Re: [Marxism] Limits to Growth was right?
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 20/01/2015 18:15, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: The main problem is food. To start with, there are limits to what the ocean can produce. There is no socialist formula that will allow everyone to eat as much cod as they'd like. Aquaculture? Works for many other fishes, can't speak for cod in particular. On top of that, livestock requires a lot of water. Right now the Ogalalla Aquifer is running dry. There is no socialist formula that will replenish it. Desalination. Ideally driven by nuclear cogeneration. Combined energy and heat production for desalinating water and electricity to drive the grid from breeder reactors. --David. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] If Charlie is racist, then so am I by Zineb el- Rhazoui
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. * A few responses: On 16/01/2015 12:17, Charles Faulkner via Marxism wrote: 1. she seems to be fixated on whether or not the individuals at charlie hebdo are racists, and thus herself, not whether the cartoons themselves (perhaps more) were racist. this is suspicious of course. at least since monroe beardsley's the possibility of criticism (1970) we are confident to separate the work from the artist. racist art can be produced by artists who have no such feeling. the intentions of the artist are not necessary to judge the work. Aside from death of the author considerations which in my view are irrelevant, I don't think she's grounding her case on the lack of subjective racism in the magazine's members, but in the context and social purpose in which the magazine existed and to which it was deployed. It's one thing to say that one can be antiracist and produce racist content by accident, it's another thing to say so when this content is being used by antiracists to combat racism. At that point we need some kind of means to determine how content produced by antiracists to combat racists and taken up for this purpose can still be racist. 2. she creates quite a lot complexity that is worthy of rupert murdoch's legions (spell correct offered lesions), such as pointing out that their are different kinds of muslims, different kinds of africans, etc. she even uses (in fact opens with) some fox news rhetorical flourishes. if i may be so quaint, i'm not sure how meaningful this is. just because there are different ethnicities within christianity (there's a chinese christian church in my neighborhood) doesn't mean that i wouldn't recognize a jab at white america in a religious caricature containing fat white texans (questions of hegemony aside). Well, the key in these distinctions is, in my view, to articulate a case for distinguishing criticism of Islamists, criticism of Islam, and racism. If you think all criticism of Islam is per se and necessarily racist, then sure, she's obfuscating. I personally can't subscribe to that position though. 3. this is a bit of a broadstroke and it's early. i'm not sure she really adequately addresses whether or not she is a member of the oppressed siding with her oppressors. so the title is not something i'm prepared to run away from. I think she addresses this fairly adequately when she refers to the oppression secularists and women suffer in the maghreb. Now if your view is that this is secondary, or irrelevant, on the light of oppression of racial or religious minorities in Europe, you may still consider that she's somehow betraying herself. I'm really dubious of propositions like this, first because I don't consider religious identities worth much, but second because people aren't singly constituted by the fact of coming from an area with a given hegemonic religious background. It would be like accusing Rosa Luxemburg of being antisemite and anti-polish, since both as a Jew and as a Pole she made a firm case against religious identities (judaism and catholicism). It also gives no room for recognition that such religious identities aren't the end of a person and can themselves be oppressive. In my opinion she makes this case better than I can hope to, though. 4. wouldn't it be ironic if i f c harlie hebdo is racist, then so am I became another slogan of freedom-loving imperialists. Sure, and all the more likely if the left doesn't come to its senses and stops this reflexive defence of religion. --David. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] If Charlie is racist, then so am I by Zineb el- Rhazoui
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 16/01/2015 17:24, Charles Faulkner wrote: yes, i hope that death of author considerations are irrelevant. but that wasn't the limit of beardsley's argument. it also applied when the artist herself was unaware of her intent or worse, deceptive. the upshot was that the work stands on its own quite aside from the intent an artist had when it was made. beardsley concluded that criticism was impossible if we had to rely solely on author intention. Sure. I have issues with this position but they are not germane. What I'm pointing at though is that there is a context. It is not just the matter of intent, but the matter of the actual outcomes involved. i am quite willing to accept that there is a difference between racist art employed by a racist and racist art employed by an an anti-racist but both are offences if only of different degree. Sure, but this is affirming the consequent. The question is determining whether products of an anti-racist magazine, that are deployed to anti-racist ends, and which seemingly successfully carry out this purpose, can be said to be racist in the first place. Or rather, at this point we need a bit of a theory of racist art: is it a formal or a material issue? Is it contextual or it inheres to particular features no matter how they are utilised? My own view on these matters is consequentialist: if something tends to disarticulate and combat racism, it is not racist; if it does the opposite, it is racist. religion is simply a fact. it goes well beyond simple accusations of oppression. we atheists on the left need to get over ourselves with our pious superiority. we are the minority. denigrating religion with offensive caricatures of its believers is a doomed project. if we want to claim moral superiority over religious hierarchy, we must demonstrate respect for all people and condemn goofy ethnic images. Capitalism is simply a fact. [...] We communists on the left need to get over ourselves with our pious superiority. We are the minority. Denigrating capitalism with offensive caricatures of the bourgeoisie is a doomed project. Etc. Religion is a fact, just like capitalism and alienation and class society are facts. A fact we must endeavour to get rid of. having been oppressed and then siding with liberators who are also oppressors isn't so uncommon. Perhaps it isn't, but this siding is extremely dubious to me. What's the theory here, that the PCF is the major cause for oppression in Morocco? This all seems to presuppose that anticlericalism and oppression can be straightforwardly conflated, which is really weird to me. I genuinely don't understand why there's so much reverence for religion. I'd say it's related to the way it permeates US and English-speaking societies in general but I could well be talking nonsense. i haven't gone back to her text yet but she also uses techniques of distraction. one such, her claim of being married to a black man. it reminds me somewhat of jarheads i knew who married locals, made claims of purity of racial thought with proof in their marriage and then went on to express some of the most unlightened racist garbage i've heard in my life. and i've dealt with klan dialogue! i'm not saying she's being racist herself but maybe, just maybe, her defence of charlie hebdo, at a time that it was being criticized for it's racism, is little more than locating the butter on bread. Thing is, at this point those people who have made up their mind that this is about racism are probably not going to change it. But I don't see those things as attempts to distract, I see those things as attempts to place matters in context and to try to call attention and explain to people that maybe there is something else going on than their default assumptions. I get the feeling that for some people making arguments of why something isn't racist seems to be taken as a proof of racism itself... Let's put it this way: is there any utterance that could be made by her in the article that might change your mind? Or is it all going to be read as siding with oppression, defending her material interest and distracting or obfuscating? The least one can do is assume good faith, in my opinion. who would you say is doing this? I'd say your paragraph regarding how religion is a fact and we have to live with it (like people have said we have to live with rain and taxes and slavery and illiteracy) counts as what I'd consider reflexively defending religion. --David. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at:
Re: [Marxism] ‘Provocative’ Bolshevik anti-Religious Caricatures.
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 16/01/2015 20:16, Ken Hiebert via Marxism wrote: And that leads me back to the questions I have asked previously on this list. Did the Charlie Hebdo cartoons have the effect of freeing some Muslim young people from religious belief? Did the cartoons have the effect of weakening the influence of the most reactionary currents within the Muslim community? I think so. It's a difficult question to answer definitively, but my impression is that such anticlerical views have been useful both in France and abroad for these purposes, and perhaps the republishing of one of them by a Turkish newspaper may be regarded as evidence towards this. --David. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: LENIN'S TOMB: This isn't really about free speech, is it? - Letter to Apostate Windbag
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. * That seems to be pretty badly grounded, and confuses freedom of expression with freedom from criticism. It is clear from Leigh's article that he's not saying anyone should be compelled to express solidarity for Charlie, or to republish their work, or to not consider them racists. So making a false equivalence between criticising the position of those who do otherwise with restricting their freedom to express such a position is incredibly disingenuous. --David. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Pablo Iglesias on reaching the working class
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 07/12/2014 12:18, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: The leader of Podemos says in 7 minutes and 20 seconds what I have been trying to say for the past 30 years. That his party has been polling ahead of the bourgeois parties in Spain gives me hope for the future. Just pointing out it has only polled ahead in one survey, and in direct voting intent (this is to say, not in the post-processed data). There's a lot one has to do to surveys to obtain a reliable forecast, among other things using vote rememberence for reliability (people get asked hwom they voted for before, if they did, and adjustments are done on this basis). Because of Podemos being a new party and this being the first time they are to participate in general elections, it is particularly hard to track their likely results. --David. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Two views on Podemos
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 30/11/2014 17:01, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: Our job as Marxists is simply to form the left wing of new formations like Syriza or Podemos to keep them honest. As I said to someone on FB complaining about Podemos moving to the right, there are 900 constituent local organizations of Podemos. If only a third were ready to break with the group because of such compromises, that would be a much more significant opposition to the neoliberal state than the sects. You keep singing the same song about anglo trot sects, which is completely inapplicable in the spanish political context. Far be it from me to tell people whether they should form the left wing of Podemos or not, but there's a perfectly functional communist party on offer. If you are determined to be protected from reformist germs, the best thing to do is declare yourself as a vanguard party and hand out leaflets denouncing the existing movement. No-one, or no-one of note, is doing this in the Spanish context. These proxy fights about whether Canon or whoever was sectarian or not played on foreign political orgs are really useless imo. opportunity for Spanish Marxists to challenge the two-party system. From everything I have heard from Marvin over the past decade or so, he would be oriented to the PSOE. No thanks. How is it unprecedented? I'll point out the last elections that have taken place in Spain, this would be the European ones a few months ago, IU rose very significantly and obtained more votes, and seats, than Podemos, for which it is hard to extrapolate actual likely electoral results given how they have, essentially, no history. The two-party system is fatally wounded in any case (not that it ever was a proper two-party system as such) and whether Podemos existed or not is of questionable relevance to this fact. The national foundational myth of the democratic transition is leaking all over the place under the weight of corruption scandals from top to bottom affecting all possible magistratures of the state and the inequity of people without homes and homes without people, supermarkets and restaurants throwing food to the garbage and people in hunger, and actually being fined for resorting to thrown away food. Podemos starts with an advantage that contains its own disadvantage: it has no history. There is no organisation, no past errors to apologise for or explain away, no people with decades in institutional positions or potential corruption scandals. By the same token, there are no experienced cadre, no significant local organisation and all but a skeleton national one; no institutions, no party discipline, no clear boundaries on the party's policies or programme. It is also a completely electoral platform (while IU/PCE do significant work in the anti-eviction struggle, or carry out expropriations of food from supermarkets). This is not necessarily to say that Podemos is useless or bad or any such. But it's not the first time that there's a leftist mass party in the country, and it's to be seen to what extent it can effectively fill this role. --David. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Two views on Podemos
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. * It seems my previous attempt to send this to the list didn't work. Trying again. On 30/11/2014 17:01, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: Our job as Marxists is simply to form the left wing of new formations like Syriza or Podemos to keep them honest. As I said to someone on FB complaining about Podemos moving to the right, there are 900 constituent local organizations of Podemos. If only a third were ready to break with the group because of such compromises, that would be a much more significant opposition to the neoliberal state than the sects. You keep singing the same song about anglo trot sects, which is completely inapplicable in the spanish political context. Far be it from me to tell people whether they should form the left wing of Podemos or not, but there's a perfectly functional communist party on offer. If you are determined to be protected from reformist germs, the best thing to do is declare yourself as a vanguard party and hand out leaflets denouncing the existing movement. No-one, or no-one of note, is doing this in the Spanish context. These proxy fights about whether Canon or whoever was sectarian or not played on foreign political orgs are really useless imo. opportunity for Spanish Marxists to challenge the two-party system. From everything I have heard from Marvin over the past decade or so, he would be oriented to the PSOE. No thanks. How is it unprecedented? I'll point out the last elections that have taken place in Spain, this would be the European ones a few months ago, IU rose very significantly and obtained more votes, and seats, than Podemos, for which it is hard to extrapolate actual likely electoral results given how they have, essentially, no history. The two-party system is fatally wounded in any case (not that it ever was a proper two-party system as such) and whether Podemos existed or not is of questionable relevance to this fact. The national foundational myth of the democratic transition is leaking all over the place under the weight of corruption scandals from top to bottom affecting all possible magistratures of the state and the inequity of people without homes and homes without people, supermarkets and restaurants throwing food to the garbage and people in hunger, and actually being fined for resorting to thrown away food. Podemos starts with an advantage that contains its own disadvantage: it has no history. There is no organisation, no past errors to apologise for or explain away, no people with decades in institutional positions or potential corruption scandals. By the same token, there are no experienced cadre, no significant local organisation and all but a skeleton national one; no institutions, no party discipline, no clear boundaries on the party's policies or programme. It is also a completely electoral platform (while IU/PCE do significant work in the anti-eviction struggle, or carry out expropriations of food from supermarkets). This is not necessarily to say that Podemos is useless or bad or any such. But it's not the first time that there's a leftist mass party in the country, and it's to be seen to what extent it can effectively fill this role. --David. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Two views on Podemos
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 30/11/2014 20:17, Shane Mage wrote: What has the PCE done to apologize for its long, long, Stalinist history, especially its counterrevolutionary role in 1936-1938 (which cannot possibly be explained away)? Trotskyist prejudices aside, if the PCE should respond for something, it should be its historic role in the 1975-78 transition which resulted in a monarchical bourgeois state with amnesty for the fascists and the levers of economic power in the same hands as during the opus dei/technocratic phase of Franco's rule. What the PCE has done to explain its role in that regard, and not reflexive complaints about Stalinism, would be the correct question to ask, and one which, historically, the PCE has been unwilling to answer. Nonetheless, the balance of forces at the time was a virtual guarantee for defeat, so in spite of potential divergences with what turned out to be the PCE's eurocommunist strategy, one can't very well fault them for it, given what was known at the time. --David. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Two views on Podemos
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 29/11/2014 22:51, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: I think we probably have different ideas about what a liberal trajectory means. But beyond the question of its decision, for example, to scale back some of its more radical proposals, there is another dimension that has to be considered--namely, the class dynamic of a party that has no links to the Spanish bourgeoisie and that is open and transparent. I'm myself more positive about Podemos than just calling them liberals and writing them off, but they're not particularly more open or transparent than other parties. They've recently set up their internal organisation through a slate (or strictly speaking, quasi-slate) system. They have no organic links to the working class. Sure they're not like Labour or the Democcrats, but Spain has IU and the PCE as working class parties with plenty of cadre (we're talking high tens of thousands, not tiny sect size). Podemos seems a lot more hazy and potentially penetrable. --David. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Spain: Podemos debates democratic structures, prepares for power
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. * Amused at reading an article on El País, under the headline of Podemos discards solving political conflicts through democratic means, and claiming that it stinks of Chávez, or something worse. It's quite surreal how for El País, which usually (at least until recently) took a social-democratic position, Chávez has always been Satan. I've heard several theories on why this may be, going from the material (the publishing roup which owns El País has interests in latam) to more hazy stuff on how the hard left is more of a danger to social democratic formations, by leeching their support, than to the right, which isn't going to turn communist tomorrow. Whatever the case, for an organ of the Spanish press to complain that Podemos' processes, whatever else one thinks about it and then, are antidemocratic, and this in a country where political party apparats are practically omnipotent, shows the extent to which this new formation is alarming the factic powers, which can't be all bad. --David. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] What if FDR had declared war against both Hitler Stalin
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 24/09/2014 19:28, Clay Claiborne via Marxism wrote: So can I now say the Christian KKK funded by the United States? Sure, don't you think there's a clear link between anti-black racism and state power in the US, particularly in certain sections? Richard Seymour has gone into this, amongst many other people. The treatment of, say, the KKK and the BPP by state power wasn't exactly equivalent. As for the sick things even the best people may be driven to under the stresses of continuing combat, shall we talk about US Marines behead Vietnamese and then kicking the heads around like soccer balls, and even digging up corpses so they can mount their heads on spikes? Wait a moment here, are you trying to say US marines are the best people? Yes, we should definitely talk about that, as one in many of the crimes of US imperialism, ongoing today. If your point is the FSA should be excused because the best people (i.e., US imperialists do it too) that seems to aspire to a particularly twisted and depraved standard. --David. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fukushima’s Children are Dying » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 18/06/2014 21:48, Shane Mage via Marxism wrote: The study was originally published in 2009. Now, more than four years later, DW is unable (he would if he could, wouldn't he?) to cite a single criticism (let alone refutation) of any of its facts or conclusions. Yet he cites the absence of either endorsement or refutation by the NYAS as justification for slandering it as junk and slandering Harvey Wasserman as not merely rabid but most rabid! I think I made a mistake with my mail client, and my reply on this issue when to LP's private email instead of to the list. I will reproduce it below, linking to two studies doing exactly that: On 18/06/2014 17:17, Louis Proyect wrote: The article making such a claim was from the New York Academy of Sciences's website. Here's info on them from about us page: I'm not sure if you're familiar with this particular case. In the event you're not, this is what the academy has to say about it: This collection of papers, originally published in Russian, was written by scientists who state that they have summarized the information about the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster from several hundreds of papers previously published in Slavic language publications. In no sense did Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences or the New York Academy of Sciences commission this work; nor by its publication does the Academy validate the claims made in the original Slavic language publications cited in the translated papers. Importantly, the translated volume has not been formally peer‐reviewed by the New York Academy of Sciences or by anyone else. Under the editorial practices of Annals at the time, some projects, such as the Chernobyl translation, were developed and accepted solely to fulfill the Academy’s broad mandate of providing an open forum for discussion of scientific questions, rather than to present original scientific studies or Academy positions. The content of these projects, conceived as one-off book projects, were not vetted by standard peer review. Additionally, the academy recommends papers like http://iopscience.iop.org/0952-4746/32/2/181/pdf/0952-4746_32_2_181.pdf or http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00411-010-0313-1 I understand if you don't follow nuclear issues closely this may be new to you, but it made a big splash when it was published, and, effectively, repudiated by the NYAS, which name had been instrumentalised to purvey very dubious science (or if you ask me complete utter rubbish). --David. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
