[Marxism] Queers: An oppressed, White, middle-class establishment

[Jeffrey Thomas Piercy]

Not quite Stonewall: 40 years later the cops haven't changed, but we have
http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/2398


>From the article:

Hopes for an unleashed queer fury, not quite Stonewall but not quite
HRC, were quickly dimmed by the organizers of the rally, however.
Messages were sent out on facebook reminding potential attendees that
this was not a protest against the APD - in which we supposedly have
queer allies - but rather one in support of gay establishments. Any
suggestion that the protest actually happen at the police department was
scuttled. People spread solidarity messages around facebook, referencing
how similar this felt to being gay in '69 rather than black in '09. This
shouldn't happen to us, this hasn't happened to us lately.

An eery, subtle message being relayed through many such expressions was
on display more explicitly by signs at the rally - how dare you treat us
like THEM. Signs that kept asking the PD why they would target The Eagle
rather than gangs, drug-pushers and muggers. "Who made this call?", one
sign asked, placing The Eagle on one side of a seesaw and various street
crimes piled up on the other. "We're law-abiding citizens," many said,
and I never thought I'd see this again.


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Re: [Marxism] Free pamphlet: `The Labour Aristocracy: The material basis of opportunism in the labour movement' | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

[Ambrose Andrews]

2009/9/18 Joaquin Bustelo :
>
> Freeware/free software to me means both free as in freedom and as in free
> beer, not just free of charge.
>

Usually in English language software circles a distinction is made
between 'freeware'
(zero dollars up front) and Free ('Libre') Software.

Anyway the pamphlet is very good, and reads well in conjunction with
Lenin's 'Imperialism and the split in Socialism'
(and I'd throw in Lenin's article 'In Australia' which sometime
appears in the Progress Moscow collection 'On Britain')

It wasn't the only tantalising 'Part One' produced by Line of March
that never ended up having a 'Part Two'.  (Another that would
certainly interest Joachin if it became available would be the
'critique of the Black Nation thesis' by Bob Wing.)

so fire up your choice of Free PDF reader:

http://pdfreaders.org/

and grab the file:

http://www.readingfromtheleft.com/PDF/LabourAristocracy.pdf

  -AA.


-- 
Ambrose Andrews
LPO box 8274 ANU Acton ACT 0200 Australia
http://www.vrvl.net/~ambrose/
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[Marxism] re A good socialist economics blog

[John Percy]

Yes, it's very useful, lots of information and good analysis. It's 
basically run by John Ross, now at a university in Shanghai, and before 
that the economics adviser to London's former mayor Ken Livingstone, and 
in the 70s one of the leaders of the IMG. Most of the material is also 
on his "Key trends in globalisation" blog: 



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[Marxism] Israel's Gaza Massacre - Disgrace in The Hague

[Dennis Brasky]

>
> *By Gideon Levy
>
> September 17, 2009 "**Haaretz*
> *" -- There's* a name on every bullet, and there's someone responsible for
> every crime. The Teflon cloak Israel has wrapped around itself since
> Operation Cast Lead has been ripped off, once and for all, and now the
> difficult questions must be faced. It has become superfluous to ask whether
> war crimes were committed in Gaza, because authoritative and clear-cut
> answers have already been given. So the follow-up question has to be
> addressed: Who's to blame? If war crimes were committed in Gaza, it follows
> that there are war criminals at large among us. They must be held
> accountable and punished. This is the harsh conclusion to be drawn from the
> detailed United Nations report.
>
> For almost a year, Israel has been trying to argue that the blood spilled
> in Gaza was merely water. One report followed the other, with horrifyingly
> identical results: siege, white phosphorous, harm of innocent civilians,
> infrastructure destroyed - war crimes in each and every report. Now, after
> the publication of the most important and damning report of all, compiled by
> the commission led by Judge Richard Goldstone, Israel's attempts to
> discredit them look ludicrous, and the empty bluster of its spokespersons
> sound pathetic.
>
> So far they have focused on the messengers, not their messages: the
> researcher for Human Rights Watch collects Nazi memorabilia, Breaking the
> Silence is a business and Amnesty International is anti-Semitic. All cheap
> propaganda. This time, though, the messenger is propaganda-proof. No one can
> seriously claim that Goldstone, an active and ardent Zionist, with deep
> links to Israel, is an anti-Semite. It would be ridiculous.
>
> Although there were some propagandists who actually tried to use the
> anti-Semitism weapon against him, even they knew this was farcical. One had
> to hear the moving interview that Goldstone's daughter Nicole gave to Razi
> Barkai on Army Radio Wednesday, to understand that he is in fact a lover of
> Israel and its true friend. She spoke, in Hebrew, of the mental anguish her
> father experienced and of his conviction that, had he not been there, the
> report would have been much worse. All he wants is an Israel that is more
> just, she explained.
>
> Neither can anyone doubt his legal credentials, as a top-level
> international jurist with an impeccable reputation. The man who found out
> the truth about Rwanda and Yugoslavia has now done the same regarding Gaza.
> The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague
> is not only a legal authority, he is also a moral authority; therefore
> complaints about the judge won't hold water. Instead, it is time to look
> closer at the accused. Those responsible are first and foremost Ehud Olmert,
> Ehud Barak and Gabi Ashkenazi. So far, incredibly, none of them has paid any
> price for their misdeeds.
>
> Cast Lead was an unrestrained assault on a besieged, totally unprotected
> civilian population which showed almost no signs of resistance during this
> operation. It should have raised an immediate furor in Israel. It was a
> Sabra and Chatila, this time carried out by us. But there was a storm of
> protest in this country following Sabra and Chatila, whereas after Cast Lead
> mere citations were dished out.
>
> It should have been enough just to look at the horrendous disparity in
> casualties - 100 Palestinians killed for every Israeli - to shake the whole
> of Israeli society. There was no need to wait for Goldstone to understand
> that a terrible thing had occurred between the Palestinian David and the
> Israeli Goliath. But the Israelis preferred to look away, or stand with
> their children on the hills around Gaza and cheer on the carnage-causing
> bombs.
>
> Under the cover of the committed media, and criminally-biased analysts and
> experts - all of whom kept information from coming out - and with
> brainwashed and complacent public opinion, Israel behaved as if nothing had
> happened. Goldstone has put an end to that, for which we should thank him.
> After his job is done, the obvious practical steps will be taken.
>
> It would be better for Israel to summon up the courage to change course
> while there is still time, investigating the matter genuinely and not by
> means of the Israel Defense Forces' grotesque inquiries, without waiting for
> Goldstone. Olmert and Tzipi Livni must be brought to pay for their
> scandalous decision not to cooperate with Goldstone, although at this point
> that is spilled milk. Now that the report is on its way to the ICC and
> arrest warrants could soon be issued, all that remains to be done is to
> immediately set up a state inquiry commission in order to avert disgrace in
> The Hague.
>
> Perhaps next time we set out to wage another vain and miserable war, we
> will take into account not only the number of fatalities we are likely to

Re: [Marxism] Free pamphlet: `The Labour Aristocracy: The material basis of opportunism in the labour movement' | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

[Joaquin Bustelo]

JTP: Actually, that's what "freeware" means. Unfortunately, there's no
convenient term in English for GNU-style free software, at least not without
borrowing from other languages ("libre software"/"software libre" being a
good choice).

Freeware/free software to me means both free as in freedom and as in free
beer, not just free of charge.

J.



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[Marxism] New Republic economist sees Chinese economy growth continuingr

[Fred Feldman]

Interesting article answering views that the Chinese economy is headed for a
big breakdown in the near future. He argues that China's continued expansion
is powering the recovery in the imperialist bloc, but warns that
underestimating Chinese future growth can lead to major miscalculations that
can damage the major capitalist economies.

Worth reading, I believe.
Fred

Published on The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com)

This Giant Isn't Sleeping
Why do we keep underestimating the Chinese economy? 
Zachary Karabell September 17, 2009 | 12:00 am 

It's now widely believed that the global recession is coming to an end, but
the path out has been far from typical: This time around, China, not the
U.S. has led the global recovery. With its $600 billion stimulus package and
with banks lending with abandon, China has become the engine of global
manufacturing and industrial activity. Its demand for commodities,
especially copper and iron ore, has driven up prices, and its domestic
market has been a rare source of strength for American companies ranging
from Caterpillar to Intel, General Motors to Procter & Gamble.

But even after a decade of robust and unexpected Chinese growth, investors
and economic analysts still focus on when and how the Chinese miracle will
end. It's not that anyone deeply questions the short-term reality of China's
strength, but no one seems quite able to believe that the locus of the
global system has in fact shifted. When global stock markets swooned at the
beginning of September, the commentary was abuzz with talk of Asian
contagion and the cascade effects of a sharp pullback in Chinese equities.
Noted Asia analyst and former strategist for Morgan Stanley Andy Xie
announced [1] that, having fallen more than 20 percent in August, Chinese
stocks could plunge another 25 percent. His reasoning? China's economic
recovery is likely to stumble badly when the central government attempts to
constrict the flow of easy credit. Even in China, when Premier Wen Jiabao
cautioned [2] Chinese citizens in late August for being too "blindly
optimistic" about China's economic recovery, that was taken both in China
and abroad as further proof that the heady run in China was about to hit a
wall. Wen then repeated these concerns to an audience of the World Economic
Forum in Dalian on September 10.

All this skepticism is much more than a forecasting problem. China's economy
is showing no signs that it's about to collapse or even contract. Growth
figures have been accelerating, from perhaps 5 percent at the beginning of
the year toward 10 percent now. While many question the recipe that China
has followed, the results speak for themselves. The problem is that too many
are convinced that the growth is a house of cards. It's a mindset that goes
back many years and that has many dangers.

At almost any given point in the past decade, economists and strategists
were convinced that good China news was simply a prelude to bubbles and
shattered dreams. In part, those beliefs were an outgrowth of past
experience with "hot" emerging economies, many of which had succumbed to the
runaway inflation that invariably accompanied turbo-charged expansion. The
economies of Latin America in the 1970s and of Southern Asia in the late
1990s were taken as harbingers of what China risked, and the fact that so
much of China's growth has been fueled by state-spending channeled through
banks to projects of dubious merit was seen as a critical weakness that
would end with a banking crisis followed by economic contraction. This doubt
was also fueled by a series of false starts in China in the 1980s and early
1990s: China suffered along with the rest of Asia during the currency crisis
in 1998, and banking reforms inside of China during those years led to some
periods of much slower activity.

Those slowdowns did not seem to have long-term consequences, though. China
has produced more growth over the past 25 years than any country, ever
(averaging more than 9 percent a year). And after stalling in the fall of
2008 and in the early months of 2009 along with the rest of the world, China
has been growing at an astonishing rate in the past six
months--manufacturing has been expanding, exports have been surging (more
than $20 billion a month [3] to the United States alone), property prices
and activity have soared, and stocks are on fire. Interior cities have
replaced the coastal provinces as the engine of growth, and that process has
barely begun.

But China's resilience does not seem to have convinced analysts to consider
the possibility that China may be on a more stable trajectory today. In the
past few years, among those talking down China's economy has been Stephen
Roach, now chairman of Morgan Stanley in Asia and one of the most
influential voices in the highest circles of politics and finance. Since
2002, Roach has relentlessly assailed [4] the China growth model; this year
he has emphatically warned that China's response to the financial 

[Marxism] US - lack of insurance = 45,000 deaths per year

[Dennis Brasky]

> NY Times - September 17, 2009, 4:14 pm Harvard Medical Study Links Lack of
> Insurance to 45,000 U.S. Deaths a Year By Reed 
> Abelson
>
> As the White House and Congress continue debating how best to provide
> coverage to tens of millions of Americans currently without health
> insurance, a new study (PDF)
> is
> meant to offer a stark reminder of why lawmakers should continue to try.
> Researchers from Harvard Medical School say the lack of coverage can be tied
> to about 45,000 deaths a year in the United States — a toll that is greater
> than the number of people who die each year from kidney disease.
>
> “If you extend coverage, you can save lives,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler,
> a professor of medicine at Harvard who is one of the study’s authors. The
> research is being published in the December issue of the American Journal of
> Public Health and was posted online Thursday.
>
> The Harvard study found that people without health insurance had a 40
> percent higher risk of death than those with private health insurance — as a
> result of being unable to obtain necessary medical care. The risk appears to
> have increased since 1993, when a similar study found the risk of death was
> 25 percent greater for the uninsured.
>
> The increase in risk, according to the study, is likely to be a result of
> at least two factors. One is the greater difficulty the uninsured have today
> in finding care, as public hospitals have closed or cut back on services.
> The other is improvements in medical care for insured people with treatable
> chronic conditions like high blood pressure.
>
> “As health care for the insured gets better, the gap between the insured
> and uninsured widens,” Dr. Woolhandler said.
>
> The researchers also concluded that other ways of delivering care to the
> uninsured, like providing them with community health centers, are not
> adequate substitutes for health insurance. Individuals need the access to
> hospitals and specialists that comes only with adequate insurance coverage,
> Dr. Woolhander said.
>
> Dr. Woolhandler said the study should prompt policymakers in Washington to
> consider the impact of scaling back any effort to provide truly universal
> coverage. She expressed concern about some lawmakers’ willingness to adopt a
> plan that could expand coverage to only a portion of the nearly 50 million
> people who are without health insurance. As a proponent for a single-payer
> system — something like Medicare for all — she said she was also
> disappointed in the current proposals before Congress.
>
> Dr. Woolhandler, who has also conducted extensive research on
> medical-related bankruptcies, cautioned that expanding coverage would not be
> meaningful if the coverage is not generous enough. People might still not be
> able to afford care if they have to pay large deductibles or too great a
> share of their over all medical bills.
>
> “Health insurance can only make you healthier if you have access to care,”
> she said.
>
> <
> http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/harvard-medical-study-links-lack-of-insurance-to-45000-us-deaths-a-year/
> >
>
>
> The late Brazilian bishop Dom Hélder Câmara said it well: “When I give food
> to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food,
> they call me a Communist.”
>

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[Marxism] A good socialist economics blog

[Louis Proyect]

http://www.socialisteconomicbulletin.com/


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Re: [Marxism] Free pamphlet: `The Labour Aristocracy: The material basis of opportunism in the labour movement' | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

[Louis Proyect]

Jay Clinton wrote:
> Louis, I would be interested on your take on the Kasama project, former RCP 
> people who seem to want to reject some of those boneheaded practices. 
> 

Honestly, I have not really studied it that carefully although I have a 
lot of respect for Mike Ely.


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Re: [Marxism] Free pamphlet: `The Labour Aristocracy: The material basis of opportunism in the labour movement' | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

[Jay Clinton]

Louis, I would be interested on your take on the Kasama project, former RCP 
people who seem to want to reject some of those boneheaded practices. 

--- On Thu, 17/9/09, Louis Proyect  wrote:

From: Louis Proyect 
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Free pamphlet: `The Labour Aristocracy: The material 
basis of opportunism in the labour movement' | Links International Journal of 
Socialist Renewal
To: "jc" 
Date: Thursday, 17 September, 2009, 10:01 PM

Jay Clinton wrote:
> Is the co-author of this piece the same Max Elbaum who wrote this awful piece 
> in MRZine:  
> http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/elbaum010909.html, which can't bring 
> itself to identify  Obama as the proper enemy of the antiwar movement (such 
> as it is)? 

Max wrote a very good book on the Maoist party-building experiments in 
the 70s and 80s called "Revolution in the Air". I am afraid that he has 
lost a lot of the radicalism of his youth in the process of rejecting 
the boneheaded practices of the Maoist movement. Frankly, I don't 
understand this whole "mellowing" business. Now in my 64th year, I am as 
pissed off as I was in 1967 when I joined the SWP.




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Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com 

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Re: [Marxism] Free pamphlet: `The Labour Aristocracy: The material basis of opportunism in the labour movement' | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

[Louis Proyect]

Jay Clinton wrote:
> Is the co-author of this piece the same Max Elbaum who wrote this awful piece 
> in MRZine:  
> http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/elbaum010909.html, which can't bring 
> itself to identify  Obama as the proper enemy of the antiwar movement (such 
> as it is)? 

Max wrote a very good book on the Maoist party-building experiments in 
the 70s and 80s called "Revolution in the Air". I am afraid that he has 
lost a lot of the radicalism of his youth in the process of rejecting 
the boneheaded practices of the Maoist movement. Frankly, I don't 
understand this whole "mellowing" business. Now in my 64th year, I am as 
pissed off as I was in 1967 when I joined the SWP.




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[Marxism] Britain’s unions commit to a mass bo ycott movement of Israeli goods

[Dennis Brasky]

> Press release – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
> 17 September 2009
>
> Britain’s unions commit to a mass boycott movement of Israeli goods
> In a landmark decision, Britain’s trade unions have voted overwhelmingly to
> commit to build a mass boycott movement, disinvestment and sanctions on
> Israel for a negotiated settlement based on justice for Palestinians.
>
> The motion was passed at the 2009 TUC Annual Congress in Liverpool today
> (17 September), by unions representing 6.5 million workers across the UK.
>
> Hugh Lanning, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: ‘This
> motion is the culmination of a wave of motions passed at union conferences
> this year, following outrage at Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, and reflects
> the massive growth in support for Palestinian rights. We will be working
> with the TUC to develop a mass campaign to boycott Israeli goods, especially
> agricultural products that have been produced in illegal Israeli settlements
> in the Palestinian West Bank.’
>
> The motion additionally called for the TUC General Council to put pressure
> on the British government to end all arms trading with Israel and support
> moves to suspend the EU-Israel trade agreement. Unions are also encouraged
> to disinvest from companies which profit from Israel’s illegal 42-year
> occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
>
> The motion was tabled by the Fire Brigades Union. The biggest unions in the
> UK, including Unite, the public sector union, and UNISON, which represents
> health service workers, voted in favour of the motion.
>
> The motion also condemned the Israeli trade union Histadrut’s statement
> supporting Israel’s war on Gaza, which killed 1,450 Palestinians in three
> weeks, and called for a review of the TUC’s relationship with Histadrut.
>
> Britain’s trade unions join those of South Africa and Ireland in voting to
> use a mass boycott campaign as a tool to bring Israel into line with
> international law, and pressure it to comply with UN resolutions that
> encourage justice and equality for the Palestinian people.
>
> <
> http://mondoweiss.net/2009/09/the-bds-movement-will-continue-to-grow-as-long-as-israel-avoids-accountability.html
> >
>
>
>

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[Marxism] Wallerstein: worst is yet to come

[Thomas Campbell]

I wish leftist intellectuals like Prof. Wallerstein would be a bit
more curious about the contexts in which they make "superstar"
performances like the one that led to the interview Louis gave us the
link to.

The context in this case was the conference "The Modern State and
Global Security," held in the Russian town of Yaroslavl:

http://www.yaroslavl-2009.ru/eng/about

Here is the Reuters article on the conference:

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-42464220090915?sp=true

Quote:

'Kremlin officials explained they had asked all the "genuine
opposition figures represented in the state Duma" to attend -- such as
the Communists or the nationalist LDPR -- but not "hooligans" or
"extremists".

'Independent NGOs critical of the Kremlin were not represented and the
conference venue on the city's outskirts was sealed off from citizens
by tight security, giving the whole affair a rather remote feel.'

Out on the wild streets of Yaroslavl itself, the local cops were
rounding up and intimidating "hooligans" and "extremists" on the eve
of the conference. Two anarchists were arrested for the grave crime of
stickering. Since that didn't amount to much, the police slapped on an
additional charge -- swearing in public -- which is now standard
operating procedure in Russia when the cops can't think of something
else to charge "extremists" with. Happily, the court that heard the
case believed the eyewitnesses (the cops themselves), and the two
"extremists" were promptly sentenced to five days in jail.

The cops and the FSB were also paying house calls to the members of
the Socialist Resistance movement (SotsSopr). One young member, a
university student, got called into the assistant dean's office on
September 10. There he found an FSB officer waiting for him. The dean
and the FSB spook told the kid to cut out the "corrosive agitation" he
was subjecting his fellow students to. The FSBshnik also reminded the
kid that they had him "on a hook."

You can read about all this fun (in Russian -- apologies for that) here:

http://www.ikd.ru/node/10903

Then there's Russia Today's excellent coverage of the forum, of which
the Wallerstein interview was a part. I was struck by how in this
interview (as in all the other interviews from the forum on Russia
Today), the interviewer starts off by saying, "It's an honor to have
you on our team." What "team" is that? The Kremlin's? Since Russia
Today is the Kremlin's international outreach wing, I guess that's
what we're left to conclude.

The interviewer, Sophie Shevardnadze, by the way, is Eduard
Shevardnadze's granddaughter:

http://www.bsj.ge/newspaper/2005/09/14/EEkyyAppkZOsNJOkgj

Russia Today's coverage also included this tremendous piece on their
website by Robert Bridge, an American:

http://www.russiatoday.com/Politics/2009-09-14/yaroslavl-conference-medvedev-politics.html

Bridge quotes Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov's address to the conference
with a straight face:

'Luzhkov started off with an emotional critique on “the march of the
transnational corporations, which seek to make the role of the state
disappear. They want to make the state weak so ‘trans-capitalism’ can
move forward unimpeded.”

'Luzhkov then bemoaned the crisis of a consumer society, and the
efforts to come to its rescue, specifically in the United States.

'“Suddenly, consumer society (a term that Luzhkov pronounces as a
communist would pronounce the word “bourgeoisie”) – where consumers
consume more than they actually produce, has hit a crisis. Now we are
expected to overcome this dire period by throwing money into the world
economy, with demands that ‘the role of the state should be
increased.’”

'Clearly, Luzhkov was in favor of more state influence, but not
without some sort of game plan. Indeed, his prediction concerning the
future of any society that is based on consumerism is that it is
doomed to failure.

'“This crisis has demonstrated that a consumer society – one that
plays with money, and spends beyond its limits – has no future.”'

Since Bridge is on the Kremlin payroll, he fails to mention that this
is pretty rich fare coming from a guy who has run Moscow as his
personal fiefdom for the last 17 years and that Luzhkov's wife, Elena
Baturina, a real estate and construction tycoon, is one of the richest
people in Russia. Or that Luzhkov and Baturina's "new" Moscow is
nothing if not a paradise for conspicuous consumption.

Perhaps, however, Comrade Yuri has had a change of heart. It's so
tiresome being filthy rich and almost omnipotent.

In this same article, Mr. Bridge has another passage that for me sums
up the Putin regime's formula for success -- knee-jerk anti-westernism
+ the darkest form of social and political reaction:

"Some commentators seemed guilty of believing that by simply pumping
more into the public sector, all of the ills of society would simply
vanish. The fallacy of this strategy was proven during America’s
experiment with the Great Society, a domestic spending program

Re: [Marxism] Free pamphlet: `The Labour Aristocracy: The material basis of opportunism in the labour movement' | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

[Jeffrey Thomas Piercy]

Joaquin Bustelo wrote:
> There are free software PDF
> readers and file creators, in addition to the Adobe reader being free of
> charge even if not freeware.

Actually, that's what "freeware" means. Unfortunately, there's no
convenient term in English for GNU-style free software, at least not
without borrowing from other languages ("libre software"/"software
libre" being a good choice).


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[Marxism] Weekly Worker 785 (17/09/09) now available at cpgb.org.uk

[Bhaskar Sunkara]

Weekly Worker 785 - Thursday September 17 2009

The latest edition of the Weekly Worker is now available on the CPGB
website at www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/785

In this week's issue:

THE FOUR WAGERS OF LENIN IN 1917
The Bolshevik decision to make revolution was based on four key
predictions, or ‘wagers’, says Lars T Lih: international revolution,
soviet democracy, peasant followership and progress towards socialism.

LETTERS
Consent confusion; No place; Prejudice; No surprise; Safety valve;
Contradiction; Hit first; Prison letter; Free Mahir; Support Sheida

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
Some people cannot distinguish a revolutionary alliance from class
collaboration. Peter Manson looks at the South African Communist
Party’s contradictions

REVOLUTION - SEXUAL AND DIGITAL
Eddie Ford sees an advance in Downing Street’s belated apology

FARCICAL AND REACTIONARY
Even by the standards of ‘paedo panic’ hysteria, writes James Turley,
plans to vet 11 million adults who come into regular contact with
children are absurd

LABOUR AND MINI-LABOUR
The Trade Union Congress saw a bit of prime ministerial honesty, a lot
of hot air, but nothing in the way of concrete measures to protect
workers from the effects of the ongoing economic crisis. Phil Ritchie
reports

SALMOND BANKS ON TORIES
The Scottish National Party has called for a referendum on
independence, writes Sarah McDonald. How should the left respond?

APPRECIATION
Robbie Rix urges you to use the now-working button to show it

A PDF version of the paper is available at
www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/785/785web.pdf

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Re: [Marxism] John Bellamy Foster interview on the financial crisis

[johnaimani]

Just finsihing reading Foster and Magdoff's "The Great Financial Crisis".

Excellent presentation of MR's stagnation thesis in light of the 
finacializtion crisis.

There is a synopsis at 
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17483992/Foster-Magdoff-The-Great-Financial-Crisis-2009-Synopsis

- Original Message - 
From: "Louis Proyect" 
To: "Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition" 
; "Progressive Economics" 

Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 3:59 PM
Subject: [Marxism] John Bellamy Foster interview on the financial crisis


> http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/foster170909.html
>
>
> 



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[Marxism] Marxian Economics: An Intensive Introduction

[Politicus E.]

f.y.i.

Marxian Economics: An Intensive Introduction (audio lecture by Rick Wolff)

Listen at http://www.rdwolff.com/content/marxian-economics.

"This course provides a working foundation in the core concepts of
Marxian economic theory – necessary and surplus labor, labor power,
surplus value, exploitation, capital accumulation, distributions of
the surplus, capitalist crises, and the differences between capitalist
and other class structures. In addition, these core concepts will be
systematically used to understand current social problems (including
political and cultural as well as economic problems). The goal is to
enable students to apply Marxian economics in their own efforts to
analyze society and to strategize politically today."

Please distribute this link to any individuals, organizations, groups,
etc., that might have an interest.  It consists of four audio lectures
that are approximately 1.5-2 hours each, each less than 40 MB in size.


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[Marxism] Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary Dies at 72

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, September 17, 2009
Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary Dies at 72
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, 
Paul and Mary made songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” 
and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” enduring anthems of the 1960s 
protest movement, died on Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. 
She was 72 and lived in Redding, Conn.

The cause was complications from chemotherapy associated with a 
bone-marrow transplant she had several years ago after developing 
leukemia, said Heather Lylis, a spokeswoman.

Ms. Travers brought a powerful voice and an unfeigned urgency to music 
that resonated with mainstream listeners. With her straight blond hair 
and willowy figure and two bearded guitar players by her side, she 
looked exactly like what she was, a Greenwich Villager directly from the 
clubs and the coffeehouses that nourished the folk-music revival.

“She was obviously the sex appeal of that group, and that group was the 
sex appeal of the movement,” said Elijah Wald, a folk-blues musician and 
a historian of popular music.

Ms. Travers’s voice blended seamlessly with those of her colleagues, 
Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey, to create a rich three-part harmony that 
propelled the group to the top of the pop charts. Their first album, 
“Peter, Paul and Mary,” which featured the hit singles “Lemon Tree” and 
“If I Had a Hammer,” reached No. 1 shortly after its release in March 
1962 and stayed there for seven weeks, eventually selling more than two 
million copies.

The group’s interpretations of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and 
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” translated his raw vocal style into 
a smooth, more commercially acceptable sound. The singers also scored 
big hits with pleasing songs like the whimsical “Puff the Magic Dragon” 
and John Denver’s plaintive “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”

Their sound may have been commercial and safe, but early on their 
politics were somewhat risky for a group courting a mass audience. Like 
Mr. Yarrow and Mr. Stookey, Ms. Travers was outspoken in her support for 
the civil-rights and antiwar movements, in sharp contrast to clean-cut 
folk groups like the Kingston Trio, which avoided making political 
statements.

Peter, Paul and Mary went on to perform at the 1963 March on Washington 
and joined the voting-rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 
1965.

Over the years they performed frequently at political rallies and 
demonstrations in the United States and abroad. After the group 
disbanded, in 1970, Ms. Travers continued to perform at political events 
around the world as she pursued a solo career.

“They made folk music not just palatable but accessible to a mass 
audience,” David Hajdu, the author of “Positively Fourth Street,” a book 
about Mr. Dylan, Joan Baez and their circle, said in an interview. Ms. 
Travers, he added, was crucial to the group’s image, which had a lot to 
do with its appeal. “She had a kind of sexual confidence combined with 
intelligence, edginess and social consciousness — a potent combination,” 
he said. “If you look at clips of their performances, the camera fixates 
on her. The act was all about Mary.”

Mr. Yarrow, in a statement on Wednesday, described Ms. Travers’s singing 
style as an expression of her character: “honest and completely authentic.”

Mr. Stookey, in an accompanying statement, wrote that “her charisma was 
a barely contained nervous energy — occasionally (and then only 
privately) revealed as stage fright.”

Mary Allin Travers was born on Nov. 9, 1936, in Louisville, Ky. When she 
was 2 her parents, both writers, moved to New York. Almost unique among 
the folk musicians who emerged from the Greenwich Village scene in the 
early 1960s, Ms. Travers actually came from the neighborhood. She 
attended progressive private schools there, studied singing with the 
music teacher Charity Bailey while still in kindergarten and became part 
of the folk-music revival as it took shape around her.

“I was raised on Josh White, the Weavers and Pete Seeger,” Ms. Travers 
told The New York Times in 1994. “The music was everywhere. You’d go to 
a party at somebody’s apartment and there would be 50 people there, 
singing well into the night.”

While at Elisabeth Irwin High School, she joined the Song Swappers, 
which sang backup for Mr. Seeger when the Folkways label reissued a 
collection of union songs under the title “Talking Union” in 1955. The 
Song Swappers made three more albums for Folkways that year, all 
featuring Mr. Seeger to some degree.

Ms. Travers had no plans to sing professionally. Folk singing, she later 
said, had been a hobby. At New York clubs friends like Fred Hellerman of 
the Weavers and Theodore Bikel would coax her onstage to sing, but her 
extreme shyness made performing difficult. In 1958 she appeared in the 
chorus and sang one solo number in Mort Sahl’s short-lived Broadway show 
“The Next President,

[Marxism] Collection of soviet songs.

[David Picón Álvarez]

This is a collection of Soviet songs. Not much more to say than that, except 
I found the introduction to the site an interesting read.

URL: http://www.sovmusic.ru/english/

--David.



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