[Marxism] NSW RFS firefighters denounce Scott Morrison (Australian prime minister)

[Chris Slee via Marxism]

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=share=OGKNtP2MmAM



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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Ten most-viewed on Irish Revolution for 2019

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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No to extradition of Seán Farrell and Ciarán Maguire


Éirígí launches election campaign for Brian Leeson, Saturday, 17 November,
7pm, Mill Theatre, Dundrum


Bernadette Devlin maiden speech, British House of Commons, April 22, 1969


Constance Markievicz on Tom Clarke


The Marxist view on tax


The burning of the British embassy – 40 years on


Constance Markievicz on Arthur Griffith and the Sinn Fein organisation


Remembering rubber and plastic bullet killings by ‘Crown forces’

[Marxism] NY Times: Antiwar Protestors Across U.S. Condemn Killing of Suleimani

[Alan Ginsberg via Marxism]

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Demonstrations in more than 80 communities were organized to call attention
to rising tensions in the Middle East.

By Mariel Padilla
Jan 4, 2020

Thousands of antiwar protesters gathered in communities across the country
on Saturday to condemn the American drone strike in Baghdad that killed
Iran’s top security and intelligence commander.

In cities and towns across the United States, more than 80 demonstrations
were planned to oppose the killing of the commander, Qassim Suleimani, and
the Trump administration’s decision to send thousands more troops to the
Middle East.

The protests were spearheaded by Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, an
antiwar coalition, and Code Pink, a women-led antiwar organization.

“Unless the people of the United States rise up and stop it, this war will
engulf the whole region and could quickly turn into a global conflict of
unpredictable scope and potentially the gravest consequences,” the
coalition said in a statement.

More than 1,000 demonstrators in Washington gathered outside the White
House, carrying “No War” signs, Brian Becker, national director of the
coalition, said. Others marched in New York City in Times Square,
repeatedly chanting “U.S. out of the Middle East.” Crowds also assembled in
Albuquerque, Indianapolis, Memphis, Miami and St. Louis.

In Philadelphia, demonstrators outside City Hall carried signs demanding
that the United States stay out of Iraq and avoid war with Iran. In San
Francisco, an antiwar rally included chanting, singing and speakers. In
downtown Chicago, hundreds of demonstrators stood outside Trump Tower, some
with signs that read “Stop bombing Iraq.”

In Seattle, a rally was held at a park next to Pike Place Market. Hundreds
of people gathered, including 19-year-old Ethan Cantrell, who held a sign
that read “please no more war.”

Mr. Cantrell said that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that spanned almost
his entire life had been “20 years of pointlessness.”

Aliza Cosgrove, an 18-year-old protester in Seattle, said she would like to
see more young people who grew up in the digital age — particularly those
who come from privileged backgrounds — demonstrating in public.

“When you go on the internet, you see so many people talking about the
world and talking about what’s going on, and they just make jokes or repost
something and that’s all they do,” she said. “There’s good in spreading the
message on social media, but there’s also direct action in going out and
raising your voice.”

Act Now to Stop War and End Racism and Code Pink began calling for
nationwide protests on Tuesday, ahead of the drone strike that killed
General Suleimani but as tensions were escalating between the United States
and Iraq, Mr. Becker said.

Protests were initially planned in 10 to 15 cities and the number grew to
30 by Thursday. When the general was killed near the Baghdad airport early
on Friday, the number of participating cities more than doubled, Mr. Becker
said.

As of Saturday afternoon, more than 80 protests were organized, Medea
Benjamin, a director of Code Pink, said.

She said she had not seen numbers like this since 2003.

“One thing that’s very different this time is that more young people and
people of color came out to protest,” Ms. Benjamin added.

Ms. Benjamin said the surge of protesters reflected a momentum and energy
that she hoped would be seen and heard by lawmakers.

“It felt like this in September 2002 when we were putting out calls to
organize,” Mr. Becker said. “There was the same sense of alarm. This is
extremely reminiscent of the months before the Iraq invasion.”

The drone attack drastically ratcheted up tensions between Washington and
Tehran, causing online interest in military conscription and “World War
III” to surge on Friday.

On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security updated its National
Terrorism Advisory System to warn that Iran “is capable, at a minimum, of
carrying out attacks with temporary disruptive effects against critical
infrastructure in the United States.”

The system’s bulletins, which are shared among law enforcement across the
country, also reiterated that there was no current, specific, credible
threat against the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/04/us/iran-anti-war-protests.html

[The coalition statement mentioned in the fourth paragraph can be found at
https://www.answercoalition.org/national_action_us_troops_out_of_iraq
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[Marxism] Oppose U.S. and Iran War by Showing Solidarity with Uprisings in the MENA Region - Alliance of Middle Eastern and North African Socialists

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://allianceofmesocialists.org/oppose-u-s-and-iran-war-by-showing-solidarity-with-uprisings-in-the-mena-region/
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[Marxism] The Australian Fires

[Ratbag Media via Marxism]

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I feel guilty that here where I live -- near the coast in South East
Queensland -- the weather is currently benign.
No fires about me. The air cannot be seen nor snorted.
Coffee in the pot and a flushing toilet.
A long way from the conflagrations to the south and west of the continent.
Getting my head around this crisis is very difficult. I may be a climate
change proponent of long standing, but if you asked me a few weeks back
that our Summer would burn like this I'd have called you an apocalyptic
nutter.
We are in January by only a few days.
As for the incompetent circus performed by (prime minister) Morrison...I
can only think of what happened to Mussolini if the Australian people ever
accepted lynching as a lifestyle choice.

Marx wrote, "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is
profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real
conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

Here the melt is very real.


dave riley
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[Marxism] War threat - reaction in Canada

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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Footage of a Washington, DC demonstration that I saw earlier on CNN has shown 
up on CBC.
I have not seen any calls for demonstrations in Canada.  Some Iranians here 
have publicly supported the killing of Soleimani, but others are urging 
restraint.
Below is an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail.  I would place the writer 
somewhat on the right of the political spectrum in Canada.
ken h


Trudeau’s handling of the Iran crisis could define his second term
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeaus-handling-of-the-iran-crisis-could-define-his-second-term/
 


This country’s best hope lies in working with European and Asian allies, 
including Japan, to forge a coherent response that provokes neither the 
Americans nor the Iranians. But that may prove impossible.

To make things even more complicated, we will all need to figure out how much 
U.S. actions against Iran are based on calculated national interest, and how 
much they are the whim of an erratic and uninformed President who is trying to 
change the impeachment channel.
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[Marxism] American Capitalism | Columbia University Press

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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New Sven Beckert book coming out in August. He and co-editor Christine 
Desan collected articles from like-minded scholars.


https://cup.columbia.edu/book/american-capitalism/9780231185240
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[Marxism] Ledeen, et al

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Got some interesting feedback from Paul Buhle on Michael Ledeen, 
who--like Mussolini, his focus in academia years ago--was a leftist as a 
college student.


Unlike most of the neocon slugs, Ledeen has impressive academic 
credentials. He has written for the NY Review of Books and one 
well-respected Italian scholar stated in a review of Ledeen's book on 
D'Annunzio, a forerunner of fascism, that nobody knows more about modern 
Italian history than Ledeen.


This review from the 2/9/2017 NY Review of Books covers Ledeen and 
Flynn's book that I mentioned in my Deep State post. It also covers a 
couple of other books by well-known policy wonks. They are relevant for 
understanding Trump's brinksmanship.




What Trump Is Throwing Out the Window
Jessica T. Mathews

The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam 
and Its Allies

by Michael T. Flynn and Michael Ledeen
St. Martin’s, 194 pp., $26.99

The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force
by Eliot A. Cohen
Basic Books, 285 pp., $27.99

A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order
by Richard Haass
Penguin, 339 pp., $28.00
1.
For three decades, roughly since the end of the cold war, American 
foreign policy has been the subject of a passionate battle among three 
groups with radically different views of the part the United States 
should play in the world and of whether force or diplomacy should be its 
primary method.


Neoconservatives, who were passionate advocates for the Iraq war, want 
the United States to be the world’s policeman, concerned not only with 
states’ external behavior but with their internal adherence to American 
values, which, they believe, the United States should impose principally 
through the use of force. They care little for international agreements, 
believing that bad guys will flout them and good guys don’t need them.


Liberal internationalists, most of whom are supporting the current 
nuclear agreement with Iran, also want the US to act globally. But they 
want to build an increasingly strong international system of cooperation 
and alliances and avoid unilateralism. They see international progress 
deriving from increasing interdependence and agreed-upon rules to which 
the United States, however exceptional it may be, must adhere.


For realists, international relations are propelled by powerful states 
promoting their own self-interest. This view holds that the US should 
concentrate on its relations with the other great powers and on the 
balance of power in the most important regions and not waste resources 
on other parts of the world. Generally, realists argue for a much more 
limited US involvement in the conflicts of the Middle East.


The global financial crash of 2008 at America’s hands, the rise of ISIS, 
the transformation of Russia under President Vladimir Putin into a 
dangerous and committed adversary marked by its 2014 annexation of 
Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine, nuclear weapons programs in 
North Korea and Iran, cyber interventions in the US election, and a 
steadily more nationalistic and militarily provocative China—all of 
these have dramatically raised the stakes of these conflicts over 
policy. The crux is no longer in deciding how far America should reach 
in deploying its power and forcing its values on others, but in what it 
must do to meet a cascade of challenges to its core interests and 
national security.


Into this particularly dangerous moment comes Donald Trump. What he has 
done is to take the few things on which neocons, realists, and liberal 
internationalists agree and throw them out the window. These are 
fundamentals of American foreign policy, taken as givens by both parties 
for the seven decades since the close of World War II. They include, 
first, the recognition of the immense value to the security of the 
United States provided by its allies and worldwide military and 
political alliances.


Second, there is the belief that the global economy is not a zero-sum 
competition, but a mutually beneficial growth system built on open trade 
and investment. Since the 1940s the United States has invested in the 
growth of the world economy out of considered self-interest, believing 
that it was building growing markets for itself that would operate under 
a set of rules that it wished to live by. And third, Americans of all 
political stripes have believed that while authoritarian governments may 
temporarily enjoy greater freedom of action than governments that have 
to consider public support, in the long run democracy will prove 
superior. Dictators have to be 

[Marxism] "Hero of the Republic of Cuba, Harry Villegas, Passes Away"

[Alan Ginsberg via Marxism]

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Alongside Ernesto Che Guevera, the Cuban General ‘Pombo’ fought in Cuba,
Congo, and Bolivia

full at
en.escambray.cu/2019/hero-of-the-republic-of-cuba-harry-villegas-passes-away/
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[Marxism] Trump Rule Would Exclude Climate Change in Infrastructure Planning

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Jan. 4, 2020
Trump Rule Would Exclude Climate Change in Infrastructure Planning
By Lisa Friedman

WASHINGTON — Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate 
change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of 
highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according 
to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark 
environmental law.


The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy 
Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and 
other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when courts ruled that 
the Trump administration did not properly consider climate change when 
analyzing the environmental effects of the projects.


According to one government official who has seen the proposed 
regulation but was not authorized to speak about it publicly, the 
administration will also narrow the range of projects that require 
environmental review. That could make it likely that more projects will 
sail through the approval process without having to disclose plans to do 
things like discharge waste, cut trees or increase air pollution.


The new rule would no longer require agencies to consider the 
“cumulative” consequences of new infrastructure. In recent years courts 
have interpreted that requirement as a mandate to study the effects of 
allowing more planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions into the 
atmosphere. It also has meant understanding the impacts of rising sea 
levels and other results of climate change on a given project.


The act requires the federal government to prepare detailed analyses of 
projects that could have significant environmental effects, including 
long-term impacts that courts have said include climate change. Since 
1970, when the law was enacted, it has undergone only one major change. 
That was in 1983, when the White House Council on Environmental Quality 
limited the use of worst-case scenarios in project reviews.


But the Trump administration has been aggressive in its efforts to roll 
back environmental regulations. The 50 or so pages of revisions that the 
Council on Environmental Quality is expected to make public on Wednesday 
would not amend the act itself. Rather, they would revise the rules that 
guide the implementation of the law.


Once the proposed rules are filed in the federal register, the public 
will have 60 days to comment on them, the official said. A final 
regulation is expected before the presidential election in November.


Dan Schneider, spokesman for the Council on Environmental Quality, said 
in a statement that the environmental law was overdue for an update. 
“The Trump administration is focused on improving the environmental 
review and permitting process while ensuring a safe, healthy, and 
productive environment for all Americans,” he said.


President Trump’s latest effort to eliminate regulations on industry 
appears also to be a play to win over construction trade unions that 
have long complained that the National Environmental Policy Act has tied 
up energy and transit projects that create jobs.


“The environmental review process designed to improve decision-making 
has become increasingly complex and difficult to navigate,” Mr. Trump 
said in a presidential message on New Year’s Day to mark the 50th 
anniversary of the act.


He criticized the “significant uncertainty and delays that can increase 
costs, derail important projects, and threaten jobs for American workers 
and labor union members” and said revisions would “benefit our economy 
and environment.”


Environmental activists and legal experts said the proposed changes 
would weaken critical safeguards for air, water and wildlife. The move, 
if it survives the expected court challenges, also could eliminate a 
powerful tool that climate change activists have used to stop or slow 
Mr. Trump’s encouragement of coal and oil development as part of its 
“energy dominance” policy.


In March, a federal judge found that the Obama administration did not 
adequately take into account the climate change impact of leasing public 
land for oil gas drilling in Wyoming, a ruling that also presented a 
threat to Mr. Trump’s plans for fossil fuel development.


One month later, another federal judge dealt a blow to Mr. Trump’s plan 
to lift an Obama-era moratorium on coal mining on public lands when he 
found the administration did not adequately study the environmental 
effects of mining as required by law.


And in 2018, a federal court cited the environmental policy act when it 
halted construction on the Keystone pipeline, a project President Trump 
has been 

[Marxism] (99+) (PDF) Essays on the History and Philosophy of Ecological Economic Thought | Marco P V Franco - Academia.edu

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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This work aims to contribute to the history and philosophy of ecological 
economic thought (EET), with a focus on Russian thought and the concept 
of ecological utopianism. The first essay brings a historical account of 
EET in the 1880s-1930s, showcasing its intellectual diversity and 
foundation on social energetics. A scientific metaparadigm was 
identified, combining different values, methods and ideas into an 
ecological critique of mainstream economics, comprised of a biophysical 
approach to economic processes. Bearing in mind such developments, the 
second essay addresses the body of knowledge produced by Soviet ecology 
in the 1920s. Research on the links between community ecology, 
conservation and economic planning revealed how innovative their views 
were and how well they fit into the definition of ecological utopianism. 
The third essay acknowledges 19th-century narodnism not only as one of 
the intellectual origins of Soviet ecology, but as an important school 
of EET on its own. The ecological utopianism of Nikolai Chernyshevskii 
is explained in terms of the extent his ideas were grounded in the 
natural sciences, and how he envisioned egalitarian social ideals, which 
would serve as inspiration for the narodnist revolutionary movement. The 
fourth essay analyzes the ideology of ecological neo-narodnism as a 
viable alternative to deal with the social and ecological challenges of 
the 21st century. It is argued that, as political economy, it should 
move beyond Chaianovian economics to redeem the principles of 
communality and cooperation of Chernyshevskii. As political ecology, it 
is a true heir of narodnism; it is best represented by environmental 
justice movements; it combines the ethnical and local character of 
peasants’ movements with the need for internationalization; it addresses 
power relations as a key issue to enforce peasant’s rights; and it adds 
biophysical limits at the planetary level as a new argument in favor of 
systemic change.


https://www.academia.edu/40037418/Essays_on_the_History_and_Philosophy_of_Ecological_Economic_Thought?email_work_card=title
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[Marxism] Deep State | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(From 2017)

I always get a chuckle out of the notion that Trump and the neocons are 
mortal enemies. Do you know who co-wrote Michael Flynn’s “The Field of 
Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its 
Allies”? Does the name Michael Ledeen ring a bell? A profile on Flynn in 
the New Yorker Magazine revealed that much of the book is practically 
plagiarized from Ledeen’s sorry body of books and articles. Ledeen is 
the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. This 
is about as neocon as you can get with founder Clifford D. May now 
serving as President, who is also a member of the Henry Jackson Society, 
an outfit that is infamous for supporting the war in Iraq. Here is 
Ledeen on the countries posing the greatest threat to the USA:


	It’s no coincidence. Russia, Iran and North Korea are in active 
cahoots. They are pooling resources, including banking systems (the 
better to bust sanctions), intelligence and military technology, as part 
of an ongoing war against the West, of which the most melodramatic 
battlefields are in Syria/Iraq and Ukraine.


To judge by their language, the leaders of the three countries think the 
tide of world events is flowing in their favor. Iranian Supreme Leader 
Ali Khamenei delivered an ultimatum to the West, saying that Iran’s war 
against “evil” would only end with the removal of America. Russian 
President Vladimir Putin marches on in Ukraine, blaming the West for all 
the trouble, and the North Koreans are similarly bellicose.


They are singing from the same hymnal. And they aim to do us in.

Right, they aim to do us in. So it turns out that the guy that Flynn is 
most closely allied to ideologically is ten times scarier than Hillary 
Clinton. If you still have doubts about Flynn’s close ties to Ledeen, I 
recommend The New Yorker profile linked to above. It states:


	Flynn and Ledeen became close friends; in their shared view of the 
world, Ledeen supplied an intellectual and historical perspective, Flynn 
a tactical one. “I’ve spent my professional life studying evil,” Ledeen 
told me. Flynn said, in a recent speech, “I’ve sat down with really, 
really evil people”—he cited Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Russians, Chinese 
generals—“and all I want to do is punch the guy in the nose.”


Get that, people? Flynn said he’d like to punch a Russian in the nose. 
People get confused over Flynn’s ideological core beliefs by missing 
that his interest in Russia is solely based on its usefulness against 
ISIS. Just because he favored a united military front against ISIS, it 
does not mean that he has the same affinity for the Kremlin that someone 
like Stephen F. Cohen has. Just remember that the USA and Stalin were 
allied against Hitler. You know how far that went.


full: https://louisproyect.org/category/deep-state/
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[Marxism] Streaming webinar: The New Wave of Class Struggle in Latin America-Register now

[Praxis Perhaps via Marxism]

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https://socialistresurgence.org/2020/01/03/the-new-wave-of-class-struggle-in-latin-america/
 



The New Wave of Class Struggle in Latin America

A Streaming Webinar:

‘The New Wave of Class Struggle in Latin America’

January 18, 2020  2 p.m. – 5 p.m. EST

Online—Registration Required 

In the last several months, the streets of Chile, Bolivia, and Colombia have 
been filled with militant and confident protesters challenging their nations’ 
neoliberal austerity regimes. In a number of cases, they have formed 
independent working-class assemblies to better conduct their struggle. There 
are strong indications that their actions, along with those who have launched 
similar protests in the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Asia, along with the 
unprecedented mobilizations of feminists, have opened a new era of 
working-class fightback and advances. 

Hear a panel of activists discuss its meaning for working people in the U.S., 
Latin America, and around the world: 

• Blanca Missé teaches at San Francisco State University and is part of La Voz/ 
Workers’ Voice  and the International Workers League

• Juan Pela is a leader of the PTR, the Revolutionary Workers Party 
 of Chile and the Trotskyist Fraction, 
Fourth International

• Simón Porras Rodríguez is a coauthor of “Why Did Chavismo Fail?” Venezuelan 
activist, an editor at Venezuelanvoices.org 
,
 and a member of International Workers’ Unity 
-Fourth 
International

William I. Robinson, Professor of Sociology and Global and International 
Studies, University of California-Santa Barbara

• Representative, Movimiento Independentista Nacional Hostosiano 
 (MINH), Puerto Rico

• Representative, Socialist Resurgence  and 
the Tendency for a Revolutionary International, Fourth International 

We plan to make this discussion fully accessible to both English and Spanish 
speakers.

You must register to attend this streaming webinar panel. L 
ink here  

Initiated by Socialist Resurgence  US.  For 
more information, email us.  

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[Marxism] Watching the Watchmen | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On October 25, 2019, I supported Martin Scorsese’s put-down of Marvel 
Comics super-hero films in a CounterPunch article. The article appeared 
just five days after HBO began streaming “Watchmen.” I knew little about 
Alan Moore, the author of the graphic novel that inspired the series, 
but decided to begin watching the watchmen. Written in 1985, it shared 
Scorsese’s dim view of super-heroes. In a 2017 interview, Moore’s 
vitriol surpassed Scorsese’s:


	I think the impact of super-heroes on popular culture is both 
tremendously embarrassing and not a little worrying. While these 
characters were originally perfectly suited to stimulating the 
imaginations of their twelve or thirteen year-old audience, today’s 
franchised übermenschen, aimed at a supposedly adult audience, seem to 
be serving some kind of different function, and fulfilling different 
needs…In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. 
Griffith’s Birth of a Nation as the first American super-hero movie, and 
the point of origin for all those capes and masks.


There are six degrees of separation between Moore and me. Twelve years 
ago, I worked with Harvey Pekar on a comic book about my comic life as a 
Trotskyist. Harvey always insisted on calling what he did “comic books” 
rather than the somewhat pretentious “graphic novel.” Like Moore, he 
wanted to break with super-hero mythology but on a different basis. 
Moore’s “Watchmen” made these figures loathsome while Pekar sought to 
ignore them altogether. Instead, he rooted his comic books in what he 
called the “quotidian” life of ordinary workers.


full: https://louisproyect.org/2020/01/04/watching-the-watchmen/
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[Marxism] 'But what about the railways ...?' ​​The myth of Britain's gifts to India | World news | The Guardian

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/india-britain-empire-railways-myths-gifts
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[Marxism] World Gone Wrong: an Environmental Diary of 2019 - CounterPunch.org

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/03/world-gone-wrong-an-environmental-diary-of-2019/
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[Marxism] “Shit-Life Syndrome,” Trump Voters, and Clueless Dems - CounterPunch.org

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/03/shit-life-syndrome-trump-voters-and-clueless-dems/
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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Colonialism and the natives - Weekly Worker

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Moshé Machover begins an examination of the Israel-Palestine conflict by 
looking back at controversies in the Second International


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[Marxism] Good review of the overrated "Parasite"

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The Nation, JANUARY 13/20, 2020
Upstairs, Downstairs
On Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.
By E. Tammy Kim

The South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho has called his latest movie 
Parasite, which won this year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, 
a “sad comedy.” It’s an imperfect label, though Parasite did make me 
laugh, sometimes hysterically. It also made me feel low—miserable, 
even—but probably not for the reasons Bong intended.


The plot centers on two nuclear families in Seoul, one poor and one 
rich, one downstairs and one upstairs. Ki-taek, the patriarch of the 
lower-class Kim family (played by the formidable South Korean actor Song 
Kang-ho), lives with his wife, Chung-sook; and adult son and daughter, 
Ki-woo and Ki-jung, in a half-basement apartment redolent of sewage and 
thick, hand-washed socks that refuse to dry. (“Ki”/“gi” is also the 
first syllable of the film’s Korean title, “Gisaengchung,” or Parasite.) 
Their neighborhood is of the old, scrappy South Korean style, cramped 
and low to the ground, a tenement in the shadow of the city’s 
cookie-cutter apartment towers. Ki-taek is an unemployed taxi driver, 
Chung-sook is a washed-up hammer-throw champion, and the two children 
failed the university entrance exam. They take in sundry piecework, like 
folding pizza boxes, to survive while on the lookout for a way up.


One night, Ki-woo’s friend stops by to ask a favor. He’s leaving to 
study abroad and needs someone trustworthy to take over his tutoring gig 
in a tony household. Ki-woo agrees and is soon at the Park family’s 
Glass House–style mansion, fake academic credentials in hand. He is 
received by Moon-gwang, the Parks’ live-in domestic worker (played by 
the prolific comic actress Lee Jung-eun), and introduced to most of the 
family: Yeon-kyo, a neurotic but well-meaning stay-at-home mom; daughter 
Da-hye, a horny high school sophomore and Ki-woo’s student-to-be; and 
Da-song, a rambunctious young boy. The father, Nathan, an IT executive, 
is at the office, per usual, working typically punishing hours. (South 
Koreans log an average of more than 2,000 hours per year, compared with 
the OECD average of 1,700 hours.) The Parks, though, are not from the 
old-money chaebol class (the dynasties that own megaconglomerates like 
Samsung and Hyundai) but from nouveau riche obsessed with English and 
with Western luxury goods.


Ki-woo gets the job and a new American sobriquet, Kevin—Yeon-kyo’s idea. 
He’s paid lavishly for his first tutoring session and glimpses a world 
of opportunity in the envelope she hands him, stuffed with pristine 
50,000-won (about $42) notes. What if his sister, father, and mother 
could work for the Park household, too? Ki-woo devises an extensive con 
and, soon enough, persuades the Park family to hire his sister as an art 
tutor and therapist to Da-song, his mother to replace the faithful 
Moon-gwang, and his father to assume the role of chauffeur to Nathan. 
All goes well until this family of hangers-on discovers and is 
discovered by a competing family of parasites. The inevitable face-off 
begins in the mansion’s subbasement, under the clueless Parks’ feet, and 
culminates in a masterfully bloody, baroque finale that implicates 
everyone in the house. Bong’s message seems to be that there are 
consequences to our obscene division of wealth and labor. In his 
account, though, it’s inevitable that the parasites will bleed most.


Parasite is a marvelously tense, propulsive film of sharp angles, 
smells, and cold light. Bong, a talented cartoonist, is known for his 
obsessive storyboarding, and Parasite, like his previous films, deploys 
the grotesque, hyperbolic elements of a comic strip in service of social 
commentary. Many critics have praised the film for its stylized critique 
of capitalism: As No Cut News, a left-wing South Korean outlet, put it, 
the movie asks, “Why do the rich only get richer and the poor, poorer?”


This, I think, gives Bong too much credit. He wants to poke fun at the 
wealthy and lightly satirize our social divides, in the tradition of 
Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. But that’s as far 
as he’s willing to go.


In interviews, Bong has described Parasite as an allegory of 
polarization: The two families, rich and poor, should exist on an even 
plane as human beings in the same metropolis, but assume the roles of 
titular parasite and host (the title of his 2006 science fiction hit). 
Nathan repeatedly opines that a good servant is one who “doesn’t cross 
the line,” who doesn’t become too intimate with or demand too much from 
his employers. This is untenable and a problem for the rich, Bong said 

[Marxism] Book Review: McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks | Roger Keeran | MLToday

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https://mltoday.com/book-review-mccarthyism-vs-clinton-jencks/


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[Marxism] Not Just Propaganda: A New View of Soviet Artists | Roslyn Sulcas | The New York Times

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/25/arts/design/deneika-samokhvalov-manege.html


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