[Marxism] German Democratic Republic against Racism , Apartheid and Colonialism (a reminder)

[Dogan Gocmen]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


http://www.anc.org.za/un/conference/ababing.html
“The Role of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the international
struggle against Racism , Apartheid and Colonialism”

by Dr.sc.Phil.Alfred Babing
(Member of  Solidaritätsdienst International (SODI) Germany

*Introduction*

It is an historical fact, that the GDR has  at all time supported the
international struggle against Racism and Apartheid and worked
constructively to implement this and all other basic principles and tasks
outlined by the United Nations, even when our country was not yet a member
of the world organisation. The GDR’s political and material Solidarity and
its practical efforts have clearly shown, that  for our people the struggles
against Racism and Apartheid was not just a tactical, but rather, questions
of principle.

This international recognition which this policy has won among many nations,
especially those in Asia, Africa and Latin America was reflected in the
decision by the UN Anti-Apartheid Committee, taken just month after the GDR
has been admitted as a member of the UN, to hold a meeting of its Committee
in May 1974 in Berlin, the Capital of the GDR.

Solidarity in the former GDR was more than a general slogan; it meant
personal human sympathy with the destiny and the need of other people, who
mostly suffered from racial and colonial  oppression or were living under a
constant threat of their life. Human dignity for those who had been degraded
to inferior people simply because of the colour of their skin; that was the
aim.

The GDR had no colonial traditions to cultivate or to restore, no old or new
claims for overseas possessions. Here there did not exist the personal
traditional bonds between old noble families, big landowners or bankers and
certain groups of the white population in "German South-West" / Deutsch -Süd
West Africa ore in South Africa ore other countries of the continent

Solidarity in the GDR was, of course connected with the socialist ideology.
But it was no "invention" of the GDR, its government or the ruling party.
More than 100 years ago it was, in many different forms, an alternative
vision of the people fighting against feudal and capitalist exploitation and
oppression.

For the German Social Democrats solidarity was the most important tradition
in their fight against the German Empire. Their founders, Wilhelm Liebknecht
and August Bebel accused the imperial colonial troops for the crimes against
the people in the colonies. They protested against the suppression of the
Hereros in Namibia and the quelling of the liberation struggle of the people
in East Africa. So they contributed to the growing awareness of the German
population and the public worldwide and which led to a stronger interest in
the destiny of the suppressed people.

In the GDR solidarity and willingness to help as well as mutual interest
have been an important part of the life, at the workplace, in the society,
in the family. Participation in the destiny of the people next to you, the
readiness to help and lend support were positive customs, very important for
the majority.

Solidarity was a main element of the education, in the conscious imparting
of ethic-moral values to children in the kinder garden, school – and later
in the job and in all spheres of social life.

Every society is well advised to follow such goals in the education and to
support them as common norms of behaviour.

The GDR was too part and parcel of the international solidarity movement  in
the United Nations and other internal organisations for instance the
Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO)

The history of the armed struggle in Southern Africa was closely connected
to the constantly changing “external” situation and the international
pressure on the racist and colonialist regimes and their allies, the
Transnational Corporations and Banks in the Western Countries. The picture
would be incomplete if one does not take into consideration the debates
which gained such great momentum in the international community concerning
the battlefield Southern Africa. In this struggle the freedom movements in
these countries where  able to convince the world, and accepted by the UNO
as the  authentic representatives of their people.
http://www.anc.org.za/un/conference/ababing.html

-
Dogan Göcmen
(http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/)
Author of The Adam Smith Problem:
Reconciling Human Nature and Society in
The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris,
London&New York 2007

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] Same-sex rights in East Germany

[Dogan Gocmen]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/lgbtseries1104.php
Same-sex rights in East Germany Legal and material progress Lesbian, gay, bi
and trans pride series part 19

*By Leslie Feinberg*

After World War II, as productivity and social reorganization in the German
Democratic Republic--"East Germany"--rose to meet the needs of the
population as a whole, the more specific needs of individuals and groups
within society, including gay men and lesbians, could be more easily
addressed.

Canadian researcher Jim Steakley, who published the results of seven months
of research in East Germany in 1976, outlined some of the concrete
conditions under which East German workers tried to construct a planned
economy--socialism.

He paid careful attention to the period between the establishment of the GDR
in 1949 and the construction of the defensive Berlin wall in 1961. "With the
formal founding of the GDR in 1949," Healey explained, "the cold war
hostilities between socialism and capitalism intensified and entered a
period of chronic crisis. The West used every means at its disposal to
destroy the GDR, ranging from economic sabotage to CIA subversion."

He noted that a calculated "brain drain" lured away some 10 percent of the
GDR's population--mostly middle-class professionals--and that a campaign of
smuggling across the open border also served to bleed the resources of the
workers' state.

"By subsidizing the costs of food, rents, and basic commodities, the GDR
held living expenses at their 1945 level (which they continue to have
today)," he wrote at the end of 1976. "Faced with costs five to 10 times
higher at home, many West Germans did all of their shopping in the GDR,
particularly in Berlin. Thus the GDR made relatively slow economic and
social advances during this period, which was closed in 1961 by the
construction of the tragically necessary wall along the border between the
German states."

During the period between 1949 and 1961, he said, the "gay scene" in both
Germanys was generally similar. Gays could visit a variety of clubs on
either side of the border. He added, however, that some gays from the GDR
felt uncomfortable about their clothing not being considered as
"fashionable," and the price of drinks was steep in the West.

However, he added, considering that at 17 million the GDR had only about 30
percent of the population of West Germany, "the GDR matched the West in
terms of subcultural institutions such as dance bars, steam baths, access to
homophile periodicals, and so on."

And, Steakley stressed, "West Germany was scarcely a haven for homosexuals
during these years. Ruled by the Christian-Democratic Party (the name tells
it all), the federal government was adamantly opposed to law reform which
might improve the situation of gay people; and local authorities were
extremely intolerant of the gay subculture. Police entrapment and raids on
bars and baths, unheard of in the GDR, were common in the West."

The published curators' notes from a 1997 Berlin art exhibit commemorating
the 100th anniversary of the German Homosexual Emancipation Movement stated
that the number of convictions of individuals accused under the anti-gay
statutes in West Germany was 1,920 in 1950; by 1959, the number soared to as
many as 3,530--an all time record.

"Even people not sentenced suffered a great deal," the exhibit curators
pointed out, "as employers and family members found out in the course of
proceedings that they were gay."

*Progress, not perfection*

The Nazi anti-gay amendment was immediately struck from the laws of the
newly created German Democratic Republic in 1949.

Formally the old Prus sian Paragraph 175 remained on the books in the GDR.
But the activist efforts of Dr. Rudolph Klimmer--a gay communist and
physician--during the 1950s had an impact.

Steakley explained that Klimmer set out to win the support of prominent
people in the GDR for the campaign to rescind Paragraph 175 and win full
equality for homosexuals. "His efforts were strongly backed by the GDR's
then Minister of Justice, Hilde Benjamin; she urged repeal of Paragraph 175
in the country's leading legal journals. There was (and still is) a high
degree of acceptance of homosexuals within the cultural sector of the GDR,"
he reported, "but the GDR's then Minister of Culture, the poet Johannes R.
Becher, refused to take a public stand on law reform."

Becher's homosexuality was well known, since West German reporters had
"outed" his relationship with a male construction worker.

"Klimmer did, however, receive the support of numerous other agencies and
individuals," Steakley said, "including one of the GDR's most famous
writers, Ludwig Renn, a party veteran whose novels frequently turned on gay
themes."

The 1950s and 1960s were defined not by per

[Marxism] Liberal disenchantment with Obama

[Eli Stephens]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==



A fascinating discussion (both the article and the comments) on the
liberal Democratic website Daily Kos about disillusionment with Obama:



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/24/807808/-You-are-losing-me,-Mr.-President


For balance and in some ways a followup on that article, an article from 
pslweb.org on the importance of spreading the message of socialism:

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=13271

Eli Stephens
 Left I on the News
 http://lefti.blogspot.com

  
_
Windows 7: It works the way you want. Learn more.
http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/windows-7/default.aspx?ocid=PID24727::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WWL_WIN_evergreen:112009v2

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] blog post: Capitol Reef to Moab

[MICHAEL YATES]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==



Full at http://blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org (I'll bet there is not another 
travel essay about southern Utah that

includes the words "Marx" and "simple commodity production.")

 

We left Capitol Reef, wishing we could stay longer. The last leg of our trip 
would take us to one of our favorite haunts—Moab. The drive time is about four 
hours, but the nice thing about Utah is that the traveling is almost as 
enjoyable as the destination. There is seldom a boring mile. Most of the trip 
is along Utah 24, another “scenic byway,” not completely paved until the 1960s. 
After the Mormons colonized the southeastern part of Utah, in the years 
following the expedition through the Hole in the Rock, they began to backtrack 
westward and establish settlements. Some of the land surrounding the Fremont 
River was suitable for farming and ranching, and communities were formed in 
Hanksville, Caineville, Torrey, and Fruita. The last one was the most 
interesting. Founded around 1880 and originally named Junction because it was 
at the confluence of the river and Sulphur Creek, Fruita (pronounced 
“froot-uh”) became famous for its fruit trees. The village itself never housed 
more than a few families, but the orchards helped them to prosper. Utah.com 
tells us:


Though it never comprised more than 300 acres Fruita — originally called 
Junction — became an important settlement due to its relatively long growing 
season and abundant water. Settlers from nearby Torrey and Loa — which each 
have 90-day growing seasons — arrived in Fruita and planted thousands of trees 
bearing Jonathan, Rome Beauty, Ben Davis, Red Astrachan, Twenty-Ounce Pippin 
and Yellow Transparent apples, Morpark apricots, Elberta peaches, Bartlett 
pears, Fellenburg plums, and the Potawatomi plum. Settlers also planted English 
and black walnuts and almonds. Grape arbors appeared later.

The author might have added, but Anglos rarely do, that the Mormons in Fruita 
took advantage of irrigation paths first constructed by the true first 
settlers, the indigenous Americans.

 

Most production in Fruita was either consumed domestically or bartered; if 
money was needed, the fruit could be sold in larger towns such as Richfield. 
The son of a school teachers at the one-room school that still sits beneath the 
cliffs that line the river remembers his parents owning a 1924 Chevy. His 
father was principal at the “big” school in Torrey and drove the car down the 
dirt road to be with his family in Fruita every weekend. Cash might have been 
needed for this automobile, though goods could have been traded for it. In 
either case, the economy of Fruita was what Marx called simple commodity 
production; at most money was a medium of exchange and the accumulation of 
capital was not in evidence. It also appears that Fruita was not a diehard 
Mormon community. There was never an LDS church, and residents don’t seem to 
have minded an occasional drink or a visit from local outlaws.

  

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] Pamphlet to download: Marta Harnecker's `Ideas for the Struggle' | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

[glparramatta]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


This 12-part series of articles by *Marta Harnecker* (translated by 
*Federico Fuentes*) on ideas for how to organise for socialism in the 
21st century first appeared in /Links International Journal of Socialist 
Renewal/. It is now available download free as a pamphlet in PDF format.

Marta Harnecker is originally from Chile where she participated in the 
revolutionary process of 1970-1973. She has written extensively on the 
Cuba Revolution, and on the nature of socialist democracy. She now lives 
in Caracas and is a participant in the Venezuelan revolution.

Download it at http://links.org.au/node/1374

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

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] Another side of the Berlin Wall

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Quotation marks simply show that I am quoting, to the letter, what Adam 
wrote. If I quote him to the letter, it is because I agree to the marrow...

I am no worshipper of the SED nor of its regime, of course. Never been, 
never will be, never COULD be...

And the counter-position is not as pointless, though it is partially 
pointless. As I am arguing on an answer to L. Willms, we should place 
most of the "historical blame" for Stalinism at the doorstep of the 
Western bourgeois. Not that we must not learn, as Socialists, from what 
happened in the Soviet Union. Not at all.

But what those regimes show is not a home made product, not a completely 
home made product. They show to us the true face of bourgeois 
imperialists, as if portrayed on a looking glass. We should care about 
the kind of looking glass we built, but not blame it for what is 
essentially the fault of the imperialists.

More or less, that´s why I made that remark.

Which, anyway, may not be as important to debate around. On this, yes, 
we share a point.

Tom O'Lincoln escribió:
> 
> 
> Adam Richmond wrote::
> 
>> The main danger to East German
>> socialism was not in West Germany, but in the wretched police
>> government of the SED.
> 
> Nestor replied:
> 
>> This is either misled, or false.
>> The main danger WAS in West Germany.
>> The greatest failure, or danger if you so prefer, of the "wretched
> police government of the SED", was that it was a doomed to fail.
> 
> This seems to  me a pointless counter-position. Both were dangers, and they 
> reinforced each other.
> 
> But Nestor, why the quotation marks? The SED did run a wretched police 
> government. My friend in East Berlin was confronted on campus by a Stasi 
> agent who had been reading her mail. "You're corresponding with an 
>  American." Her father, a blue collar worker, had gone to prison for trying 
> to leave the GDR, and he was no right winger. Rather he was basically 
> apolitical. What is this if not a wretched police state?
> 



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] Another side of the Berlin Wall

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Lueko Willms escribió:
> 
> 
> Nestor Gorojovsky (nmg...@gmail.com) wrote on 2009-11-24 at 15:19:06
> in  
> about Re: [Marxism] Another side of the Berlin Wall:
>>
>> It was not a wall erected to protect the workers.
> 
>OK. Without reserve. 
> 
>> But those who tore it down were absolutely decided to turn the workers, 
>> particularly the workers in Eastern Germany, into shit.
> 
>Dear Nestor, here I have to disagree with you. 
> 
>The Wall was torn down by workers from East Berlin, not by the
> tanks of 
> the US, British and French military stationed in West Berlin, nor by
> the armored cars of the West Berlin police or by the Bundeswehr of
> the FRG. 
> 
>The people of the GDR had not been "decided to turn the workers
> into shit", 
> but they had not the understanding of the actual situation, and left
> the power 
> to the German bourgeoisie. They had illusions, and most were baffled
> later to 
> find out what had really happened to them. 
> 
>I remember those workers from a factory in Leipzig which I met at
> one of 
> those "Monday demonstrations": they were eager to get a capitalist
> from West 
> Germany as a new boss, because they hoped that this would improve
> their 
> situation, and bring them the same material advantages which they
> saw, or 
> thought to see, at their class comrades or personal relatives in the
> West. 
> 
>The fact is, that four decades of stalinist burocratic rule had
> managed to 
> eradicate class consciousness in the working class. It will still
> take some time, before a new beginning can be made on a mass scale. 
> 
>But, OK, we know that the only stable element is that there can be
> big surprises at every moment, and that history can move faster than
> we ever thought at the least expected moments. 
> 

Maybe we don´t disagree as much.

The stalinist rule was a byproduct of the isolation of the Soviet Union 
and the victory of the Western bourgeoisie over their own workers, 
particularly in the German events of 1923. Since that moment ahead, the 
metaphor by Trotsky ("a coin tossed to the air") began to work. So that 
the demoralization was in the end a product of the victory of the 
Western bourgeois.

And as to who _did materially tear the Wall down_, it is not effectual 
to my point. When imperialist workers use their guns and machine guns 
against another peoples, of course it is they who "win" the battles on 
the battlefield. But the actual origins of those wars are not located in 
the interests and ideals of those workers turned soldiers. They are 
located in the interests and necessities of bourgeois rule of the world.

The attack on the workers of Eastern Europe (particularly so on those of 
Eastern Germany) was an all out attack. That is, every weapon was 
employed. Ideas can be weapons, as everybody knows.

Maybe you understand that in this sense, we agree. Which does not mean 
that we might not be in disagreement on other points. But I think that 
not on this one.

Your comment on the Leipzig workers, in fact, helps me on this "debate".


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] Another side of the Berlin Wall

[Tom O'Lincoln]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Adam Richmond wrote::

> The main danger to East German
> socialism was not in West Germany, but in the wretched police
> government of the SED.

Nestor replied:

>This is either misled, or false.
>The main danger WAS in West Germany.
>The greatest failure, or danger if you so prefer, of the "wretched
police government of the SED", was that it was a doomed to fail.

This seems to  me a pointless counter-position. Both were dangers, and they 
reinforced each other.

But Nestor, why the quotation marks? The SED did run a wretched police 
government. My friend in East Berlin was confronted on campus by a Stasi 
agent who had been reading her mail. "You're corresponding with an 
 American." Her father, a blue collar worker, had gone to prison for trying 
to leave the GDR, and he was no right winger. Rather he was basically 
apolitical. What is this if not a wretched police state?




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] (no subject)

[S. Artesian]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


And I had all these great things to say about antagonism and its non-use by 
Marx in Capital... oh well.

I think that what you say about capital being an "environment within an 
environment" is very insightful in that the historical specificity of 
capitalism is clearly defined in such a description.

We can say, and I would say, the determining contradiction that drives 
history is the conflict, or antagonism if you prefer, between the 
organization of labor and the conditions of labor.  Within that environment 
we have the conflict specific to capital between the means of production 
organized, monopolized by the bourgeoisie, as private property and the 
social organization of labor as wage-labor.  Further within that 
environment, we see this conflict compressed, transferred, and reproduced in 
every product of created by the exchange between wage-labor and capital, in 
the commodity-- in its dual form, coincident existence, as both useful 
article and value.  We see the inseparability of the coincident facets, 
use-value and exchange value, and we can see how use-value tends to 
undermine value, to which threat value responds by withholding, 
incinerating, destroying use-value--  by devaluing itself.

And this contradiction within the conflict within the antagonism (if you 
like) is expressed throughout capitalism as the conflict between the 
usefulness of accumulating the means of production, which can only exist in 
commodity form, and the ability to accumulate profits.  In short, the 
conflict between the means and relations of production.

(Brief cinematic digression:

"But all this... this discussion You were made as well as we could make 
you," said Eldon Tyrell.  "Revel in your time, Roy."

"I've donequestionable things," said  Roy.

"You've done remarkable things.")

Marx doesn't really begin with the exploration of primitive accumulation. 
He begins Capital  with --The Two Factors of  A Commodity:  Use-Value and 
Value (The Substance of Value and the Magnitue of Value).   Most difficult 
part of his analysis, Marx says, this twofold existence of the commodity. 
Starts us right off with it because in that two-fold character is the social 
relation of production that is at the core of capitalism.

But back to the issue at hand:  The original question is, was, the 
"inevitability" of defeat in revolutionary struggles, an inevitability 
determined by the technical development of capitalism-- not simply its 
expansion, but its sophistication in the productive process.  Crudely I 
could put this:  Were the Chinese workers destined to fail in the 1920s 
because capitalism had not advanced sufficiently?  Is it the backwardness of 
capitalist development that limits the revolution in China to an 
"anti-imperialist" struggle?  And crudely again, "Did Mao triumph because he 
more faithfully represented the backwardness of the economy, of the 
technical development of the mode of production?"  I think that's where we 
came in.

Short version:  Is historical materialism a hammer-lock on the proletarian 
revolution? Is there a technological determinism to it, or is the assertion 
of a technological determinism really an imposition of a mechanistic, and 
formalized, interpretation of Marx's work?

Historically, the argument was known as the "stages" argument, with sooner 
or later back then, every opponent of the proletariat's revolution in Russia 
pretending at some knowledge of Marxism deploying the "not now, we're not 
ready" argument against the actual existence of the workers' seizure of 
power.

So we need to ask, what are the elements that would indicate that capitalism 
has indeed developed enough, that the proletariat has developed beyond 
contradiction and to antagonism, that bourgeois private property is 
obsolete?  Would we say, only where and when agriculture is conducted on a 
large, and largely mechanized, scale, with minimal labor inputs?  Would we 
say, only where and when tenant-farming, debt-peonage, hacienda/plantation 
agriculture have been replaced by "free" yeoman farmers?  Would we say only 
where industrial production is  X percent of GDP?  How do we know when 
capitalism has reached the wall, or the curve, or the event horizon?  Would 
we say, only where X amount of the population lives in urban areas?

Well let's first consider the above "markers."  The historical facts are 
that between, 1885 and 1975,  capital's intrusion into less capitalistically 
developed areas has actually supported the power of the hacienda, the 
plantation; has actually fed the force of debt-peonage, tenant-farming; 
limiting the mechanization of agriculture.  Capitalism in fact had fused all 
these modern indicators with maintenance of the most backward and archaic 
organizations of la

Re: [Marxism] Oh shit

[Brett Murphy]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Maybe what's required is a sewerage farm.


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] War and profits

[Louis Proyect]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/25107


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] Bagram: A living hell

[Nasir Khan]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


The US military has allowed journalists into its newly expanded secret
detention centre at Bagram air base in Afghanistan this week. The base
has been described by campaigners as Guantanamo Bay’s “more evil twin”
and the allegations of torture and murder within its secretive walls
continue to this day.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/83515


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] (no subject)

[Waistline2]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Well if I got it right-- let me start by answering just those 4  points:
 
1. In Capital, all 3 volumes, I don't recall Marx utilzing the term  
antagonism to explore capital. My memory sucks for anything but numbers  
these days, but he certainly uses the term contradiction. And throughout  
the body, the totality, of Marx's work it is clearly the internal  
contradictions of capital, its own essence that creates the material  
conditions for revolution, and 
 
2...capital creates the class, which by virtue of the position it occupies  
in the nexus of existing capitalist production can, and must, take power,  
political social power, in order to abolish the production of value and  
organize production for use, production for need. The working class, the  
proletariat, never stands outside the contradictions of capital. At the  
theoretical level, the proletariat develops, as capital develops its  
contradictions, as capital creates the "breaking point" for revolution, the 
 
proletariats moves from being merely the opposite-identity to the  
bourgeoisie, as wage-labor is the opposite identity of capital, to becoming 
 
capital's negation. I should use all caps-- OK, NEGATION. That's much  
better. 
 
Reply 
 
Our last off list exchange was enough to compel me to add Marx presentation 
 of the general law of negation of the negation. 
 
Marx does not use the word antagonism to explore "capital."  A search  of 
the word antagonism in the Collected Works of Marx and Engles turn up over  
200 entries, without any - I found, in Capital 1, 2 and 3. I did not check 
out  anything close to all the entries. Nor did the search show any usage of 
the term  and concept "nodal line" in Capital. Nodal line as a measure is 
used in  Anti-Duhring. 
 
Marx and Engels use the term antagonism generously and in different ways.  
In all instances to describe a movement of classes rather than production of 
 value. Negation is a different concept from antagonism. Bourgeois private  
property is antagonistic to private property of the small producer, without 
 negating private property. 
 
In Capital Vol. 1, Marx outlines the whole historical course of private  
property.. Marx unfolds the dialectic of contradictory development of the 
forms  of private ownership in which each successive stage grows out of its 
predecessor  and appearing as its negation, negates itself,.in turn by the 
force 
of the  development of the contradiction.  Both the conversion of 
small-scale  private ownership of means of production into large-scale 
capitalist 
ownership  and also the conversion of the latter - bourgeois private property, 
into social  ownership proceed based on the development of the essential 
contradiction in the  mode of production itself. Each phase in the development 
of the form of private  ownership resolves the determined form of the 
contradiction that belongs to the  previous stage of development of the 
material 
power of productive forces. 
 
It is a "determined form" because "form" corresponds to and exist as an  
expression of property within a certain state of development of the material  
power. 
 
All my mumbo jumble means is that the essential - fundamental,  
contradiction, THAT IS mode of production is not the form of property through  
which 
"material power" and "means," - "relations of production," express  
themselves. Rather we are talking about productive forces + labor on the one  
hand, 
and how peoples organize themselves to deploy these productive forces on  the 
other; (stop pause),  . . . . . with the property relations within in  which 
they have been at work. 
 
Productive forces, as instruments, tools and human ingenuity + the  
compulsion arising from deploying these means of production, evolves before the 
 
appearance of private property and are the essential condition upon which  
private property becomes activated. 
 
Mode of production contains its distinct internal process - the unity of  
means and relations. Means and relations are isolated as the contradiction  
internal to mode of production. Every internal process is the environment for 
 some other internal process. The earth is internal to "our" - the, solar 
system  which is part of a large reality containing it. But the earth is the 
environment  for all earthly processes. Nature is the environment of man and 
the means of  production are/is the environment of society. Means are only 
"means"  shaping  relations because they are deployed towards a purpose. 
Society is  the environment of the class struggle and the list Is never ending. 
Nature is  united into a whole. Concepts are deployed to unravel a process. 
 
Marx deploys the concept negation with a purpose. In my opinion negation  
and negation of the negati

[Marxism] Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan

[Nasir Khan]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Jeremy Scahill, The Nation, Nov 23, 2009

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi,
members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a
secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected
Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value
targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an
investigation by The Nation has found.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091207/scahill


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] A new analysis is painfully lacking

[Barry Brooks]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


How to create a comprehensive world-left? Find and advocate solutions to
the world's problems. Provide understanding, answers and hope. That must
be based on a new analysis, which is painfully lacking. That new
analysis is our contemporary duty. It helps to just rediscover the old, 
but only to get a lift up in order to make the new.

Forgive me if I repeat some old ideas, but there is some new stuff and 
no one bothered to tell me to shut up yet.

**

Physical Economics

Although it's not easy, we can change the rules of money economics, but
the rules of physical economics can not be changed. Starting with
knowledge of the things we can't change and the things we want we can
begin to outline a new plan for economics.

Intelligent design of an economic system must be rooted in the study of
physical economics. Money and politics tend to obscure the physical
basis of economics. Physical economics does not rely on money values to
measure wealth. The subject use-value of an item to a person is poorly
predicted by money value in the market.

The need to put a number on everything invites the neglect of many of
the most important subjective considerations. Even when measurement is
possible we might remember that we shouldn't bother to measure the
fire's temperature before deciding to not walk on it. There's no need to
put doubtful numbers on things that defy any kind of measurement beyond
the subjective binary we need to decide whether to do it or not.

Actual numbers are less important than an understanding of the functions
that describe how things work, even though the use of numbers in
examples can help us to conceptualize the functions.

One example of the importance of physical economics is afforded by
consideration of the relation between the rate of production and the
goods-in-service resulting from that production. To provide cars for the
whole population engineers will plan to put enough cars into service,
but what rate of production is possible? Since the rate of production is
limited by many factors, provision of the needed fleet of vehicles will
take time.

If we needed 1000 cars in service, but could only produce them at a rate
of 500 cars/year it would take 2 years to provide the desired fleet.
Then, as the fleet wears out it could be replaced with a lower rate of
production, which depends of the life-span of the cars. If the cars
lasted for 10 years the final replacement rate of production would only
be 100 cars/year.

Any rate of production above the replacement rate will increase the cars
in service. We can have vast wealth even after we reduce our consumption
to sustainable low levels if we start to think about providing a fleet
in service rather trying to increase the rate of production. Instead of
producing more we could make durable items last longer. We would have
more wealth with less consumption and pollution, but the money economy
would suffer.

Waste and war make lots of jobs and money, but they squander physical
wealth. High rates of production and full employment are not indications
of economic health. Economic health depends on our physical wealth. That
depends on the quality and quantity of goods in service. Too bad
that the quantity and quality of goods in service can never be boiled
down to a meaningful number.

Money economics can not always guide us to do the right things, because
often the right things don't make money, and the wrong things can make
us rich. The new economy will need a money economics that supports
physical economics. Where money doesn't directly apply to a situation
the best thing money economics can do is to say out of the way. Physical
externalities don't belong in money economics. We could plan around
"hidden" costs, limit them by law, or we could just refuse to do some
things because they are wrong.

Putting artificial prices on physical externalities is money-ism. It
will not lead to effective planning. Artificial costs will not
effectively guide the building of a better system. The external planning
that money-ism hopes to avoid will still be needed. It would be so much
easier to start with the direct implementation of a plan to build a
sustainable physical economy that makes the money economy its slave.
That would allow leaving prices up to the market and physical economics
up to good judgment.

Barry Brooks














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] Red Nation Humanitarium Award Acceptance Letter from Leonard Peltier

[David Thorstad]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==



Interesting point by Peltier (if true) that no Native American 
reservation chairmen meeting with Obama would bring up his incarceration 
when they met with the Great One recently. That suggests how such 
kaffeeklatsches serve as a way of co-opting people rather than advancing 
justice.
David
=
*From:* "cont...@whoisleonardpeltier.info" 

***Sent:* Tue, November 24, 2009 12:04:22 PM
*Subject:* Red Nation Humanitarium Award Acceptance Letter from Leonard 
Peltier

The Red Nation Film Festival has chosen Leonard Peltier to receive its 
first annual Humanitarian Award for his lifelong commitment to 
indigenous and human rights, as well as his leadership in efforts to 
alleviate poverty and domestic abuse among Native peoples. As a 
political prisoner for nearly 34 years, Peltier has helped focus world 
attention on government repression of Native resistance throughout the 
Americas, while the United States continues to make an example out of 
him of the consequences of seeking freedom. Unable to accept the award 
in person, Leonard wrote the following acceptance speech for award:

"I am very humbled to have been honored with the first-ever Red Nation 
Humanitarian Award. I wish the Red Nation Film Festival success in all 
its endeavors, as I believe your event benefits Indian people 
everywhere. With your continued support, I hope that I will one day have 
the freedom to thank you in person.

Film is a powerful medium with the potential to help change one's 
consciousness, which can in turn change the world. Film can transport 
the viewers to places and situations they might never encounter, from 
the mountains and jungles of Peru and Bolivia, to the prison cells of 
Abu Ghraib and Lewisburg, the federal penitentiary where I am held in 
limbo as they transform the facility into a  special site for 
problematic prisoners. Although I have been what they call a model 
prisoner, I am still here because I was jumped and beaten by other 
inmates when  I was transferred to another prison. I am here in spite of 
the fact that I was an ideal candidate for parole by any objective 
standard free of politics. But because of my beliefs, and the FBI's 
fears of exposure of their crimes against the people of Pine Ridge and 
the American Indian Movement, the federal government is determined to 
see to it that I die in prison. So here I sit in a 3 foot by 6 foot cell.

The fact that you are here today at a Native film festival shows how far 
we have come from the days when Hollywood Indians were portrayed by 
white actors as one-dimensional savages standing in the way of 
civilization.  The fact that we are today not only acting in films but 
also directing and producing shows how far we have in the last forty 
years since the American Indian Movement arose from the ashes of the 
Termination Era and demanded political sovereignty and cultural respect .

But how far have we really come? We are still subject on the 
reservations to the jurisdiction of the colonial police force known as 
the FBI, an agency which ignores serious crimes such as sexual assault 
while persecuting those who would stand up for true sovereignty and 
human rights. On other reservations, state police play the same role, 
though their jurisdiction is a legacy of the discredited termination 
era.  Last week, President Obama held what was billed as a historic 
summit meeting with hundreds of tribal officials in attendance, but what 
was really accomplished? My defense committee sent faxes to more than 
500 reservation chairman asking them to speak out on my behalf on this 
unique occasion. A few said they would, but when the opportunity 
presented itself they were too polite to speak out to a president who 
spoke of dissolving tribes in his inauguration speech.

It is the same in movies. While we now have realistic films dealing with 
poverty, alcoholism, and related social problems on the rez, how many 
deal with the root cause—colonial oppression which extinguishes hope for 
the future? I ask you filmmakers to use this powerful medium to help 
create visions for the future and to put our many problems in an 
accurate context. I plead with you, if you can't get me out of prison 
and I am destined to die here, to make my sacrifice worth it in terms of 
creating a more sustainable future for our children and future 
generations. "

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,
Leonard Peltier "






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] Another side of the Berlin Wall

[Lueko Willms]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Nestor Gorojovsky (nmg...@gmail.com) wrote on 2009-11-24 at 15:19:06
in  
about Re: [Marxism] Another side of the Berlin Wall:
> 
> 
> It was not a wall erected to protect the workers.

   OK. Without reserve. 

> But those who tore it down were absolutely decided to turn the workers, 
> particularly the workers in Eastern Germany, into shit.

   Dear Nestor, here I have to disagree with you. 

   The Wall was torn down by workers from East Berlin, not by the
tanks of 
the US, British and French military stationed in West Berlin, nor by
the armored cars of the West Berlin police or by the Bundeswehr of
the FRG. 

   The people of the GDR had not been "decided to turn the workers
into shit", 
but they had not the understanding of the actual situation, and left
the power 
to the German bourgeoisie. They had illusions, and most were baffled
later to 
find out what had really happened to them. 

   I remember those workers from a factory in Leipzig which I met at
one of 
those "Monday demonstrations": they were eager to get a capitalist
from West 
Germany as a new boss, because they hoped that this would improve
their 
situation, and bring them the same material advantages which they
saw, or 
thought to see, at their class comrades or personal relatives in the
West. 

   The fact is, that four decades of stalinist burocratic rule had
managed to 
eradicate class consciousness in the working class. It will still
take some time, before a new beginning can be made on a mass scale. 

   But, OK, we know that the only stable element is that there can be
big surprises at every moment, and that history can move faster than
we ever thought at the least expected moments. 

  
Saludos revolucionarios,  
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany




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] Come back Karl

[Louis Proyect]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Bhaskar Sunkara wrote:
>  Isn't the first task to reconstitute a relevant Marxist Left in the West to
> acknowledge the reasons for the historic failures of Marxism and the Left's
> defeats in the 30s and 60s? 

No. And that's that.


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] HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE 2009: ANOTHER WORLD IS NECESSARY: CRISIS, STRUGGLE AND POLITICAL ALTERNATIVES

[Verso Mail]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==




ANOTHER WORLD IS NECESSARY: CRISIS, STRUGGLE AND POLITICAL ALTERNATIVES



The sixth annual Historical Materialism conference takes place next weekend, 
27th to 29th November at SOAS and Birkbeck, London.



Pre-registration closes November 24. Book here:





Programme, abstracts and other information here:





Speakers include:

Shlomo Sand * Julian Stallabrass * Peter Hallward * Fredric Jameson



For more information about Shlomo Sand's new book THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH 
PEOPLE: http://inventionofthejewishpeople.com/



Fredric Jameson's new book VALENCES OF THE DIALECTIC is out now: 
http://www.versobooks.com/books/ghij/ij-titles/jameson_f_valences.shtml



Other speakers include: Gilbert Achcar * Robert Albritton * Kevin Anderson * 
Jairus Banaji * Wendy Brown * Alex Callinicos * Vivek Chibber * Hester 
Eisenstein * Ben Fine * Ferruccio Gambino * Lindsey German * John Holloway * 
Bob Jessop * David McNally * China Mieville * Kim Moody * Peter Osborne * Leo 
Panitch * Moishe Postone * Sheila Rowbotham * Hillel Ticktin * Kees Van Der 
Pijl * Hilary Wainright



Panels include: APOCALYPSE MARXISM * ART AGAINST CAPITALISM * CLASS AND 
POLITICS IN THE 'GLOBAL SOUTH' * COGNITIVE MAPPING, TOTALITY AND THE REALIST 
TURN * COMMODIFYING HEALTH CARE IN THE UK * CUBAN REVOLUTION AND CUBAN SOCIETY 
* DERIVATIVES * DIMENSIONS OF THE FOOD CRISIS * ECOLOGICAL CRISIS * EMPIRE AND 
IMPERIALISM * ENERGY, WASTE AND CAPITALISM * FINANCE, THE HOUSING QUESTION AND 
URBAN POLITICS * GLOBAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS * GRAMSCI RELOADED * 
INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CRISIS * LABOUR BEYOND THE FACTORY * LATIN AMERICAN 
WORKING CLASSES * LINEAGES OF NEOLIBERALISM * MARXISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE * 
MIGRATION * PHILOSOPHY AND COMMUNISM IN THE EARLY MARX * POSTNEOLIBERALISM * 
RACE, NATION AND ORIENTALISM * RED PLANETS: MARXISM AND SCIENCE FICTION *  
REMEMBERING PETER GOWAN AND CHRIS HARMAN * REVOLUTIONARY THEORY, AUTONOMIST 
MARXISM AND THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY * SLAVERY AND CAPITALISM IN THE 
US SOUTH * STUDENT MOVEMENTS AND YOUTH REVOLTS * THE CRITIQUE OF RELIGION AND 
THE CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM * UTOPIAS, DYSTOPIAS AND SOCIALIST BIOPOLITICS.




Visit Verso's new blog for information on our upcoming events, new reviews and 
publications and special offers.
http://versouk.wordpress.com/

And get updates on Twitter too!
http://twitter.com/VersoBooksUK




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] Come back Karl

[Louis Proyect]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Dogan Gocmen wrote:
> Louis, the issue I am raising is how to create a comprehensive world-left
> front against world-capitalism.
> That we touch also, deriving from the article you forwarded to the list, is
> unavoidable as the past is part of our present.
> However the focus is on the present as I tried to make clear.
> 

My concern is not so much with comrades making reference to the past in 
discussing the present. It is rather the tendency to resort to the 
language of "betrayal" that I find so tiresome. Indeed, it would be one 
thing if such language was used sparingly but I am afraid that 
listserv's tend to create a hothouse atmosphere for these kinds of 
charges that are repeated ad infinitum.


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] Come back Karl

[Bhaskar Sunkara]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Not that I'm unhappy to not get interminable debates about Trotsky and
Stalin's legacy in my inbox, but your choice of language is interesting.
 Isn't the first task to reconstitute a relevant Marxist Left in the West to
acknowledge the reasons for the historic failures of Marxism and the Left's
defeats in the 30s and 60s?  This is especially important if we admit that a
large chunk of these defeats were self-inflicted.

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

>
> Reminder. I set up http://groups.yahoo.com/group/soviet_legacy/ for
> those who want to call attention to ideological poisoning that took
> place 75 years ago.
>
> Marxmail, on the other hand, was established to discuss problems facing
> the left today.
>

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] Come back Karl

[Dogan Gocmen]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


2009/11/24 Louis Proyect:
Marxmail, on the other hand, was established to discuss problems facing
the left today.

Dogan:
Louis, the issue I am raising is how to create a comprehensive world-left
front against world-capitalism.
That we touch also, deriving from the article you forwarded to the list, is
unavoidable as the past is part of our present.
However the focus is on the present as I tried to make clear.


Dogan Göcmen
(http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/)
Author of The Adam Smith Problem:
Reconciling Human Nature and Society in
The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris,
London&New York 2007

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] Another side of the Berlin Wall

[Adam Richmond]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


The wall was a response to imperialist provocation and a very poor one at 
that.  It was a bureaucratic, cruel, and barbarous response.  It did not 
safeguard socialism in the short on long term, it instead divided working class 
families, split the potential power of a united working class in Germany, and 
safeguarded the narrow Stalinist interests of the SED. 

Gay people may have had more "on paper" legal rights in East Berlin, but the 
cultural explosion of the gay scene in West Berlin was far more inspiring and 
compelling than any anemic gay scene in East Berlin. 

As for the "picket line means do not cross" lingoit's a pathetic attempt to 
give a working class fig-leaf to a monstrosity that the East German working 
class hated.  The main danger to East German socialism was not in West Germany, 
but in the wretched police government of the SED.

Adam Richmond
Ex neo-marcyite
SF, CA 



  

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] Corp Profits data

[brad bauerly]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


BEA Corporate Profits release.  Especially interesting is this: "Domestic
profits of financial corporations increased $97.0 billion in the third
quarter, compared with an increase of $28.5 billion in the second.  Domestic
profits of nonfinancial corporations increased
$12.9 billion in the third quarter, compared with an increase of $29.8
billion in the second."



 Profits from current production (corporate profits with inventory valuation
and capital
consumption adjustments) increased $130.0 billion in the third quarter,
compared with an increase of
$43.8 billion in the second quarter.  Current-production cash flow (net cash
flow with inventory
valuation adjustment) -- the internal funds available to corporations for
investment -- increased $41.6
billion in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of $30.5 billion in
the second.

Taxes on corporate income increased $6.7 billion in the third quarter,
compared with an increase
of $35.6 billion in the second.  Profits after tax with inventory valuation
and capital consumption
adjustments increased $123.3 billion in the third quarter, compared with an
increase of $8.2 billion in
the second.  Dividends decreased $12.7 billion compared with a decrease of
$62.1 billion; current-
production undistributed profits increased $136.1 billion, compared with an
increase of $70.3 billion.

Domestic profits of financial corporations increased $97.0 billion in the
third quarter, compared
with an increase of $28.5 billion in the second.  Domestic profits of
nonfinancial corporations increased
$12.9 billion in the third quarter, compared with an increase of $29.8
billion in the second.  In the third
quarter, real gross value added of nonfinancial corporations increased, and
profits per unit of real value
added increased.  The increase in unit profits reflected a decrease in unit
nonlabor costs that more than
offset a decrease in unit prices; unit labor costs were unchanged.

The rest-of-the-world component of profits increased $20.1 billion in the
third quarter, in contrast
to a decrease of $14.6 billion in the second.  This measure is calculated as
(1) receipts by U.S. residents
of earnings from their foreign affiliates plus dividends received by U.S.
residents from unaffiliated
foreign corporations minus (2) payments by U.S. affiliates of earnings to
their foreign parents plus
dividends paid by U.S. corporations to unaffiliated foreign residents.  The
third-quarter increase was
accounted for by an increase in receipts and a slight decrease in payments.

Profits before tax increased $156.2 billion in the third quarter, compared
with an increase of $90.6
billion in the second.  The before-tax measure of profits does not reflect,
as does profits from current
production, the capital consumption and inventory valuation adjustments.
These adjustments convert
depreciation of fixed assets and inventory withdrawals reported on a
tax-return, historical-cost basis to
the current-cost measures used in the national income and product accounts.
The capital consumption
adjustment increased $9.2 billion in the third quarter (from -$128.6 billion
to -$119.4 billion), compared
with an increase of $16.3 billion in the second.  The inventory valuation
adjustment decreased $35.5
billion (from $18.1 billion to -$17.4 billion), compared with a decrease of
$63.0 billion.

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] Come back Karl

[Bhaskar Sunkara]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


The system collapsed, because of Western bankers and economically it
couldn't have continued for much longer.  Thatcher and Bush both were wary
of any revolutionary ruptures in Eastern Europe and the course of events
didn't suit their model of how the collapse of Stalinism should have
continued.  The system was plagued by its contradictions and collapsed, but
that *doesn't* mean it wasn't a historic defeat for the Left.
 Destalinization didn't occur, but an authoritarian, neoliberal capitalism
took root.  I don't see how the spread of capitalist global hegemony can't
been seen as a defeat for the anticapitalist Left.

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 10:01 AM, Dogan Gocmen wrote:

> Dogan:
> Well, this was not my claim. I said that the defeat of first socialist
> attempts was also the defeat of the left in general.
> This includes all sections or fractions of the left. However, leftists
> attacking SU they did not cause the defeat but they
>  contributed to that direction.

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] Another side of the Berlin Wall

[Dogan Gocmen]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


2009/11/24 S. Artesian:
This is a touching commentary which ignores the significant question:  Why
did the wall fall?  Why, if it was a wall erected to protect the workers,
was there no organized movement of workers to defend the wall?  Of course,
we might ask the same thing about the "workers states."  In fact, we have to
ask the same question about the so-called workers states.

Dogan:
From historical point of view your question, as important as it is, is a
secondaty one.
The primary question is why did the left in general not suceed save these
first socialists attempt.
I say primary question because the same mistakes the left made in that
period of time are likely to
be made today in relation to Venezuela. If Venezuela fails it would be the
failure of the left in general.
Therefore I support Venezuela without any precondition as Clara Zetkin
supported the Soviet Union.
--
Dogan Göcmen
(http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/)
Author of The Adam Smith Problem:
Reconciling Human Nature and Society in
The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris,
London&New York 2007

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] Come back Karl

[S. Artesian]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


Yes, that is correct-- I used that as a lead in to explore the real sources 
of the collapse.

I responded to your other points in the rest of the post.

The fundamental question is  why did the fSU and its satellites/allies 
collapse, and collapse when they did?

There is either a Marxist analysis, which explains this in terms of internal 
class relations as impacted by international class relations, or 
there's. conspiracy theory.  I sure we both reject the latter and are 
more interested in the former in order to avoid a repeat.
- Original Message - 
From: "Dogan Gocmen" 
To: "David Schanoes" 
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 10:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Come back Karl




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] Come back Karl

[Dogan Gocmen]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


2009/11/21 S. Artesian:
The "left in general" did not cause the collapse of those "first historical
attempts."

Dogan:
Well, this was not my claim. I said that the defeat of first socialist
attempts was also the defeat of the left in general.
This includes all sections or fractions of the left. However, leftists
attacking SU they did not cause the defeat but they
contributed to that direction.


---
Dogan Göcmen
(http://dogangocmen.wordpress.com/)
Author of The Adam Smith Problem:
Reconciling Human Nature and Society in
The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, I. B. Tauris,
London&New York 2007

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] Price tags in the war on terror

[Louis Proyect]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


NY Times, November 15, 2009
High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War
By CHRISTOPHER DREW

While President Obama’s decision about sending more troops to 
Afghanistan is primarily a military one, it also has substantial budget 
implications that are adding pressure to limit the commitment, senior 
administration officials say.

The latest internal government estimates place the cost of adding 40,000 
American troops and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces, as 
favored by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied 
commander in Afghanistan, at $40 billion to $54 billion a year, the 
officials said.

Even if fewer troops are sent, or their mission is modified, the rough 
formula used by the White House, of about $1 million per soldier a year, 
appears almost constant.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us/politics/15cost.html

---

NY Times, November 24, 2009
Deal Ends Legal Fight Over London Police Killing
By JOHN F. BURNS and ALAN COWELL

LONDON — Scotland Yard and the family of a Brazilian electrician shot 
dead by police officers who mistook him for a terrorist said Monday that 
they had agreed on a compensation deal after more than four years of 
wrangling and dispute.

While no amount was specified, a British newspaper, The Daily Mail, said 
the sum could be in the region of $165,000.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/world/europe/24britain.html




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] Another side of the Berlin Wall

[Dogan Gocmen]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


 WW COMMENTARY
Another side of the Berlin Wall
By Greg Butterfield
 Published Nov 20, 2009 11:10 PM

Twenty years ago, a labor organization was on strike under very difficult
conditions.

This workers’ organization and its leadership were castigated by the
corporate media. The bosses threatened, cajoled and bribed people to cross
the picket line. Scabs were brought in.

The heads of the international union colluded with the capitalists to
undermine the strike.

Eventually, the strike was lost. But that wasn’t enough for the bosses.

Not satisfied with lowering the workers’ wages and benefits and breaking the
union, they sent their state apparatus after the strike leaders with
accusations of heinous crimes. The former president was driven into exile to
escape prosecution.

The labor organization in question was Amalgamated Transit Workers Union
Local 1202, which went on strike against behemoth Greyhound Bus Lines in
February 1990.

But everything written above also applies to the German Democratic Republic
–socialist East Germany–and the fall of the Berlin Wall a few months
earlier, in November 1989. Both the capitalist class and some misinformed
progressives have been crowing over the 20th anniversary of that event.

*Picket line means ‘Do Not Cross!’*

Ask anyone who’s been on strike if it is ever okay to cross a picket line,
and you will likely hear a resounding “No!”

The Berlin Wall–so maligned and condemned by war-making imperialists and
hand-wringing liberals alike–was nothing but a picket line on a much larger
scale.

The wall was erected in 1961 in response to provocations from U.S.
imperialism and its West German junior partner meant to destroy the attempt
to build socialism in eastern Germany. These provocations included
infiltrating East Berlin with anti-communist agents, military threats, and
bribing specialists whose labor was need by the workers’ state—the so-called
“brain drain.”

The disgusting myth that the Berlin Wall was erected to destroy the freedom
of Berliners, immortalized in President John F. Kennedy’s famous speech, is
just the opposite of the truth. The capitalist powers wanted to crush the
working class’ freedom to build a society unchained from the profit motive.

The Berlin Wall was a world away from the apartheid wall built by Israel
around Palestinian population centers, the U.S./South Korean military wall
that separates family members from North Korea, or the expanded U.S. wall
against immigrants on the border with Mexico.

What is the difference? Those walls are aimed at repressing the workers and
oppressed.

The Berlin Wall, by contrast, was built in defense of the workers and
oppressed.

*Socialist Germany’s accomplishments*

The GDR wasn’t the product of a classical revolutionary uprising. It was
formed by an alliance of German communist, socialist, and workers’ movements
that had resisted Nazism and survived World War II, and the Soviet Red Army
that liberated the eastern part of the country, all under the military and
economic pressure of the U.S.-initiated Cold War. It was only established
after U.S. imperialism and their new allies in the vanquished German ruling
class had begun to build up West Germany as a bulwark of aggression against
the USSR and its allies.

In some ways, it was a halfway house of socialism.

But whatever its faults, the GDR was a workers’ state that provided jobs,
housing and health care for all its residents. It provided aid and support,
including military and medical aid, to national liberation movements
throughout the world, including the struggle against apartheid in southern
Africa.

The GDR provided a safe haven for refugees from fascist terror in countries
like Chile and Argentina. Socialist Germany also provided jobs and education
for guest workers and students from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East–many
of whom were terrorized or driven out by fascist attackers in the early
1990s after reunification with imperialist West Germany.

East Germany was far ahead of any country in the world in
lesbian/gay/bi/trans rights and freedoms. The gay liberation movement as we
know it grew up within the German socialist and communist movements of the
19th and early 20th centuries.

Regarding women’s rights to education, jobs and housing, and especially in
establishing extensive child care, the GDR made enormous strides. Much of
this progress was wiped away when the GDR fell.

The German Democratic Republic had a right to defend its sovereignty from
imperialism, all the more so since the border between East and West Germany
was also the border between the imperialist and the pro-socialist world
camps.

Those who cannot or will not defend the right of a workers’ organization to
defend itself—whether it is a union, a resistance movement or a

[Marxism] Black youth suffer 1930s type unemployment

[Louis Proyect]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/23/AR2009112304092.html
Blacks hit hard by economy's punch
34.5 percent of young African American men are unemployed

By V. Dion Haynes
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

These days, 24-year-old Delonta Spriggs spends much of his time cooped 
up in his mother's one-bedroom apartment in Southwest Washington, the TV 
blaring soap operas hour after hour, trying to stay out of the streets 
and out of trouble, held captive by the economy. As a young black man, 
Spriggs belongs to a group that has been hit much harder than any other 
by unemployment.

Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression 
proportions -- 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate 
for the general U.S. population. And last Friday, the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics reported that unemployment in the District, home to many 
young black men, rose to 11.9 percent from 11.4 percent, even as it 
stayed relatively stable in Virginia and Maryland.

His work history, Spriggs says, has consisted of dead-end jobs. About a 
year ago, he lost his job moving office furniture, and he hasn't been 
able to find steady work since. This summer he completed a construction 
apprenticeship program, he says, seeking a career so he could avoid 
repeating the mistake of selling drugs to support his 3-year-old 
daughter. So far the most the training program has yielded was a 
temporary flagger job that lasted a few days.

"I think we're labeled for not wanting to do nothing -- knuckleheads or 
hardheads," said Spriggs, whose first name is pronounced Dee-lon-tay. 
"But all of us ain't bad."

Construction, manufacturing and retail experienced the most severe job 
losses in this down economy, losses that are disproportionately 
affecting men and young people who populated those sectors. That is 
especially playing out in the District, where unemployment has risen 
despite the abundance of jobs in the federal government.

Traditionally the last hired and first fired, workers in Spriggs's age 
group have taken the brunt of the difficult economy, with cost-conscious 
employers wiping out the very apprenticeship, internship and 
on-the-job-training programs that for generations gave young people a 
leg up in the work world or a second chance when they made mistakes. 
Moreover, this generation is being elbowed out of entry-level positions 
by older, more experienced job seekers on the unemployment rolls who 
willingly trade down just to put food on the table.

The jobless rate for young black men and women is 30.5 percent. For 
young blacks -- who experts say are more likely to grow up in 
impoverished racially isolated neighborhoods, attend subpar public 
schools and experience discrimination -- race statistically appears to 
be a bigger factor in their unemployment than age, income or even 
education. Lower-income white teens were more likely to find work than 
upper-income black teens, according to the Center for Labor Market 
Studies at Northeastern University, and even blacks who graduate from 
college suffer from joblessness at twice the rate of their white peers.

Young black women have an unemployment rate of 26.5 percent, while the 
rate for all 16-to-24-year-old women is 15.4 percent.

Victoria Kirby, 22, has been among that number. In the summer of 2008, a 
D.C. publishing company where Kirby was interning offered her a job that 
would start upon her graduation in May 2009 from Howard University. But 
the company withdrew the offer in the fall of 2008 when the economy 
collapsed.

Kirby said she applied for administrative jobs on Capitol Hill but was 
told she was overqualified. She sought a teaching position in the D.C. 
public schools through the Teach for America program but said she was 
rejected because of a flood of four times the usual number of applicants.

Finally, she went back to school, enrolling in a master's of public 
policy program at Howard. "I decided to stay in school two more years 
and wait out the recession," Kirby said.
On a tightrope

The Obama administration is on a tightrope, balancing the desire to 
spend billions more dollars to create jobs without adding to the $1.4 
trillion national deficit. Yet some policy experts say more attention 
needs to be paid to the intractable problems of underemployed workers -- 
those who like Spriggs may lack a high school diploma, a steady work 
history, job-readiness skills or a squeaky-clean background.

"Increased involvement in the underground economy, criminal activity, 
increased poverty, homelessness and teen pregnancy are the things I 
worry about if we continue to see more years of high unemployment," said 
Algernon Austin, a sociologist and director of the race, ethnicity and 
economy progr

[Marxism] NY Times review of Shlomo Sand book

[Louis Proyect]

==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==


(A surprisingly evenhanded review.)

NY Times, November 24, 2009
Book Calls Jewish People an ‘Invention’
By PATRICIA COHEN

Despite the fragmented and incomplete historical record, experts pretty 
much agree that some popular beliefs about Jewish history simply don’t 
hold up: there was no sudden expulsion of all Jews from Jerusalem in 
A.D. 70, for instance. What’s more, modern Jews owe their ancestry as 
much to converts from the first millennium and early Middle Ages as to 
the Jews of antiquity.

Other theories, like the notion that many of today’s Palestinians can 
legitimately claim to be descended from the ancient Jews, are familiar 
and serious subjects of study, even if no definitive answer yet exists.

But while these ideas are commonplace among historians, they still 
manage to provoke controversy each time they surface in public, beyond 
the scholarly world. The latest example is the book “The Invention of 
the Jewish People,” which spent months on the best-seller list in Israel 
and is now available in English. Mixing respected scholarship with 
dubious theories, the author, Shlomo Sand, a professor at Tel Aviv 
University, frames the narrative as a startling exposure of suppressed 
historical facts. The translated version of his polemic has sparked a 
new wave of coverage in Britain and has provoked spirited debates online 
and in seminar rooms.

Professor Sand, a scholar of modern France, not Jewish history, candidly 
states his aim is to undercut the Jews’ claims to the land of Israel by 
demonstrating that they do not constitute “a people,” with a shared 
racial or biological past. The book has been extravagantly denounced and 
praised, often on the basis of whether or not the reader agrees with his 
politics.

The vehement response to these familiar arguments — both the reasonable 
and the outrageous — highlights the challenge of disentangling 
historical fact from the sticky web of religious and political myth and 
memory.

Consider, for instance, Professor Sand’s assertion that Palestinian Arab 
villagers are descended from the original Jewish farmers. Nearly a 
century ago, early Zionists and Arab nationalists touted the blood 
relationship as the basis of a potential alliance in their respective 
struggles for independence. Israel’s first prime minister, David 
Ben-Gurion, and Yitzhak Ben Zvi, Israel’s longest-serving president, 
made this very argument in a book they wrote together in 1918. The next 
year, Emir Feisal, who organized the Arab revolt against the Ottoman 
empire and tried to create a united Arab nation, signed a cooperation 
agreement with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann that declared the two 
were “mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between 
the Arabs and the Jewish people.”

Both sides later dropped the subject when they realized it was not 
furthering their political goals.

(Though no final consensus has emerged on the ancestral link between 
Palestinians and Jews, Harry Ostrer, director of the Human Genetics 
Program at New York University Langone Medical Center, who has been 
studying the genetic organization of Jews, said, “The assumption of 
lineal descent seems reasonable.”)

Books challenging biblical and conventional history continually pop up, 
but what distinguishes the dispute over origins from debates about, say, 
the reality of the exodus from Egypt or the historical Jesus, is that it 
is so enmeshed in geopolitics. The Israeli Declaration of Independence 
states: “After being forcibly exiled from their Land, the People kept 
faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and 
hope for their return to it.” The idea of unjust exile and rightful 
return undergirds both the Jews’ and the Palestinians’ conviction that 
each is entitled to the land.

Since Professor Sand’s mission is to discredit Jews’ historical claims 
to the territory, he is keen to show that their ancestry lines do not 
lead back to ancient Palestine. He resurrects a theory first raised by 
19th-century historians, that the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, to 
whom 90 percent of American Jews trace their roots, are descended from 
the Khazars, a Turkic people who apparently converted to Judaism and 
created an empire in the Caucasus in the eighth century. This idea has 
long intrigued writers and historians. In 1976, Arthur Koestler wrote 
“The Thirteenth Tribe” in the hopes it would combat anti-Semitism; if 
contemporary Jews were descended from the Khazars, he argued, they could 
not be held responsible for Jesus’ Crucifixion.

By now, experts who specialize in the subject have repeatedly rejected 
the theory, concluding that the shards of evidence are inconclusive or 
misleading, said Michael Terry, the chief librarian of the Je