Re: [Marxism] The National Equality March: A New Generation of Protesters
1- Organizing is easier on one level (for those with computers) - but this last weekend event, only had one tenth the number of the last national march. 2 - The partial answer to your point two is - the Oct. 11, 2009 event took that date because of the successes that the Oct. 11, 1987 National March had - they admit that in their calling for this date. If you do not know what the actual changes and effects that the earlier real national marches had - then I ask you to learn Gay history. And Marxists understand why movements need to be grass roots from bottom up and not controlled by a few - if they are to be truly successful in the long run. Sorry to be so short and crude on this but a complete answer would take more than room for this email! 3 - Again my original email stated if the ISO leadership really cared about the development and growth of an independent mass GLBT Movement - it would have done its homework and contacted the previous national march organizers to encourage them for their insight and experiences and what needed to be done to create a successful march. Instead they went to David Mixner and followed Cleve Jones and Torrie Osborne - and following them - that is not leading - and that is the problem - the ISO wanted to be with people in motion - and never cared what this was doing to the already exisiting GLBT Movement in relationship to this. This march did not bring needed unity - and if it was successful (and it was not) - it would have allowed a billionaire to then call on their own, the next so called national march. I have worked for 40 years to help build the GLBT Movement - and I wish the ISO would first learn what makes up the GLBT Communities - before they go blindly forward! It will only lead to disappointment and wasted effort - because the ISO was being used by others who are center-right social democrats. They went backward not forward with how this march was called, organized and its politics projected - pretty sad in 2009 to be going backward!!! The ISO was not in the leadership of the earlier national marches - and therefore appraently does not care about that work and what it created - such as instituting that a national conference open to all should decide on the march and its demands and makeup. They seem to only care about what they can achieve. That is sectarian, divisive and trashes the work of those who came before them. Poor organizing and strategy to recruit a few members at the expense of a movement! > Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:22:39 -0500 > From: proletarian...@gmail.com > Subject: Re: [Marxism] The National Equality March: A New Generation of > Protesters > To: causecollec...@msn.com > > John - Strategy and logic of the ISO's participation aside...a few > points on your critique: > > 1. Some see the technology generation as being less likely to engage > in this sort of action, though there is no doubt that the internet and > everything else makes organizing much easier. > > 2. If the earlier, 'more successful' demonstrations were more > grassroots, independent, radical, etc. then why did this march even > happen? What were the long-term effects of these earlier > demonstrations? > > 3. My understanding is that there was a steering committee for the > march which the ISO was a part of. I'm not sure who the three people > you're talking about are or the details that make this march so much > more undemocratic than the past ones but suffice to say that it was a > manifestation of a new generation of activists who are frustrated but > not yet ready to give up on Obama or the Democrats. That doesn't mean > that the ISO isn't going to turn out or endorse the march. The most > immediate demands of the march were clear - abolish don't ask don't > tell & DOMA, pass ENDA - with the ultimate goal of full equality for > all. The ISO is not shy to advertise that the only way to real sexual > equality and freedom is socialist revolution, but we're not at the > point of building a broad movement based on that or even a complete > break with the Democrats, which we also advocate. > > > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/causecollector%40msn.com YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Colombia Update
Hello again: Colombia, Colombia. Today there was a national "paro" - more or less a national strike, called by the CUT and other trade union federations. It is pretty hard to tell how big the response was, but it was not overwhelming. The Plaza Bolivar, the main plaza in Bogotá, was maybe half-full, twenty thousand people, for the main demonstration. The issues are many, to many to count, but they start with the government's austerity program and include the government's agreement to allow more or less unlimited US access to Colombian military bases (often talked about as two or seven US bases). A very large part of the turn out consisted of students from the National University, which is the traditional center of the Colombian left, and which is under special attack in the austerity plan. The austerity plan is very schizophrenic, since it involves stimulus for construction from now until the elections next year, but severe cutbacks in areas like education. It all makes sense in terms of mobilzing middle class Colombian voters to the polls to elect Alvaro Uribe to a third term in office, if he can overcome a constitutional crisis which is simmering with the Supreme Court. The Uribistas are in chronic crisis, but they are so corrupt that they can be united by a telephone call from the US embassy and enough favors and cash passed out under the table that the thick hatreds amongst them can be put aside. This is what happened when they suddenly changed their minds in the Congress and voted to approve a change in the Constitution to allow Uribe to run for a third term. The Uribista vase is not happy with Uribe, and a lot of them will not vote for him on the first round of the next presidential election (assuming he is a candidate), but they will vote for him ont he second round in a run off with the Polo Democratico. The Polo itself is moving to the right. Its primary election was won by Gustavo Petro who favors running a coalition campaing with the Liberal Party. Carlos Gaviria, the long time lader of the Polo lost that primary. In an interview after his loss, with El Tiempo, he characterized the Polo as "tepid social democracy" - a characterization which is all too unfortunately accurate. Where things are going here is anybody's guess. The right is in crisis, but the country has moved to the right. The left has moved to the right, partly because of the military defeat of the FARC. The USA is positioning its Colombian pawn for a future war with Venezuela. The current president of the country ismoving onto the Fujimori path. And in Choco ...watch the video below (choco is just to the southwest of Panama). Anthony http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AbhL2holDg YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The exclusive Israeli right of self defense
> > Article: Rattling the Cage: Our exclusive right to self-defense > > Click here to view the entire article: > > http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1254861893834 > > AOL Users click here to view the article: > http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1254861893834 > "> > http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1254861893834 > > > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Can Obama actually be stupid?
Mark Lause wrote: > > I find these kinds of discussions curious. You can't understand Obama > without understanding Chicago politics. I find it more than curious. I find it reactionary. One of the more harmful mistakes leftists have made the last 8 years is mocking Bush as a person. Bush was neither stupid nor evil. He simply disagreed with us and supported (sincerely) institutions that we must try to destroy. But those institutions (including capitalism itself) are neither evil nor stupid; they are history. And we must destroy them. Carrol YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Can Obama actually be stupid?
I find these kinds of discussions curious. You can't understand Obama
without understanding Chicago politics.
But I remember when all my friends who vote Democratic, ("progressively" of
course) used to say that Bush was stupid. My response was always something
like,"Maybe, but what does that say about the Democrats since he regularly
runs circles about them." It was true, of course. If Bush was too stupid
to think two squares ahead, the Democrats seemed incapable of one.
Obama's been smart enough to break some speed records in his rise from state
legislator to president of the U.S. Don't sell him short. The entire
discussion about what sort of presidency he might have turned heavily on the
extent to which the progressives who put him in power would start wiggling
free and putting pressure on him. He's evidently smart enough to have kept
that from happening yet on any serious scale.
So the same question poses itself as with Bush. If the president's stupid,
what does that make all the "smart" people he's playing
ML
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[Marxism] 11/19/2000 Gus Hall Memorial CSPAN Coverage
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/160702-1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] book for review
I'm looking for someone to review Rick Wolff's Capitalism Hits The Fan, the book, not the video, for Socialism and Democracy. Write to me offline if you are interested at snedek...@verizon.net George YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] United States: `Birthers', `deathers' and haters -- Right-wing populism and liberal retreat | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
By *Malik Miah, *San Francisco October 11, 2009 — The heat is on the administration of US President Barack Obama. The energised conservative base has taken over town hall meetings on health care. There are “birthers” (those who claim Obama is not a US citizen and ineligible to be president), “deathers” (those who claim Obama’s health care reform is a plan to kill old people) and just pure haters. Obama has been personally attacked as a racist, socialist, communist, Stalinist, fascist, Nazi, Pol Potist, foreigner and every other name the right finds in its vocabulary. Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1297 Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Turk-Israeli rift good for Palestinians
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48859 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Obama's delusion
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n20/brom01_.html Obama’s Delusion David Bromwich Long before he became president, there were signs in Barack Obama of a tendency to promise things easily and compromise often. He broke a campaign vow to filibuster a bill that immunised telecom outfits against prosecution for the assistance they gave to domestic spying. He kept his promise from October 2007 until July 2008, then voted for the compromise that spared the telecoms. As president, he has continued to support their amnesty. It was always clear that Obama, a moderate by temperament, would move to the middle once elected. But there was something odd about the quickness with which his website mounted a slogan to the effect that his administration would look to the future and not the past. We all do. Then again, we don’t: the past is part of the present. Reduced to a practice, the slogan meant that Obama would rather not bring to light many illegal actions of the Bush administration. The value of conciliation outweighed the imperative of truth. He stood for ‘the things that unite not divide us’. An unpleasant righting of wrongs could be portrayed as retribution, and Obama would not allow such a misunderstanding to get in the way of his ecumenical goals. The message about uniting not dividing was not new. It was spoken in almost the same words by Bill Clinton in 1993; and after his midterm defeat in 1994, Clinton borrowed Republican policies in softened form – school dress codes, the repeal of welfare. The Republican response was unappreciative: they launched a three-year march towards impeachment. Obama’s appeals for comity and his many conciliatory gestures have met with a uniform negative. If anything, the Republicans are treating him more roughly than Clinton. Obama appears securer only because the mainstream media, which hated Clinton beyond reason, have showed up on his side. Americans, however, attend to a congeries of substitute media, at the centre of which lie Fox News Radio and Fox TV, the Murdoch stations. From that source, in the late spring and summer, a message percolated through a crowd of 20 million listeners, a message that was coherent, detailed and subversive of public order. I listened a little every day, as I drove to work and back, and I saw what was coming. The talk aimed to delegitimate the president, and it gave promise of an insurrection. A floating army of the angry and resentful were being urged to express contempt for Barack Obama, and to exhibit their loyalty to principles they felt in danger of losing – the right to bear arms, the right not to pay for health insurance. When representatives from Congress addressed town-hall meetings in the late summer, men in several states came armed with guns in leg holsters. Their local grievance was hostility to Obama’s plan for healthcare, a plan which was detested sight unseen, and which has still not been explained with sufficient clarity to remedy the distrust of the rational. (Clinton made the mistake of handing the construction of a national health system to his wife and a group of advisers she consulted in private. Obama, to avoid that error, left the framing and elaboration of a bill to five committees of Congress: an experiment in dissociation that rendered him blameless but also clueless beyond the broadest of rhetorical commitments.) But beneath all the accusations was a disturbance no ordinary answer could alleviate. The America these people grew up with was being taken away from them. That formulation occurred again and again on talk radio. Barack Obama had become the adequate symbol of forces that were swindling the people of their birthright. ‘This guy’ – another common locution – didn’t have a right to give laws to Americans. When the Clinton impeachment was going forward, Obama was a young Chicago politician with other things on his mind. He could have learned something then about how the Republicans work. The most questionable of his appeals in the primary campaign against Hillary Clinton was the endlessly repeated bromide with which he dissociated himself from ‘the partisan bickering of the 1990s’ – a piece of spurious evenhandedness if there ever was one. Bill Clinton, who gained his national stature in the conservative Democratic Leadership Council, had been as much a prudent adjuster and adapter as Obama. The fury of the attack on Clinton, which started a few months into his presidency, was not the bickering of two rival parties exactly comparable in point of incivility. Yet such was Obama’s convenient picture of the recent past. (clip) YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Overproduction - underconsumption
Gee, speaking of steel and China and overcapacity-- from yesterday's Wall Street Journal: China Takes a Hard Look at Its Steel Industry Beijing and Companies Move Toward Lowering Taxes to Promote Consolidation and Cut Capacity "Frustrated in previous attempts to consolidate its fragmented steel industry, Chinga is working on a new way to promote mergers and reduce capacity, possibly giving a boot to other global steel companies. China has hundreds of steel mills [around 800 actually-- my note] many of them small and inefficient. But the central government's desire to close small plants and consolidate the industry has been stymied at the regional level. Local government officials have resisted the potential loss of jobs and tax revenue. Steelmakers, meanwhile, have been kept in check by riots protesting planned plant closures. [Isn't it funny how that part of the equation never shows up in the homages sung to increased capacity by our developmentalists? And I get accused of 'defeatism'? Or perhaps the Chinese workers are being misled by their ultra-left leaders, leaders secretly allied with Western imperialism, to engage in direct action thereby undermining the fatherland? ] Under a plan being worked out, steelmakers' national tax bills would decline by year end, with some of that money instead going to regional taxes, according to people familiar with the matter. That would soften the blow of closed mills by giving regional governments additonal tax revenue to stimulate their economies and help find jobs for displaced steelworkers. [sure, that worked so well for steelworkers in Pittsburgh, Pa. and Buffalo, NY. Allentown, Pa. during the Reagan era, didn't it?] Details on the tax plan are still being worked out by the Chinese Iron and Steel Association and China's central government in Beijing, said Wu Xichun, the association's honorary chairman. "The tax burden for Chinese steelmakers is too high," Mr Wu said [channeling the spirt of Milton Friedman]. About 17% of revenue for Chinese steel makers goes to pay taxes, about triple the rate for US steelmakers, he said [hmmm... how could that be-- first law of Laffler/Friedman Robotics 1.more tax, less growth; less tax, more growth. Here we have China's capacity growing despite a higher tax burden... Do you think maybe the real issue isn't taxes but profitability?] China has the capacity to produce at least 610 million metric tons fo steel a year-- about 100 million more tons than it currently needs. The central government has said excess capacity has been permanently shut down The association noted that China already has reduced its exports substantially to 4% of production through August from 12-13% last year... The [World Steel Association-- remember them, and the locomotive of China?] global trade group expects that growth in Chinese demand will slow to 5% next year, based on Chinese steel assoication forecasts, as support from stimulus measures wanes. Not so big a locomotive is it? Not quite the tractive effort you would expect from the next big thing in locomotives is it? Who's Friedmanizing now? YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] India and Armed Struggle
David S., I don't think it's so clear as it used to be. I've drifted from my old SWP/LTF days as opposition to armed struggle as we debated it in the 1970s and, as people practiced it, had different results that we expected. I think there is no *easy* answer to you question and generally... "generally" ... the answer would be no, it's not a viable substitute. But what if we look at Nepal, where in fact the Nepalese Maoists were able to use their version of prolonged peoples war too *intersect* and even develop that "mass consciousness"? What then? This is in a way what happened in Nicaragua with the FSLN and, certainly, with the July 26th Movement, in Cuba. It happens. Which is why there is no easy answer. David W. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Two Talks by Shlomo Sand in NYC
TALK BY PROFESSOR SHLOMO SAND, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF TEL AVIV, ON HIS NEWLY TRANSLATED BOOK, THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE (This may be the most important and most surprising book on Zionism, Israel and Judaism written in the last fifty years. Nothing in the Middle East looks the same after reading it. To whet your desire to attend the talk, I’ve appended a brief sketch of some of the major themes in the book at the end of this announcement. I’ve also booked a large hall for Sand’s talk (SEE BELOW), so please pass this announcement on to friends, students and colleagues who are (or should be) interested in these subjects……… Bertell Ollman) BRECHT FORUM – 451 WEST STREET (BETWEEN BANK AND BETHUNE STREETS, THAT IS ON THE CORNER OF WHAT WOULD BE ABOUT 12TH STREET AND THE WEST SIDE HIGHWAY) DATE / TIME - THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15 - 7:30 – 10:00 PM (In Discussion with Professor Joel Kovel, Bard College, author of OVERCOMING ZIONISM) - MARXIST THEORY COLLOQUIUM AT NYU DATE / TIME - FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 - 4:15 – 6:15 PM (Please note new date and later starting time) PLACE - MEYER HALL, N.Y.U., 4 WASHINGTON PLACE (between West 4th Street and Waverly Place, just west of Broadway), Room 121. (Please note new place) SPEAKER - PROFESSOR SHLOMO SAND Sand is a much published professor in the Dept. of History at Tel Aviv University specializing in the history of ideas. His most recent book is THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. It is an extremely scholarly, very original, and often shocking work – the title is meant literally – with profound implications for Zionism and the ongoing conflict between Israel and its neighbors. I can’t recall when last I – Bertell – learned so much about both nationalism and Zionism from any book. It was a best seller and caused a huge scandal when it appeared a couple of years ago in Israel and another scandal when the French edition appeared last year. Sand will be in the U.S. for a week promoting the English edition of the book. For more, see reviews and interviews in English at . TOPIC – “THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE” DON’T MISS THIS ONE! *MEDIA - Professor Sand has a few time slots available for interviews with the media during his stay in New York (Oct. 15 – 18). Those of you in the media (or who have contacts in the media) who are interested in interviewing him, should write to Julie McCarroll, his editor at Verso Books at jul...@versobooks.com. *** NYU REQUIRES A PHOTO I.D. TO GET INTO ALL OF ITS BUILDINGS BRIEF SKETCH OF SAND’S BOOK THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE is divided into two parts. The first is a long section on the theory of nationalism, whose main characteristic, according to Sand, is the tendency to invent a past that suits the current needs and goals of the people in question. This is not a new idea (Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner have presented versions of it), but this is the best account of it that I have read. Second, there follows a much longer section on Zionism, Judaism and Israel in light of the earlier discussion of nationalism. Most of this long book is devoted to showing with a great deal of evidence and arguments from several different disciplines that most of Jewish history has been invented. The turning point is the supposed expulsion of the Jews from Palestine by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. (apparently, there is no evidence for this; the Roman's never engaged in such mass expulsions; and most of the Jews in Palestine at the time were peasants living in the countryside, who would not be directly affected by the destruction of Jerusalem). This raises two key questions: 1) Where did the large Jewish populations that turn up later throughout the rest of the Middle East and Europe come from, if they were not descended from people who were expelled from Palestine by the Romans? Sand's answer is that most of them came from mass conversions of peoples to Judaism that occurred in at least three different places and times between the destruction of the Second Temple and the early modern period. (He also shows that some mass conversions of people to Judaism took place in Palestine even before the destruction of the Second Temple. So the practice of converting people, even large groups of people, to Judaism is not as unknown to the history of Judaism as is commonly believed.) Probably the biggest mass conversion took place in Khazaria, a Turkamen empire between the Caspian and the Black Sea between the 8th and 11th century A.D., which was destroyed in the 11th century by attacks from Russians, with most of its Jewish population migrating west into eastern Europe. Together with a somewhat later, smaller, more prosperous and more cultured Jewish migration from Western Europe through Ge
Re: [Marxism] India and Armed Struggle
Actually, I think the real question for all is: Is armed struggle both a viable substitute for and a successful alternative to class-conscious mass action? - Original Message - From: To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 3:23 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] India and Armed Struggle > Rajesh wrote: > "...the question for them and their > proponents is the same.. is there a > murdering path to socialism/communism?" > > No, the question should be: is armed struggle > a legitimate path to socialism/communism > in India? YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] India and Armed Struggle
Indeed, I think the same question can be raised for places like Palestine, or even Northern Ireland or the Philippines. How's that working out, exactly? Palestine itself is not engaged in armed struggle for socialism. If so, I missed the memo. They are engaged in a defensive, somewhat centrifugally expressed *defensive* armed struggle. Ireland...we all know that's lead... and the Philippines has resulted in almost the total demobilization, often leading to gangsterism, of the NPA. Most communists are no longer anywhere near the CPP anymore, having rejected Sison's armed struggle strategy as antiquated and not fitting the mostly urban population that makes up the Philippines today. Armed struggle *can work* if it intersects a truly revolutionary movement of the *masses*. But if not, it ends up being like it was, or is, in the Philippines, or Peru, where the armed struggle does not reflect the consciousness of the masses but in fact bypasses, completely, the people they are supposed to be leading. The need to build a revolutionary party OF the working class and peasantry in these countries is still on the agenda and armed struggles actions by dedicated militants often bypasses the working class in this endeavor. It seems like in India's increasingly urban environment, even if with local or small regional successes, India is not unlike the Philippines in this regard. The Maoists there seem to have bypassed the large urban centers and focused on the lower populated rural areas which, in many ways, seems to have isolated them. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The National Equality March: A New Generation of Protesters
At 09:07 14/10/09 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: >http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee262 >Intellectual Affairs >New Civil Rights Movement >October 14, 2009 >By Scott McLemee I sort of liked this essay but won't expound on the various issues. As usual, I will just jump to where I disagree: .. >In her book, Schulman offers a strategy for dealing with homophobic >trauma: Homophobia should be identified as a sickness, with families >court-ordered into treatment programs.. > The cure >sounds as bad as the disease ... >The law, he said, defines permissible action but not the content of >anyones heart. A court can never oblige you to love your neighbors. . >Full equality for LGBT people is not a matter of eventually forcing >bigots into group therapy for good. Well I'm also against forcing people into "re-education camps" if they haven't broken any law. And surely forcing someone into "treatment" for their bigotry isn't going to eliminate their prejudices or their expression of that bigotry in private. However McLemee doesn't address one key sector. Something like 1/5 of the population is enrolled in public schools, in which the state already -- and inevitably -- defines social standards (and thus ideology) that become internalized in the students. There is no question of "neutrality" in public education for its very purpose is learning, and the educators control the content that is taught. Of course the learning doesn't just (or even mainly) consist of the syllabus but results from the entire school experience over which the school administrators have ultimate control, including behavior involved in peer pressure. Unquestionably homophobia (and other bigotry) is learned at a young age and can be countered through active intervention of the school system. And positive values can be learned that will help the future adults counter antisocial behavior and ideologies which they will surely encounter. In the long run it is the initial positive experience in the (pre-) school room that will change the "hearts" of the population, not sending middle aged bigots to re-education camp or to jail. And you can be sure that the right-wing appreciates that too! No wonder they fought to ban "Heather Has Two Mommies" from the classroom. The homo-friendly values in such a book should rather become widespread in the curriculum, and not relegated to a book on the very subject or to "sensitivity training." Only because of the widespread presence of bigotry (and resulting oppression) in society is special attention warranted in relation to fighting it. And the likelihood that a child might be subject to such indoctrination at home requires positive pressure so that students are strengthened against their (possibly bigoted) parents. But that can become less and less needed after a generation or so. - Jeff P.S. Of course the above doesn't address the problem of parents who (often for these reasons alone!) send their children to private/religious schools or home schooling. I think that public education should be universal, and that this promotes society's interests in protecting the rights of children against indoctrination (= abuse) by their parents. But that's a whole 'nother issue YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] India and Armed Struggle
Rajesh wrote: "...the question for them and their proponents is the same.. is there a murdering path to socialism/communism?" No, the question should be: is armed struggle a legitimate path to socialism/communism in India? The same question could be raised for the Philippines, or Palestine, or even Northern Ireland. That revolutionary movements exist in all those places committed to socialist transformation through military means does raise important issues. Those issues take on an added urgency now that the Indian state is preparing its war of extermination against the Maoists. Rajesh, you keep describing the Naxalites as "ultra revolutionaries." Given your comment above wouldn't it be more accurate to simply label them as criminals? Murder is a crime and in the words of Maggie Thatcher consigning the hunger strikers to death- "Crime is crime is crime." YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism
You can find some German language articles/books on Felix Wemheuer's cv, which is here: http://www.univie.ac.at/Sinologie/staff/wemheuer/fw-cvPublAct.pdf YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Overproduction - underconsumption
I never give investment advice. Remember, the markets are fundamentally irrational. My advice to myself , which I did follow as a matter of fact, was to get out of stocks in 2000, and then get out of everything in 2007 except US Treasury instruments. The reasoning behind both those decisions? Overproduction/rate of profit [which on careful analysis become the same thing]. And that, comrade, is why I was able to retire from the railroad early. - Original Message - From: "Marv Gandall" To: "David Schanoes" Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:46 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Overproduction - underconsumption > Artesian writes: > > ...so I wouldn't >> rush out and buy shares in Baosteel based on the WSA article, know what I >> mean? > == > Jeez, Artesian, anyone following your investment advice would have been > short China and long the US market since 2000, and we know where they'd be > now - where you would be if you followed your own forecasts: looking for a > job as a Walmart greeter or back on the railroad. :) YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Socialist Voice: Honduras / Disappearing coups / Hugo Blanco Interview
SOCIALIST VOICE Marxist Perspectives for the 21st Century http://www.socialistvoice.ca October 14, 2009 HONDURAS: ‘NOTHING WILL BE THE SAME AGAIN’ http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=708 by Federico Fuentes What began as a coup aimed at deposing a millionaire landowner president, whose “crime” had been to gradually shift Honduras away from U.S. control and implement mild pro-people reforms, has spurred on a mass resistance movement with the potential to revolutionize the country. CBC ‘DISAPPEARS’ VENEZUELA AND HAITI COUPS http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=704 by Roger Annis An Open Letter to ‘The Current,’ the weekday morning newsmagazine of the CBC, Canada’s state radio broadcaster. HUGO BLANCO: INDIGENOUS PEOPLE ARE THE VANGUARD OF THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE EARTH http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=701 LeftViews: An interview with Peruvian peasant leader Hugo Blanco. “The amazonicos are teaching the Peruvians and all the world how to defend nature and defend the survival of the human species.” * Other recent articles: POSITIVE DEVELOPMENTS IN THE EUROPEAN LEFT http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=696 HOW TO REALLY FIGHT ANTI-SEMITISM http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=638 PALESTINE SOLIDARITY VICTORIES ALARM PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=634 BRITAIN’S CONQUEST OF QUEBEC: 250 YEARS LATER http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=615 * SOCIALIST VOICE Web: http://www.socialistvoice.ca Email: socialistvo...@sympatico.ca Editors: Ian Angus, Roger Annis, John Riddell Associate Editor: Mike Krebs Readers are encouraged to forward or distribute Socialist Voice as widely as possible. To subscribe, send a blank email to socialist-voice-subscr...@yahoogroups.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to socialist-voice-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com FEEDBACK: Socialist Voice welcomes questions, comments and debate on the articles we publish. Please use the `Feedback' box at the bottom of each article on our website. LINK DOESN'T WORK? Some email programs block links to websites. If clicking on a link in Socialist Voice doesn't work, try holding down the CTRL key as you click, or copy the link address into your browser. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] IMF style austerity in the works for the USA?
This article has a lot of flaws but at least it does not fall for the inter-imperialist rivalry within the G-20 and over the US dollar nonsense. It properly shows the shared interest (even if it seems to imply a level of coordination and conspiracy) of capitalists across nations. If only the left was so organized and understood the shared interest across nations against capital. Brad YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Trial of Israel's Campus Critics
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22874 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Statement against Government of India ’s planned military offensive in adivasi-populated regi ons
Naxalites experiencing widening support ? I would strongly counter that view.. If you look at Andrha Pradesh, they have been routed from there.. these people survive by the barrel of the gun, and by terrorizing innocent people in far-fetched villages.. if they believe that India can be conquered without democratic processes and purely by military means, what can one say ? If one takes the case of Bengal, the support for these infantiles is coming right from the right-wing Mamta Banerjee and such other anarchist forces.. one can get a sense of the opportunism involved in such tactics.. Of course, a dialogue is welcome.. but we seem to be getting staples from single-agenda anti-CPI(M) lobbies like Sanhati.. - Original Message From: Bhaskar Sunkara To: rajeshcher...@yahoo.co.in Sent: Tue, 13 October, 2009 7:42:11 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Statement against Government of India’s planned military offensive in adivasi-populated regions I'm generally sympathetic to the CPI-M, but it's important that any analysis of the Naxalites focus on why they are experiencing widening support. Marginalization, corruption, landlordism, caste discrimination and the very painful processes of urbanization and proletarianization. Seems to me that you seem unwilling to do this or engage comrades in substantiative discussion on these topics. Connect more, do more and share more with Yahoo! India Mail. Learn more. http://in.overview.mail.yahoo.com/ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Forwarded on MR and Maoism
(Ethan, please use PLAIN TEXT in the future. This bounced because it was sent in HTML.) Subject: Re: [Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism From: Ethan Young Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:14:41 -0400 (EDT) To: marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Monthly Review does not hide its pro-Cultural Revolution sympathies - in fact they just published a new book taking this now-rare view: http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/unkculturalrevolution.php On US Maoism: http://www.revolutionintheair.com/ US & French Maoism: Belden Fields: Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States. Probably the key work drawing interest in China within the US 60s movement was William Hinton's Fanshen. The success of the Progressive Labor Party in building a powerful faction in SDS played a role; PL was the largest Maoist party in the US in the 60s, before they broke with China. Maoism drew support from important black figures and groups, including Shirley Graham DuBois, Robert F. Williams, Bill Epton, Malcolm X [who saw China as an example of a united anti-imperialist nation], Max Stanford, the Black Panther Party and the Black Workers Congress. Most of the information on China came directly from China, in the form of the weekly Peking Review, as well as reports from western China supporters like Anna Louise Strong, Felix Greene and Maud Russell, who published the newsletter Far East Reporter. The largest independent far-left paper, the Guardian, was pro-China in the 50s through the early 70s. ey YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Overproduction - underconsumption
Artesian writes: ...so I wouldn't > rush out and buy shares in Baosteel based on the WSA article, know what I > mean? == Jeez, Artesian, anyone following your investment advice would have been short China and long the US market since 2000, and we know where they'd be now - where you would be if you followed your own forecasts: looking for a job as a Walmart greeter or back on the railroad. :) YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism
Thanks for all suggestions so far. The context for this is a projected paper/article (just in the planning/abstract stage at the moment) looking at various composers explicitly engaging with Maoist ideas in their work, primarily Cornelius Cardew. But I'm interested in anything on the reception and interpretation of Maoism in the West in general. The impression I get is that those calling themselves Maoist in the 1960s and 1970s tended to fall into two categories: (a) those who took Mao's side in the Sino-Soviet split, and saw Maoism as an anti-revisionist antidote to Krushchev's critique of Stalin, and (b) those who associated Maoism with a more generalised romantic third-worldism, reasonably untrammeled by classical Marxist distinctions of the revolutionary or other role of the peasantry and the proletariat. I'm very interested in general in posters' thoughts on these matters. Solidarity, Ian YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The National Equality March: A New Generation of Protesters
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee262 Intellectual Affairs New Civil Rights Movement October 14, 2009 By Scott McLemee In the weeks leading up to the National Equality March -- held in Washington this past Sunday -- I found myself in the awkward position, for a straight person, of defending same-sex marriage rights to gay people who hated the whole idea with a passion. Half the pleasure of being gay, explained my irritated interlocutors, is running wild. Maybe more than half. Now in fact I do not doubt this. As a teenager circa 1980, I went through a countercultural initiation that involved listening to Patti Smith’s version of “Gloria” (treating it as a song about lesbian cruising) while reading William S. Burroughs, whose experimental fiction tended to include sadomasochistic orgies between young male street hustlers and extraterrestrials. A somewhat less literary(if not necessarily less exotic) exposure to to gay folkways has gone with living in Dupont Circle in Washington for a couple of decades. My own life is almost comically straight and narrow and monogamously domesticated. But that hardly precludes the ability to acknowledge and affirm other possible arrangements. Besides, marriage isn't for everybody, and there are statistics to prove it. Anyway, my argument with the fierce anti-matrimonialists boiled down to a fairly simple point: The right to marry is not an obligation to marry. I doubt this persuaded anyone. The assumption seemed to be that I was practicing cultural genocide through heteronormativity. I sure hope not. Committing cultural genocide would be bad. In any case, something like 150,000 people turned out on Sunday to march past the White House on their way to the Capitol. The demand of the protest was simple: full equality for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people (LGBT) in all matters covered by civil law. It was a spirited crowd. But on consideration, it might have been more than that. Early this summer, I devoted a column to gathering the thoughts of various scholars on what developments they expected might emerge within LGBT studies over the next decade. At that point, planning for the march was at its most grass-rootsy. Now, a few months later, I suspect that a new wave of research and reflection will be necessary to deal with something not previously anticipated, let alone theorized. For we seem to be witnessing the emergence of a civil rights movement in which the struggle for recognition and equality goes beyond “identity politics” (in which each subset of an oppressed group insisted on the incommensurable specificity of its own experience and struggle). Something new is coming forward. It is not purely a matter of sexual identity, let alone of political activism. I think it involves something much deeper, drawing on bonds of solidarity that extend across divisions in sexual orientation. Forty years after Stonewall, a generation or two has grown used to the idea of feeling mutual respect, affection, and everyday concern with people who belong to a different erotic cohort (if that is how to put it). Beyond a certain point, such ties cease to be merely personal. They create a new sense of justice. You feel protective. If my friends who were married in one state cannot see one another in the hospital when in another state, then their anger is my anger. An injury to one is an injury to all. This does not mean that homophobia disappears from society. Far from it. But it means there is a counterforce. A less sanguine view comes across in Sarah Schulman's Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, a recent title from the New Press. The author is a novelist and playwright who is professor of English at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. It is a short and angry book. Unlike many another volume of social criticism by an academic, it does not mediate or diffuse that anger through carefully rehearsed stagings of the author’s theoretical affiliations. She just gets right down to it. The fact that gay figures (real or fictional) are now often routinely shown in the media is not, she points out, “progressive” as such: “They often portray the gay person as pathological, lesser than, a side-kick in the Tonto role, or there to provide an emotional catharsis or to make the straight protagonist or viewer a ‘better’ person. What current cultural representations rarely present are complex human beings with authority and sexuality, who are affected by homophobia in addition to their other human experiences, human beings who are protagonists. That type of depth and primacy would force audiences to universalize gay people, which is part of the equality process. It would also force an acknowledgment of heterosexual cruelty as a constant and daily part of American life.” One of the most devastating and persistent forms of such cruelty, in Schulman’s assessment, is
Re: [Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism
Ian Pace wrote: > I'm looking for recommendations for literature on the growth of Maoism in the > West, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, any material giving > some idea of how much information on life in Mao's China was known in the > West during this period would be of great interest. Not just Marxist > literature, I'm interested in any recommendations that are thoroughly > researched. > Max Elbaum, "Revolution in the Air" YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism
I don't know if Ian is interested in looking at the history of French Maoism but the following interview with Badiou looks interesting. Badiou is probably one of the few contemporary French intellectuals who would still accept the label of Maoist. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, lots of leading French intellectuals were associated with Maoism, either as actual activists in Maoist organizations or as sympathizers to one degree or another. These included many big names like Sartre, De Beauvoir, Althusser, Foucault etc. http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/badiou-on-different-streams-within-french-maoism/ Jim F. -- Original Message -- From: "Richard Fidler" To: farmela...@juno.com Subject: Re: [Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:52:42 -0400 You might start with back issues of Monthly Review, which was pretty keen on Mao's Cultural Revolution -- although they are loathe to admit it now, as they celebrate their various anniversaries. -Original Message- From: marxism-bounces+rfidler_8=sympatico...@lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:marxism-bounces+rfidler_8=sympatico...@lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Ian Pace Sent: October 14, 2009 5:34 AM To: rfidle...@sympatico.ca Subject: [Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism I'm looking for recommendations for literature on the growth of Maoism in the West, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, any material giving some idea of how much information on life in Mao's China was known in the West during this period would be of great interest. Not just Marxist literature, I'm interested in any recommendations that are thoroughly researched. Solidarity, Ian House Rescue Bill Passed $133,000 mortgage under $679/mo. Compare rates and save! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=7r9PCDe4Cu1TQA2P00_aTgAAJ1BRugI4sJACAWmXIev8NAFPAAQFAMWzpD4AAAMlAAaTcQA= YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism
You might start with back issues of Monthly Review, which was pretty keen on Mao's Cultural Revolution -- although they are loathe to admit it now, as they celebrate their various anniversaries. -Original Message- From: marxism-bounces+rfidler_8=sympatico...@lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:marxism-bounces+rfidler_8=sympatico...@lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Ian Pace Sent: October 14, 2009 5:34 AM To: rfidle...@sympatico.ca Subject: [Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism I'm looking for recommendations for literature on the growth of Maoism in the West, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, any material giving some idea of how much information on life in Mao's China was known in the West during this period would be of great interest. Not just Marxist literature, I'm interested in any recommendations that are thoroughly researched. Solidarity, Ian YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism
Robert J. Alexander's survey of _Maoism in the Developed World_ [Praeger, 2001] might be useful. On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 3:34 AM, Ian Pace wrote: > I'm looking for recommendations for literature on the growth of Maoism in the > West, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, any material giving > some idea of how much information on life in Mao's China was known in the > West during this period would be of great interest. Not just Marxist > literature, I'm interested in any recommendations that are thoroughly > researched. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Literature on Western Maoism
I'm looking for recommendations for literature on the growth of Maoism in the West, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, any material giving some idea of how much information on life in Mao's China was known in the West during this period would be of great interest. Not just Marxist literature, I'm interested in any recommendations that are thoroughly researched. Solidarity, Ian YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
