[Marxism] WorkChoices - it's back
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * WorkChoices - it's back The Abbott government in Australia will not reject the attacks on penalty rates, the minimum wage slow down or condemn individual contracts that will undermine pay rates for all workers. It will say it is just a draft; it is really just fine tuning what is already there; in the national interest we should all work together to address significant challenges to the economy and jobs, etc etc etc. What this all boils down to is making the working class pay for the crisis of profitability gathering pace in Australia. If the ruling class get these changes through that will open the floodgates for the next set of attacks from the insatiable bosses. http://enpassant.com.au/2015/08/04/workchoices-its-back/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: 'We woke up in a desert' – the water crisis taking hold across Egypt | World news | The Guardian
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Egypt, once celebrated as the “gift of the Nile”, is in the grips of a serious water crisis. With a rising population and a fixed supply, the country has less water per person each year. The country’s annual water supply dropped to an average of 660 cubic metres a person in 2013, down from over 2,500 cubic metres in 1947, according to official figures. Egypt is already below the United Nations’ water poverty threshold, and by 2025 the UN predicts it will be approaching a state of “absolute water crisis”. For people like Sayed, living in villages and cities outside of Egypt’s centres of power and wealth, that crisis has already arrived. In June, the Delta city of Bilqas, with a population of 50,000, was suffering from a severe drought. “We can’t find water to drink, wash, clean or anything. We woke up to find we have moved to the desert and our taps are dry,” said Hossam Megahed, a city resident. full: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/04/egypt-water-crisis-intensifies-scarcity _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Exit the Euro? Polemic with Greek Economist Costas Lapavitsas
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * (The Morenoites make an intervention on CounterPunch. They oppose a Grexit and instead advocate nationalizing everything posthaste. Well, why not? Of course, the next step is to forge a revolutionary party capable of leading such an audacious struggle. So what if Antarsya and the KKE have failed to develop any kind of mass following. The important thing is to make the record.) http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/04/exit-the-euro-polemic-with-greek-economist-costas-lapavitsas/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Cossacks Face Reprisals as Rebel Groups Clash in Eastern Ukraine - The New York Times
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * By contrast, the Donetsk Republic formulates its agenda from below, literally on the run, in response to the public mood and the course of events. Strictly speaking this republic is not even a state—rather, it amounts to a coalition of diverse communities, most of them self-organised. In essence, it is the perfect embodiment of the anarchist concept of the revolutionary order. --Boris Kagarlitsky --- When the rebellion erupted in eastern Ukraine last year, the Cossacks, the whip-wielding, onetime horsemen of the southern Russian steppes, sent hundreds of young men as volunteers to fight alongside the rebels. Renowned warriors, as well as darlings of the Putin-era Kremlin, they lent a steely organization to the often ragtag separatist forces. As the fighting died down, the Cossacks established at least de facto control over three eastern Ukrainian towns which they claimed as “Cossack Republics” and subjected to harsh, traditional punishments, like public horsewhippings for petty criminals. At the peak of their success last year, the republics run by Mr. Mozgovoi and two other Cossack commanders, or atamans, Nikolai I. Kozitsyn and Pavel L. Dryomov, claimed to control 80 percent of the Luhansk region, including major towns, strategic roads and border crossings to Russia. They were closer than ever before to realizing a long-held dream of having an independent Cossack state. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/world/europe/cossacks-face-reprisals-as-rebel-groups-clash-in-eastern-ukraine.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Pacific war, racism and Hiroshima
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/08/07/the-pacific-war-racism-and-hiroshima/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] New on Redline
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * One of the most interesting pieces this week is 'A Nightmare in Whiteware', which is an account of work on the dryer line at Fisher and Paykel in Auckland. It was written in the early 1990s but retains great relevance as the method of labour organisation used, Teamwork, is essentially a form of speed-up and is widely used today. In addition to the worker's account, we explain why employers resort to speed-up as opposed to simply investing in more machinery and technology to make workers more productive. https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/from-the-vaults-a-nightmare-in-whiteware-the-teamwork-system-exploitation-and-alienation/ Today's awful politicians looks at Mana Party leader Hone Harawira's 'bruddah' letter to Obama: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/todays-awful-politicians/ Don Franks looks at prison violence: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/prison-violence-wheres-it-heading/ Mike Roberts examines whether Paul Mason's 'postcapitalism' is utopian or scientific: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/12729/ Philip Ferguson looks at the entrenchment of the 'White NZ' policy 1910-1920, including the ignominious role of the NZ Labour Party: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/the-making-of-the-white-new-zealand-policy-pt-9-white-new-zealand-entrenched-1910-1920/ Don Franks looks at how it's OK for people in uniform to kill civilians (especially if they're brown) but just don't kill a lion. . .: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/just-dont-shoot-a-lion/ Nizar Visram looks at Greek austerity and African debt peonage: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/greek-austerity-and-its-resemblance-to-african-debt-peonage/ Yassamine Mather looks at how the Turkish regime, supported by the US, is attacking the Kurdish movement which has been successfully fighting against IS: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/us-backed-turkish-regime-attacks-kurds-fighting-is/ Phil (for the Redline blog collective) _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Togliatti?
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 8/4/15 5:54 PM, Richard Fidler via Marxism wrote: Excellent balance sheet of the recent Greek events: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/tsipras-debt-germany-greece-euro/ Kouvelakis: The transitional program is also organically linked — this is something we learn from the inheritance of the third and fourth congresses of the Communist International and the subsequent elaboration by Gramsci and Togliatti — to the goal of the united front, the rallying of all the forces of the block of the subordinated classes at a higher political and strategic level. It was this unifying approach implicit in the idea of a “government of the anti-austerity left” that fired the imagination of broad masses in spring 2012, enabling Syriza’s rise. Togliatti? Transitional program? WTF? This article links to another Jacobin article about Togliatti written by Peter D. Thomas. He apparently thinks that Perry Anderson was a bit off on Western Marxism, especially by including Gramsci. I don't think that Anderson was off at all by claiming that the Gramsci industry in academia represents a detour into cultural studies but let's leave that aside for the time being. What I don't get is Thomas and Kouvelakis's enthusiasm for Togliatti, especially the latter's linking him to transitional demands unless he is talking about something totally unrelated to Trotsky's writings. Meanwhile here's Thomas: I also think that Marxist theory in this period needs to be understood integrally and politically, that is, not simply in terms of theoretical productions (essays, books, etc.), but also in terms of the political impact of theoretical work. In that sense, the greatest Western Marxist theorist of the postwar period is not Sartre or Althusser or Colletti or any of the other figures discussed at length by Anderson, but instead, Palmiro Togliatti. In addition to his own theoretical writings — of much greater value than is often supposed today — Togliatti was also a theoretician of politics engaged in creating a hegemonic apparatus that encouraged a profound and real dialectic and real critique of the politics of his period. Whatever disagreements I might have with his substantive theoretical and political positions — and there are many — this should not preclude acknowledgment of his real importance as a theorist and politician with a real, mass impact on the politics of his time. The theoretical and political culture that Togliatti helped to shape in the Italian Communist Party, and in Italy more generally as this massive party’s sphere of influence radiated across the entire spectrum of the Left, was the example to which other leftists in Europe and around the world looked for inspiration. --- All I can say is that if you are interested in the role of the CP in Italian politics, you are better off reading Paul Ginsborg's A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943-1988 than this balderdash because after all you have to judge socialists on their deeds much more than their theory. Ginsborg: In another area, the party's attitude to the Soviet Union, mystification prevailed. In the 1950s the P C I was characterized by its Stalinism. At the most straightforward level this meant a slavish adulation of 'Baffone' himself. In Rinascita of 1948, reviewing Stalin's work on the national question (of all things), Lucio Lombardo Radice had this to say: 'Creative Marxist that he is, Stalin is not only a scholar of genius who analyses political and historical problems in the light of Marxist principles; he is certainly this, but he is above all the great revolutionary, the great builder who analyses relations in order to transform them, who studies problems in order to resolve them.' On the occasion of Stalin's seventieth birthday Togliatti wrote: 'The role that Stalin has played in the development of human thought is such that he has earned himself a place which until now very few have occupied in the history of humanity.' When the news reached Italy of Stalin's death in March 1953, the Communist Party went into mourning. L'Unita's headline of 6 March read: 'The man who has done most for the liberation of the human race is dead' The party's grief extended to its lowest levels. Natoli has described how in the party sections of the poorest Roman borgate photographs of Stalin were surrounded by flowers and candles and local militants sat around as if commemorating a saint.42 As well as elevating Stalin into a father-figure of superhuman proportions, the party portrayed the Soviet Union as a society where the problems of democracy and social justice
[Marxism] Fwd: Some notes on Corbyn | ed rooksby
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The radical mood sweeping much of Europe crystallises within nationally specific social conditions and finds concrete expression in nationally specific political and organisational forms. In Spain the need for an alternative was given political expression by a new party, Podemos, which emerged from the 2011 ‘movement of the squares’ while in Greece anti-austerity forces cohered around a pre-existing coalition of radical left organisations, Syriza, (later to transform itself into a unitary party). In Britain something quite distinct appears to be emerging. Whereas Podemos and Syriza, for all their differences, emerged to challenge established social democratic parties (the PSOE and PASOK respectively) from without, the British challenge is manifesting within the structures of the traditional party of social democracy (or at least in close relation to these structures inasmuch as Corbyn’s leadership bid has galvanized forces of support that go beyond the Labour Party). Further the specific British form of this challenge has emerged rather late in the day after a series of what, in retrospect, now seem to have been false starts – remember the ‘Green surge’ of a few months ago – as if this new radical mood was searching in a sort of trial and error process for an appropriate vehicle before finally settling (for now at least) on the movement currently coalescing around Corbyn. full: https://edrooksby.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/some-notes-on-corbyn/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Turning No Into a Political Front (Kouvelakis)
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Excellent balance sheet of the recent Greek events: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/tsipras-debt-germany-greece-euro/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II A Collection of Primary Sources Updated National Security Archive Posting Marks 70th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings of Japan and the End of World War II Extensive Compilation of Primary Source Documents Explores Manhattan Project, Petitions Against Military Use of Atomic Weapons, Debates over Japanese Surrender Terms, Atomic Targeting Decisions, and Lagging Awareness of Radiation Effects New Information Spotlights General Dwight D. Eisenhower's Early Misgivings about First Nuclear Use General Curtis Lemay's Report on the Firebombing of Tokyo, March 1945 National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 525 Edited by William Burr Originally posted - August 5, 2005 First updated - April 27, 2007 Latest update - August 4, 2015 For more information, contact: William Burr - 202 / 994-7000 or nsarc...@gwu.edu August 4, 2015 - A few months after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Dwight D. Eisenhower commented during a social occasion how he had hoped that the war might have ended without our having to use the bomb. This virtually unknown evidence from the diary of Robert P. Mieklejohn, an assistant to Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, published for the first time today by the National Security Archive, confirms that the future President Eisenhower had early misgivings about the first use of atomic weapons by the United States. General George C. Marshall is the only high-level official whose contemporaneous (pre-Hiroshima) doubts about using the weapons against cities are on record. On the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the National Security Archive updates its 2005 publication of the most comprehensive on-line collection of declassified U.S. government documents on the first use of the atomic bomb and the end of the war in the Pacific. This update presents previously unpublished material and translations of difficult-to-find records. Included are documents on the early stages of the U.S. atomic bomb project, Army Air Force General Curtis LeMay's report on the firebombing of Tokyo (March 1945), Secretary of War Henry Stimson's requests for modification of unconditional surrender terms, Soviet documents relating to the events, excerpts from the Robert P. Mieklejohn diaries mentioned above, and selections from the diaries of Walter J. Brown, special assistant to Secretary of State James Byrnes. The original 2005 posting included a wide range of material, including formerly top secret Magic summaries of intercepted Japanese communications and the first-ever full translations from the Japanese of accounts of high level meetings and discussions in Tokyo leading to the Emperor's decision to surrender. Also documented are U.S. decisions to target Japanese cities, pre-Hiroshima petitions by scientists questioning the military use of the A-bomb, proposals for demonstrating the effects of the bomb, debates over whether to modify unconditional surrender terms, reports from the bombing missions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and belated top-level awareness of the radiation effects of atomic weapons. The documents can help readers to make up their own minds about long-standing controversies such as whether the first use of atomic weapons was justified, whether President Harry S. Truman had alternatives to atomic attacks for ending the war, and what the impact of the Soviet declaration of war on Japan was. Since the 1960s, when the declassification of important sources began, historians have engaged in vigorous debate over the bomb and the end of World War II. Drawing on sources at the National Archives and the Library of Congress as well as Japanese materials, this electronic briefing book includes key documents that historians of the events have relied upon to present their findings and advance their interpretations. * * * * * Check out today's posting at the National Security Archive - http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb525-The-Atomic-Bomb-and-the-End-of-World-War-II/ Find us on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/NSArchive Unredacted, the Archive blog - http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
