here then the reality of what a defeat of Chavismo would mean might
actually manifest itself in a political radicalization.

It is also important not to think of "overwhelming commitment of energy,
enthusiasm, and creative innovation" in purely numerical terms.  It is
above all a qualitative notion. In other words a resolute political
minority can act decisively and swing public opinion behind them.  After
all that is precisely how the ruling class rule.

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] thoughts on watching a certain funeral

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


**

*
--
*

I would to heaven that I were so much clay,
As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling -
Because at least the past were passed away -
And for the future - (but I write this reeling,
Having got drunk exceedingly today,
So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)
I say - the future is a serious matter -
And so - for God's sake - hock and soda water!

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Re: [Marxism] Explosions at the Boston Marathon

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


Actually this is sickening. My immediate sympathy to all who suffered.  It
is too early to attribute responsibility, but one can readily condemn this
action.  Marx's remarks on the Clerkenwell explosion spring to mind.

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] A Keynsian speaks

[Gary MacLennan]

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In the Guardian Will Hutton wrote:

Trade unions certainly needed the Thatcher treatment in terms of both
accepting the rule of law and the need for responsibilities alongside their
rights. But companies, shareholders, banks and wider finance also needed
this treatment. But as "her people" and part of the hegemonic alliance she
aimed to create, they would never get the same medicine. Instead, her Big
Bangin
1986, allowing banks worldwide to combine investment and commercial
banking in London, was a monster sweetheart deal to please her own
constituency. Britain became the centre of a global financial boom, but at
home this meant an intensification of the financial system's
dysfunctionality, helped by little regulation and a self-defeating credit
boom, worsening the anti-investment, short-termist that needed to be
reformed. This is now obvious to all. But for nearly 30 years, the apparent
success of Thatcherism hid the need.

My comment:  Hutton's article on Thatcher is worth a read if one can
control the gag reflex. He is critical of her but reserves his praise for
her defeat of the unions.  He represents the 1970s as a crisis of
governability.  The trade unions were too strong and the "rights" of
parliament had to be asserted, he argues.

Reading his analysis of union power, I can only say "I wish!"

He then goes on as above to describe the rise of the market.  He does not
admit that this is where governability shifted to.  He is unable to
conceive of such a notion. But the revelations of the corruption of
politicians by the Murdoch clan are just the tip of the ice berg when it
comes to how Parliament lay down before the city. The whole notion of the
banks as "too big to fail" and the unspoken corollary of the working-class
as "too small to succeed", clearly shows the constructing of commonsense
around the power of the capitalist class.

But Hutton is worried.  He is honest enough to see that Britain is not
working.  He describes how he is part of a committee chaired by Lord Adonis
(!) to introduce a kind of watered down Keynesianism to the devastated
North East.  The reintroducing of the state as partner to capital is for
him the solution.  He also fusses a little over the crushing of the unions
in that it has meant that 60% of British workers have no vocation.

My own thoughts are that the unions were not powerful enough in the 70s.
They were powerful certainly but they did not challenge the system
fundamentally.  They were much too economist. If there had been a crisis of
governability as Hutton alleges that would actually have created a whole
different kind of politics.


comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] rotting in hell

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


As Robert Frost put it:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
>From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

>
> Would it not be "burning in hell". Rotting is what one does in the grave.
> Just say'n...
>
> David
>
>

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[Marxism] rotting in hell - final words

[Gary MacLennan]

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Comrades,

I had not expected this to be a controversial topic at all.

A good friend just sent me this text:

*TEXT/ SMS circulating over here.
Thatcher has been in hell 20 minutes and she has closed down 3 furnaces*!"

The text is interesting in that it records a feeling that Thatcher was and
in a sense remains a power.  For me that justifies the necessity of
publicly popping a champagne cork or two.  I will be having my own belated
toast on Friday night.

Now my final words on all this are that of course I understand that
publicly celebrating Thatcher's death is not sufficient.  Puh-leezze give
me a little credit, comrades.  I do realise that dancing on graves will not
bring down capitalism.


Like all on this list I want so much more.  But at least some are chanting
"Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Dead, Dead, Dead".  Wouldn't it be so much worse
if there was no chanting and no fireworks and no corks popping?

There is also below the surface a feeling that it is somehow unseemly to
celebrate a death. Marxists all too often come in stuffed shirts. But in
the immortal words of Michael Corleone "It's not personal, Sonny. It's
strictly business".  And the business is that of counteracting the lies of
capital- the sheer, nauseating hypocrisy of mass murderers like Barack
Obama.  So dance on I say to all.  "The Wicked Witch is dead".

Comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] She should rot in hell

[Gary MacLennan]

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==


With all respect Manuel, you've got it exactly wrong here.  I repeat it is
essential to publicly celebrate the death of this woman. The crowds that
gathered on the Falls Road, in Liverpool and in Brixton were signalling
clearly to the powers that be and all that cooperate with them undying
hatred for what they stand for.  Look at the reaction of the powerful to
the celebrations.  Look at what Martin McGuinness said.  He as a sell out
was alarmed at the celebrations.  They should hve doubled on that account.

Every firecracker, every balloon every glass of champagne, and every tweet
hurt the powerful, because they deny that Big Brother is loved, and of
course Big Brother needs to spread the lie that he is loved.  In the
carnival of the celebrations we find the people's truth - the antidote to
the offical "truth" that swamps the airways.

Now I would also point out for Thomas that I have never mentioned
Thatcher's dementia.  I am too old to rejoice in any occurrence of
Alzheimer's or vascular dementia.  Besides my own mother had the latter and
it was a cause of terrible grief to all of us.

Now for the Thatcher funeral.  The police state is to be mobilised. I am
not at all surpised by that necessity.

comadely

Gary




On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 6:25 AM, Anthony Hartin wrote:

> ==**==**==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==**==**==
>
>
>
> > No, you got my point. Personally, I would rather there be a mass
> outpouring of thousands fighting against the bedroom tax and other forms of
> austerity of the "present crisis" don't you?
>
> Jeez, give people a night off when they've got something to celebrate.
> I don't think the two (dancing/fighting) are counterposed, indeed I expect
> the level of both is related. Dont worry about the Labour Party - they are
> doing a fine job exposing themselves by condemning any bad words about
> Thatcher
>
>
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Re: [Marxism] She should rot in hell

[Gary MacLennan]

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 I have been very struck by the absolute necessity to celebrate her death
publicly. On one level it is Épater la bourgeoisie.  They should hear the
faint echo of the tumbrels as the crowd chants "We're having a party
because Thatcher's dead".  On another level it is essential to assert the
People's Truth in the face of the lies and hypocrisy of Official "Truth".
To adapt the language of the Occupy movement, it's very much a case of
"This is what the truth looks like".
Then there is the contemporary resonances of the Austerity Program - the
absolute logic of Thatcherism.

Good riddance to bad rubbish as we used to say as kids.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Fireworks in Liverpool...

[Gary MacLennan]

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I'm loving this.

Gary

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[Marxism] rotting in hell

[Gary MacLennan]

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Thankfully the Irish Times has a column on the celebrations among some
"Britons". The words "Rejoice" are at least being seen.

Re Meryl Streep's comments: She is obviously a bright peson, but it is sad
to se her throw praise at such an evil opportunistic, vain and ultimtely
stupid person such as Margaret Thatcher.

comradely

Gary

PS Is Paddy still on the list?  I wonder what he is thinking.

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Re: [Marxism] She should rot in hell

[Gary MacLennan]

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I hope Briish comrades on this list do their duty and let us know what is
being said on the ground among the people.  Such is the dominanace of
"official truth" in the bourgeois media here in Australia that it is hard
to get beyond the "tributes pour in" line. Though stuff is fltering
through.  Thus the deputy editor of the Sun did say "nasty things" were
being said about Thatcher on Twitter.  My heart leaped with relief.

Lou, as is his wont when a hero of the bourgeoisie dies, prefaced his post
with "rot in hell".  I second that heartily. It is so important that there
be a people's carnival over Thatcher's death. Her heirs and wannabes in the
Tory and Labour parties need to be "encouraged".

comradely

Gary


On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 10:44 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> ==**==**==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==**==**==
>
>
> NY Times April 8, 2013
> Margaret Thatcher Dies; Remade Britain
> By ALAN COWELL
>
> LONDON — Margaret Thatcher, a towering, divisive and yet revered figure
> who left an enduring impact on British politics, died on Monday of a
> stroke, her family said.
>
> “It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that
> their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this
> morning,” a statement from her spokesman, Lord Tim Bell, said.
>
> Lady Thatcher had been in poor health for months. She served as prime
> minister for 11 years, beginning in 1979. She was known variously as the
> ‘Iron Lady,’ a stern Conservative who transformed Britain’s way of thinking
> about its economic and political life, broke union power and opened the way
> to far greater private ownership.
>
> She was leader of Britain through its 1982 war in the Falklands and
> stamped her skepticism about European integration onto her country’s
> political landscape for decades.
>
> __**__
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Re: [Marxism] Glasgow Bedroom Tax Protest - Large Turnout - Marred by SWP Related Controversy

[Gary MacLennan]

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I looked up the video on this.  I was appalled by the spectacle of grey
haired men pushing back young women.  From a purely marketing point of
view, I would have thought that this was not a good look. But then, to give
them their due,  I think that Kimber & Callinicos, not to mention dear old
Comrade Delta, can hardly be accused of factoring in how what they do and
don't do might look to the constituency of young women.  Grey haired old
men will do them nicely as a support base, thank you.

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] The 'orrible brothers

[Gary MacLennan]

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So the older of the Milliband Brothers is quitting British politics. That
is a splendid piece of good news.  Now we only have Ed to endure.

I have the Irish special dislike of traitors and betrayers.  That Ralph
could have raised two such bloody minded opportunists as David and Ed
defies understanding. I wonder though what is behind David's leaving.  Is
it a sign that there can be no return to the politics of Tony Blair?  Is it
in other words an indication that finally we are post-New Labour?  That is
truly a consummation devoutly to be wished.

In any case Milliband is now heading off to the US of A.  Another bloody
Brit like Hitchens for Americans to put up with.  American comrades have my
full sympathy. At least Hitchens could be occasionally witty.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] The Rebel Jew Jesus » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

[Gary MacLennan]

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A strange piece this.  There seems so much unsaid.  The illusions and
delusions of the mentally ill are so terrifying in their reality.
comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] The SWP leadership has turned the party into a sinking ship | Richard Seymour | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

[Gary MacLennan]

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This is a very bitter piece. Very.  I followed the link to the Julie Sherry
article defending the Leadership and I could understand the bitterness.
Sherry's article is profoundly dishonest. She has, as a woman, been wheeled
out to provide a cover for a coven of males who think they are a law unto
themselves.

Yet again, delenda est Carthago.  One needs to insist that the central
problem is the destruction of democracy by the manipulation of democratic
centralism by a core of full time "revolutionaries" in the name of building
the "revolutionary party".

comradely
Gary

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[Marxism] re life in political life in Oz - let me be the first (yet again)

[Gary MacLennan]

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While the good Yanks on this list are snoozing, back down under the
Australian Labour Party is about to change leaders.  In a maneuver worthy
of the decks of the Titanic, former Prime Minister will be re-installed in
about twenty minutes for now.  I am too late to take any more bets
unfortunately, but my crystal ball has already garnered me $10 worth of
lotto tickets.
I have already said my piece on Rudd on this list.  so I will not expand on
those remarks.  As for Gillard, undoubtedly anti-woman sentiment is a
factor in her demise.  But she had sunk to such depths of neo-liberalism
that I will shed no tears over her defeat.  For instance when it came out
that in cabinet she had opposed increased pensions she said proudly that it
showed she was not "a soft touch".  As an old collapsed Catholic I smelt
more of that there Protestant radicalism. In her case Methodism with a
leavening of a belief in the concepts of the deserving and undeserving
poor.

Gillard was also an ardent Zionist and was opposed to the recogniiton of a
Palestinian state at the recent UN vote, but she was overruled by the
Foreign Minister and we gallantly abstained.  She also agreed to station
American troops on Australian soil and thus we participate in the military
encirclement of China, despite it being our principal customer. So good
riddance I say.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Gailbraith and Panitch: Is a New "New Deal' Possible?

[Gary MacLennan]

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I felt this interview was unsatisfactory in ways I cannot really pinpoint.
It seemed to me that Panitch & Galbraith had only really got going when
Time Out was called. Was the underlyingissue the difference between
Keynesian prognoses and remedies and the classic Marxist position that
Keynesianism cannot stop the downward spiral of the Tendency of the Rate of
Profit to Fall;  and that Keynesian pumppriming locks us into stagnation?

Or have I as usual mucked up an understanding of the economic?

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Questions for my class

[Gary MacLennan]

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Hi Dan

I obviously cannot comment on the American scene, but here in Oz there are
not dissimilar myths.

One of the absolute keys to understanding Australian politics is that we
were born modern.  If one brackets of the Indigenous community, then there
has never been an aristocracy or a peasantry in Australia.

Now some time ago Lou posted the Tamas article on the truth about class and
caste, and I may have commented on it before.  But for methe article
represented a moment of epiphany.  It explained to me all those stupid
arguments I used to have with Australian and American academics over
statements such as "Anyone can be President" or "Prime Minister ".  "There
is no class in Australia".

 No amount of shouting or raging on my part could shift that line. And
trust me I did shout and rage.  Then post Tamas I worked out what they were
saying is  "There is no caste in America" (or in Australia).  So mobility
is a theoretical possibility.  Just like I might win the lotto. So now my
tactic would be to explain the difference between caste and class and then
to talk about probability.

But no one comes up to me anymore and says that anyone can be president.  I
suppose that is one good outcome from all that shouting and raging.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] The crisis of the Catholic Church

[Gary MacLennan]

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I enjoyed reading this piece.  I love all that gossip about who voted for
whom.  Unfortunately it rushes to its conclusions and really the author
could not do justice to his topic in the space available. Having said that
there are so many potential strands to this story that could be teased out
in a book.  Firstly Ratzinger's resignation: did he go or was he pushed?
Did he throw up his hands and in effect walk off stage with a "I've had
enough of this shit"? Maybe, although he did seem so attached to the purple
socks, red shoes, cute little hats and the white dress.  It might have
taken a big shove to get him away from all that bling.

Then there is Francis 1st.  As a Jesuit and outsider, he may be able to
tackle the Vatican Bank and the homosexual mafia within the Curia.  Still
if I were him I would watch Godfather 3, and make my own tea.

Enjoyably interesting times.

comradely
Gary

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[Marxism] back in the UK

[Gary MacLennan]

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I have always maintained an interest in British politics even though I am
now in my fifth decade in Oz.  I read the Guardian regularly and of course
I am a total groupie when it comes to Lenin's Tomb.  BTW if any one is
getting up a Richard Seymour personality cult and a fan club. put me down
for life membership - for however long that will be. He's bright; he's cute
and he's got good politics.  The real clincher though is that the rat that
sold him out at the NCC meeting reported he did not go to branch meetings
What more proof is needed that Richard is the real thing?

But the intent of this post is not to dwell on the SWP or its troubles.
Rather I intended to focus on the Tory Party.  Sometimes I can control my
gag reflex long enough to ask what do they think they are up to?  My
Catholicism kicks in and I tend to ask how can any group of people be that
evil for that long?  But something of an answer was in today's Guardian. A
recent poll shows the Tories as heading for defeat. Anger and fear is
gripping the party.  And this piece struck me as interesting"



"The Tory planning minister, Nick Boles, said on Friday night that the
party had "screwed up" in the Eastleigh byelection but warned that it must
not swing to the right after the drubbing.

He suggested the party had failed to offer voters any hope and had repeated
the same mistakes it has been making for more than a decade.

Boles told the Times that last week's Hampshire by-election, which saw the
Tories pushed into third place behind Ukip, had been a "truly rotten
campaign".

He said: "Where was the hope? It was as if *modernisation* had never
happened."

So there it is the key word -modernisation.  The Tory party as the
inheritor of  the modernisation brand  that the New Labour mob had made
their own.  Modernisation is of course a heavily coded word for the
elimination of anything that does not comply totally with market
imperatives.  But it also plays to British fears that their country is old
and decrepit and run down and in political terms weak..  Check out the
opening sequence of Monty Python's *The meaning of life* to see a fantasy
resolution of those fears. There a group of old British fogeys take on and
defeat the Yanks.

British politics can be interpreted so easily as a tale of a country that
is still agonising over the transition from being an empire to being a
nation.

So modernization is the answer. Cut pensions. Decimate the NHS.  Harass
single mothers. Demonize Muslims.  Greatness awaits us!

My gag reflex is reasserting itself so I will end this post on that note.



comradely



Gary

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Re: [Marxism] On Hugo Chavez

[Gary MacLennan]

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I am deeply saddened by the news of Chavez' passing.  I know there will be
comrades from the Sate Cap tradition who may not feel this as a tragedy.
Nevwertheless a tragedy it is.  The enemies of humanity - such as Obama -
will be delighted, but the people are growing stronger and the Chavez
legacy will not so easily be defeated.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] A world without work

[Gary MacLennan]

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>
> Hi Michael
>

Is this the famous German Ideology quote or did you have some other piece
in mind?

comradely

Gary

>
> Marx suggests that work can morph into play.  Among rich people,
> self-directed work becomes a hobby,  such as when farm work becomes
> gardening or  when executives  do cabinet work in their spare time.
>
>

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Re: [Marxism] The Greens and Labor: Is this war baby or just confusion?

[Gary MacLennan]

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Just a few comments, John.  We should never, like not ever, call the
bastards "miners".  They are mine owners,  or executives. They have never
done any mining. Only in Australia could that gross creature Gina Reinhart
be called a miner.

That apart I tend to think the Greens move is largely rhetorical, as you
do, I believe.  However it may be a sign that there is a left opening
within the Greens.  It may be that given the current political stagnation
that the call for a redistribution of money away from the 1% towards the
99% will gain traction. In any case we should be open to such a possibility
and not reply with the ever ready mantra of the need for a revolutionary
party. Think Syriza, John.  Think broad regroupment.  Above all think
beyond the  hopeful platitude of "from little things, big things grow".
comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Australian IST group uncritically backs the SWP CC

[Gary MacLennan]

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Is Solidarity Ian Rintoul's group or is he something else?  John bless his
heart denies the IS origins of Socialist Alternative but does it not
feature a core of old ISers?

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Australian IST group uncritically backs the SWP CC

[Gary MacLennan]

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Who is in the IST?  They're the mob who expelled what was to become the
Socialist alternative are they not?  So difficult to keep tabs on the
groupuscle.
comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Redfriars - the Public School of the Socialist Workers Party

[Gary MacLennan]

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Is the Redfriars meme outdated?  Perhaps but the British imaginary is still
haunted by the residues of caste.  What the public school metaphor does is
to highlight the sense of privilege and power within the sanctum of the
SWP's CC.  to that extent the Redfriars metaphor or meme if you like still
has efficacy.  besides one cannot underestimate the rage of the CC at these
assaults which are designed to make fun of them.  the point is not the
humour so much as the attempt at humour.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Redfriars - the Public School of the Socialist Workers Party

[Gary MacLennan]

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Sunday morning and man's heart expands to tinker with the internet...

I found this funny, like I did the Kimber bunker rant on youtube (has it
been taken down?).  Some of the personalities are not known to me, though.

Having said that the bullying and the spoofs are all bad signs.  Callinicos
& Kimber & co are going to going to make sure that the ship goes down with
them.  Normally that would lead to the demoralisation and depoliticising of
the faction that is expelled.  But this time it might all be different.  I
think so because in Syriza we have something like  a model of the way to
go. Should the crisis in the UK mature to the extent that the working class
get over their abstentionism and take an active role in their
self-emancipation, then a British Syriza could emerge.  Then comrades like
Richard Seymour would have a role to play.  Of course then Kimber &
Callinicos would come running to try and do their entry thing.

All this is based on the assumption that the special conference will see a
the defeat of Seymour and his comrades. If that does not happen however
then a very interesting new game could be in town.  In any case what we are
hearing in the UK is the death rattle of Zinovievism.  And that makes this
thread of continuing relevance for us all.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] SWP CC caves

[Gary MacLennan]

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The CC are not caving in.  They think they have the numbers. They will vote
down the faction at the special conference and then there will probably be
a split.  Kimber will emerge still as the leader .  The organisation will
be smaller, but hey from little things big things grow, don't they

I feel like muttering something like "where have all the factions gone?"

What is happening here is what Pham Binh put his finger on.  We are dealing
with the tyranny of the full time party worker. Their ability levels demand
that they keep the organisation small enough to dominate.  They use the
Leninist rule book with utter ruthlessness.  It is all so predictable.

I feel obliged to comment on the content of the CC statement.  It takes me
back over the years to how my faction was characterised.  We too were not
political and were not facing the reality of the class struggle.

Kimber clothes himself in the kind of rhetoric that long ago Nixon tried to
use.  He accused his opponents of being mire in Watergate, while he kept
his eye on the really important matters.  Similarly Kimber is keeping his
eye on neo-liberalism and the class struggle.  It is a pity he did not keep
his eye on the rape issue.  But I suppose that makes me sound like a
feminist.

I said originally that this was all a tragedy.  I stand by that, but
perhaps if it all leads to the final discrediting of the Leninists then we
will have made some progress.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] SWP Faction

[Gary MacLennan]

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I think with the resignation from the student office we entered a different
game.  Kimber & Callinicos are fighting for their lives, now, lMO. "Leninism"
creates Kimbers and in my experience they will rather reign over a small
organization than  serve in a large one.  I always thought Richard Seymour
was too talented from the CC's point of view. So the odds are on a split.

What is extraordinary is the incompetence of the CC - taken out by the dark
side of the force I.e. the Internet.

Comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Paul Le Blanc on the SWP crisis

[Gary MacLennan]

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Tony wrote:

On the other hand its not impossible that Leninist organisations like Soc
Alternative/RSP can find a way forward also. Despite Gary's eternal shudder
of disgust, you may have to concede that Soc Alternative learnt something
through past faction struggles (Mick, Sandra, Jeff and Jill Sparrow and
myself were all expelled from the IST), and the last 18 years of slow and
steady building. I mean you have to take some hope from that fact that past
bitter rivals decided that they were able to get along after all - perhaps
there's hope for the rest of us as well.

My reply:

Never disgust Tony. Never as in not ever. My predominant emotion is sadness
about all the people who have been processed through Leninism.  Where have
they all gone? Does it ever occur to the "Leninists" to think of all those
thousands who have fallen by the way side?  Generally they are dismissed
with the comment that the ex-member has "moved to the right".

I have made this point before, but the weight of empirical evidence is that
the Leninist party builders are doing something wrong, because they have
failed miserably to build the party.

The crisis in the British SWP is of great significance to the Australian
Left generally and to the Socialist Alternative in particular despite what
John has argued.  Mick and Sandra etc have all as you say been in the IST.
Now I sincerely hope that the discussion with the RSP are legitimate and
help to build an impetus towards a larger and more open organisation.

But it could also be a maneuver designed to mop up a rival organisation.  I
have been through that process before with the Communist League and the
then SWP. the end of the "unification process" was that the Communist
League did not exist and most of its members were depoliticised.  My own
belief is that the organisation, which will form the embryo of the broad
organisation we so desperately need, already exists and it is the Socialist
Alliance.

But is say that in no partisan or sectarian sense at all. If Mick and
Sandra really have learned something they would be in discussions with the
Socialist Alliance, but I know Mick and I know Sandra and I also know pigs
don't fly.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] Their SWP ... and ours

[Gary MacLennan]

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> Joaquin wrote:
> I cannot criticize the leading comrades of the SWP (UK): they merely
> followed our footsteps, and those of so many others.
>
> But I do grieve that it is.
>

You are not alone in your grief, Joaquin. Sadly to the committed  & to the
young and illusioned, we sound bitter.  But I am not angry at them,
 My anger is reserved for the "leadership" - the ageing mountebacks who
vampire like feed of the hopes and faith of the revolutionary youth while
all the time muttering the mantra "from little  things big things grow".
How many more years of little things must we trek through?

Comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] can neo-liberalism become "natural"?

[Gary MacLennan]

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> .
> Patrick wrote:
>


> So what are called 'service delivery protests' spread like wildfire under
> these conditions but all efforts in policy debates and even the highest
> courts have left those neolib structural conditions untouched. So the
> comrades resort to a kind of 'commoning', i.e. systematic stealing of water
> and electricity in their own Polanyian move. But that's just temporary; the
> crackdowns step up and state violence intensifies, so protests that are
> immediately squashed or die out are now perhaps best described as
> 'popcorn'.
>
>
>
Well Patrick all that proves that neo-liberalism is not natural, basically
my point btw.  An alternative moral economy operates in the townships.

Now it has not broken through but that is another question, actually.
Richard's metaphor of the pendulum being moved in favour of neo-liberalism
does not hold here.  If it did there would be no need for state violence.
Lurking underneath Richard's analysis is the dystopic vision that Big
Brother will come to be loved.

I remain optimistic and convinced that one day the rich and the powerful
will choke on a diet of popcorn.  Certainly lets hope so.

comradely

Gary

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Re: [Marxism] So what the fuck was Humphrey Bogart doing in North Africa anyhow?

[Gary MacLennan]

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I remember hoping the Japanese commandant, Colonel Saito, would stab him.

comradely

Gary

On 1/22/13, Louis Proyect  wrote:
> ==
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>
>
> On 1/21/13 6:38 PM, Gary MacLennan wrote:
>
>>
>> I recall that character too.  I suppose he was part of the narrative
>> of the colonial experience as being cuaght up in m odernization.
>
> Think Alec Guinness in "Bridge Over the River Kwai".
>
>
> 
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