[Marxism] Review of Richard Seymour's Corbyn
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. * Reviewing Corbyn by Richard Seymour Verso 2016 If ever a book was born under a lucky star, it surely was Richard Seymour’s *Corbyn*. No sooner had it been published than the anti-Corbyn coup pushed it into the best sellers list. I have no idea of how many copies it has sold, but the author’s exhausting list of engagements suggest that it has done very well. I am glad that this is so, for this is a very good book and one that all socialists should read. Apart from the fortuitous circumstances surrounding its publication, the book serves deeper purposes. It analyses the amazing phenomenon when a shop worn old leftist was taken off the back benches, dusted down and miraculously propelled into the leadership of the British Labour Party. In front of our eyes, hope was snatched out of the maw of despair. Hundreds of thousands swarmed into the Labour Party and suddenly we had the largest Social Democratic Labour Party built almost overnight. Here in Australia we Old Lefties are almost choked with envy. Why couldn’t we have a Corbyn over here? We too are desperate for relief from neoliberalism. We too have a revived ultra-right under Pauline Hanson who has crested a wave of Islamophobia that we did not know even existed. She is now seated in our senate and spouting the sort of vicious nonsense that warms the heart of the followers of the likes of Donald Trump and Marie Le Pen. Yet the Australian Labor Party is headed up by a right wing former union leader, Bill Shorten, whose main credentials are his skill at doing deals with bosses. His rival on the Left, Anthony Albanese is no better. When faced with a challenge from the Greens, Albanese resorted to the crudest of red baiting, stooping even to use the epithet ‘socialist’ as an insult. So there is no Corbyn down under and no sign of one on the horizon. But Seymour’s analysis should shake us out of the comfort of despair. He is not a member of the British Labour Party and comes instead out of the International Socialist tendency, from which he was honorably expelled for his defence of a woman raped by a party “leader”. Full disclosure: I too for my sins was once a member of the IS tendency but was expelled last century for trying to escape from what Paul Mason calls ‘the bureaucratic and hierarchical culture of Bolshevik re-enactment’. Seymour’s speaking position is that of a sympathetic observer who remains outside the Labour Party. This enables him to cast a cold eye on the dialectics of the enthusiasm that has created Corbynism. Allied to this is his commitment to the Gramscian slogan of “Pessimism of the Intellect”. In a number of key chapters he gives us a very useful and to my mind accurate portrayal of the history of the British Labour Party. Its great moments in office turn out not to have been so great. Its greatest leaders e.g. Clem Attlee turn out to have not been so great either. Seymour’s deepest scorn though is reserved for the time of New Labour and its repulsive Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the war criminal. Seymour’s wrath is almost holy here, when he correctly describes Blair as a ‘viper’. Seymour makes two key points. Corbyn won because of the weakness of the Labour Party – it lost 5 million votes over the 1997-2010 period. But that very weakness makes Corbyn’s project of reviving social democracy all the more difficult. As well, the economic times that permitted some redistribution of wealth away from the powerful and towards the working class no longer obtain. We live in the time when the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is asserting itself. The neoliberal response to falling profits has not restored profitability to pre-1973 levels. The capitalist class is hoarding and not investing. Will Corbyn’s mild Keynesian type solutions change this? Seymour is careful not to say he thinks Corbyn will fail. But he is brutally honest about the chances of the Corbyn project succeeding. He was also incredibly prescient about the opposition that Corbyn would face from inside the Party machine and the Parliamentary Labour Party. They did everything they could to destroy Corbyn. Indications are that Corbyn will win the current leadership contest. But some of his opponents have already signaled that they are prepared to destroy the party in order to save it. In an endeavor to get rid of Corbyn, the Parliamentarians and the Machine have declared war on the Party. No one knows the extent of the suspensions and expulsions. Seymour has written elsewhere that he does not think the purge will be of the dimensions necessary to defeat Corbyn. He seems to believe that it is designed to create the kind of Ground Zero that
[Marxism] Fwd: Mourning the Syria That Might Have Been | Foreign Policy
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Why "Lesser Evilism" Is a Loser | Solidarity
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. * I would be satisfied, at this point, if there were more consistency when it comes to building something right here. Watching this campaign unfold in 2016 has been an object lesson for me in how the Greens failed to build anything out of 2000. I only hope that the organization grows stronger in places that are committed to a membership based party. Elsewhere, the politics are best expressed as Clay with a more pragmatic appreciation of protest voting. :-) Protest voting does not a party build. ML _ 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] [UCE] Fwd: The Two Noam Chomskys: the military-sponsored scientist and the anarchist activist
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Why "Lesser Evilism" Is a Loser | Solidarity
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. * "Lesser evil is a losing strategy. It paves the way for greater evils." (Stein) Stein should pay attention to herself regarding the larger treachery of lesser evilism in supporting Russia and the Dictator Al Assad. With every good point, she diminishes what it means to fight for independent political action by accepting the treachery of the Baathist-supporting pretend "Left". Stein remains the best chance to dismantle the Democratic Party and mount a veritable resistance to Democratic and Republican reaction that will surely come regardless which candidate the capitalist class chooses and the masses are forced yet again to choose between no choice and no choice at all. We can only hope that the Green Party will create a space--if only in the elections--for galvanizing the mass movement that is sure to come as Black and Brown people, women, and youth--within the working class--yet again are faced with the combined assaults from all the politicians representing capitalism; including Sanders and all those that thought that supporting the Democrats was a "last stand" against reaction. Like Custer before them, such people will be left defending each other as the masses overtake them. History will not be kind and neither will the revolutionary masses. And, like the Sioux and indigenous nations before us, it is not written that we will be victorious immediately. But, we can only be inspired by the first nations at Standing Rock fighting for the simple right to drink water. Native peoples have founded a unity that has inspired and caused reverberations throughout the working class (indicated by the recoil of labor misleaders who have pinned their hopes with their capitalist masters). Young Black and White athletes have found a way to express how they are affected by the police occupation of oppressed communities. Instead of 2 Black youth and one White youth on a podium at the Olympics registering resistance and solidarity, we now have hundreds at a multitude of sporting events registering the mass discontent with injustice. The storm is coming and we have to recognize it. The aftermath is not a victory inevitable, but the mounting of a struggle is. I suggest that internationalism will be the proving ground. Being "anti-war" in this coming period will not be divorced from the revolutionary struggle against dictators, right wing religious and non-religious reactionaries, and the governments of the imperialist bourgeoisie who keep them in power (indeed if it ever was). Either Stein will learn this hard lesson or she will be swept aside by better leaders emanating from mass struggles. As ever, solidarity with the oppressed and remaining on the side of workers and the oppressed of all countries, will determine whether one is actually a leftist or if the term becomes arcane and undescriptive of revolutionary politics. _ 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] 34 years ago – the Shatila Massacre
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[Marxism] Fwd: Donald Trump Does Have Ideas—and We’d Better Pay Attention to Them - POLITICO Magazine
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. * Ideas really don’t come along that often. Already in 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that in America, “ideas are a sort of mental dust,” that float about us but seldom cohere or hold our attention. For ideas to take hold, they need to be comprehensive and organizing; they need to order people’s experience of themselves and of their world. In 20th-century America, there were only a few ideas: the Progressivism of Wilson; Roosevelt’s New Deal; the Containment Doctrine of Truman; Johnson’s War on Poverty; Reagan’s audacious claim that the Cold War could be won; and finally, the post-1989 order rooted in “globalization” and “identity politics,” which seems to be unraveling before our eyes. Yes, Donald Trump is implicated in that unraveling, cavalierly undermining decades worth of social and political certainties with his rapid-fire Twitter account and persona that only the borough of Queens can produce. But so is Bernie Sanders. And so is Brexit. And so are the growing rumblings in Europe, which are all the more dangerous because there is no exit strategy if the European Union proves unsustainable. It is not so much that there are no new ideas for us to consider in 2016; it is more that the old ones are being taken apart without a clear understanding of what comes next. 2016 is the year of mental dust, where notions that stand apart from the post-1989 order don’t fully cohere. The 2016 election will be the first—but not last—test of whether they can. full: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/donald-trump-ideas-2016-214244 _ 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] His Position Still Secure, Bashar al-Assad Smiles as Syria Burns
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. * NY Times, Sept. 17 2016 His Position Still Secure, Bashar al-Assad Smiles as Syria Burns By BEN HUBBARD BEIRUT, Lebanon — On the day after his 51st birthday, Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, took a victory lap through the dusty streets of a destroyed and empty rebel town that his forces had starved into submission. Smiling, with his shirt open at the collar, he led officials in dark suits past deserted shops and bombed-out buildings before telling a reporter that — despite a cease-fire announced by the United States and Russia — he was committed “to taking back all areas from the terrorists.” When he says terrorists, he means all who oppose him. More than five years into the conflict that has shattered his country, displaced half its population and killed hundreds of thousands of people, Mr. Assad denies any responsibility for the destruction. Instead, he presents himself as a reasonable head of state and the sole unifier who can end the war and reconcile Syria’s people. That insistence, which he has clung to for years even as his forces hit civilians with gas attacks and barrel bombs, is a major impediment to sustaining a cease-fire, let alone ending the war. The new cease-fire, less than a week old, is already tenuous, with attacks resuming across the country and aid meant for besieged residents of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, still stuck at the Turkish border. It has also made Mr. Assad a central paradox of the war: He is secure and kept in place by foreign backers as his country splinters, although few see the war ending and Syria being put back together as long as he stays. Although he remains a pariah to the West, and scores of militant groups continue to fight to oust him, even his opponents acknowledge that he has navigated his way out of the immediate threats to his rule, making the question of his fate an intractable dilemma. The rebels are unlikely to stop fighting as long as the man they blame for the majority of the war’s deaths remains. But fear of what might emerge if Mr. Assad is ousted has deterred many Syrians from joining the insurrection and may have helped prevent countries like the United States from acting more forcefully against him. The result has been a crushing stalemate. Mr. Assad’s standing as leader of Syria is diminished — and yet stable. “The problem is that he cannot win, and at the same time he is not losing,” said Samir Altaqi, the director of the Orient Research Center in Dubai. “But at the end of the day, what is left of Syria? He is still the leader, but he lost the state.” Indeed, recent events give the impression that Mr. Assad has succeeded in muddling through, without being held accountable. August came and went with little mention of the anniversary of the chemical attacks by his forces that killed more than 1,000 people in 2013. Turkey, a key backer of the rebels, dropped its demand that he leave power immediately, and the United States has stopped calling for his removal. And the day before Mr. Assad’s birthday on Sept. 11, for which his supporters created a fawning website, the United States and Russia announced a new cease-fire agreement with surprising benefits for Mr. Assad. Besides making no mention of his political future, the agreement brought together one of his greatest foes, the United States, with one of his greatest allies, Russia, to bomb the jihadists who threaten his rule. Years ago, few assumed that Mr. Assad would join the ranks of the world’s bloodiest dictators. Self-effacing and educated as an ophthalmologist, he had not planned on a political career but was summoned from London by his father and predecessor, Hafez Assad, when the heir apparent, Bashar’s elder brother, Bassel, died in a car accident in 1994. After Bashar succeeded his father as president in 2000, many hoped he would reform the country. But those hopes dwindled, evaporating entirely with the start of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, when Mr. Assad sought to quell initially peaceful protests with overwhelming violence. The conflict escalated from there. Despite widespread opposition to his rule, a combination of factors has enabled Mr. Assad to persevere, analysts say. His foes have remained divided and have failed to convince many Syrians, especially religious minorities, that they would protect their rights or run the country better than Mr. Assad. As continuous battles have ground down his forces, Mr. Assad has been the beneficiary of significant military support from Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah — aid much more significant than what the United
[Marxism] Fwd: New Film Tells the Story of Edward Snowden; Here Are the Surveillance Programs He Helped Expose
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[Marxism] Fwd: Why "Lesser Evilism" Is a Loser | Solidarity
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[Marxism] Fwd: Defecting Syrian propagandist says his job was 'to fabricate' - CNN.com
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[Marxism] Parliamentary report exposes PM Cameron's falsehoods re danger Gaddafi posed to Benghazi civilians
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. * excerpts from BBC article on UK parliamentary report on British=French military intervention in Libya: Mr Cameron has defended his handling of the situation, telling MPs in January action was needed because Gaddafi "was bearing down on people in Benghazi and threatening to shoot his own people like rats". But the foreign affairs committee said the government "failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated", adding that it "selectively took elements of Gaddafi's rhetoric at face value". Crispin Blunt, chairman of the committee, told the BBC: "We were dragged along by a French enthusiasm to intervene, and the mission then moved from protecting people in Benghazi, who arguably were not at the kind of threat that was then being presented... "Indeed, on the basis of the evidence we took, the threat to the people of Benghazi was grossly overstated." full at: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37356873 _ 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] Bill Clinton's Stone Mountain Moment
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://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/stone-mountain-kkk-white-supremacy-simmons/ Speaking of presidential candidates and White Supremacy... _ 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
