Re: [Marxism] (99+) (PDF) Academic Corruption, the Israel Lobby, and 9/11, or, Why I have resigned from my emeritus status at the University of Sussex | Kees Van der Pijl - Academia.edu
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 must confess that I've never heard of Kees Van der Pijl, so when I read at the start of the Prof's lengthy paper that 'in reply to a Twitter message summing up a series of crimes ascribed to "Saudis", beginning with their alleged responsibility for bringing down the Twin Towers, I posted, "Not Saudis, Israelis brought down the Twin Towers with help from Zionists in US Govt!"', I thought that he was perhaps being sarcastic, taking the mickey out of conspiracy theories. Then I read through the paper only to find out that he really believes this nonsense, that the World Trade Center buildings were demolished by controlled explosions, and so on and so forth. I'm rather glad I studied History at UCL rather than International Relations at Sussex. Paul F _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] France's conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism
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. * These are some of my thoughts on this that I posted elsewhere. Paul F Have the initiators and supporters of this proposal thought it all through? France has quite strong laws against ‘hate speech’: the Wikipedia page starts: ‘Those laws protect individuals and groups from being defamed or insulted because they belong or do not belong, in fact or in fancy, to an ethnicity, a nation, a race, a religion, a sex, a sexual orientation, or a gender identity or because they have a handicap. The laws forbid any communication which is intended to incite discrimination against, hatred of, or harm to, anyone because of his belonging or not belonging, in fact or in fancy, to an ethnicity, a nation, a race, a religion, a sex, a sexual orientation, or a gender identity, or because he or she has a handicap.’ If, as this latest ruling states, anti-Zionism is considered as synonymous with anti-Semitism, then criticising a political philosophy — Zionism — and the actions of a nation-state — Israel — is liable to be considered in law an act of racial hatred towards the nationality or ethnic group associated with that philosophy and nation-state — that is, Jews. Therefore those making statements, issuing publications or organising activities that present a criticism of Zionism or of actions of the state of Israel are by so doing liable to be considered as contravening the ‘hate speech’ laws, and, if found guilty, they will be punished according to those laws. This sets up a significant precedent, by which political philosophies and public institutions are directly equated with a nationality or ethnicity, and are thereby protected by legislation that protects people on the grounds of nationality or ethnicity. If anti-Zionism is legally synonymous with anti-Semitism — that is, a political viewpoint is legally synonymous with a form of racial hatred — then criticism of Zionism and of actions of the state of Israel is in the eyes of the law ipso facto motivated by racial hatred of people associated with that philosophy and nation-state. Racial hatred on the part of the critic is thus assumed: the burden of guilt now falls upon the critic, who has to show that his criticisms of a particular political philosophy and actions of a nation-state are not motivated by racial hatred of the people associated with that philosophy and nation-state, rather than an accuser of the critic having to prove that the critic is thus motivated. This also sets up a significant precedent. Other things follow. Either this legislation means that criticism of Zionism and the state of Israel is to be treated in law in a different manner than any criticism of any other political philosophy and nation-state, or, if one is to avoid the unique treatment of Zionism and the state of Israel, the principle must be extended to cover all nationalist philosophies and nation-states. Either way, another significant precedent will have been set. However, if the second proposal is implemented and the precedent set by this new law is extended to all nationalist philosophies and nation-states, then politics becomes essentially impossible: anyone can assert that criticism of this or that nationalist agenda or policy of a nation-state is motivated by racial hatred and have the force of the law brought down upon the critic. (I can’t help thinking that some people have already been thinking along these lines: Modi’s supporters here are busy implementing this second proposal, condemning Corbyn as ‘anti-Indian’ because of Labour’s opposition to the Indian government’s nationalist policies in Kashmir; others will no doubt follow…) The only political philosophies that will be allowed to be criticised without the speaker or writer being likely to be up before the beak on racial ‘hate speech’ charges are ones that are not associated with any particular nationality or ethnicity. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Holodomor, Genocide & Russia: the great Ukrainian challenge
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 problem I have with the idea of the Ukrainian Holodomor is that it tends to obscure the fact that the famine went far beyond Ukraine, and badly affected Southern Russia and the North Caucasus as well. Also, whilst the Nazis' Holocaust was a deliberate attempt to exterminate Europe's Jews and Roma, likewise with the Turkish genocide of the Armenians; contrary to what some Ukrainian historians insist, it is not at all established whether Stalin's regime was intent on a genocidal policy towards Ukrainians -- which I highly doubt -- or intended its agricultural policies to lead to mass starvation either in Ukraine or in the other affected areas. That Stalin continued with these agricultural policies after their deadly impact became apparent is true, but that does not mean that such results were desired or intended. Paul F _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] ISO Dissolution -- A Quick Thought
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. * Comparing the dissolution of Gerry Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party back in 1985 and the ISO's dissolution today, I am wondering whether this is the first historical repetition in which the farce has preceded the tragedy. Paul F _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] When the NY Times backed Communists
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. * Similar examples can be found as far back as the late 1930s. From my book, The New Civilisation? ‘The far left’s stance on this issue [that is, Communist Party policy -- PF] was echoed to some degree by commentators of quite different outlooks. This was particularly so in respect of France, where the Communist Party, although not at first participating in the Popular Front government under Léon Blum, suddenly became very patriotic, played an important role in demobilising two mammoth strike waves in 1936 and 1938, and was seen as being in danger of being outflanked by Trotskyists and other leftists. In March 1938, the Economist went so far as to suggest that the maintenance of social order was best served by having the Communist Party in government (‘France’, Economist, 26 March 1938).’ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] My Article on Deutscher's Trotsky Trilogy
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. * List members might well be interested in an article that I've recently written on Isaac Deutscher's Trotsky trilogy. Here's the abstract: 'This paper investigates Isaac Deutscher’s Trotsky trilogy, concentrating upon the examples of Trotsky’s ideas and actions in which Trotsky was centrally involved of which Deutscher presented a critical assessment and for which he provided differing perspectives. These are i) Trotsky’s ideas concerning substitutionism; ii) his theory of Permanent Revolution; iii) the assumption by the Bolsheviks of a political monopoly after the October Revolution; iv) the substitution by the Bolsheviks of the rule of their party for the rule of the working class; and v) the chances of success for the Left Opposition, what remained of the October Revolution under Stalinism, and the possibility of political change within Stalinist society. This paper considers that although Deutscher’s perspective of the democratic self-regeneration of Soviet society was wildly optimistic and caused him, if reluctantly, to accept the victory of Stalinism, it also permitted him to show the problematic features of Bolshevism in power in greater detail than Trotsky was willing to do. The paper concludes by showing that Deutscher’s final thoughts on the nature of Soviet society implicitly undermined his perspective of the democratic self-regeneration of Soviet society and suggested a more critical stance on his part towards the Soviet élite.' If you'd like a copy, please contact me off-list by e-mail. Paul F _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Sussex Uni professor tweets ?Israelis blew up Twin Towers?
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. * Dear oh dear. It just goes to prove what I wrote 30 years back, that academic qualifications do not prevent men from being charlatans or fools, or both. Paul F _ 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] Norman G Finkelstein on the accusations of anti-semitism against Corbyn's Labour Party.
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. * Finkelstein's article has raised some hackles over here. I wrote the following comment on a Facebook thread. Paul F Finkelstein is crossing an unwelcome line with this piece. There are a couple of tell-tale phrases: 'Jews are incomparably organized as they have created a plethora of interlocking, overlapping, and mutually reinforcing communal and defense organizations that operate in both the domestic and international arenas', and, 'The wonder would be if these raw data [on the proportion of Jews in prominent positions] didn’t translate into outsized Jewish political power.' What he writes about US politicians, with the implication that some sort of Jewish force is influencing if not governing US high politics, is quite at odds with what he wrote (quite accurately) a short while ago where he stated that pro-Israel policies are voted through because they are in the interests of US foreign policy, and that were this to be no longer to be the case, the pro-Israel lobby would wither on the vine. Now the tail -- and, moreover, a Jewish one rather than a pro-Zionist one -- seems to be wagging the dog. Here's another very worrying bit, on matters close to home: 'Were it not for the outsized power of British Jews, it’s hard to conceive that British society would be interminably chasing after a hobgoblin. True, although fighting anti-Semitism is the rallying cry, a broad array of powerful entrenched social forces, acting on not-so-hidden agendas of their own, have coalesced around this putative cause. It cannot be gainsaid, however, that Jewish organizations form the poisoned tip of this spear.' I feel that the matter of allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has pretty much accidentally become the axis around which the anti-Corbyn campaign revolves. I don't believe that anyone or any organisation decided: 'Let's whack Corbyn on anti-Semitism, that'll do the job nicely.' It's just emerged that way, it's the form which the campaign has taken. There is a very broad range of opposition to Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party and potential Prime Minister, and this opposition covers a very wide range of topics, far beyond anti-Jewish prejudice and Israel/Palestine. That's the content of the campaign, let's not confuse form with content. It's true that the broad campaign against Corbyn has 'coalesced around this putative cause', and of course that will bring in various Jewish groups that don't like Corbyn, but to view these groups as the main force behind the campaign, rather than to view their formal prominence as the result of the form that the campaign has taken, and -- worse -- to see that as the result of 'the outsized power of British Jews' is getting things seriously back to front and putting the author amongst some very dubious company. Up till now, what I've read of Finkelstein's writings have carefully eschewed this sort of thing, even when he has been typically provocative in his writing style. What he has written here is quite unacceptable, and shows a decided shift in his analysis into the murky world of anti-Jewish conspiracies. _ 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: H-Net Review [H-War]: Rutherford on Moorhouse, 'The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact With Stalin, 1939-41'
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 did a fair bit of reading about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and especially how it was seen in Britain, when researching my PhD. The pact really took people by surprise, yet if one read Stalin's speech to the CPSU's Eighteenth Congress, there were hints that something was already afoot, as Stalin heavily implied that Germany was not a threat to the Soviet Union, and that the world's bourgeois democracies powers could no longer rely upon Moscow's good favours were they to find themselves at war with Germany. One Trotskyist group in Britain, the Workers International League, considered that Stalin's speech showed that Soviet foreign policy was shifting, and saw this as a consequence of the uncertainties that had arisen after the Munich debacle and the collapse of Czechoslovakia. Its journal concluded: 'Stalin's speech of last month further emphasises the uncertainty of Soviet foreign policy and his readiness to strike a bargain with Hitler.' This, however, was rather the exception. The Communist Party was especially caught on the hop. It had reproduced Stalin's speech in its weekly paper without critical comment, and a fortnight before the pact was signed, one party leader, Johnny Campbell, insisted that there could 'be no rapprochement between the Soviet Union and the Fascist states' (Daily Worker, 9 August 1939). Rather amusingly, after the pact was signed, the Communist Party called for another pact, between Britain and the Soviet Union, even though this was implicitly prohibited by the clause in the M-R Pact stating that neither of the contracting parties would 'participate in any grouping of powers' which was 'either directly or indirectly aimed against the other contracting party'. The party also declared that it would support a war against the fascist powers, although Berlin was now allied to Moscow, and it did support Britain's war against Germany when it broke out in September. This anomaly was subsequently ironed out when in October Moscow ordered the communist parties to oppose the war, not without some bother within the British party's Central Committee. My book, which covers this episode, is still available < https://secure.francisboutle.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=10&products_id=50 >. Paul F _ 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] The Gay Architects of Classic Rock
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. * This article has some resemblance as this one by Alexis Petridis a few years back < https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/feb/28/how-pop-lost-gay-edge >. I grew up in Britain through the 1960s, and it was well known that the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein was gay (not that that term was used then), and there would be snide comments from older people about the 'effeminate' pop stars of the day, with their long hair and, later on, flamboyant clothing. Rumours about Larry Parnes' predatory predilections for handsome young men seeped out, along with the more common stories about his appalling rip-off managerial style; he was popularly known as 'Parnes, Shillings and Pence'. If these tales were true, he really would have been a Der Stürmer stereotype; I can't vouch for their veracity. But the rest of the gay managers were unknown to us. Lambert, Napier-Bell... the average music fan had never heard of them, let alone knew that they were gay. I'd heard of Stigwood, but only recently learnt (via Ginger Baker's autobiography) that he was gay. These guys, along with their sexuality, were behind the scenes. As for the article's conclusion -- 'in an era when gay sexual expression was brutally suppressed, the men were able to express themselves through the most influential sex symbols of the day, creating a kind of erotic ventriloquism' -- that's not how it appeared at the time. Nobody of my generation thought that Mick Jagger was gay, whatever our parents' generation might have thought, or that his image was conjured up by some gay managerial svengali. If anything, we young lads were envious of the way he could get crowds of girls around him; the same went for the other popular music stars of the time. Likewise, I can't recall any openly gay person in the popular music scene at that time. The only man I can think of was Long John Baldry, and he wasn't publicly gay at the time; I don't think he either admitted it or was obliged to deny it publicly, although I suspect that it was known within the business. I can't recall when rumours started being heard that Dusty Springfield was gay, but I don't think it was in the 1960s, when she was first in the public eye. The whole scene appeared to be very straight. It wasn't until the early 1970s with David Bowie did real hints towards being gay, or at least a strong sense of ambiguity, become visible in the popular music world. It was different in the world of the theatre, including musical theatre, and to a lesser degree cinema, where gay men, often with little attempt at disguising their gayness, were fairly common. It's a paradoxical thing that drag acts and camp comedians were popular for decades in working-class entertainment at a time when there was no apparent evidence of anyone being gay in working-class circles. But that was an entirely different scene, nothing to do with the popular music scene, even though their songs would sometimes jostle for position in the 'hit parade' with songs by performers of our generation. Paul F _ 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] Moshé Machover Expelled From UK Labour Party for 'Anti-Semitism'
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 Labour Party's Thought Police -- sorry, Compliance Unit -- has really done it this time in its campaign against party members who are left-wingers and critics of Zionism. It has expelled Professor Moshé Machover, a founder of the Israeli socialist group Matzpen, on the grounds of anti-Semitism, for an historical study that he wrote for the Labour Party Marxists. This is truly the theatre of the absurd... or the 'big lie' of Goebbels... or the jurisprudence of Vyshinsky. Moshé's article can be found here < http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/anti-zionism-does-not-equal-anti-semitism-2/ >. Moshé's comments < http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/in-defence-of-history-reinhard-heydrich-zionism-and-saying-the-unsayable/ >. More at Tony Greenstein's site < http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/professor-moshe-machover-israeli-anti.html >. Paul F * * * Below is the Jewish Socialist Group's statement on this farce < http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/news/item/jewish-socialists-group-statement-in-support-of-moshe-machover >. Dr Moshe Machover – a lifelong Israeli socialist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist, who has lived in Britain since 1968 – has been expelled from the Labour Party accused of writing “an apparently antisemitic article” and accused of “involvement and support for” two organisations, the Labour Party Marxists and the Communist Party of Great Britain. The accusation regarding the “antisemitic” article references the controversial, flawed definition of antisemitism, which the JSG and many others on the left have challenged < http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/news/item/fight-antisemitism-and-defend-free-speech >. Moshe Machover has been a friend of the Jewish Socialists’ Group for more than 30 years. He has spoken at JSG meetings, written for Jewish Socialist magazine, and participated in campaigns for social justice with us. We know him as an outstanding and sophisticated thinker and analyst, a fighter for human rights and social justice, and a consistent opponent of all reactionary ideologies and actions. The JSG is not affiliated to the Labour Party but we have strongly criticised the right wing-led campaign to smear left wing activists as antisemites < http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/news/item/statement-on-labours-problem-with-antisemitism-from-the-jewish-socialists-g >. The Labour Party has a duty to take action against genuine examples of antisemitism and other forms of racism and bigotry. In line with the Chakrabarti Inquiry, however, we: * favour education rather than heavy-handed disciplinary measures * expect transparent, fair and just process with regard to complaints against members * support Shami Chakrabarti’s desire to encourage respectful free speech within the Party. The JSG chooses to support individuals suspended or expelled from the party on a case by case basis.In this case we fully support Moshe Machover and call for his expulsion to be rescinded and for his immediate reinstatement as a member of the Labour Party. The JSG recognises the article by Moshe Machover, that has been cited,as a critique of the political ideology of Zionism, not of Jews. Indeed the article exposes antisemitic ideas. The JSG rejects any McCarthyite-style attempt to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” other left groups on the basis of writing articles and attending and participating in meetings. It is common practice for Labour members of all levels to speak and participate in events of other groups, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications. Solidarity with Moshe Machover! _ 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: H-Net Review [H-War]: Beall on Richie, 'Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising'
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 text of the Polish socialist Zygmunt Zaremba's pamphlet The Warsaw Commune: Betrayed by Stalin, Massacred by Hitler, originally published in 1947, first English translation 1997, can be found on the Marxist Internet Archive < https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/zaremba/warsaw-commune/index.htm >. The progressive nature of the programme of the Warsaw fighters can be seen from the demands that Zaremba listed: 1: A constitution ensuring that governments conform to the will of the people. 2: A democratic electoral law faithfully reflecting public opinion at the time of the general and municipal elections. 3: An agrarian reform sharing out all agricultural land in excess of 50 hectares along with German landed property, as determined by prior decree; the excess of population being directed into industry and manufacture. 4: The socialisation of key industries. 5: The participation of the workers in the management of enterprises and workers’ control of industrial production. 6: All citizens have the right to work and to a decent standard of living. 7: A proper distribution of social revenue. 8: All citizens have the right to education and culture. Paul F _ 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: George Orwell was a reactionary snitch who made a blacklist of leftists for the British government
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. * Here's my take on the business (minus footnotes). The full article from which this is taken is at < https://www.academia.edu/1457/_I_Know_How_But_I_Don_t_Know_Why_George_Orwell_s_Conception_of_Totalitarianism >. Paul F Appendix: Orwell and the Spooks The right-wing press had a field day with the discovery in 1996 of correspondence in the Public Record Office between Orwell and Celia Kirwan, who was a friend of Orwell’s, the sister-in-law of Arthur Koestler, and an employee of the Foreign Office’s clandestine propaganda wing, the Information Research Department. The correspondence revealed that Orwell was asked in 1949 by the Foreign Office if he would help in the writing of material which could be used in its war of words against the Soviet Union. Orwell, terminally ill, turned down the invitation, but did provide the IRD with the names of 35 fellow-travellers, taken from a notebook containing 86 names. The papers repeated their celebrations two years later when the names in the notebook — or most of them — were finally revealed in one of the 20 volumes of the newly-released Orwell Collected Works. Once again, the right wing could claim Orwell as one of their own. Why was Orwell willing to collaborate with the murkier parts of the British state, the same sort of bodies which he had long denounced? Orwell was always a supporter of the lesser evil, and without ever renouncing his calls for the socialist transformation of Britain, he adopted a defencist stand during both the Second World War and the ensuing Cold War, as he saw parliamentary democracy as a lesser evil than either a Hitlerite or Stalinist dictatorship. By the late 1940s, with Stalinist rule extending across Eastern Europe, Orwell, by now a sick and pessimistic man, was willing to take whatever steps he felt were necessary to defend democratic rights in Britain. Furthermore, despite his suspicion of state institutions, he had no conception of the necessity for socialists to maintain their political independence from the state. This is why he was willing to make common cause with institutions that were bitter enemies of socialism, rather than propose a politically independent course. In the covering letter to his list, Orwell stated that he wanted to help ensure that ‘unreliable’ people would not be ‘worming their way into important propaganda jobs’. Orwell admitted to Kirwan that her ‘friends’, as he put it, probably knew all about those named by him, although he added that it was probably a good idea to have such ‘unreliable’ people listed. He gave the example of Peter Smollett, an important official at the wartime Ministry of Information, who could well have advised against the publication of Animal Farm, and has since been revealed as a Soviet agent. The list itself is a strange collection. Some of the names are of well-known Americans — Walter Duranty, Edgar Snow, Anna Strong, Paul Robeson, Upton Sinclair — whose fame (or notoriety) did not require Orwell to point them out. Some British Stalinists — DN Pritt, Lester Hutchinson, WP and Zelda Coates, JD Bernal, Hewlett Johnson — were so well known that the very idea of their being used to write British official publications during the Cold War is laughable. Some were well-known sympathisers of Stalinism, such as Sean O’Casey and George Bernard Shaw; some, like Kingsley Martin, had been soft on Stalinism; and others, including Michael Redgrave and JB Priestley, were politically naive individuals. Whether they were Stalinists without a party card, or credulous believers in a happy land, far far away, the whole thing with most fellow-travellers was that they were publicly sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Secret Soviet sympathisers like Smollett are very few and far between in Orwell’s list. Stephen Spender is strange inclusion, as he had long dropped out of the Communist Party, and was shortly to get star billing in that anti-communist credo The God that Failed. The listing of Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin is even more baffling. To be honest, a glance through the contents pages of Labour Monthly and other Stalinist publications could well have provided a better list of fellow-travellers, and there can be no doubt that Kirwan’s ‘friends’ regularly scanned them. The rise of Stalinism posed a real problem for the left. Here was a state and a world-wide movement, emerging from a workers’ revolution and using the liberatory language of Marxism, which was extremely repressive, particularly towards its left-wing opponents and the working class. How could the non-Stalinist left respond to it? When an article by Trotsky on the Moscow Trials appeared without his approval in
[Marxism] New Book: Paul Flewers and John McIlroy (editors), 1956: John Saville, EP Thompson and The Reasoner
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. * List members may be interested in a new book which I have co-edited. Paul Flewers and John McIlroy (editors), 1956: John Saville, EP Thompson and The Reasoner (Merlin Press, pp 450, £20) When Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin in his ‘Secret Speech’ in 1956 the leaders of the Communist Party of Great Britain attempted to deal with an unprecedented and unwelcome situation by carrying on as best as normal. Many party members were not satisfied with their prevarications, and one result was The Reasoner, a substantial duplicated magazine produced by party historians John Saville and EP Thompson. The three issues of The Reasoner gave an outlet to critical party members’ feelings; for the leadership this was mutinous behaviour. Dismayed by the party leaders’ endorsement of the Soviet invasion of Hungary, Saville and Thompson, along with thousands of others, resigned their party membership. Although The Reasoner has been mentioned in many historical studies, its text has never been republished until now. This book reproduces all three issues, together with key CPGB statements on the issues that the magazine raised. John McIlroy has provided an extensive introduction that investigates the history of intellectuals within the CPGB and an essay that analyses the political evolution of John Saville, and Paul Flewers has provided an essay that assesses EP Thompson’s views on Stalinism and the Soviet experience. Contents 1. Preface 2. Chronology 3. John McIlroy, Communist Intellectuals and 1956: John Saville, Edward Thompson and The Reasoner 4. Documents I — Harry Pollitt, Rajani Palme Dutt, George Matthews, John Saville, EP Thompson, Derek Kartun, CPGB Political Committee 5. The Reasoner, No 1 6. The Reasoner, No 2 7. Documents II — CPGB Political and Executive Committee on The Reasoner 8. The Reasoner, No 3 9. Ronald Meek, The Marxist-Leninist’s Song 10. John McIlroy, John Saville and Stalinism: An Exploration 11. Paul Flewers, E P Thompson and the Soviet Experience 12. Index Paul Flewers is the author of The New Civilisation? Understanding Stalin’s Soviet Union 1929-1941 and an editor of Revolutionary History. John McIlroy is a Professor of Employment Relations at Middlesex University Business School. Order your copy here < http://www.merlinpress.co.uk/acatalog/1956.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] Haaretz: 'Why Jewish Conservatives Fear Donald Trump'
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 received the article below via Moshé Machover, it's behind the Haaretz pay-wall. An exchange between Moshé and I follows on from it. Paul F * * * Peter Beinart, 'Why Jewish Conservatives Fear Donald Trump: Because he represents a brand of nationalism that doesn’t really include them' George Will once wrote that Barry Goldwater actually won the 1964 presidential election. It just “took 16 years” — until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 — “to count the votes.” It’s time to update that line. Pat Buchanan actually won the Republican nomination in 1996. It just took 20 years — until the nomination of Donald Trump — to count the votes. Although it’s been largely forgotten, the early 1990s were a period of intellectual crisis inside the GOP. For much of the 20th century, conservatives had urged “the West” to resist Soviet communism. But when Soviet communism collapsed, two different groups of conservatives realized that they meant two different things by “the West.” The party’s “neoconservative” intellectuals — many of them Jews — defined the West ideologically: as the bastion of democratic capitalism. Buchanan, by contrast, along with many rank and file conservatives, defined the West ethnically: as the bastion of white Christianity. These two different interpretations led to radically different foreign policies. The “neocons” wanted take advantage of the USSR’s collapse to spread democracy and free markets, if necessary by force. The Buchananites, quoting John Quincy Adams, wondered why Americans should go overseas “in search of monsters to destroy.” And they wondered whether global capitalism really benefitted ordinary Americans anyway. The neocons defended the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); the Buchananites denounced it. Neocons like William Kristol and Robert Kagan urged the United States to take up arms to defend Bosnia and Kosovo against Serbian aggression. The Buchananites asked why, exactly, the United States should wage war for Muslims fighting Christians. The divide culminated in 1996, when Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary. GOP elites, he gleefully declared, “are in a terminal panic. They hear the shouts of the peasants from over the hill. All the knights and barons will be riding into the castle pulling up the drawbridge in a minute. All the peasants are coming with pitchforks.” The knights and barons counterattacked, and managed to nominate Bob Dole. Then, in the years that followed, Republicans papered over their differences. They united in an attempt to impeach Bill Clinton. They united in vengeance after the September 11 attacks. They united to oppose Barack Obama. But below the surface, the balance inside the party shifted. After 2000, wages stagnated, which led more Republicans to doubt the benefits of global trade. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan became quagmires, which led more Republicans to doubt the benefits of foreign war. And Barack Obama’s election induced a panic about America’s changing demographic character. All these factors strengthened the Buchananites, even as Buchanan himself faded into obscurity. Which brings us to Trump and the Jews. Name the conservative movement’s most passionate Trump opponents, and you’ll notice that Jews — Bill Kristol, David Brooks, David Frum, Robert Kagan, Jonah Goldberg, Max Boot, Bret Stephens, Dan Senor, Jennifer Rubin — are heavily overrepresented. The primary reason is that most Jewish conservatives find Trump’s brand of nationalism alarming. Trump doesn’t see the “West” as worth defending on ideological grounds. Like Buchanan, he thinks America’s key allies rip us off. He can’t see any reason why America should spend money and risk lives defending the Baltic States — just because they’re democracies — against Russia. For Trump, like Buchanan, the West matters only as a religious and racial entity. Muslim immigration, Trump claims, is “destroying Europe” and “I’m not going to let that happen to the United States.” Jewish conservatives want to expand the West’s frontiers in the name of prosperity, security and freedom. Trump, by contrast, wants the West to close its doors to keep the Muslim hordes out. Jewish conservatives don’t only find this frightening because they fear what may happen overseas if the U.S. withdraws. They also fear what may happen at home. For many American Jews, the isolationism of the 1930s connotes anti-Semitism. It evokes figures like Charles Lindbergh, Joseph Kennedy Sr. and Father Coughlin, all of whom used Jew-hatred to justify appeasing Hitler. Trump, by resurrecting the slogan of Lindbergh’s America First Committee, which opposed U.S. entry into World War II, plays
[Marxism] Article on US Right-Wing Intellectuals
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. * This article on US right-wing intellectuals appeared in the Guardian this week < https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/16/secret-history-trumpism-donald-trump >. Below are some lines I wrote to a pal in New York when she asked me about the possibilities for this political trend: 'I think that conservatism, not least of this brand, could make a revival. We are seeing a reaction against neo-liberalism in the form of the reassertion of the nation-state: calls for immigration controls, import substitution through the defence of indigenous industry, etc. That's what's behind Trumpery and the various right-wing nationalist forces across Europe. It was to a large degree the push behind the anti-EU vote here. These forces have no answer, there is no national solution to the crisis, but that will not prevent them from making a lot of noise and winning elections. Trump probably won't get elected, but Mrs Le Pen might in France. And even if they don't, they still represent large numbers of angry people looking for a way out. 'Is there a future for right-wing conservative intellectuals? Almost certainly: we've seen right through the last decades more than traces of calls for traditional mores, etc, and opposition to 'cosmopolitan', 'politically correct' liberalism. That liberalism is in part the ideological reflection of neo-liberal economic policies; nationalist economic policies will necessarily be reflected ideologically in patriotism and all the rest. How far all the old right-wing prejudices will bubble up -- that I don't know, but I'm afraid that it will to some degree or another. 'What I do feel is that the rise of Trumpery and similar things in Europe will encourage old-style conservatism to come increasingly into the open. These guys will never form a mass movement, but they will gain confidence with the rise of Trumpery, they will form some sort of symbiotic relationship with it. I don't think that Trumpery is a flash in the pan, even if Trump is: there is a real basis for angry nationalism as neo-liberalism continues to bite hard on many people. The German right-wing conservative thinkers did not have an easy relationship with the Nazis; they did not like the rowdy, uncultured, lower-class aspects of the Nazis. But in the run-up to 1933 they fed off each other. So I think there will be a relationship, symbiotic but uneasy, between Trumpery and conservatism; the latter giving theoretical shape to the former, the former giving confidence to the latter, encouraging it to be more bold in opposing liberal norms.' _ 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] Israel - world's most racist state?
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. * Re ARG's comments. In what way does Tony Greenstein's criticisms of Zionism and the state of Israel constitute an 'ethnocentric perspective'? Kindly explain yourself. Paul F _ 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] Thompson on Morris
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've just finished a fairly hefty article on EP Thompson and the Soviet experience, looking at his writings on the topics of Bolshevism, the Russian revolution, Stalinism and Trotskyism, and this takes in some of the points that Andrew makes in his posting. Thompson's post-CPGB line on the nature of the Soviet Union was rather close to that of Isaac Deutscher, although his historical account of Bolshevism and Stalinism was nothing as clear as Deutscher's, and was often tentative and contradictory. Thompson's book on William Morris was first published in 1955, and I cite a passage that soon became somewhat embarrassing for the author. This was missing from the revised edition that was published well after he left the CPGB in 1956. My article should be in a book containing all three issues of The Reasoner, which Thompson and John Saville published whilst still CPGB members in 1956, a selection of related CPGB documents, and an introduction by John McIlroy, hopefully to be published later this year. Here's an extract from my article, starting with Perry Anderson's critique of Thompson. Paul F ** And where, asked Anderson, was Thompson prior to 1956? Where was he during, say, Stalin’s infamous Doctors’ Plot of 1952, or the Slánský trial a year before? In 1955, Thompson completed his massive study of William Morris, and one senses that its general feel ran a bit askew to the hidebound ethos of his party. However, as Palmer noted, Thompson ‘could not break out of the Stalinist straitjacket’, as this would have been ‘an act of apostatical default too disturbing to contemplate’. And so the book concluded with this masterpiece of bathos: 'Twenty years ago even among Socialists and Communists, many must have regarded Morris’ picture of ‘A Factory As It Might Be’ as an unpractical poet’s dream: today visitors return from the Soviet Union with stories of the poet’s dream already fulfilled. Yesterday in the Soviet Union, the Communists were struggling against every difficulty to build up their industry to the level of the leading capitalist powers: today they have before them Stalin’s blueprint of the advance to Communism… Thus have the ‘claims’ of William Morris, the ‘unpractical’ poet, been promised fulfilment!' This was incongruous enough in 1955 — Efstathiou was quite wrong when he wrote that ‘Thompson’s pro-Stalin stance was not unusual for the time’: attitudes had changed rather a lot over the preceding decade — and within a twelve-month would be downright embarrassing in the light of Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’. The events of 1956 put dissident members of the official Communist parties in an especially awkward position now that the record of their movement had been exposed — and exposed ex cathedra at that — as deeply flawed, and they found themselves pulled in opposite directions as their rivals on the left took gleeful pleasure in their discomfort. Hence in the first issue of The Reasoner, Thompson declared that he was proud of the work of the CPGB in support of the working class in Britain and in opposing colonialism abroad, but he was ‘not proud’ of the CPGB’s ‘servile attitude to the leadership of the Soviet Union’ and the ‘silence’ which he and others had maintained on this and other matters. A year later, however, the defensiveness had gone, and Thompson was a lot less forgiving towards his critics: 'I am not going to spend years crippled by remorse because I was duped by the Rajk and Kostov trials, because I was a casuist here and perhaps an accomplice there. We were Communists because we had faith in the fundamental humanist content of Communism, and during the darkest years of the Cold War it was our duty to speak for this. I do not regret this, although I wish we had spoken more wisely and therefore to more effect.' Anderson had not been asking an unreasonable question, for what Khrushchev exposed in his ‘Secret Speech’ had long been common knowledge outwith the official Communist movement. Thompson’s peevish outburst may well have been the result of his being asked this question once too often. > Message: 13 > Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 13:36:19 -0400 > From: Andrew Pollack > To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition > > Subject: [Marxism] Thompson on Morris > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > New at MIA: > https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1951/william-morris.htm > Thanks to Paul Flewers for transcribing this. > I'd be interested to hear from him and others with more knowledge of the > > period in general and Thompson and/or Morris in particular, what they make of > this piece. > On the one hand it's
[Marxism] Famous Isaac Deutscher Essay Now On-Line
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. * Isaac Deutscher's famous review of Isaiah Berlin's essay Historical Inevitability is now available on-line at < https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1955/determinists-all.htm >. This rather sharp review, published in The Observer on 16 January 1955, was largely responsible for sparking Berlin's furious hostility for Deutscher, which culminated in his sabotage of Deutscher's chances of obtaining a university teaching post, a sorry tale described in David Caute's recent book Isaac and Isaiah. Paul F _ 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 Book on the City of London as a Financial Centre
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. * List members may well be interested in this new book by Tony Norfield < http://www.versobooks.com/books/2103-the-city >. Tony Norfield also writes at < http://economicsofimperialism.blogspot.co.uk/ >. Paul F * * * * * * * Tony Norfield, The City: London and the Global Power of Finance A radical insider’s account of how the city of London really works The City, as London's financial centre is known, is the world's biggest international banking and foreign exchange market, shaping the development of global capital. It is also, as this groundbreaking book reveals, a crucial part of the mechanism of power in the world economy. Based on the author's twenty years' experience of City dealing rooms, The City is an in-depth look at world markets and revenues that exposes how this mechanism works. All big international companies -- not just the banks -- utilise this system, and The City shows how the operations of the City of London are critical both for British capitalism and for world finance. Tony Norfield details, with shocking and insightful research, the role of the US dollar in global trading, the network of British-linked tax havens, the flows of finance around the world and the system of power built upon financial securities. Why do just fifty companies now have control of a large share of world economic production? The City explains how this situation came about, examining the history of the world economy from the postwar period to the present day. If you imagine you don't like 'finance' but have no problem with the capitalist market system, think again: it turns out the two cannot be separated. _ 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] has Jacobin seen the light?
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 agree with David W's comments about the bombing of Germany in the Second World War: it took a massive ground war from east and west to overcome Nazi Germany. Aerial bombing played some part, but it was not decisive. It also played into the hands of the Nazi regime, who could present it as an attack upon all Germans and especially urban Germans, as the cities were the main target. The German bombing raids on Britain earlier in the war did not undermine the British government. To move on from this, it's pretty clear that the big powers today recognise that a ground war will be necessary to defeat ISIS's quasi-state. Yet, unlike the defeat of Germany by largely ground forces, which led to the collapse not only of the Nazi regime but of the credibility of its ideas, the defeat through invasion of ISIS-held territory will not destroy ISIS as a current, even if ISIS suffers fairly hefty losses in the process. The defeat of Germany in 1945 totally discredited Nazism as an ideology in that country. Based upon a hypertrophied variant of German imperialism, everything it stood for was massively undermined by its defeat: the supposedly 'plutocratic' USA, the supposedly effete Britain, the supposed 'untermenschen' of the 'Judeo-Bolshevik' Soviet Union had proved victorious; the 'Thousand-Year Reich' and its core in the German state lay in pieces. Based intrinsically upon the power of the German state, it could not survive the utter defeat of that state and its powerlessness at the hands of the victor states. The quasi-state that ISIS has created on the Syria-Iraq border does not equate to the Third Reich, or to other less ideologically hypertrophied nation-states that have been defeated in war. Whilst the ISIS quasi-state is useful in attracting support from like-minded Islamist people around the world in a way that al Qaeda, lacking a national base for much of the time, didn't manage to, such a territorial base is not an essential factor in this brand of violent jihadism. The ISIS ideology can withstand the defeat of the ISIS state. Rather than stand in ISIS-land and wait to be over-run in an invasion, ISIS will almost certainly send the bulk of its cadres away to other countries -- it's probably doing this to some degree now -- in order to carry out guerrilla-type activities in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Another factor is that the invasion and defeat of ISIS-land -- assuming that the fraught question of amassing sufficient forces to do it can be solved, which is a question we might discuss elsewhere -- won't deal with the factors underlying the rise of such movements as al Qaeda and ISIS. So long as the Ba'athist regime remains in power in Damascus, then this will be a permanent destabilising factor on the basis that it has lost all legitimacy amongst substantial sections of the population and it's hard to see how this could be regained; if it falls, then is there the real possibility of the type of statal collapse we've seen in Libya. The level of instability that would ensue from either of these results, along with the general conditions in the region, would almost guarantee that some form of violent Islamist movement, either a revived ISIS or some new variant, would emerge. Paul F _ 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 Issue of Revolutionary History: Clara Zetkin: Letters and Writings
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. * New Issue of Revolutionary History: Clara Zetkin: Letters and Writings Clara Zetkin played a prominent role within the left wing of the German Social-Democratic Party and subsequently within the Communist Party of Germany and the Communist International, with a strong interest in the rights of working-class women. The latest edition of Revolutionary History, edited by Mike Jones and Ben Lewis, brings together articles and letters by Zetkin on such subjects as revisionism within the SPD, women's rights and feminism, the fight against fascism, and the bureaucratisation of the Communist International, together with scholarly articles focusing upon specific aspects of Zetkin's political life. This edition of Revolutionary History will bring the life and work of Clara Zetkin to the notice of today’s left-wing activists and historians, and help to restore her name to its rightful position within the pantheon of twentieth-century revolutionary Marxists. Articles by Clara Zetkin * The Servant Girls' Movement * Against the Theory and Tactics of Social Democracy * Guidelines for the Communist Women's Movement * Letters to Lenin * The Struggle Against Fascism * The Bourgeois Women’s Movement * Letter to the Politbureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU * Speech to the ECCI * Letters to Fanny Jezierska * Letter to Wilhelm Pieck * Opening Speech of the Reichstag as its Oldest Member, 30 August 1932 Articles about Clara Zetkin * Gisela Notz, Clara Zetkin and the International Socialist Women's Movement * Ottokar Luban, Clara Zetkin's Influence on the Spartacus Group, 1918-1919 * Günter Wernicke, Clara Zetkin's Opposition to Sidelining of Comrades in the Comintern and KPD in the Mid-1920s * Horst Helas, Clara Zetkin's 'Filthy Letter' Plus a big book review section Order at < www.revolutionaryhistory.co.uk > _ 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] CPUSA 'Jewish Life' Magazine -- Help Needed
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. * Kevin Lindemann wrote 'the article was reprinted in Jewish Radicals: A Documentary Reader, edited by Tony Michels (New York: New York University Press, 2012), and it looks like Google Books has the full text online'. Many thanks for the reference, I have found the article in the book on-line and have corrected the text as it appeared in The Reasoner; it was a simple typographical error which left the text quite garbled. Paul F _ 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] CPUSA 'Jewish Life' Magazine -- Help Needed
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'm currently working on a project to republish the three issues of The Reasoner, a magazine issued in Britain by EP Thompson and John Saville in 1956. As part of this, I need to obtain a copy of article from the June 1956 issue of the CPUSA journal Jewish Life to check the text in the Reasoner, no 1, against the original, as some of the text is garbled. The holdings in various libraries in London do not have this issue, nor does the on-line archive of the journal on the Jewish Currents website. Does anyone here know where I might be able to get this, either as a hard copy (xeroxed) or a scan (PDF)? The article is the Statement by the Editorial Board; the opening sentence in the Reasoner version reads: 'The wiping out of Soviet Jewish culture confirmed in the past few months horrified us.' Paul F _ 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] Right-Wing Anglo-Greek Commentator Openly Praises Golden Dawn
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. * 'Taki', a longstanding Anglo-Greek reactionary, right-wing columnist, has come out openly -- in a fairly big-circulation weekly, the Spectator -- in favour of Golden Dawn, and sees them as fine upstanding Greeks defending their kith, kin and country against all these foreigners < http://www.spectator.co.uk/life/high-life/9601182/golden-dawn-is-the-only-thing-standing-between-poor-athenian-neighbourhoods-and-outright-anarchy/ >. He still sees the need to deny that GD are actually fascists, but this nasty bloke a year or two... Has anyone here seen any other examples of open championing of GD by right-wing columnists? Paul F _ 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] The Russian Roots of Nazism
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 read Kellogg's book some time back, when it first came out, and felt that the author rather overestimated the impact of the right-wing Baltic Germans. I think that they played a catalytic role in the rise of fascism in Germany, but I don't think that Nazism would have been qualitatively less genocidal, or that the drive to the East for living space would have been less fervent, had their influence been less. Many of the ideas that the Nazis promoted during the Weimar years were versions, amplified to varying degrees, of ideas already floating around on the German right prior to the influx of Baltic Germans. The quest for Eastern territories was quite a common demand on the nationalist right; the Nazi eugenics policies were not at all uncommon not only on the German right, but in only slightly less harsh forms in many countries amongst people of many political standpoints. The anti-Bolshevism of the Baltic German right-wingers added to the anti-communist sentiment on the German right, but there was plenty of that around before they arrived. Anti-Semitism had been on the rise in Germany even prior to the First World War, and it developed strongly towards and after the end of the war, with the idea of Germany's defeat being the fault of 'the stab in the back' (by you-know-who). I can't recall what Kellogg wrote about the arrival of the Protocols of the Elder of Zion into Germany, but the connection with the Baltic German right seems to be coincidental rather than direct. According to Norman Cohn's Warrant for Genocide, the standard account of the history of the Protocols, this document was first introduced into Europe from Russia by White-Guard Russians. It came to Germany with the German troops retreating from the East. The Protocols keyed in with the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Germany (and elsewhere), and proved very popular with right-wingers. I think, altogether, that Kellogg rather overstated his case. If one bears that in mind, the book is nonetheless useful in bringing to light information that is not broadly known. Paul F _ 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] The politics of language
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. * There was a concerted effort by the English authorities to extirpate the Welsh language in the latter nineteenth century, and the language as a living concern became more or less limited to the North of Wales with occasional pockets elsewhere, such as in some South Wales valleys. There's evidence of this even today in some of the mutilation of South Wales place-names: not all of the Anglicised names have been converted back to the Welsh. More recently there have been moves to revive the Welsh language, and to make it a necessity in some public-sector jobs even in areas where Welsh is barely spoken. Because this has often been to the benefit of middle-class English incomers who have learnt Welsh rather than Welsh people who don't know it, it has led to resentment. What I have noticed over the three decades I have had holidays in North Wales is the rise, especially over the last few years, of the use of English in everyday conversation of children and teenagers in the Welsh-speaking heartlands. Twenty or even 10 years back, when I walked through the towns, everyone would be speaking Welsh. Over the last few years, I've noticed that youngsters, when speaking amongst themselves, continually switch from Welsh to English and back again, or speak more in English than Welsh (I think that all Welsh people speak English these days). This, I was told, is a growing trend in the Welsh-speaking areas, and goes against the official trend of trying to revive the language. There are differences between the question of Welsh in Wales and Ukrainian in Ukraine, chiefly in that there is effectively no commonality between Welsh, a Celtic language, and English, whereas there is a fair bit of commonality between Russian and Ukrainian. In the parts of Ukraine where both languages are spoken, a new language has appeared, Syrzhik, drawing upon both. It is disproved of by both Russian and Ukrainian nationalists, as one might expect. This I think would be impossible in Wales because of the almost total lack of commonality between English and Welsh. I mentioned my observations to an English resident in North Wales who has learnt Welsh, and he felt that the easy availability of English-language media (internet, telly) is encouraging youngsters to converse increasingly in English, and that Welsh might die out within a generation or two should this trend continue, which he felt was likely to be the case. Paul F _ 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] The Devils? Alliance: Hitler?s Pact with Stalin, 1939?1941
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 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was of relevance to the question of Ukraine, not least because the carving up of Poland saw Ukrainian territory transfer from Polish to Soviet control. This is something I wrote on the topic that might be of interest < https://www.academia.edu/11046513/Western_Ukraine_and_the_Molotov_Ribbentrop_Pact >. Paul F _ 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] Marxist Analysis of Boko Haram
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. * Here's a link to an extensive analysis of Boko Haram by a Marxist from Nigeria < http://www.researchgate.net/publication/235332802_CLASS_THEORY_OF_TERRORISM_A_STUDY_OF_BOKO_HARAM_INSURGENCY_IN_NIGERIA >. Paul F _ 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] My Letter on Greece Published in 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. * I had a letter published in the Guardian about the EU, Greece and Syriza's turn towards Russia < http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/05/failed-eu-policy-turns-greece-to-russia-ukraine >. The author of the original piece, Natalie Nougayrède, is a French journalist and a strong advocate of the 'European Project' and the new cold war against Russia. Paul F _ 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] Prominent Putin critic Boris Nemtsov shot dead near Kremlin
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. * Lou P wrote that the idea to annex the Crimea 'goes back for more than a decade' < http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/observers-say-russia-had-crimea-plan-for-years/496936.html >. It's occurred to me that if the Crimea fell into Russian hands, then it would be rather awkward for Ukraine to join NATO if a sizeable chunk of the country's territory, and one that contains a major naval base, fell under the control of another country, and a none-too-friendly one at that. So on that basis, taking over the Crimea was an insurance policy against Ukraine's joining NATO. I wouldn't be surprised if this was long on the Russian state agenda. As for Eastern Ukraine, I doubt if Putin had any plan actually to annex Donestk, Lugansk or any other part. What Putin wants is to be able to influence to his advantage Ukrainian politics. Having already with taking over the Crimea removed from Ukraine a hefty number of people who consistently voted in large numbers for pro-Russian candidates, it doesn't make much sense to remove several million more people, of whom half (and probably more) also consistently voted for pro-Russian candidates. I suspect that the pro-Russian elements in Eastern Ukraine have gone a lot further than Putin would have liked. He would have liked some kind of autonomy that nonetheless allowed the population to vote in Ukrainian elections. What is emerging in Eastern Ukraine is similar to what has happened in Moldavia with the Transdniestrian set-up: a de facto independent state. This situation is not in Russia's interest in Ukraine. The pro-Russian elements have forced Putin's hand; if he abandons them they will collapse and he'll lose everything, in supporting them he is obliged to permit them to call the agenda. If we get an independent Eastern Ukrainian state, or if the area is incorporated into Russia as with the Crimea, then Putin's chances of influencing politics in Ukraine will be vastly reduced and for a very long time. What does this mean for politics in Ukraine? I feel that it will ensure that right-wing Ukrainian parties will have a big audience for their revanchist ideas. Despite the romantic views of some people on the left, the pro-Russian regions will not be run by some left-wing regime but by Russian nationalists with all which that implies. There will be a refugee problem as those unwilling to live in this region will move out or may be expelled. Politics in Ukraine as a whole will move rightwards as nationalist trends of both a Ukrainian and Russian brand will take root in the seeming absence of political currents that can transcend nationalist agendas. Paul F _ 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: Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist | 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. * Varoufakis also wrote: 'I moved to England to attend university in September 1978, six months or so before Margaret Thatcher’s victory changed Britain forever. Watching the Labour government disintegrate, under the weight of its degenerate social democratic programme, led me to a serious error: to the thought that Thatcher’s victory could be a good thing, delivering to Britain’s working and middle classes the short, sharp shock necessary to reinvigorate progressive politics; to give the left a chance to create a fresh, radical agenda for a new type of effective, progressive politics.' If he'd have come up with anything like that at a left-wing meeting in Britain at that time, he would have been met with brays of ill-mannered laughter. As for his 'quote' from Lenin to the effect that the worse things get the better things are for the left, that really is bizarre. I've seen it used here, although not as a 'quote' from Lenin, by right-wing hacks who think that's how we think, but not by any left group. I wonder if Varoufakis has some background in a weird left group in Greece that actually believed that. Paul F _ 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] Obituary of Bill Fishman, Historian of London's Jewish East End
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. * Dave Rosenberg has written a fine obituary of William Fishman, author of the wonderful book about the Jewish left-wingers and labour activists of East London, East-End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914, and other historical works, who died recently at the age of 93 < http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/dec/26/william-fishman-historian-obituary-east-end-jewish-radicals >. Bill Fishman's book, a pioneering study about a now long-lost world, has been republished by Five Leaves Publishing, and is available via here < http://www.fiveleaves.co.uk/jewish.html >, as is Dave Rosenberg's own book on anti-fascist struggles in East London during the 1930s. Paul F _ 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] Spanish Civil War and British artists
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've been informed that the Chichester exhibition is indeed a very good display. A friend of mine has a couple of pictures exhibited there, and he was invited to the opening ceremony. The organiser, noting the remarkable array of people at the show, from lowly left-wingers to the richer echelons of society, started his address with the immortal words: 'My lords, ladies and comrades...' Paul F _ 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] Moshé Machover's Recent Writings on Palestine/Israel
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. * Moshé Machover's recent writings on Palestine/Israel. Paul F 1. Zionist myths – Hebrew versus Jewish identity, 17 May 2013 < http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2013-05-17/moshe-machover-zionist-myths-hebrew-versus-jewish-identity/ >. 2. Israel-Palestine – déjà vu all over again, 26 July 2013 < http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2013-07-26/moshe-machover-israel-palestine-deja-vu-all-over-again/ >. 3. De-Zionization – strategic considerations, 8 October 2013 < http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2013-10-08/moshe-machover-dezionization-strategic-considerations/ >. 4. Belling the cat (expanded version of 3), 13 December 2013 < http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2013-12-13/moshe-machover-belling-the-cat/ >. 5. Israel’s quest for legitimacy, 18 September 2014 < http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2014-09-18/moshe-machover-israels-quest-for-legitimacy/ >. _ 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] Putin Disses Lenin -- The New Yorker
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Re Lou P's posting -- what Putin is saying is very similar to the latter-period Solzhenitsyn, who also considered that Lenin was a traitor to Russia because of his defeatist line during the First World War. Lenin and Bolshevism have always posed a problem for Russian nationalists within or emerging from the Soviet apparatus. Back in the 1970s, the Young Guard elements within the Soviet youth movement were becoming very nationalistic in their viewpoint and ended up evolving a line that implicitly meant that, in their eyes, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had a treasonous attitude towards Russia during the First World War. The party big-wigs realised the dangerous position into which a section of the party youth was going, and waved the big stick at them. Putin, although a product of the Soviet state and despite carrying on with various Stalinist practices, can, as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, be more free in promoting this view. But because the Russia of today is so obviously a product of the Soviet era, rejecting Lenin and branding him a traitor could alienate him from those who still base their Russian nationalism at least partly upon the Soviet experience. Paul F 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] Ukrainian responsibility for the mass murder
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == It's true that the Ukrainian authorities should have declared the whole of the eastern region of the country as dangerous, and putting a 32 000 foot minimum safe limit was a bit daft considering that they must have known, or at least strongly suspected, that pro-Russians in the east had anti-aircraft missiles that could reach twice that height (airliners usually cruise at between 30 000 and 40 000 feet). It's also wrong that airlines, in order to save a few bob on fuel, would insist on flying over a region in which aeroplanes are being shot down up to heights not that far short of the safe limit. On the other hand, if one does have possession of such weapons, then it would be best to have personnel in charge of them who know the dangers involved in using them. According to the reports of various military experts, the missiles' guidance systems and ancillary equipment are insufficient to obtain a detailed identification of the target. This has to be obtained by other means, usually via communication with the country's air traffic control, to ensure that one's target is the plane which you wish to hit. If this incident was the work of pro-Russian elements, I suspect that they were aiming at a Ukrainian transport plane and locked the missile on to the Malaysian airliner by mistake, or that they misidentified the Malaysian plane as a Ukrainian one. Either way, they were unable properly to identify it until it was far too late, after it had crashed. Were the missiles of this type supplied from Russia, taking into account the potentially disastrous -- and foreseeable -- consequences of a heavy-duty anti-aircraft missile in amateur hands, it's unlikely that they would have been just handed over and not accompanied with operators who knew how to handle them and hopefully avoid disasters (such as this one) occurring. If this did happen, then this was irresponsible in the extreme. The Ukrainian authorities were amiss in not declaring the region to be dangerous and prohibiting all over-flying; the airlines should have avoided the area once planes started to be shot down (some airlines did do this). True enough. But responsibility must firstly be placed upon those who launched the missile and who in so doing failed to establish beforehand the actual identity of the plane at which they aimed it. Paul F Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Occupy Protests and the Far-Right
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I don't know if this has been referred to before, but here's a substantial piece on the Occupy protests and the far-right < http://libcom.org/library/right-hand-occupy-wall-street-libertarians-nazis-fact-fiction-right-wing-involvement-spe >. Paul F Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Loren Goldner's Review of Kevin Coogan's Biography of Francis Yockey
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == With the growing infatuation of most of Europe's hard-right with Russian nationalism and the rise of interest in Eurasian theories, the name of the US fascist Francis Yockey has not unsurprisingly arisen in one or two of the discussions on the internet. Here is a link to Loren Goldner's review of Kevin Coogan's big book on Yockey, The Dreamer of the Day < http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/yockey.html > that list members may find interesting, not least as Yockey prefigured quite a lot of the ideas of today's far-right thinkers. Paul F 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] Stalinist dupes, then and now
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Further to Andy P's reference to my book, The New Civilisation?, and his comment 'Is there anything akin to this focused specifically on US dupes?, there is Frank Warren's Liberals and Communism: The 'Red Decade' Revisited (Columbia Uni Press), originally published in 1966, which looks at some length at The Nation and The New Republic and other magazines in the 1930s. I found it an informative work. The former fellow-traveller Eugene Lyons published in 1941 The Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America, which, as suggested by the title, is an agitational anti-communist work, but it does contain quite a bit of useful information. David Caute's The Fellow Travellers and Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims look, from a left and right-wing perspective respectively at pro-Soviet individuals, including many US ones. One thing I noticed when reading through the many descriptions of the Soviet Union that were published here which has resonated in the light of the rival descriptions of what's happening in Ukraine today is that reading anti-Soviet and pro-Soviet material I had the distinct impression that the authors were describing two entirely different countries, so different were their descriptions. Reading the many rival reports on the Maidan protests and the separatist movements and various other aspects of Ukraine today, I feel that we are getting descriptions of two entirely different places, almost like parallel dimensions. To return to my book, where I feel that it is also useful is that I managed to go beyond the usual view of the 1930s attitudes towards the Soviet Union of consisting solely of diametrically-opposed pro-Soviet and anti-communist viewpoints, and -- as Geoff Foote pointed out in his review -- described what I call the 'centre ground', that is, a broad swathe of opinion, from moderate Tories through to right-wing and centre social democrats, who, whilst strongly rejecting Marxism and workers' revolution (and the Stalinist interpretations of them), looked to Soviet state economic and social welfare policies as something from which Western governments could learn. This was, of course, in the context of the vivid contrast between Western economic slump and the massive growth under the initial Five-Year Plans. Various authors have looked in passing at how the Soviet economic and welfare measures were looked at in Britain, and others have looked, at some length, at the rise of the idea of state intervention in Britain between the world wars, but none, as far as I know, has systematically brought the two factors into a single framework of analysis. I imagine that attitudes towards the New Deal and related state interventionist policies have been thoroughly investigated in the USA, although whether researchers have done for the USA what I have done in respect of Britain, I'm unable to say. I imagine that the situation in the USA was similar to that in Britain, and that it went beyond the clash of uncritical pro-Soviet and totally rejectionist anti-Soviet viewpoints. I researched and wrote my book, of course, many decades after the event and in the light of subsequent knowledge, and it was thus much easier to ascertain what were worthwhile reports and assessments and which were tendentious or wishful thinking, and to discover that the usual perception of the 1930s debate as a mere clash of anti-Soviet and pro-Soviet views is inaccurate. Although it was not impossible at the time to ascertain to a fair degree what was happening in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and to ascertain the complexity of the impact of the Soviet experience in Britain, it needed quite a bit of discretion, a lot of studying of the material, and the putting aside of preconceptions. That might be a good idea today when considering events in Ukraine and elsewhere. Anyone interested in my book can order it via here < http://www.francisboutle.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=10&products_id=50 >. Paul F Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com