[Marxism-Thaxis] 30 year papers trailer for Dame Stella
In Britain under the 30 year rule, a bundle of secret government papers of 1970 have been partially made public. Some of these show the extent of espionage around the dockers' strike. The Guardian report suggests that more information may be published by the former head of MI5 when her book comes out later this year. >Focused mainly on the role of communists and their allies in the strike - >which was led by the then TGWU general secretary, Jack Jones - the reports >reveal the extent of MI5's undercover penetration and surveillance of the >left at the time and contain a relatively sophisticated analysis of the >private differences among the dockers' leaders. > >Their release comes at a time when Stella Rimington, who headed MI5 in the >early 1990s, is about to publish her memoirs in the teeth of fierce >resistance in Whitehall. > >Dame Stella worked for MI5's political subversion department, F branch, in >the early 1970s, when its role was massively expanded in response to >increasing industrial militancy on the left. She later headed MI5's >"counter-subversion" operations against the 1984-85 miners' strike. > >The 1970 docks strike was the first of a series of increasingly effective >stoppages during the Heath administration, which culminated in the miners' >strike of 1974, the three-day week and the Tories' electoral defeat. > >The MI5 briefings on the July docks walkout - passed to the prime minister >every couple of days and based on agents' reports, phone tapping and >bugging - include accounts of private meetings between Communist party >officials and dockers' shop stewards and even internal discussions about >the editorial line of the Morning Star, described as "the subject of much >anxious consideration". Perhaps Dame Stella and Melita Norwood could jointly host a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Chris Burford London ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Further blow to death penalty
re previous exchanges with Charles, I thought it worth reporting how this item got selected for British news reports. Perhaps it does not stand out in the US press but to British and perhaps European eyes it looks scandalous. The worst thing is you must be killing innocent people who do not get released. Michael Roy Graham Jr was released after 13 years on death row because of what Louisiana prosecutors called a "total lack of credible evidence". Long term, even the massively culturally self-sufficent and smug USA must start becoming aware of the way this sort of behaviour is regarded in other parts of the world - as barbarity. Since Bush is a active practitioner of the death penalty, would not a civil rights campaign on this issue, put him on the defensive? Chris Burford London ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Oil and theory of capitalist crises
Mark made another important point in his post of 14 Sept (S11) which I wanted to come back to. (The intensity of Mark's posts and the quality of his information makes it difficult to keep up, but the problems of the global economy will not go away anyway, so here goes.) I accept the broad case Mark argues, for example in his persuasive piece "A New Energy Crisis" of 13th Sept. Also the Crash List has been pursuing this theme, and among other things I have picked up from there, I agree the arguments first presented by Hubbert, and now called the Hubbert Curve, about the peak of oil production. www.hubbertpeak.com However the point I wanted to come back to seems to be not quite right from a marxist point of view, or if it is right, it raises some interesting questions about how to apply the marxist theory of crises to the present phenomena. Mark wrote: >to anyone who's done their >homework this cannot hide the fact that (since 1973 at least) >energy-shortages have been behind economic cycles, have >led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and to >3 mideast wars, and are now resulting in the Fourth and Final Oil Shock Now the marxist theory of capitalist crises, as I understand it, describes the endless tendency for surplus value to accumulate more surplus value, to the business cycle accelerating until it reaches its rate- limiting step in the contradiction between capitalist accumulation and the limited purchasing power of the masses of working people. There are sub-phases to this as stocks of overproduced commodities accumulate, which usually first trigger a financial crisis, before a general economic crisis ensues, with the destruction of a significant amount of capital, living and dead. This theory of crises depends on exploitation of labour power. Marx recognises exploitation of resources too, but his theory of capitalist crises is not dependent on them. Mark's point above is compelling enough in that a short supply of a basic commodity like oil may imperil the profitability of certain sectors of the economy short of a general economic crisis of capitalism. But it would be theoretically risky to substitute important ecological arguments for the marxian theory of crises. That theory is independent of what technology is used by capitalism. Indeed it presumes constant revolutionising of the means of production under capitalism. Mark is persuasive about the arguments that the human race is coming up against the finite limits of extractable oil. But that does not necessarily unfortunately mean the end of capitalism. Capitalism wobble as a result. But if you don't push it, it won't fall. Chris Burford ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: M-TH: Fwd: Mongolian CP wins in a Landslide
At 10:34 05/07/00 -0400, you wrote: >Communists reclaim power in Mongolia vote >Landslide victory could limit freedoms, analysts say > >By Jeremy Page, Reuters, 7/4/2000 > > >ULAN BATOR, Mongolia - Mongolia's former communist rulers have been swept >back to power in a landslide election victory, state media said yesterday, >crushing the forces that helped usher in democracy a decade ago. > > >State radio said the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, or MPRP, had >won 72 of 76 seats up for grabs in Sunday's election to Parliament, or Great >Hural. That is a fine victory in a country that will be seen in the west as quite peripheral to the global capitalist economy. Presumably the population also feel secure that Russia and China, may provide some insulation against its worst effects. The report is written in such a fashion as to imply it may be the end of "democracy" once again. But that bias should be questioned. Presumably the MPRP should be able to win future elections even in a more diversified economy, without having to restrict basic democratic rights. Who owns the media, might be a crucial question. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Livingstone claims money for London
On the day of his inauguration as Mayor of London, Livingstone played the populist card by claiming that every Londoner, man, woman, and child, pays £50 a week in subsidy to other parts of the country. This amounts to over £19 billion per year. Livingstone is good at popularising statistics and the arithmetic no doubt backs him. However the argument is in essence chauvinistic. It is similar to the argument that the rich developed countries have the greatest financial stake in the IMF and in the United Nations and should therefore have a disproportionate influence on the world economy. London and the South East of England is overwhelmingly the richest part of England, although there are islands of poverty. It illustrates the economic concept of regional city centred economic zones which form the basis of the European Union's economic planning. The volume of commercial traffic may be greatest at the centre, and therefore the wealth greatest, but the regional market must be considered as a whole. Without the large poorer penumbra there would be a much smaller market for the centre to sell to, and exploit. Without a pool of cheaper labour moving gradually towards the centre, wage costs would rise more rapidly and cut the upturn short each time in the capitalist upturn. The law of value must be interpreted dynamically in the economic area as a whole. Without a concept of the non-equilibrium nature of regional economies, and indeed the global economy, the left will be vulnerable to the sort of populist interventions of people like Ken Livingstone. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Livingstone backs Euro
Ken Livingstone is already supping with capitalism with not too long a spoon. Due to be formally invested on Monday as London Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone told GMTV's The Sunday Programme that he was in discussion with major international firms who have investment programmes planned in the UK. "They are all working on one assumption, that is we will be in the Euro by 2003," he said. "If we are not...they will be rethinking their investment plans, I have no doubt about that. Any sign that we were pulling back from that assumption we are on our way in would be devastating for jobs in London." "We have got to play on a world stage. One third of firms in Britain now link in to International Corporations. You can't opt out of the world. You can't stop the world because we want to get off and go back to the 1950s." His argument, and that of John Monks, head of the British Trades Union Congress, is to support industry, including industrial capitalism, against finance capitalism. And not just national industrial capital. Nissan warned earlier this week that jobs could be under threat unless Britain joins the single currency. Mr Monks said that there were "quite a lot of Nissans. Toyota have been saying the same sort of thing and we know it was a factor behind the BMW decision in relation to Longbridge. Is this a compromise too far? ust because Lenin said it, does not make it right, but he did say "From their daily experience the masses know perfectly well the value of geographical and economic ties and the advantage of a big market and a big state." That of course does not mean that people with socialist credentials should become the cheer leaders of industrial capital. But do not the arguments of Livingstone and Monks stand on their own merits? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: e-government
Power without guns? The withering away of the state? Extract from article in the Economist below Chris Burford London SURVEY GOVERNMENT AND THE INTERNET IN DOWNTOWN Phoenix, Arizona, people are queuing in a grubby municipal office to renew their car and truck registrations. They are visibly bored and frustrated, but what can they do? All over the world, people dealing with government departments and agencies are having to engage in dreary and time-consuming activities they would much rather avoid. What is unusual about Arizona is that the locals have a choice. Since 1996, a pioneering project called ServiceArizona has allowed them to carry out a growing range of transactions on the web, from ordering personalised number plates to replacing lost ID cards. Instead of having to stand in a queue at the motor vehicle department, they can go online and renew their registrations 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in a transaction that takes an average of two minutes. What is more, ServiceArizona has not cost taxpayers a cent to set up, and is free to users. The website was built and is maintained and hosted by IBM, which is being paid 2% of the value of each transactionabout $4 for each vehicle registration. But because processing an online request costs only $1.60, compared with $6.60 for a counter transaction, the state also saves money. With 15% of renewals now being processed by ServiceArizona, the motor vehicle department saves around $1.7m a year. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Zimbabwe
At 10:30 24/06/00 +0100, you wrote: >It is clear as to how the Zimbabwe economy is in such a shabby condition. >Despite a mineral rich country it suffers tremendous economic problems. The >fact that these mineral resources are largely owned by imperialist companies >helps explain why the country is so relatively backward. > >Comradely regards >George The high turnout suggests the opposition claims are true that many people are disaffected by the economy, and feel intimidated from expressing their opposition to Zanu publically. However from England I think the main thing is to separate ourselves from the publicity designed to ridicule or demonise the quite reasonable demand of Zanu for a redistribution of the land of the white colonial farmers, who are producing a poisonous cash crop for export dollars. The blame for the state of the Zimbabwean economy should lie on the global financial system rather than on Mugabe. I am doubtful that a win for the MDC will really see progressive change. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Football and finance capitalisml
If Rupert Murdoch was watching the England game last night, no doubt on one of his Sky TV channels, he must be a confused man. How come the richest league in football, the English, could perform so badly? Especially after he had invested so much money in it? Just as off piste is more exciting in skying, so off pitch in football was the real site of the most dramatic battles. Could national governments spot all known criminals and racists from getting to the football venues, what strength of beer would be available, should cafe's have tables and chairs available facing the main town square, how did the Belgian police team compare with the Dutch police team for pace, coordination and results? Keegan's strategy was to pick the best English players from the league, (not that brilliant) and to try to get them to play together. But they lacked ability to work as a team. In his post-mortem they lacked ability to trust each other to pass the ball. So smaller and poorer countries like Portugal and Romania showed much more overall team ability. These are the fruits of treating individual players as individual atomised commodities, bought and sold between companies backed by finance capitalism for the highest fee. Also in broader Gramscian terms it shows the bankruptcy of Little Englandism as an ideology, with supporters from nations like England, outside European civility, sitting handcuffed in the main town squares continent protesting that allowances should be made for their behaviour because their grandfathers allegedly won the last world war. Finance capital will have to think again where it puts its money. In particular in British politics it will now be subtly important how strongly Murdoch's paper, the Sun, continues to play the card of little England jjingoism, in an attempt to prevent the Labour government from joining the European currency union. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Communism gains acceptance in Japan
At 12:43 18/06/00 -0400, you wrote: >Communism gains acceptance in Japan > > Economic problems turn voters away from mainstream parties > > By Sharon Moshavi, Globe Correspondent, 6/18/2000 Interesting article and hopeful, if old prejudices are dying out. But the developments here must be qualified in many ways. They sound similar to the gradual relative rise in respect and acceptability for the Communist Party of Italy. That went hand in hand with developments in Eurocommunism, and also with changes of name. Although the official policy is not to change the name of the CPJ, it is not surprising the question has come up. The article is accompanied by many protestations against anything that may sound like the dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately force lies behind much of politics. Tactically and strategically I am sure the CPJ is right not to imply it will be the first to use force. But from this bourgeois report it could be more explicit about how it is going to neutralise the force of the enemy. It appears to be attracting votes as a sort of protest party concentrating on local activism. It sounds the equivalent in English terms of a cross between the Liberal Democrats and Ken Livingstone. Gathering together all the threads of discontent is a strategy which has Lenin's stamp of approval, and they appear to be occupying a viable niche here, but it is not really communism. Or is it? The report is reminiscent of the situation which Marx and Lenin described in the early 1840's in Germany when all different strata called themselves communists. The CPJ seems to be angling for a return to that sort of acceptance. After all Jesus was a communist, and different sorts of communists have surfaced in different social conditions throughout history. How does the CPJ deal with class contradictions, and finance capital? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Is Chris Buford here?
No, Chris Burford is not here. Or only here long enough to say that I am going away for a week. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: SACP statement on general strike
At 15:11 25/05/00 -0400, you wrote: >SACP salutes South African workers > >Workers in South Africa staged a general strike May 10 under the >leadership of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). >Following is a statement issued by the South African Communist Party >(SACP) on the strike. > >* * * * > >All reports indicate massive and enthusiastic support for the general >strike against job losses and for job creation. The SACP salutes the South >African working class, under the revolutionary leadership of COSATU, for >today's actions. I would be surprised if a trade union organisation could give revolutionary leadership. But this does look a very pointed stance by the SACP against the ANC government. They say the strike is in essence against capitalism, but there are no points made here about the IMF and the domination of global finance capital. Mbeki will say very reasonably, that there is no alternative to the governments policies, while the South African economy is dependent on the credibility of the Rand in the eyes of the handlers of finance capital. Can the SACP square this circle? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Russian 'intervention' in Afghanistan
At 06:44 23/05/00 +1000, Rob wrote: >I see Moscow is threatening to drop some bombs on Afghanistan because the >Taliban is allegedly (and unsurprisingly) helping out the Chechen >separatists. This is consistent with 100 years of imperial assumptions by Russia towards Afghanistan. It is no accident that Putin had himself inaugurated in the throne room of the Czars. (British imperial history makes the contested nature of Afghanistan between different empries quite clear. At least Britain got a thrashing early on.) Policy towards Afghanistan has been one of the big crunches on the left, with certain allegedly marxist groups supporting the Russian invasion of 1970 and the Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty. Unfortunately a large section of the left in the USA and in Europe will once again feel indulgent towards Russia because Afghanistan has undemocratic practices towards women. > the >hegemons du jour prefer their foreign radicals to be of the right - as >Trotsky warned when the boy Hitler first came under notice Can you explain this reference? > - and as Caspian >oil projections might recommend). Can you explain again. Too eliptical. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: British intervention in Sierra Leone
At 08:43 12/05/00 +0100, you wrote: >In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Chris >Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes > > > What Jim is > >opposing is any discrimination between the different actions of imperialist > >powers as to which are progressive and which are not. This is childish > >leftism, ridiculed by Lenin. > >Progressive imperialism? I have often been criticised for insisting on >the persistence of progressive trends within capitalism, such as the >(intermittent) development of productivity, but it would not have >occurred to me to insist on the progressive aspect of imperialism. On the internetit is possible to learn something everyday. Of course it does not mean it is correct just because Lenin had the thought, but his argument seems a credible one:- "Imperialism is as much our 'mortal' enemy as is capitalism. That is so. No Marxist will forget, however, that capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism and that imperialism is progressive compared with pre-monopoly capitalism." An occurrence has just occurred in Jim H's brain. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: British intervention in Sierra Leone
At 08:34 10/05/00 +0100, Jim heartfield wrote: >In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Chris >Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes > >IMO this particular British involvement is progressive and is part of the > >developing process of world governance, so long as it assists the UN and > >the West African peace keeping force to re-organise. I say that, conscious > >at this moment, that the British government deserves strong criticism for > >its interference in the developing land redistribution in Zimbabwe. > >Well, its hardly surprising. Chris has lined up behind ever imperialist >venture in the post-cold war world by my recollection. Cheap shots are part of the internet, but you only have to look at the last passage that Jim quoted, to see that this is a cheap shot. What Jim is opposing is any discrimination between the different actions of imperialist powers as to which are progressive and which are not. This is childish leftism, ridiculed by Lenin. Cannot he see for example a progressive side to the pressure the west brought on Croatia, to remove the repressive and racist features of Tudjman's regime and accept bourgeois democratic norms? This refusal to discriminate between positive and negative policies of imperialism is consistent with the Trotskyist view that opposed participation in the Second World War, something steadfastly propagated by the owner of "the" Marxism list. >It is not the subjective intentions of the imperialists that makes >imperialism Of course. That is why even when we see a positive feature in their policies, we do not "line up" behind them. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: British intervention in Sierra Leone
One of the ways the world could make reparations to Africa is by giving support to the democratic resolution of its conflicts. This Time article characteristically pinpoints a dilemma for western capitalist governments. > May 9, 2000 > > By Tony Karon > > In Kosovo, the West went to war to stop ethnic > cleansing; in Sierra Leone the > international community appears unable to muster the > will and resources to stop > a ragtag guerrilla band that has already killed and > mutilated tens of thousands > more people than Slobodan Milosevic's forces ever did. The British government has sent in 700 troops on the pretext of withdrawing European nationals. They have got out 100 so far. This is a typical excuse for imperialist intervention. Britain has also claimed it has secured Lungi airport for the United Nations. In Parliament the debate is between the Conservatives who demanded a strict assurance that the British involvement was only for the purpose of getting British and Euorpean nationals out, and the Labour government which kept the door open for a wider involvement. From the Guardian webpage today: >Mr Cook said that the operation is >proceeding "smoothly", but said that there >is no timetable for its completion. In the case of East Timor, progressives in the west, such as Chomsky, called for Western intervention. IMO this particular British involvement is progressive and is part of the developing process of world governance, so long as it assists the UN and the West African peace keeping force to re-organise. I say that, conscious at this moment, that the British government deserves strong criticism for its interference in the developing land redistribution in Zimbabwe. I suggest that only left wingers who are in fact anarchists or pacifists would *in this particular context* denounce British intervention in Sierra Leone as imperialist in nature. Chris Burford London > --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Fwd: "Lessons of the LONDON ELECTIONS" - Next L.S.D.F. Meeting
In the interests of pluralism I forward this further discussion statement from someone in CATP and notice of a discussion meeting in London on Sunday 14th May. Chris Burford London Campaign Against Tube Privatisation - http://CATP.listbot.com Now is a good time to re-assess our positions in this election. I think many people got over-excited by just listening to the rest of the left and isolated sections of advanced workers - and (including me, who thought one of Tatchell or the LSA might come closest) failed to make a sober assessment of the balance of forces we were faced with. It is now clear that the "Livingstone factor" was mainly only present in the mayoral race, although it probably exaggerated the left vote, bit not to a significant degree. Nonetheless, Livingstone has won mayor - & he will no doubt claim that his position on voting Labour/Green has been vindicated. As someone who always supported the "labour" part of that, I am not surprised. There was no significant challenge to labour from workers' candidates. The only 2 results at all like that were the 2 people who had the foresight to stand as "pro_livingstone" (one was also "independent labour" and polled strongly), doing very well, up there with the Greens who are an established party. Although it is true that if all the left candidates added up got 5.2% that is hardly earth-shattering on a 34% turnout,and a) it's fantasy politics, in an election this size it is practically impossible to get the left outside labour to unite around one candidate and b) it doesn't necessarily follow that all those that voted CATP or Tatchell would have voted LSA had those 2 options not been standing. A vote for CATP jsut expressed opposition to tube privatisation (progressive and correct but not for the same programme as an LSA vote), whilst many who voted for Tatchell probably did so because of their respect for his work over the years for gay rights and wouldn't necessarily have backed the LSA. It seems to me that the idea that you can "shortcut" your way to success on the back of the fracture and schisms that occurred in the london labour movement over Ken was wrong. The idea that the LSA was some embryo of a mass workers' party of the future, and not just an alliance of a few individuals along with a no.of small propoganda groups, looks to have been proven wrong by events. To me it is clear that although workers are disillusioned with this government and often stay at home rather than vote Labour, there is no sign that they are going to be won over to an LSA type body in the foreseeable future. But now we must all unite to fight tube privatisation - Livingstone appears to be making a stand which is good for all who believe in class politics. I would be intested in the views of the LSA, CATP etc candidates around us about this and also on the related topics about where to go from here. The Meeting will be held: IN: the Calthorpe Arms, Grays Inn Road (corner with Wren Street) FROM: 2.00 pm ON: Sunday 14-MAY-2000 TOPIC: "Lessons of the LONDON ELECTIONS" London Socialist Discussion Forum is supported by "New Interventions" and "What Next?" magazines, and is a forum for non-sectarian discussion of issues facing revolutionary socialists today. If you want to attend you will be very welcome, and if there is any subject that you would like us to discuss, please contact me with the details, and I will bring them up at a planning meeting.
M-TH: Re: UK Far Left Blows Its Chance in London
At 11:17 06/05/00 -0400, you wrote: >See attached article > >Given the proportional election system of the new London Assembly, this >should have been a chance for left socialists to elect a few assembly >members as a beachhead against the centrism of New Labour. The Greens >managed to elect three out of the twenty-five assembly members, but vicious >infighting and sectarian proliferation of candidates assurred that none of >the far left socialist parties got anywhere. It looks like Scargill, the >SWP (IS), Communist Parties and other groups have strongly established their >absolute electoral irrelevance in Britain. If they could not win in an >election where Ken Livingstone was romping to victory with two thumbs firmly >in the eyes of the Tories and Blair's Labour, is there any reason why anyone >will take them seriously after this? Any UK folks with other thoughts? > >Nathan Newman >- >Factions blow their chance >By Ben Leapman > >Extraordinary infighting among five competing socialist factions looks set >to ensure that none achieves success in the London elections. > >Far Left groups have squandered a unique chance of electoral success on the >coat-tails of Ken Livingstone. With the rebel MP streets ahead of Frank >Dobson in the polls, there is a huge appetite among Labour-leaning Londoners >to cast "safe" anti-Government protest votes. > >The 25-member Assembly, to be elected alongside the Mayor on Thursday, >appears ripe for fringe candidates to shine. It has few real powers for >extremists to abuse. The list voting system means parties need only five per >cent support across London to win a seat. > >Yet extraordinary infighting among five competing socialist factions looks >set to ensure that none reaches that threshold. The combined votes of the >far-Left parties may well reach five per cent, but individually it is almost >certain that none of them will. The row could come straight from Monty >Python's Life of Brian, in which the People's Front of Judea accuse the >Judean People's Front of being "splitters". Surely. Greens got three seats in the London Assembly through proportional representation, and the Liberal Democrats (who in some respects are left of New Labour) got four. There is no radical left wing representative to back up Livingstone. Scargill, who actively favoured proportional representation for this purpose (unlike Tony Benn), insisted on heading his Socialist Labour Party. Their leaflet emphasised "London Underground must be kept in public ownership. Both the private finance initiative (PFI, or PPP) *and* New-York-City type bonds mean "privatisation" of the Tube by one means or another. Bonds were Livingstone's answer. Livingstone clearly asked the London Socialist Alliance to keep at arms length so he could win as an independent. However it did not pitch itself as providing a broader lead, but like most left groups concentrated on trying to prove it was purer than the rest. By contrast Trevor Philips, the black journalist, who has been close to Democratic left, has emerged as one of the most influential members of the Labour group on the Assembly and likely to become its first chairperson. Livingstone too has embraced the new pluralist politics. He has gone to each of the parties *including the Conservatives* and invited them to have a representative in his cabinet. The Conservative asked if that included executive office. He replied that that could be negotiated. London could soon have an assembly, like Northern Ireland, that embraces all shades of opinion. On balance this provides a more transparent arena for the left to argue out what really is, and is not, democratic. Yes quite right to deride the sectarian dogmatic left. They do considerable damage in preventing a rational application of a marxist approach. But it is early years yet in learning how this system works. I would predict that a radical left candidate capable of crossing the 5% hurdle in four years time, will need to combine a radical green as well as a socialist stance. But the theory behind this practice must also be seriously discussed. I hope the organisation will be marxist-influenced. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Membership etc
At 13:59 07/05/00 +0200, you wrote: >This possibility was removed after discussions about not making things too >easy for cyberspooks. > >What replaced it was the occasional moderator's report about the numbers >subscribed and a breakdown of their nationalities. > >Cheers, > >Hugh This possibility was removed about 3 years ago, just before the list was moved from Spoons, because spammers were able to get the list of names automatically and bombard subscribers. It may still be necessary. Possibly though the moderator could get the list and post it as an ordinary e-mail message to the list. It is a pity because it reduces the collective spirit of a list. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: CPGB archives
At 07:29 06/05/00 -0700, you wrote: >- Original Message - >From: Barry Buitekant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: Michael Pugliese <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 10:43 PM >Subject: Re: M-TH: CPGB archives > > > > Michael > > > > The CPGB archives are held in the National Museum of Labour History. >Address > > is 103 Princess Street, Manchester M1 6DD. > > > > Two odd things ie I cannot find a website for them. > > Regards > > > > Barry There is not a CPGB website, because the CPGB legally transformed itself into Democratic Left. (Because of the size of the assets this was tested in the courts and found to be consitutionally valid.) A new organisation has taken on the name of CPGB but is criticised by its enemies as Trotskyist. Although no doubt it claims it is morally and ideologically the descendant of the founding spirit of the CPGB there is no organisational continuous line of descent. Democratic left at a conference at the end of last year committed itself to transform into the "New Times Network". The politics are not explicitly marxist. They are explicitly pluralist. The organisation has lost core size and very possibly viability, but has spread in influence in the 90's. It helped to shape the politics of New Labour, as did Marxism Today, the defunct journal of the Eurocommunists. The General Secretary of the Trades Union Council, John Monks, has attended a number of meetings sponsored by Democratic Left, together with other organisations (joint sponsorship was part of DL's style.) The person who is the formost Labour spokesperson on the new Greater London Assembly, the black journalist Trevor Philips, who is likely to become chair of the Assembly, has also attended a number of functions organised by Democratic Left. DL has no democratic centralist structure. Members are not obliged to follow the decisions of the central body. Marxists are not excluded as such, but are expected to subscribe to pluralist politics. As I do. The post of general secretary has been replaced I think by a co-ordinator. The new person who is taking over from Nina Temple, starts work this month. The URL for Democratic Left UK is http://www.democratic-left.org.uk/ This page states that the New Times page was last updated in Febraury 2000. I hope this information is transparently clear. I am glad to hear the archives of the CPGB are in Manchester. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: London Election - Left in a mess
At 13:24 05/05/00 +0100, you wrote: >On Fri, 5 May 2000, Andy Lehrer wrote: > > > The results thus far are disappointing. The LSA's only chance at an > outright > > first-past-the-post seat, Ian Page, has not been elected and as for the > "top-up" > > PR returns the LSA seems to be running between 2-3% with half the votes > counted, > > well below the necessary 5% threshold. > > >The LSA got about 1.6% of top-up votes and 2.7% of constituency votes. >Note exactly brillant. It's worth noting that in total leftwing slates in >the top-up section got around 4%, all the parties were standing on >broadly similar platforms so this isn't unreasonable. Yes, we are going to have to learn how to use this proportional electoral system. Hopefully next time round there will be still more serious debates about where the left should pitch its stall. Of course some groups would rather fight on their own to get 1% of the vote across London, but I predict over the next ten years a group will emerge that will put a more radical reasonably-coherent reformist position. This should still not be about tailing behind bourgeois parties or bourgeois politics. But without the first past the post system, that is less of a danger. How this can link up with revolution, the question John Walker poses, is that this radical party must articulate issues that make sense in terms of immediate tactics as well as with long term goals. At the moment it is the three green councillors who have got the chance. Meanwhile we will have to see whether the extra-parliamentary anarchist anti-capital protestors will find a more effective way of locating their direct action within the context of a larger political space which they have to open up with the help of serious radical reformers. The socialising of land in London would be a pretty radical agenda, and does indeed touch on the Mayor's few powers - over transport and vetoing certain developments. Don't expect the IMF to schedule its next major international conference here in London in the near future! Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: London Election - Left in a mess
At 15:19 04/05/00 +, you wrote: >Dear comrades, > >I have been quietly reading the Left press in relation to the London >Election and Ken Livingstone London's Mayoral candidate which is >happening today. > >A large section of the Trotskyist Left and the Marxist Leninist CPGB >are backing Ken Livingstone and have gathered themselves together >into the London Socialist Alliance and will stand for the Greater >London Authority (where if they are lucky they may win just one >seat!). >John Walker Proportional voting and tactical voting are becoming more important here. Although there are delays in the London counting, one result tonight shows massive tactical voting got the Conservative MP out in a Parliamentary by-election, with Labour voters switching to Liberal Democrat. Ken's vote is partly a protest vote and most votes are votes against someone. All this talk of entrism is a waste of time. Serious discussion of tactical voting is not. There is an advantage in having at least one radical left representative in the Greater London Assembly. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: www.computeruser.com
At 15:32 28/04/00 -0400, you wrote: >www.computeruser.com Looks an interesting site, but why did you post it here? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Execution of a deputy mayor
One of the least attractive things about China from Britain is its ready use of the death penalty. Presumably that is not the main obstacle to friendship with China in the USA. These repeated accounts are sometimes taken as proof that China is just going capitalist, or if not, is a most unattractive version of socialism. I am sure that is not Charles's purpose in reproducing this item. These reports are often recycled from Chinese sources but are re-edited in the West to pick up only the scandal. I suggest they are best viewed in perspective as a society in the course of major social change dictated by the change in the means of production. The millenia old culture of China relied on a professional system and a culture of what was acceptable and what was not, in order to influence that system. Yet that system was able more or less to run half a continent. In retrospect some of the most radical features of China's socialism had elements of the old feudal system in it. The overthrow of rotten imperial officials for example. The peasant uprising overthrowing a dynasty before the old system re-asserted itself. The new emphasis in China on a social and a market economy puts tremendous pressure on this system which cannot be controlled by more sophisticated methods such as accountants. Hence the reversion to public shame and exemplary punishment. Chris Burford London At 12:14 26/04/00 -0400, you wrote: >Monday, April 24, 2000 > >China executes deputy mayor for graft >ASSOCIATED PRESS > >BEIJING, APRIL 23: Chinese authorities executed a deputy mayor on Sunday for >massive bribery, the latest official punished in a year-long campaign >against rampant corruption. >After a case review by China's Supreme Court, Li Chenglong (48) was put to >death in the impoverished southern region of Guangxi, where he worked as a >deputy mayor of Guigang city, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said. >On Thursday, the head of Guangxi's government from 1990-1998, Cheng Kejie, >was expelled from the ruling Communist Party ahead of his prosecution for >alleged bribery. >Cheng, a deputy chairman of China's national legislature, was one of the >most senior officials caught in the recently renewed campaign against the >graft that is undermining public support for Communist rule. >Li was convicted of bribery and having unexplained sources of income, Xinhua >said. It said that in exchange for approving promotions, loans, land and >construction contracts, Li took Dollars 478,500 worth of bribes in Chinese, >Hong Kong and US currencies between 1991 and 1996, when he was Communist >Party secretary of Yulin city in Guangxi, Xinhua said. >Li also couldn't explain where he got currencies worth more than Dollars >685,000 that were found in his home, along with jewellery, Xinhua said. >Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. > > > > > > > --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: "Reparation for Our Nation! Organize!"
he motherland of the entire human race. His demand for Reparation for Africa is a movement that will go on, by people with the knowledge, skill, expertise and insistence that it must go on. Reconciliation can only be based on recognition of what has happened, not least in the African holocaust and what is happening now. In fighting for Africa, they are also fighting ultimately against finance capital that has impoverished, degraded, and killed the people of the rich motherland of our human race. God Save Africa! Our god is, ultimately, the human race. Bernie fought that fight, and leaves behind him tens of thousands of people determined to strengthen that fight. To succeed it will have to overthrow the global rule of finance capital. In alliance with other oppressed peoples, it will succeed. The African drums beat exuberantly and the sisters danced, as Bernie's coffin was placed on the hearse to drive down the hill. His message will go on until it is achieved. Nkosi Sikelela! Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Putative about Putin
At 09:04 18/04/00 +, you wrote: >Chris wrote: > > I think it is more an attempt to forge a special relationship with > Blair in > > which they are using each other. Putin is a creature created by the > > oligarch media owners in Russia. He has been well advised by media > > specialists about how to manage his image. They have clearly liaised > > closely with Alistair Campbell, Blair's expert spin doctor, in > > orchestrating the visit by Tony and Cheryl last month to meet the Putin's > > at a special performance of "War and Peace". > > > > Blair has always sought to use personal charm and dynamism to help Britain > > punch above its weight. He now seeks to present himself as an intermediary > > between Putin and Clinton, especially on the strategic arms limitation > > negotiations, > >Surely this is to reduce political analysis to clever tricks with >smoke and mirrors. That it is all a matter of individual >personalities and internal propaganda advantage. This might be >interesting comment for the bourgeois press (and their largely >proletarian and middle class readership) but surely Marxists should >aim for a little more indepth analysis of the real underlying >factors for a possible (historic) alliance between Russia and >Britain, beyond the photo-oportunities with smart suits and >fashionable wives. > >In my view the real important factor appear in your later brief >paragraph: > > The press release also refers to financial talks between Britain and > > Russia, designed of course for Britain to get some tactical advantage > > relative to German and French capitalism in Russia. > >We'll wait and see which is the more important... >Regards, John The economic base, yes, is ultimately the determining factor. The economic basis of solidarity between Blair and Putin is capitalist profit. But what I describe is more than smoke and mirrors. It is inherent in the contradiction of state power that the executive committee of the bourgeoisie has simultaneously both... 1) to appear to stand above classes impartially. 2) to ultimately rule in the interests of the dominant class. Sophisticated management of modern media is what Blair and Putin have in common. Their economic base is also ultimately the same: not small capital, not even middle sized capital, not industrial capital, and not speculative capital. It is finance capital at its weightiest and most rational. They have a natural alliance beyond the closeness of their age. Note also how Putin is a charmer and a dealer: He has just signed an agreement with Kuchma of the Ukraine (shortly after Kuchma makes his bid for greatly enhanced powers) to cooperate in arms manufacture and in nuclear reactors. Putin has also done a pluralist deal with the Russian communists. That party has just had its nominee confirmed as speaker of the Duma. Putin appeals to the nostalgia for the strenght of the old regime. He is forging alliances that could open the door for the reconstitution of the USSR (in the service of finance capital). More than smoke and mirrors. Damn clever footwork in the service of the powers that be, finance capital. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Putative about Putin
At 16:54 17/04/00 +0100, you wrote: >Mr Putin's UK visit may putatively form part of a strategy to, among >other things, drive >a wedge between Europe and the US in western relationships with the CIS. > >Warm regards >George Pennefather I think it is more an attempt to forge a special relationship with Blair in which they are using each other. Putin is a creature created by the oligarch media owners in Russia. He has been well advised by media specialists about how to manage his image. They have clearly liaised closely with Alistair Campbell, Blair's expert spin doctor, in orchestrating the visit by Tony and Cheryl last month to meet the Putin's at a special performance of "War and Peace". Blair has always sought to use personal charm and dynamism to help Britain punch above its weight. He now seeks to present himself as an intermediary between Putin and Clinton, especially on the strategic arms limitation negotiations, The press release also refers to financial talks between Britain and Russia, designed of course for Britain to get some tactical advantage relative to German and French capitalism in Russia. Neither Putin nor Blair are trying to drive a wedge. At best, as sophisticated opportunists, they are efficient transducers of the balance of forces, internally and externally. All at the expense of the oppressed people of Chechnya, of course, of whom Blair is as much a champion by dialogue, as he was a champion by war of the rights of the muslim people of Kosovo. I see nothing progressive in these exchanges except that global dialogue is better than global war. Progressive and marxist people should note which nations are oppressed and which are oppressor, and where the interests of capital lie, and those of working people. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Gysi steps down
I missed this news. Can anyone tell me why? I attach the not very idiomatic report of the 3rd Congress of the PDS from their web site. Chris Burford London __ PDS International Information on the results of the 3rd Session of the 6th Congress of the PDS This session took place on 7-9 April, 2000 in Münster in North-Rhine Westphalia - for the first time in a West German federal state. The PDS had taken this decision to demonstrate after the successful elections of the years 1998/99 the importance of a growing influence and stronger organisations in the lander of the old FRG. At the same time this was meant as a support of the PDS campaign for the Landtag election in this federal state due on 14 May, 2000. For financial and organisational reasons the PDS had not invited partner organisations from abroad to take part in this session. Representatives of several foreign embassies attended as observers. The main points of the agenda were: Keynote speech of the party chairman General discussion and decision on continuing the programmatic debate in the party Discussion and decisions on the following problems: - Armed military missions of the UN - Future orientated ecological policy - North-South relationship, just world economic order - Gender emancipation Amendments to the party constitution The session attracted considerable media attention. The number of the registered correspondents exceeded that of the delegates. The whole session of 2,5 days was transmitted live by one public TV program and one radio station. The following are the main results of the session: 1.After the general debate on the keynote speech of party chairman, Lothar Bisky, the congress adopted a political resolution which calls for basic changes in the development of society to prevent the destruction of the welfare state. It must be reconstructed under the new circumstances. The party views itself as part of this society and signals from Münster a new opening towards it. It seeks closer co-operation with all forces striving for a sustainable development. It will put forward its own specific propositions and not duplicate erroneous projects of Social democrats and Greens. 2.After a thorough debate the congress decided with a big majority against the vote of delegates of the Communist Platform, the Marxist Forum and others on a revision of the party programme of 1993, thus paving the way for a programmatic renovation of the party. No time limit was set for this work but the national election of autumn 2002 is exerting a certain pressure. The voters of the socialist party in Germany have the right to know about the principal political and programmatic positions of the PDS. Lothar Bisky demanded in his speech neither to exaggerate nor to deny the chances and the potential of reform in this society. 3.The congress stated the necessity to pay more attention to the ecological problems in PDS politics. A socialist party can only be an ecological one. 4.In the debate on development issues delegates demanded more active solidarity with the developing countries. All the more so as the PDS is finding growing acceptance with the NGO's working in this field. 5.The worsening social situation of women in Germany ten years after unification was met with harsh criticism. Their real influence on PDS policies is also seen as insufficient, the decision on 50 % reserved places in all leading bodies of the party notwithstanding. On the last three issues the National Executive presented position papers (see the PDS website on www.pds-online.de). 6.On application of the National Executive the congress adopted several amendments to the party constitution. The most important one concerns the terms of office for the leading posts of the party. As a lesson from SED times a person was allowed to stay maximum eight years on the same post. According to the amendment adopted by the congress this now refers only to party officials elected individually (chairpersons, vice chairpersons, general secretaries, treasurers) on the lander and national levels. After a special decision of the competent body adopted by two thirds of the vote a prolongation of two years is possible. For the lower levels the limit has been lifted altogether. 7.On the position of the party towards armed UN missions according to Chapter VII of the Charter the session continued the passionate, emotional debate which has been going on for several weeks. It adopted by big majority a resolution confirming the anti- militarist consensus of the party, its character as a force of peace. Important points of this consensus are: a civil, non-military foreign and security policy peaceful, non-military solutions to conflicts, their preventive handling no militarisation of the EU general and full disarmament, prohibition of weapons of mass destruction and arms exports no Bundeswehr missions in foreign countries.
M-TH: Ken slips below 50%
Today's London Evening Standard shows a decline in the opinion polls for Ken Livingstone. Nevertheless their right wing editorial line continues to support him as a thorn in the flesh of the Labour Government. Ken is down from a month ago by 12% to 49%. Dobson, the New Labour choice, has picked up none of this and has if anything slipped a point to 15%. Norris, the conservative candidate, finally married again, has just overtaken him at 16% by picking up 3%. The Liberal is up 4% to 12% and the Green is on 4%. Ken has been slightly damaged in the atmosphere of consensus politics presumably by conservative voters wondering if they really want to vote for him. Just before the poll he had hinted at the legalisation of cannabis. However he is likely to get a lot of the second preference votes in a tactical switch, and will he get almost all of Dobson's. But lest non-Brits think that history is made by individual heroes, what may really matter is the voting for the assembly. Labour's percentage is still apparently strong at 44%, and the conservatives still down at 27%. Liberals at 17%. In his time at the GLC, Ken was surrounded by radical Labour councillors who produced many of the ideas he marketed. This time it is possible that his standing may increase the vote by cutting abstentions. There are no signs yet that he will bring a lot of people to vote for the London Socialist Alliance list - a coalition of Trotskyist groups. He is clearly not backing them publically. The Assembly votes are more likely to go to Labour. And the Assembly seats will be distributed by proportional representation, requiring consensus politics. I suppose the key question for a marxist analysis is whether Ken's candidacy opens up a space for genuinely radical politics. Not as much, I suspect, as the Trotskyist entrist groups assume. Painful though Dobson's defeat will be for Blair, it looks however as if this constitutional experiment will liven up local politics in London. Perhaps the election of that will be the really interesting one politically. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Red Ken
This is a Telegraph piece and therefore tailored to make the readers tut self-righteously. It is also a bit old. The assumption is still the Ken will win but someone I know who I expected to support him did not. This man worked in the GLC during Ken's leadership. He pointed out that many of Ken's progressive ideas at the time came from the couple of hundred of left wing councillors who made up the Labour section of the GLS. Ken is a good left wing publicist but my friend criticised him for not having any strategic thinking. What will happen after the election? Ken will not have much power because he will not have these left wing-councillors with him. The test of his politics currently is his proposals about raising a bond issue for the London Underground. Chris Burford London At 13:05 11/04/00 -0400, you wrote: >Livingstone aims Hitler attack at capitalists > >By Robert Shrimsley, Chief Political Correspondent Telegraph > >Ken Livingstone's efforts to project a business-friendly image were >undermined yesterday when he said that international capitalists had killed >more people than Hitler. > >His latest attack on the forces of capitalism follows controversy >surrounding earlier remarks [see below] where he expressed sympathy with the >rioters who brought chaos to the World Trade Organisation negotiations in >Seattle and the simultaneous anti-capitalist protests in the City. The >front-runner to be mayor of London made his comments in a question and >answer session with readers of New Musical Express. > >Asked whether he still believed the bosses of the International Monetary >Fund should "die painfully in their beds", Mr Livingstone replied: "The IMF >and the World Bank are still appalling and now the World Trade Organisation, >too. All over the world people die unnecessarily because of the >international financial system." --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Merkel's acceptance speech
Angela Merkel's acceptance speech as president of Germany's CDU was particularly assured for a woman from East Germany, who was born after the foundation of the CDU. Possibly her period thinking about the alternatives to East German state socialism has given her a theoretical base which she can combine with skilled manoeuvring as the CDU tries to extricate itself from the era of illegal funding under Kohl. Significant were the the tilt away from centralisation of Europe in Brussels and the gesture of solidarity with Austria's People's Party, which has gone into coalition with Haider's Freedom Party. It echoes a sharpening of the rhetoric by the British Conservative Party against immigrants. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: From China
I agree this sort of news from China is important. I also agree that it is silly to take a routinely positive or a routinely negative attitude to developments in China. But why did you choose this item? What conclusions do you draw from it? Chris Burford (absent recently owing to leave and the joys of computer upgrading!) At 11:58 30/03/00 -0500, you wrote: >SCMP Thursday, March 30, 2000 > >Army pushes Jiang's party unity dictum > >WILLY WO-LAP LAM > >President Jiang Zemin is pushing ideological >education in the face of rising >pro-independence sentiments in Taiwan. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Britain to join NAFTA?
There is a reports that a group of British Conservatives have approached a US Congress committee to ask assistance with a feasability study on Britain joining NAFTA. In the post modernist world of politics this is not a rumour of a possible conspiracy. It means 1) that someone has decided that it is in their interestes to leak the existence of such a study 2) plans for such a study do indeed exist 3) the range of possibilities for the British economy has been irrevocably altered several degrees by the fact that all other political calculators may feel pressured to consider and at least discount this scenario. The leakers have already achieved their first objective. Any confirmation on the western side of the pond? Any comments on viability. It is primarily caution about gut little Englanderism that makes the British government reluctant to spear-head a campaign to join the Euro, but it is still being said without factual contradiction that British economic cycles are out of sync with continental Europe. And the British government continues to pursue a strong pound, high labour flexibility, low unemployment policy with falling national debt, as in the USA. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Livingstone stands in London
At 10:28 07/03/00 -0500, you wrote: >If this guy passes Hugh's test, he ain't no sellout. > >CB He's not a sell out. He is courageous and shrewd. But that does not stop him being an opportunist. If he wins, and it is more than likely, since he will get the largest first preference votes, and will get the largest second preference votes from everyone else, including the Conservative! then he will incorporate protest votes once again into the New Labour machinery. They will make some accommodation with him, and when his term expires, the party machinery will reabsorb him. And I should warn Charles that Livingstone supported military intervention in Kosovo, though he did not support the intervention that occurred. BTW how would you suggest he raises several billion to renovate the London underground? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: LSA welcomes Livingstone's decision to stand for major
At 12:57 07/03/00 +, Dave wrote: > >[From http://www.londonsocialistalliance.org.uk/.] > >The London Socialist Alliance welcomes Ken Livingstone's decision to stand >as an independent candidate for mayor of London. By doing so, he has given >Londoners an alternative at the ballot box. We hope Ken will stand on a >socialist and trade union platform. Last night Ken dismissed the Socialist Alliance as a group of old Trotskyists. He is also believed to have cancelled an appearance at a large rally to avoid being associated with "the Left". Comments Dave? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: [PEN-L:16920] Livingstone stands in London
At 00:15 07/03/00 +, I wrote: >A snap telephone opinion poll for the Guardian tonight reports him to be over 40 % ahead of his nearest rival, Dobson, who has 13%, with the Conservative candidate Norris on 11%. < Whoops! I have already slandered him. It must be my New Labour proclivities! He is in fact 55% ahead of his nearest rival. (sic) I thought I heard that ,but I could not confirm it in writing before I had to send my post. Here is the Guardian article on the poll. Perhaps this is a candidate for erasure if the listserver is concerned about copyright, but all the material is so relevant for comment and it is a good advert for the Guardian, I cannot really imagine them suing. You might like to bookmark their webpage on the contest, since Livingstone will have no machine to work for him and the media and the internet may be decisive. Chris Burford London _ Official candidates eclipsed in survey confirms Ken's cross-party charm ICM poll: Half of Tories would vote for Livingstone The London mayor: special report Alan Travis, Home Affairs Editor Tuesday March 7, 2000 The breathtaking 55% poll lead that Ken Livingstone has built up in the battle to be the first elected mayor of London is reinforced by nearly every detail of the findings of the Guardian/ICM opinion poll. Mr Livingstone's cross-party popularity in London has become so great more than 70% of Labour and Liberal Democrat voters in the capital say they will support him against their party candidates - and an extraordinary 48% of Conservative voters say they will back him. The poll shows that Livingstone's support is solid at over 60% among both men and women, across all social classes and all age groups. Steven Norris, the Tory candidate, is humiliatingly eclipsed by Mr Livingstone among Conservative voters. Mr Norris, who has 11% support overall, secures only 40% of the Tory vote, compared with 48% for Mr Livingstone. The poll indicates that the Tory voters will be engaging in tactical voting on a scale unseen for more than 20 years. The detail of the poll spells only despair for Frank Dobson. He might have hoped that those who were supporting Mr Livingstone - particularly Labour voters - were doing it only as a mid-term whinge at the performance of the Labour government. But when those who said they intended to vote Ken were asked about their motives it was the personality factor that proved the strongest of all. Nearly all Livingstone voters think he has been treated unfairly by Labour. Two thirds think that Frank Dobson is a weak candidate and want to give Tony Blair a kick by voting for Ken, but when they were asked to specify the principal reason for voting for him 72% said they believed he was the best candidate for mayor. Even among that select group of Conservatives for Livingstone, 68% said they would back him because he was the best candidate, and only 13% said they were backing him mainly because they wanted to give Tony Blair a kick. The only possible saving grace for Mr Dobson lies in the 18% who say they have not made up their mind. But even if the official Labour candidate were to sweep the board among these "don't knows", it seems inconceivable that he will be able to demolish Mr Livingstone's overwhelming lead in the next two months, given that he starts his campaign at such a low level of support - 13%. But there must be disappointment for those who had hoped that a Livingstone bid for mayor would boost the turnout. Those who say they are certain to vote account for only 41% - about the same level as a similar ICM poll a fortnight ago. As to the immediate future, the poll brings more bad news for Labour. The next few days will be dominated by the process of expelling Mr Livingstone from the party for standing against an official candidate. The poll shows that this may bring even more unpopularity for the party. Some 59% believe that expelling him would be unfair, as against 27% who do not. Among Labour voters those who believe it would be unfair reaches 68%. However much the question of expulsion might be understood and accepted by party activists, the poll shows that the reasons are not understood by London voters. They are even more hostile to the idea of other Labour members being expelled for openly supporting Livingstone. Only 12% of London voters believe this would be fair, and even 72% of those who say will vote for Frank Dobson think it would be unfair. ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,003 adults aged over 18 by telephone on March 6. Interviews were conducted across London, and the data has been weighted to the profile of all London adults. Ken Livingstone's biographer, John Carvel, will be live online on the Guardian network at 2pm today to answer your questions about Livingstone's mayoral bid. Ken Livingstone's biographer John Carvel will be live on the Guardian network at 2
M-TH: Livingstone stands in London
Ken Livingstone has taken the plunge, broken his word, and announced he is standing for the new post of Mayor of London, against the official Labour candidate Frank Dobson. A snap telephone opinion poll for the Guardian tonight reports him to be over 40 % ahead of his nearest rival, Dobson, who has 13%, with the Conservative candidate Norris on 11%. Blair's devolution strategy has already run into difficulties in Scotland and Wales where people have relished the opportunity to distance themselves from New Labour central policies. Livingstone's cheeky humour attracts him to many. It is also a symptom of the success of New Labour that the opposition is coming from within the Labour party. Another opinion poll gives Livingstone a majority not only of Labour voters but of Liberal voters and of Tory voters! The issues of substance here are 1) how much party machines can control the bourgeois electoral process especially if US type direct elections are introduced. How can corrupt contenders like Archer be excluded unless there are powerful party machines? 2) whether a contest like this will enliven interest in the mechanics of bourgeois democracy 3) whether the system of people having a second vote will move us further towards proportional representation. (Livingstone has shrewdly already said he would like people to cast their second votes for Dobson) 4) In economic terms there is a major issue of how to raise the vast amounts of capital needed to modernise the London underground system. Livingstone is arguing for continued state ownership plus an issue of bonds. Dobson and Norris are arguing for a public private partnership. IMO both methods almost certainly leave the dominance of finance capital unquestioned. How should surplus be raised for major civil engineering projects like this? What despotic inroads into the rights of property would subscribers recommend to Livingstone or Dobson, that will also get the wage slaves to work on time and reasonably fit? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Fw: [marxist] new communist movement family tree!
>Subject: [marxist] new communist movement family tree! Interesting concept. Could also be applied to e-mail lists. But where is the ruthless battle against revisionism and opportunism in this frankly pluralistic description of marxist history? Is it not an invitation for everyone to join the happy, or not so happy, families, that inhabit the marsh of opportunism? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Mandatory Sentencing
At 11:32 28/02/00 +1100, you wrote: >Comrades, >Despite protests around Australia, PM John Howard and Chief Minister of the >Northern Territory, Denis Burke and Premier of West Australia, Richard Court >are refusing to repeal mandatory sentencing. In the last 3 weeks, a 15 year >old boy hung himself while in jail for stealing texta/pencils worth $50, a 22 >year old Aboriginal man was jailed for one year for stealing biscuits worth >about $10, another young Aboriginal man jailed for 14 days for breaking a >window in his own home and a 15 year old boy was held over night in jail in >Perth for taking 40c from a public phone booth so he could catch a train home. There are times when I think thaxis is a refuge for marxists from countries other than the USA who, in volume terms, dominate marxism lists. But if we are to become truly internationalist in "marxism-space" we need to be able to read and hear what is unique in the struggle in each country, but also to discuss what is common. It seems to me that mandatory sentences are a sort of mirror image of individualist bourgeois rights. The latter treat all human beings as abstractly equal and ignore the class or other differences between them. Yet this affects what sort of lawyers they can hire to enforce their equal rights. So for this and other reasons, equal rights get enforced unequally. Mandatory sentences are common, if I understand correctly, in the USA too. People are supposed to be punished equally for the same crime. The fact that this ends up with a system where black people are greatly over-represented among those lined up on death row, is dismissed as pure chance. What is a more socialist attitude to rights and punishment? To see the rights, and the undesirable behaviour within the individual's social context. With crime, that does not mean ignoring the reality of the crime. It means asking the person to take responsibility for their decisions but the society also to take responsibility for the conditions in which the person found themselves. Crime is extremely common among young men and is almost normal affiliative behaviour, part of risk taking and maturation. In London studies have shown that re-offending has been cut substantially by cautioning first offenders and introduing them to a youth club. Unfortunately the previous conservative government cut youth clubs. But what is cheaper, a youth club or a punishment youth prison camp? What is the cost of - is it really over 2 million prisoners - in the land of the free?? I am not sure how much this may have parallels to the situation in Australia, but people need social support and individual and social challenges. People are basically good. Only those who believe in the exploitation of the majority by the minority, or who are part of privileged minority of beneficiaries, believe otherwise. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Albright Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty
At 02:35 27/02/00 +1100, Rob wrote: >G'day Chris, > >>"Sovereignty carries with it many rights, but killing and torturing >>innocent people are not among them." > Guess Unca Sam is just that extra bit >sovereign. Of course. But he is also vulnerable to the criticisms you make, and that is the strategic advantage of taking this battle on. >>I suggest this hegemonism must be fought on the merits of the case and not >>on any abstract principle that national sovereignty is sacrosanct. There is >>no materialist basis for such an approach. > >Er, yeah ... Is this Burford of Kosovo speaking? Christopher nemesis of >Luxemburgian state theory? What's happened to ya, mate? Whatever it is, I >like it. Rob, I can't say 'Touché!' because I cannot work out what point you are making. Haven't a clue about the allusion to Luxemburg on the state. As for Kosovo my position is consistent. Like Ken Livingstone and quite a section of left Labour, the Guardian and the Observer, I thought there had to be intervention of some sort in Kosovo, like I thought there should be in East Timor and should have been in Chechnya. I am not a pacifist. >From that position it is easier to criticise the imperialist nature of the intervention that did take place. The war should have been restricted to Kosovo, the KLA should have been supported on certain conditions, instead of disarmed as they have now been, and international troops should have been prepared to get killed. Rather than just bombing infrastructure from 30,000 feet, claiming to avoid deliberate deaths. >>Clearly we contest the bourgeois, fragmented and individualist version of >>human rights that is promoted by US imperialism. > >Demanding that these fragments be afforded material content is an apposite >start, I reckon. I still maintain that exposing the formalism of bourgeouis >rights, and demanding they be given the content their essence requires, is a >good way to push 'the idea' towards the already pulling material relations >of our day. Absolutely. In taking up a democratic demand the difference between the marxist contribution to a broad movement and that of liberals or conservatives, would be that the marxists would bring to the fore the social context. In essence argue for social human rights, and not just individual human rights. As the penultimate thesis on Feuerbach puts it: "The standpoint of the old materialism is 'civil' society; the standpoint of the new is *human* society, or associated humanity." > I maintain it's not wise to >content ourselves with a 'dissolution of the state' descriptor-du-juour. >What the state's doing is transforming. From the proletariat/petit >bourgeouis/lumpen-point of view, it looks to be dissolving. To some it >already looks completely alienated from them. But, from the point of view >of the haute-bourgeoisie, it's as crucial as ever, although now an ally who >asks much less for its services than it used to. > >I still think Seattle can best be read as a demand for democratic >involvement in the polity. Which means, and must mean already to a lot of >the protesters, that the contradiction between high capitalism and >humanly-authored human existence has shown its face. The broadly-animated >quest to reassert the enlightenment conception of the state (a la >Galbraith), or an enlightenment notion of transnational democratic >accountability and guidance (a la Habermas), should, with a bit of luck, be >most enlightening for people, as the very idea of 'liberal/democratic >capitalism' becomes harder and harder to envisage. Yes again. There are of course anarchist responses to the contradictions of late capitalism. They added to the movement against finance capital that came to a head on June 18 in London, and was carried on in Seattle. But with courage and revolutionary phrases alone they will run out of steam. They need to be part of a wider movement, some elements of which they would regard as reformist. And the whole movement needs marxist analysis to see the objective points of unity and common interests and the areas of weakness in the defences of global finance capital. This is one of the best countermoves to the Albright Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Albright Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty
"Sovereignty carries with it many rights, but killing and torturing innocent people are not among them." Madeleine Albright presenting the State Department's 1999 world survey on human rights. This statement comes nearest to a formula of Limited Sovereignty. It can be compared to the Brezhnev Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty. Obviously the stated ideals are different. What they share is a moral justification for limiting state sovereignty. I suggest this is not just an ideological battle. It is a reflection of the fact that the development of the means of production limits the ultimate relevance of the nation state. A hegemonic power therefore has some logic in appealing, if it wishes, to an overarching ideal with which to justify its interference in the internal affairs of other countries. I suggest this hegemonism must be fought on the merits of the case and not on any abstract principle that national sovereignty is sacrosanct. There is no materialist basis for such an approach. Clearly we contest the bourgeois, fragmented and individualist version of human rights that is promoted by US imperialism. Eg we should not claim purely abstractly that the right of a doctor in Cuba to fly the flag upside down is equivalent to the right of a tens of thousands of children *NOT* to have to scrape a living out of the municipal rubbish heaps of third world countries or by running dangerous lawless errands for drug dealers, who may execute one of them periodically to impose labour discipline. But limited national sovereignty is here to stay. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: The IRA and Fintan O Toole
At 10:56 21/02/00 -, you wrote: >Below are some comments to an piece written by the Irish Times >columnist Fintan O Toole published in the Irish Times on Friday, 18th >February 2000: Fintan O Toole: As the rump of the Second Dáil and the >remaining leadership of Sinn Féin after the departure of Eamon de Valera >to form Fianna Fáil, these people really did believe that they were the >legitimate government of Ireland. And until very recently, Sinn Féin and >the IRA went on believing in this fantasy. When, in 1939, the tiny rump >of the Second Dáil formally passed its powers to the IRA army council, the >line of apostolic succession passed to an ever more secretive elite. And >throughout its vicious campaign in Northern Ireland, the IRA, in its own >mind, continued to draw its legitimacy from this weird delusion.” I agree with George's reasoned criticism of the idealism that is inherent in one strand of Irish republicanism. Also that Fintan O'Toole appears merely to criticise it from another idealist point of view, but one without any radical or revolutionary significance. I also agree that the idealist strand of republicanism was literally reactionary - in that it reacted to the oppression of British imperialism with idealist ideology. However not all Irish nationalism was reactionary of course. I would extend George's emphasis on political reality to stress an emphasis also on economic reality. The development of capitalism does not stir all potential nations into separate national life. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the most rapid means of transport of the growing trade in commodities was by water, and several cities grew on either side of the Irish Sea: Bristol, Dublin, Liverpool, Belfast, Glasgow. It was only in the 19th century when railways and improved roads gave greater continuity to land communications. The bulk of the population joined an effective and democratic nationalist movement against British domination which won consitutional and to a large extent economic independence for Eire. But it was not strong enough to take the whole population with it and to prevent various forces external and internal (obviously including British imperialism) from causing a split. The development of capitalism has now moved on and the economic self-sufficency of de Valera Eire is antiquated. Ireland is part of the European Union, and so is Northern Ireland. Irish nationalism is not therefore one single entity but has a different context at different stages of economic history. >From a materialist point of view, continuing national and democratic demands must be pursued starting from this economic context. They can be pursued in a radical way, in a reformist way, or in a potentially revolutionary way. But the economic and political reality cannot be combatted by an ideology of philosophical idealism. Chris Burford London PS could you note that I think your post must have been in html format as it came out with funny format coding and layout. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: London and Ulster
At 06:36 14/02/00 +0100, you wrote: >I saw today your defense of the Vietnamese Stalinists Chris and thought >about recent events in Ireland. Well, what have ya got to say now? About >Stormont and the fake peace process. > >In fact the old term "I told you so" comes to mind. > >Warm Regards >Bob Malecki Funny you should say that. I have often thought of saying "I told you so" to you about Ireland. I was defending the Vietnamese for a rational revolutionary strategy in marxist terms and would not want to say I was defending Vietnamese "Stalinists". The term covers too many things to be sure it is more than a term of abuse. But if you mean by 'Stalinist' they indulged in dogmatism and widespread purges against members of the party, I have not heard that they did this any more than other communist parties at the time. Ireland: What is fake about the peace process? Politics is a continuation of war by other means. The Provisionals should be getting gold medals from revolutionaries for not surrendering their weapons, which many communist parties did after the anti-fascist struggles in 1945-46. The way they are doing this is by saying that rust is the best decommissioning agent. They also say that enough trust has not been built up yet. They could also say, and probably have, that it is in the interests of the British and Irish governments and the enlightened unionists to keep the political process going because then that cuts the arguments away from those wishing to raise funds for more armaments. They also point out that they are not the only owners of arms, and that if the nationalist population of the north is to feel they do not need arms again then they need the assurance that the army of domination, the Royal Ulster Constabulary has been qualitatively transformed. They also need assurance that triumphalist paramilitary parades will not march round their communities during the "Marching Season". So if political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, they need assurances that the barrels of the guns are not pointed in one particular direction. As for the British and Irish governments they have been following a policy of conflict management and conflict resolution which is in the interests of their finance capitalist class, who want a smooth integrated market in the whole of the British Isles as well as Ireland. Therefore for historical materialist reasons the significance of home rule for Ulster has changed from a fundamental nationalist demand to part of the process of assuring national democratic rights in a pluralist political environment in an integrated market. It is quite clear from the present exchanges that Trimble and Adams know what roles each has to play and are carefully avoiding burning final bridges. What is fake about that? More it is a fake breakdown. Your problem Bob, is that whenever I point out a progressive development by the Blair regime, you imagine I am advocating unqualified praise. Blair has done this because it is in the interests of British finance capital. Coincidentally it is also in the interests of the proletariat. I told you so! Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: stop-imf listserve announcement
>Dear Friends: > >Especially as interest grows in the April 16 actions coming up in >Washington, D.C., we would like to build the subscription base of >stop-imf (now around 500). If you value the listserve, please pass the >announcement below to friends, colleagues and relevant lists, and >encourage people to join. Thanks. > >Robert Weissman >Essential Information | Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >** LISTSERVE ANNOUNCEMENT ** > ** [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** > >Want to learn more about the International Monetary Fund and Third World >debt issues in the run up to the April 16 actions in Washington, D.C.? > >Then subscribe to stop-imf, a listserve run by Essential Action! > >[EMAIL PROTECTED] is an open, moderated listserve which posts >newsclips, reports, news releases, updates, urgent actions and analyses on >topics relating to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), structural >adjustment and Third World debt. It is not a discussion list. Traffic >ranges from zero to five messages a day, averaging approximately two a >day. > >To subscribe to stop-imf, send a message to >[EMAIL PROTECTED] with "subscribe" in the text of the >message. > >Stop-imf archives can be accessed at >http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/stop-imf/2000q1/date.html > > > > >___ >stop-imf mailing list >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/stop-imf > > --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: The Vietnam War
At 23:18 11/02/00 -, George wrote: > In 1945 and 1946 the PCF >hoping to win power through the ballot box was not anxious to avoid >anything to do anything that might make them unpopular which is why they >abandoned their support for national independence movements. That sounds possible but I would like to see the context and exactly what the PCF did or did not do. Overall however these comments on the Vietnam War fail to understand the brave and largely correct strategy of the Communist Party of Vietnam of leading a war of national liberation. It also fails to understand the need to make compromises and to take advantage of contradictions among the enemy, eg at one time using US imperialism against French, and vice versa. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: hoaxes and the health of capitalism
At 10:31 11/02/00 -0500, > >CB: One of my slogans is " repudiate the U.S. national "debt" ". That would be a radical reform. It can be put in popular terms. Why should the government on behalf of the people owe a bunch of bankers a debt. They should owe us with all they have been ripping off, and all the money put into protecting their investments overseas. Good, stategically that sounds quite right. It is about a society where living labour has domination over dead labour. >So what about restriction of the power of rentier capital and landed >capital, and increased legislation and monitoring to promote social >production controlled by social foresight? Not red-blooded enough for Hugh, >but a step on the way? No? > >&&&&&&&&&& > >CB: Marxists struggle for reforms and for revolution. How would the above be struggled for in a revolutionary manner ? > >Revolutionaries in the U.S. struggled for many reforms such as legalization of industrial unions, unemployment insurance, welfare for the poor, Social Security, anti-racist and anti-lynch laws, etc. How to struggle for the above in a revolutionary manner? It needs coming at from both sides: side one, opposition in principle to the domination of finance capital; side two, study of the details of financial management in order to maximise the campaign against finance capital, and minimise the proportion of the population opposed. For example the measures should not look bureaucratic. Once step is to study the Financial Services Authority that Gordon Brown has set up in the UK, and discuss the fine print of its aims, remit, and "mission statement". Close attention to the popularity of the Financial Services Authority. A culture of consumer rights at first sounds very individualistic but can tap into the sense of outrage and vulnerability that even people with "middle class" aspirations face from unfair judgements about insurance policies, health care entitlement etc. We have already said about the importance of reducing the national debt. Salami tactics against private landownership, with a flexible market in renting the usage of land in accordance with socially controlled plans. This will bring a stream of revenue to the state funds that will be higher in periods of high economic activity and can be used to ease burdens during the turn down of the business cycle. Trade union investment fund managers helping progressive forums with studying how to reform the financial climate to give greater security to people. Some ideas. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: hoaxes and the health of capitalism
Thanks to a passing virus hoax for sparking us back to life. At 09:25 10/02/00 +0100, Hugh wrote: >the whole of his bloody book is a chain of empirical claims. Facts, >facts, facts! Mr Gradgrind would be very proud of him. Trouble is, it >explains fuck all about capitalism, what it's doing and where it's heading. The book certainly is full of a lot of empirical data but that does not mean it is empiricist. Doug is both coy and provocative at times. Nevertheless there are a score of references to Marx, with theoretical implications of an imaginative kind which many dedicated marxist revolutionaries would overlook. Could Hugh take up one reference to Marx or one quotation from Marx in "Wall Street" and illustrate how it is inadequate, or erroneous. No doubt from his point of view it is, so that should be easy but it is not correct to say that Doug ignores theory. I have just looked up the first reference to Marx again that caught my eye: "The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter's wand, it endows unproductive money with the power of creation and thus turns it into capital." So reduction of the public debt from this point of view is progressive even if it is not revolutionary ... or should we think otherwise? Hugh: >Except to lull us into thinking that it's never been stronger, of course, >and that our best political hope is a weaker capitalism with a kinder, >gentler regime. Maybe Doug should run for president. Please no, third party attempts within the US two party system are a major recipe for wasted efforts. But what of a half-way goal of a "weaker capitalism with a kinder gentler regime"? Why not? And a weaker capitalism would be less able to resist further advances... So what about restriction of the power of rentier capital and landed capital, and increased legislation and monitoring to promote social production controlled by social foresight? Not red-blooded enough for Hugh, but a step on the way? No? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Declaration of the Austrian antiracist movement
This was sent by JS to >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> but there may still be some people on PEN-L who did not get it. I am forwarding it to PEN-L and to marxism-thaxis It is in the name of Platform for a world without racism Vienna, 1.2.2000 ***. WE ARE CONCERNED ABOUT WHAT IS DONE TO HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMAN DIGNITY IN OUR COUNTRY. We do not feel obliged to claim Austria's "innocence". The to-be government is in support of the majority of Austria's population. We have no reason to claim Haider is "just another" populist. He is not. He is a populist that operates with xenophobia, racism and the denial of the Holocaust. The major threat is not the increase of direct violence against minorities. The major threat is the signal that far right agitation and action is not only ok but earns you a place in government. As opportunism is one of the most prominent features of the "Austrian mentality", this is a severe political danger. We have reason to be afraid of * the final end of refugee or integration policies * increasing xenophobia, racism and even antisemitism, because Austia has never faced its past and now people have governmental legitimation for such attitudes * law and order policies instead of co-operative strategies to deal with crime and conflict * abolition of progressive women's policies (e.g. the post of the minister for women's affairs will be cancelled and replaced by an extended family ministery) * severe restrictions to freedom of art, especially where it puts a finger on the state of the Austrian society (already, in Carinthia, artists are faced with political limitations to their work) * restrictions to the freedom of press, because subsidies for critical media products will most certainly be cut down we don't know yet what to do about it. we need both your solidarity and your ongoing critisism. don't stop looking at our country. To the international community Declaration of the Austrian antiracist movement In this moment of Austrian history we are deeply concerned with the political developments in our country. For more than 10 years, many NGOs, initiatives and smaller parties have tried to change the austrian racist reality without success. In the new millenium, Austria still is not a democracy but a national democracy. More than 10 % of our population is systematically denied all political rights and participation, often even for decades, they are kept in the status of "foreigners". Even in the trade-unions, there are no equal voting rights for all workers and employees. This system, guaranteeing equality not to human beeings but to citizens only, is unique in Europe. Since a democratic system has been imposed on Austria after World War II, not only the conservatives and the right wing, but also the governing social democrats fortified this system of nationalistic and racist segregation and exclusion. This lack of balance in the political system led to the uprising of a party that is openly promoting a revision of Nazi history, using racism as an effective political tool due to the lack of a counterveilling power. Even the killing of Marcus Omofuma during his deportation on May 1st 1999 did not lead to any antiracist measures. On the contrary, police action, especially against people with African background, increased drastically. Charles O., major activist, writer and poet from Nigeria, was even accused of being a drug-boss and imprisoned for 3 months, before he had to be released due to complete lack of evidence and major charges were dropped. Nevertheless these practices led to significant intimidation of the Black communities in their political campaigning. Under such unfair conditions of criminalisation and the lack of democratic rights, we welcome initiatives from the side of the international community that put pressure on Austrian representatives. Austria is facing a drastic swing to the right. With a right-conservative government things will even get worse for people discriminated on grounds of racism, including the Jewish minority, as well as for people discriminated on the grounds of sexual orientation, sexual identity or on the grounds of being physically handicaped. For some years now, Austria is known in the European Union for its attempts to radically alter the politics towards a demontage of the Geneva Convention and the denial of asylum for refugees. Austria has become the home-base for right-wing policies, threatening emancipatory movements all over Europe. Therefore it is in the self-interest of all democratic powers in Europe to try to reverse the political currents in Austria. We want to encourage all international steps in this direction, hoping that the European Union at least has learned from history, while the official Austria has not. Under any government to come, Austria should finally change towards a fair democratic system which includes the right to vote
Re: M-TH: There is no premature anti-fascism
I very much support the title of Charles Brown's thread on marxism-thaxis. Yes Haider's party is not a fully fascist party, but the direction it is going is clear. Its participation in government legitimates this direction. It opens up space for more serious advances by the authoritarian, populist, and racist right. The Austrian Ministry of Internal Affairs has already announced a "more decided and less wavering reaction by the security forces against illegal protests" Police in Vienna have announced an "intransingent stand against law-breakers" (according to posts forwarded by Louis Proyect to PEN-L). The danger of fascism exists in all bourgeois democracies. The imperialist bourgeoisie is not a reliable defender of bourgeois democracy even though petty bourgeois and bourgeois nationalist elements may be more immediately behind moves to fascism. There is no perfect check list of states which are fascist and those which are (bourgeois) democratic. What we have to watch vigilantly is the process and the direction things are going in. George is mistaken in just calling for intensified working class struggle for socialism. The whole revolutionary movement requires taking up of general *political* issues relevant to all non-exploiting members of the society. Bourgeois democracy can never fully deliver democracy, which takes into account social context and the inequality of people. But bourgeois democratic rights are extremely important. In the course of the struggle to defend and extend them, coalitions can be built which will shape a more robust essentially revolutionary movement social human rights. That will involve contest with the liberal bourgeoisie and other elements for leadership of those coalitions. Haider's party may not be fully fascist, but "there is no premature anti-fascism." He and it must be opposed now. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Fw: "Bukharin's prison manuscripts prove Koestler wrong"
At 09:54 01/02/00 -0800, you wrote: > >- Original Message - >From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2000 8:38 AM >Subject: "Bukharin's prison manuscripts prove Koestler wrong" > Presuming these texts are authentic, they certainly sound interesting. Simplistic propagandist versions of "Stalinism" are breaking down, (although that should not minimise the tragedy of the purges). Only one caution about the texts: with the polarisation in which Bukharin is the victim of a particularly arbitrary version of the dictatorship of the proletariat, he can write a more idealised humanistic version of marxism. If he was a marxist leader he would still have had to retain power, ultimately by force of arms. Or do people want to see him as cuddly, in the way some Gramscians undoubtedly wish to prettify Gramsci. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Bhaskar proved? (was Idealist discussion of quantum theory)
At 16:40 26/01/00 GMT, you wrote: >Chris, > >What exactly is you concern? > >I have only briefly glanced through the article and the review a few >pages earlier. Does your possible objection lie in the fact that the >experiment would appear to bolster Schrodinger's thought experiment >(I am personally rather hostile to thought experiments per se) which >as I understand it - from the few, contractory, accounts I have read >- is an undialectical 'proof' for idealism (or possibly just >Kantianism? Or possibly I'm wrong?) < > >John What struck me was the opening paragraph, and Nature is a very authoritative journal. It rang bells for me with arguments presented by Roy Bhaskar, the dialectical philosopher whose writing is exceedingly detailed and complex. One central idea in his "Realist" theory of science is that every "closed" experiment is artificial. In the universe there is no such thing as something without interconnections with the outside. But an "orthodox" scientific experiment which is closed, ie states there are a limited number of variables at the beginning and the outcome is the result only of those variables, is actually idealist. It is idealist because it tries to jump from empirical data straight to Truth, to reality. It is therefore an empiric*ist* version of idealism. A correctly "realist" approach to scientific knowledge accepts that material reality exists, often in ways in which we do not have full direct experience, and attempts to understand the pattern behind that Reality. It was the opening sentences of the Nature article which I thought were a strikingly confident assertion in an empirical journal, even though I do not pretend to understand the details of the subsequent study. >The theory of quantum mechanics applies to closed systems. In such ideal >situations, a single atom can, for example, exist simultaneously in a >superposition of two different spatial locations. In contrast, real systems >always interact with their environment, with the consequence that >macroscopic quantum superpositions (as illustrated by the 'Schrödinger's >cat' thought-experiment) are not observed. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Idealist discussion of quantum theory
This abstract from the 20 Jan 00 edition of Nature suggests there is an undialectical idealism in the discussion of quantum theory in the form of stories about "Schrödinger's cat". I am quoting it for the first three sentences. While chaos theory is modelled in closed systems it does not apply only to them. The implications of this argument about quantum theory are IMO not clear: whether it can still apply to non-closed systems i.e. actual reality, rather than an experiment with an artificially restriced number of variables. Chris Burford London _ Decoherence of quantum superpositions through coupling to engineered reservoirs C. J. MYATT, B. E. KING, Q. A. TURCHETTE, C. A. SACKETT, D. KIELPINSKI, W. M. ITANO, C. MONROE & D. J. WINELAND The theory of quantum mechanics applies to closed systems. In such ideal situations, a single atom can, for example, exist simultaneously in a superposition of two different spatial locations. In contrast, real systems always interact with their environment, with the consequence that macroscopic quantum superpositions (as illustrated by the 'Schrödinger's cat' thought-experiment) are not observed. Moreover, macroscopic superpositions decay so quickly that even the dynamics of decoherence cannot be observed. However, mesoscopic systems offer the possibility of observing the decoherence of such quantum superpositions. Here we present measurements of the decoherence of superposed motional states of a single trapped atom. Decoherence is induced by coupling the atom to engineered reservoirs, in which the coupling and state of the environment are controllable. We perform three experiments, finding that the decoherence rate scales with the square of a quantity describing the amplitude of the superposition state. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: "Kosova revisionists let NATO off the hook"
At 06:22 24/01/00 +0100, Bob Malecki wrote: >These >people really are the little drummer boys for imperialism in my opinion. In Bob's opinion - but that does not address the issues. As usual Bob takes a very abstract approach to being revolutionary: it is enough to say revolutionary sounding things, but not to expect that progressive people can intervene concretely in any situation to take the leadership away from the ruling class. It is a battle fought entirely on the terrain of revolutionary rhetoric. It also reveals a failure to understand the progressive reasons for upholding the right of nations to self determination. That by no means necessarily entails supporting the imperialist nature of the war that NATO waged. If we make distinctions and avoid remaining stuck in one-sidedness, we can see that it might well have entailed supporting the right of the Kosovans to armed resistance. However as the Green Left article argues one of the imperialist objectives in Yugoslavia was to be a condescending saviour and avoid supporting the responsibility of the Kosovans to claim the right to self-determination, almost certainly because of racist and imperialist prejudice against muslims. Rob concentrates on the number and causes of the deaths and misses the point in the article about the meaning of genocide: >In the UN Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as >acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in >part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Such >acts, with these aims, are not restricted to killing, but >include deliberately inflicting on the group conditions >of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction >in whole or in part, such as uprooting people from their homes. > >The Nuremberg Tribunal Charter explicitly lists deportation >of the civilian population as one of its crimes against >humanity. The genocide in Kosova was not a question of >numbers of dead, but the fact that half the population of >Kosova had been driven across borders, and around 80% of >those remaining inside Kosova had also been uprooted from >their homes. Besides, with the evidence of what had happened in Bosnia failure to intervene in Kosovov would have made the west culpable in genocide. No doubt Bob on "revolutionary" grounds opposes intervention in Burundi at present. However in a spirit of internationalism and human rights, some intervention in Burundi is now essential, even if it does not involve imperialist bombing their infrastructure! I trust Rob will make the distinction, even though Bob, I am sure, will be incapable of it. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: "Kosova revisionists let NATO off the hook"
I commend this article as a critique of the leftist line on Kosovo: Chris Burford London ___ >From Green Left Weekly (Australia) Jan 19 2000 By Michael Karadjis The massacres that never were, ran the headline in the right-wing London Spectator. The article reported claims by journalist John Laughland that only hundreds of Albanians had been killed in Kosova during the NATO-Serbia war last year, rather than the figure of 10,000 estimated by the United Nations. Laughland told readers, A whole string of sites where atrocities were allegedly committed have revealed no bodies at all. This is hardly surprising from the Spectator, which represents the views of those disgruntled Tories who felt the traditional ties between the British and Serbian ruling classes were more important than British Labour's ambitions to put a human face on imperialist slaughter. Similar stories also turned up in the Sunday Times and the New York Times, and it was taken up by the pro-Milosevic wing of the left. The view was also peddled by the US right-wing think-tank Stratfor, which had long advised Washington that its war would be counterproductive because it would help, rather than hinder, the struggle of the Kosova Liberation Army for an independent Kosova. Preventing Kosovan independence and disarming the KLA were key reasons NATO wanted its troops in Kosova, to do the job Milosevic had failed to do. According to Stratfor, since only a few hundred bodies have been found, NATO's use of the term genocide to justify its war has serious implications not just for NATO integrity, but for the notion of sovereignty. It is certainly true that NATO's brutal war on Serb civilians casts much doubt on its integrity, but this right-left alliance to deny the Kosovan genocide has little integrity of its own. The revisionists' main argument was that a Spanish forensic team returned home having discovered only 187 bodies. This pseudo-journalism left the reader to believe this was the only team searching. In fact, there were 20 such teams in different parts of the country -- a team in Djakovica discovered 200 bodies in five days. When the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) recently released the figure of 2108 bodies so far discovered, rather than admit their mistake these revisionists continued. Maybe not hundreds, but only 2000, rather than 10,000. Of course, the forensic teams had to pause their work for the winter. The 2108 figure was only from the 195 graves so far dug up -- out of the 529 so far identified. If that trend continued, there would something like 6000 bodies. But, according to ICTY, this is just the bare minimum, because there was also widespread evidence of tampering with grave sites, of digging out bodies, of burning and scattering them. The 2108 bodies had been discovered in sites where Albanians had given accounts of 4256 murders of relatives -- the whereabouts of the other 2000 is still unknown. In fact, the 10,000 figure was not invented by NATO, but based on figures produced by ICTY of 11,334 killings actually identified by relatives. How accurate this is it is difficult to say, but it is rarely mentioned that there are still 17,000 Kosovar Albanians completely unaccounted for. While up to 5000 are still rotting in Serbian jails, this leaves a figure for the presumed dead which is similar to the usual estimate. But what has this to do with genocide? Are the revisionists saying that only 2000 dead is not genocide, but 10,000 dead is? In the UN Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Such acts, with these aims, are not restricted to killing, but include deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, such as uprooting people from their homes. The Nuremberg Tribunal Charter explicitly lists deportation of the civilian population as one of its crimes against humanity. The genocide in Kosova was not a question of numbers of dead, but the fact that half the population of Kosova had been driven across borders, and around 80% of those remaining inside Kosova had also been uprooted from their homes. Ironically, by doing a hatchet job on the brutalised Albanians in order to criticise NATO, these revisionists let NATO off the hook. NATO did not act in response to the genocide; the NATO bombing precipitated it. And when Milosevic launched his genocide using the NATO pretext, NATO did nothing to defend the Albanian victims for fear that actions against Serb military forces in Kosova would aid the KLA, the main thing NATO wanted to avoid. Veteran Kosovan human rights campaigner Veton Surroi described an average day in the war: It doesn'
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
At 15:45 18/01/00 GMT, you wrote: >Chris, > >You seem to have come to a point of stalemate as to in what way >Gramsci is or is not a revisionist, but IMO both side have offered >little evidence from which anyone, who is not well versed in >Gramsci-ism, could come to a reasoned conclusion either way. Gramsci is not a revisionist. A revisionist means a marxist pariah, with a label hung round his neck. If it cannot be clearly demonstrated why he deserves this honour, he is not a revisionist. >On the basis of clarification rather than harsh criticism could you >elaborate on a few of the points you raise? > >You talk of the: >> analysis of whether the balance of forces is now suited to a war of >> position or a war of movement? > >What on earth is 'a war of position' or 'a war of movement'? "He argues that the nature of political power in advanced capitalist countries, where political power includes complex institutions and mass organisations, determines the only strategy capable of undermining the present order and leading to a definitive victory for a socialist transformation: a war of position, or trench warfare; while the war of movement, or frontal attack, which was successful in the very different circumstances of tsarist Russia, is onbly a particular tactic." (from a Dictionary of Marxist Thought) >Again these smack, not of theoretical tools related to the class >struggle, but broader, bland terms arising more from the general >tradition of radical continental European political theory and >philosophy. Are you in favour of frontal revolutionary attack in Western Europe? If so how will you avoid being isolated and defeated? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
At 13:49 18/01/00 +1300, Dave wrote: >I would want to add that Gramsci is held up today as a mainstream >marxist precisely because of his espousal of what has become >canonised as Western Marxism. By this I mean Menshevism - the >doctrine that revolution is evolution and will only take place when all >the objective pre-conditions are present - namely a fully developed >working class (and culture) etc - as determined by petty bourgeois >intellectuals. One thing that appears to be a problem with this argument, on both sides, is that people are attributing to Gramsci what they want to. As for Dave's reformulation of Gramsci's alleged errors as Menshevism and then as political evolutionism, contrary to this, I explicitly quoted evidence that Gramsci actively argued that Italy did not have to wait for the developent of capitalism before having a revolution based on an alliance of the workers and the peasants! >The reality of class struggle and the need for a the >proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard as the active agent of >revolution and of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, is thus denied >and suppressed. Maybe some people make rightist deviations in the name of Gramsci but what is the evidence that Gramsci, his experience concentrated by imprisonment under state power, had illusions about the fundamental class character of the state and is a "revisionist"? >Gramsci is hauled out to explain why October >was premature, adventurous etc, Gramsci specifically argued that October 1917 was not premature. >Today, after the so-called fall of 'communism', it fits with the >wholesale right shift of the left which now (having judged the >socialist revolution premature) OK switching to today, how imminent is the revolution? Or is Dave just using criticism Gramsci as a foil behind which he fails to clarify his own analysis of whether the balance of forces is now suited to a war of position or a war of movement? > This doesnt >mean that Gramsci would have endorsed all this reactionary stuff, >but he would have to take responsbility for promoting a fatalist >method which contributed to it. What is fatalist about Gramsci's method? It is a method that says in effect, never stop struggling; look for every opportunity for advance even when the balance of forces look unfavourable. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Chechnea etc...
At 13:47 16/01/00 -, George wrote: >It is clear that the Chechen war is absorbing substantial military resources. Yet the >central government in Russia does not appear to be making the necessary progress for a >swift victory. Clearly there are significant potential dangers for the Russian state under >this scenario. Should the war continue to soak military resources the opportunity may open >up for other regional powers to strike out against the Russian state in a struggle for >independence. Should several such nationalist wars break out the Russian state would be >sorely tried to vanquish them. Under such circumstances it is quite conceivable that the >Russian state and economy could disintegrate. > >Given a war on several fronts from nationalist movements the opportunities for Washington >and even other large powers to exploit the situation would present itself. This helps >explain why the Russian government has been putting greater emphasis on its nuclear >arsenal. The weaker the conventional military becomes and the state the more the nuclear >blackmail will be used as a defensive threat against potential incursion by imperialist >powers. The US must be even happier that Russia is making the surrounding states so wary of its intentions. It is in the interests of the US to protest about the attacks on the Chechens but not as much as in the case of East Timor, to force the army to withdraw. Instead if Putin cleans up his government so that the oligarchs are not too corrupt and above all co-operate with the IMF and western banking, then the US will not pull the rug from under the chauvinist Russian regime. It does not want a socialistic one in its place. The Chechens will just have to pay the price. Meanwhile there is a clipping from another list. I cannot speak for the status of Peoples Voice of Canada, but the clip is a relatively concise and apparently relatively accurate summary of the oil issue. Chris Burford London (This article is from the Jan. 1-15/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.) AS BORIS YELTSIN'S second war against Chechnya grinds on, world public opinion is growing increasingly alarmed by the terrible consequences for Chechen civilians, but also at the rising tensions between Russia and the USA, fuelled by Yeltsin's latest nuclear threats. Clearly there is far more at stake in this war than first meets the eye. As with other conflicts in the region during this century, the key to understanding this struggle is oil. Chechnya and Dagestan are among the former Soviet territories near the Caspian Sea, with its vast sources of oil and natural gas. More than a century ago, the nearby city of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, became the centre of a booming oil industry which was greatly expanded during the Soviet era. This industry was a rich prize desired by Hitler during the Second World War, but the Red Army blocked the Nazis before they could occupy the Caucasus in 1942. Since the capitalist counter-revolution which broke up the USSR in 1991, a consortium of 11 oil monopolies from the USA and Europe have gained control of more than 50 percent of the oil reserves in the area, estimated at a potential worth of $4 trillion. US imperialism has steadily worked to advance its interests around the Caspian Sea, now bordered by five countries: the former Soviet republics of Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, as well as Iran. The Russian government fears that the CIA and the Pentagon are engineering the de facto colonisation of these and other resource-rich former Soviet territories, such as by encouraging the Islamic separatist movement in Chechnya. "The national interests of the U.S. correspond to a scenario in which an armed conflict is constantly smouldering in the North Caucasus," Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said in a recent news conference. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Avdeyev said a few days later that the country may be heading for a direct conflict with the United States. "The prospects of potentially enormous hydrocarbon reserves is part of the allure of the Caspian region... New transportation routes will be necessary to carry Caspian oil and gas to world markets," according to a December 1998 report from the United States Energy Information Administration. The USA wants a new Caspian oil pipeline to bypass the existing lines routed through Russia, which were designed to link the Soviet Union internally. On Nov. 18, President Clinton and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson met with the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia, T
M-TH: IMF needs broader social support
Here below, the IMF is acting as testamentary executor for the financial crash of 1997-8. Some sort of political adjustment is essential. The IMF particularly has to shore up its credibility in Asia. The implications of this are the increasing importance of the 2 billion members of the emerging global "middle class", on whom Clinton bases his strategic hopes. Chris Burford London >>>>>>>>>>. The IMF will secure broader support for its programs from various sectors of society to make them more effective and successful, AFP reports an IMF official said yesterday. "Clearly, we think that programs work better and quicker if there is this broader sense of ownership," IMF External Relations Director Thomas Dawson said in Singapore. "When a budget is drawn up, and targets are agreed to, an assessment has to be made as to its viability." This is why "Fund missions do regularly meet with elements in the opposition, with elements in civil society, labor unions in particular to...make a judgment of what is doable and achievable," he added, citing the success of the IMF's program in South Korea, where there was leadership and willingness to support financial restructuring. Dawson said his trip through Japan and Singapore were among a series of visits by IMF officials to gain feedback on the Fund's programs, including from the media, opposition groups, and labor unions. <<<<<<<<<<<<< --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
At 13:53 13/01/00 +, David Welch wrote: > >Didn't we have this discussion last year? Just because something can't be >touched doesn't mean it isn't material (in the properly marxist sense). >That said, it's not difficult to share John's hostility to hegemony as a >socialist strategy. Look what happened to the British Eurocommunists (or >perhaps they did a bit too well considered the number of ex-CPGB figures >in the Labour party leadership) Good point. I suspect that if the past subscription list of Marxism Today were published, it would be very embarrassing for the New Labour government. But it is a strength as well as a weakness. I never had an appetite myself to read Marxism Today, which always seemed to me to be defeatist about the need to accommodate to why Thatcherism was so successful. However in a sense, it was a very materialist analysis. It cut free from the idealism of left Labour, which would have a list of good left causes, suitable to people permanently in opposition. Instead this approach calculated ruthlessly how to get re-elected and to stay re-elected. This meant accommodating to the swing section of the electorate, the skilled working class or the new intelligentsia who call themselves middle class. It logically implies careful continuous surveys of public opinion and a 5 strong "Peoples Parliament" of focus groups. It includes very much taking into account people's psychological reactions in a way not usually made explicit in marxist theory, but very influential in practical politics. It implies spin doctors, but more importantly positive presentations. These are not so much political rhetoric but more the way a modern large monopoly company would organise its employees and its publicity department. In strict marxist terms it analyses the "resultant of forces" continuously, [see Engels' argument in his famous letter to Bloch of September 1890]. It limits the scope of reforms only to what can be achieved within the resultant of forces. It is therefore by definition reformist. The question however is whether a revolutionary approach to reforms should also use the same method of analysing the resultant of forces. I say yes. I know David has a thought-out position on involvement in electoral politics and it is a very difficult problem for what are often small organisations of marxists. But Gramsci implies an alternative to the bourgeois two party system that has kept capitalism in power for so long. It entails reformist risks but Gramsci is not I maintain revisionist as such, and Hugh has interestingly fallen silent on this point. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Luxemburg Liebknecht March Ban
Allegedly on security grounds, this years Luxemburg Liebknecht march in Berlin has been banned. Traditionally held on the second Sunday in January, the PDS has now called for another attempt to be made this Saturday, which happens to be the exact anniversay, January 15, of the day in 1919 when Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered. It was a traditional march in the GDR, and after the fall of the wall many other leftists supported it. The failure of the authorities to protect it allegedly from someone who had a grudge against the GDR, is ominous. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
Does Hugh think Gramsci is a revisionist or not? Chris Burford London _ At 19:09 11/01/00 +0100, you wrote: >Chris writes: > >>Presumably if Hugh always assumed Gramsci was a revisionist he did not know >>the details I posted which I extracted from the Dictionary of Marxist Thought. > >Gramsci's positive attitude to the theory of Permanent Revolution during >the first few years of October and the Third International is hardly >surprising. Not even Stalin dared criticize Lenin or Trotsky for this view >(completely against the Two-Stage Theory of revolution of course) in those >years. It's what happens to this attitude after the Stalinist >counter-revolution and the dogmatization of Socialism in One Country etc >that counts. >If he thinks the quote from the Dictionary solves that, he's wrong. >If he thinks that deliberate vagueness and political code is a necessary >aspect of writing by a communist leader in prison, he should say so and >crack the code for us so the real revolutionary message of Gramsci's work >emerges. >the real orthodox revolutionary Marxist >message of Gramsci's writings --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
Have Hugh and I reached stalemate on this subject? Presumably if Hugh always assumed Gramsci was a revisionist he did not know the details I posted which I extracted from the Dictionary of Marxist Thought. The more substantive question is the strategic question about preparing for revolutionary change in an advanced capitalist society. Hugh does not oppose the struggle for reforms of course. However I await him saying how this is combined with a more revolutionary perspective and how radicals should prepare for those sudden qualitative changes of tempo that precede a true revolution. Could it be that our differences are not as great as we would both like to believe? We can still come down on different sides on certain political questions eg is it more revolutionary or not for Britain to join the European Monetary Union to take an example we have not discussed. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
ted a coup d'etat although he tended to overestimate the fragility of the new regime. In Jan 1921 he helped to found the Communist Party of Italy as part of Lenin's Third International. From 1922 - 4 he worked for the Comintern in Moscow. Elected to the Italian Parliament in 1924 he returned to Italy where he took over the party leadership and engaged in a struggle to transform the PCI from the sectarianism of its early years into a party rooted in the mass movement. [This could be quite consistent with the political position Lenin argued in "Left Wing Communism - An Infantile Disorder"] Gramsci was arrested in 1926 and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. After years of ill-health Gramsci died in 1937 from a cerebral haemorrhage. Now I cannot see any of that is revisionist by definition. The man has courage. He bases his work on the working class and the peasantry. He promotes the self-organisation of the working class. He is an internationalist. He combines parliamentary campaigning with trying to promote a mass base. He uses bourgeois legality to try to restrict the risks of fascism, without any suggestion that he would wish to abandon the goal of revolution. Perhaps the lessons of Italy and of Germany was that once established, fascism was a much more serious menace than the communists at first realised. But that is nothing to do with any charge of revisionism that could reasonably be levelled against Gramsci. In terms of Hugh's rather specialised definition of revisionism above, I do not see how Gramsci's participation in the Third International from 1922-4 could be said to be against the idea of an international party of the working class, unless Hugh thinks that Lenin's model of a single communist party in each country was itself revisionist. In which case he ought to lay the charge of revisionism more coherently at the door of Lenin, and we can stop trying to interpret Gramsci's cryptic prison notebooks. Whatever the merits or demerits of what Hugh calls Stalin's two stage theory of revolution, I do not see that the account of Gramsci's life above shows he was in anyway reluctant to have had a revolution in Italy if the conditions had permitted it. Hugh refers to Lenin's State and Revolution. He presents no evidence that what Gramsci said was against the principles there. Indeed Gramsci's analysis of the rise of fascism shows he was very clear of the danger of the state being a body by which one class oppresses another. Really with the resources Hugh has at his disposal from his Trotskyist contacts and in view of the widespread interest in Gramsci by "Eurocommunists" I would have thought Hugh would have some ready made articles to hand with clear passages which could back up his claim that Gramsci was a revisionist. If Hugh is however essentially criticising what he sees as right opportunist positions by Eurocommunists who claimed to be inspired by Gramsci long after Gramsci's death, then the debate can move on to that. And we are back at how in a developed capitalist society the progressive forces can accumulate strength against the forces of capitalism by long painstaking work. PLUS, how they can prepare for the unexpected. IMO both require a revolutionary attitude to reforms. Over to you again, Hugh. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
n one is open to right opportunist distortions. >I'm surprised no-one else is joining in Yes, I too think it is surprising. Just because we can count on Hugh for a good argument does not mean that this strategic issue is of relevance just to him and me. At least we both agree that it is pretty fundamental. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
> When Chris lauds Blair, he is lauding >a reformist. [And when Hugh beats his wife, he is a male chauvinist.] >Let's call a revisionist someone who thinks that somehow socialism will >grow automatically out of a non-bourgeois, workers state. Once the >bourgeoisie has been expropriated, the rest looks after itself (always >providing you exterminate the saboteurs, fascists, Old Bolsheviks, >Trotskyists, capitalist roaders, imperialist running dogs and other enemies >of the state, except when you make deals with fascists and imperialists >like Hitler, Churchill, the Shah, Mobutu or Nixon, for the good of the >state). This regardless of the position within the world economy of that >workers state. It is obvious that this kind of break with Marx's principles >only became possible on the back of October. What is amazing is the >consistency with which the same guff repeated itself in all the deformed >workers states following on October -- the Eastern European satellites as >more or less carbon copies, and with varying degrees of independence but >fundamental similarities (Socialism-in-Our-One-Country, the Two-Stage >Theory of Revolution, Bureaucratic Centralism, the personality cult) in >Yugoslavia, Vietnam, China and Cuba. > >So revision of Marx's principles is common to both reformists and >revisionists, but the main watershed is the principle of the state, where >the revisionists accept the necessity (by their institutional dependence >on it, as a state or as a dependent party, ie a CP performing the function >of diplomatic representation for the Stalinist Soviet Union, Maoist China >etc) of a workers state, a dictatorship of the proletariat, but reject the >consequences of Marx's and Lenin's analysis of the dialectical relationship >between form of state and mode of production (best presented in Lenin's The >State and Revolution and Trotsky's Permanent Revolution). > >It is clear that Gramsci, as bound hand and foot, and willingly, to the >Italian, Stalinist CP, falls into this category of revisionism. The >elements of reformism in his thought, reminiscent of Kautsky's >ultraimperialism turned in on the operations of society, express a >compensatory desire to wish away the political defeats of his period (ie >Stalinist counter-revolution with all its disasters for the international >working class) by means of an essentialist, fatalist, automatic growing >over of imperialist society into socialist society. In other words a >deliberate ignoring of the political and social contradictions between the >bourgeois state (ie the relations of property) and the class struggle (ie >the development of the forces of production). This sounds at best just one definiton of revisionism, which conveniently fits everything Hugh would say about Stalinism anyway. Gramsci is tainted by association with the Communist Party of Italy. That is not a very convincing way of arguing that Gramsci is inherently revisionist. However although I would not use the same terminology I think it there is room for some common ground when Hugh says: >What is amazing is the >consistency with which the same guff repeated itself in all the deformed >workers states following on October Why is this amazing? If we still think it is amazing there must be something deficient in our analysis. There must be something deeper happening which cannot be summed up just in a word derived from the name of one man, Stalin. As far as revolutionary change in the west is concerned Hugh seems to make the mistake of arguing that because Gramsci's approach implies 10,000 changes in the superstructure will be part of the process, it will nevertheless be a gradual evolution. Turbulence and sudden change could occur. It might still be right to fight a war of position, until it turns dialectically into a war of movement. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
Hugh, are your really calling Gramsci a revisionist? And if so what type of revisionist is he, and what is your evidence? (I will still allow that you might want to call many self-declared *Gramscians* revisionists, but that is not necessarily the same question.) Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: From another list on "nation"
ndation for solidarity in the future against the common enemy. So even in the case of movements that are really movements of national minorities, rather than of full nations, it is usually positive to oppose all forms of oppression as part of wining them to the socialist revolution in the widest sense. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
manifest in a clear temporal sequence - first A then B then C. (He argued for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat in a socialist country before the victory of socialism world wide (oddly reminiscent of Stalin's explicit revision of Engels on the question of the withering away of the state). Now I read Gramsci as saying that to the extent that the openly cooercive functions of the state can be replaced by more consensual ones, so long as *consciousness* can internalise methods of self-regulation in the minds of the citizens then the state in that sense can wither away. But that will not be totally possible while classes exist. For example there are now over 20,000 CCTV cameras in London. Many of them reduce petty crime just by being there, by intruding on the consciousness of people that they *might* be filmed. Often there is no film in the CCTV cameras used to control speeding. The light flashes, and people slow down. Fines on the London underground are only £10 for having no ticket. This is hardly the iron fist of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, although the service is still a bourgeois service, expensive and inconvenient. If the market is not immediately to be abolished but if finance capital is to be brought under social control with the greater use of computers, it is possibly to envisage a society that is more consciously self-regulated, with many feedback systems, with only some aspects of the state designed to maintain the domination of the private ownership of the means of production by *force*. Now clearly Hugh would wish to criticise this as revisionist but I would appreciate him saying exactly in what way. Because I think Gramsci's formulas can be defended as not revisionist. I think they reflect the fact that the marxist method of abstraction is to be understood concretely in terms of quantitive changes turning into qualitative changes over quite a long period of time, and not as a linear sequence of punctuated revolutionary steps. (Marx held that modes of production were often mixed.) If correct, this has big implications for our concept of revolution. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Gramsci on the State
At 22:10 02/01/00 +0100, Hugh wrote: > >This makes things pretty clear, I think. > >The first sentence talks about "the general notion of the State", that is >one valid for any state regardless of the class character of the ruling >class that organizes it to protect its interests in the mode of production >involved. The second sentence goes on to refer to "a doctrine of a State >which conceives the latter as tendentially capable of withering away", as >if the withering away was part of the earlier "general notion of the >State". Given Gramsci's reputation as a Marxist, it might be thought that >he was referring to Marx's notion of the State. But Marx made it very clear >that in his view the State would only be able to wither away once the >conflicting interests of the classes in the capitalist mode of production >(ie the bourgeoisie and the proletariat) had been resolved by a revolution >in the mode of production so that these classes are removed from the >battlefield of history and replaced by a society of freely associated >producers, neither wage-slaves nor capitalists but equal in law and in >practice in their access to the forces of production and in the sharing of >the wealth they produce. As long as society is riven by class struggle, >that is as long as capital and labour-power confront each other as polar >opposites, ie as long as they exist as capital and >labour-power/wage-labour, there is no way the State can wither away. > >It's obvious from the remark quoted that Gramsci ignores this and is >completely reformist in his general perspective. Which of course is why >he's such a favourite with academic liberals who like to coquette with a >dash of Marxist red in their dinner jacket lapels. Thanks for dealing with these arguments directly. Which was more than I got from the Moderator of Marxism (LP) on the PEN-L list, whose reply appeared to be that self-evidently these ideas could not be taken seriously because they were written in prison! There is no doubt that Gramsi's ideas are open to a reformist interpretation. They also try to tackle the complexity of late bourgeois state and society in which the state intervenes in all sorts of ways, some of which are not about the open threat of violence by bodies of armed men, but which merge with accepted procedures sanctioned by the hegemony of ideas and the practice of civil society. I think there is a lot to be said for this but in terms of Hugh's criticisms, the question is, where does the reformist risk in Gramsci come from? From himself, from the pressure of writing in prison under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, or from his fashionable academic interpreters. Hugh directly criticises the passage in Gramsci. But it is certainly written in somewhat obscure ways and the following paragraph suggests that Gramsci was signalling the very reservations that Hugh insists upon. Would Hugh agree? "The expression 'Ethical State' or 'civil society' would thus mean that this 'image' of a State without a State was present to the greatest political and legal thinkers, in so far as they placed themselves on the terrain of pure science, (pure utopia, since based on the premise that all men are really equal and hence equally rational and moral, i.e. capable of accepting the law spontaneously, freely, and not through coercion, as imposed by another class, as something external to consciousness)." Well. Does the fault, if fault it be, lie in Gramsci or in his opportunistic interpreters? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Gramsci on the State
Gut revulsion at opportunist political leaders seems to combine with a reading of Lenin's polemics against opportunism to create a view that the bourgeois state can never have a progressive aspect, nor can government policies be a terrain of struggle. It is a controversial area, but the following extract from the entry on Gramsci in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought by Anne Showstack Sassoon, (volume ed. by Tom Bottomore. Blackwell, Second Edition 1991) - may clarify the arguments. "Intellectuals organize the web of beliefs and institutional and social relations which Gramsci calls hegemony. Thus he redefines the state as force plus consent, or hegemony armoured by coercion * in which political society organizes force, and civil society organizes consent. Gramsci used the word "state" in different ways: in a narrow legal-constitutional sense, as a balance between political and civil society; or as encompassing both. Some writers criticize his 'weak' view of the state which overemphasizes the element of consent (Anderson 1976-7), while others stress that Gramsci is trying to analyse the modern interventionist state where the lines dividing civil and political society are increasingly blurred (Sassoon 1980). He argues that the nature of political power in advanced capitalist countries, where civil society includes complex institutions and mass organizations, determines the only strategy capable of undermining the present order and leading to a definitive victory for a socialist transformation.: a war of position, or trench warfare; while the war of movement, or frontal attack, which was successful in the very different circumstances of tsarist Russia, is only a particular tactic. Influenced by Macchiavelli, Gramsci argues that the Modern Prince - the revolutionary party - is the organism which will allow the working class to create a new society by helping it to develop its organic intellectuals and an alternative hegemony. The political, social and economic crisis of capitalism can, however, result in a reorganization of hegemony through various kinds of passive revolution, in order to pre-empt the threat by the working-class movement to political and economic control by the ruling few, while providing for the continued development of the forces of production. He includes in this category fascism, different kinds of reformism, and the introduction in Europe of scientific management and assembly-line production." * This is a reference to page 263 of "Selections from the Prison Notebooks" 1971, Lawrence and Wishart: "the general notion of the State includes elements which need to be referred back to the notion of civil society (in the sense that one might say that State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected with the armour of coercion). In a doctrine of a State which conceives the latter as tendentially capable of withering away and of being subsumed into regulated society, the argument is a fundamental one. It is possible to imagine the coercive element of the State withering away by degrees, as ever-more conspicuous elements of regulated society (or ethical State or civil society) make their appearance." 1932 Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Vote for Karl Marx!
At 08:35 19/12/99 -0500, Andy Lehrer wrote: > >(please forward) > >http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/millennium/default.stm > >The BBC is conducting an internet poll to determine "the man of the millenium" >(last month >Indira Gandhi was chosen woman of the millenium). Anyone anywhere can have one >vote for >each e-mail address. Karl won the September "Thinker of the Millennium" vote, got >tons of >publicity, and he >stands a real chance now - so VOTE NOW! Here are the standings thus far: > >1. Mahatma Gandhi >2. Leonardo da Vinci >3. Nelson Mandela >4. Sir Isaac Newton >5. Albert Einstein >6. Martin Luther King >7. Jesus Christ >8. Sir Winston Churchill >9. Charles Darwin >10. Karl Marx > >As you can see, our man Karl is trailing in tenth spot. Help boost Karl to first >(we did it >once before with the Thinker of the Millenium poll in September) by voting at > >http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/millennium/default.stm 1. Mahatma Gandhi 2. Leonardo da Vinci 3. Jesus Christ 4. Nelson Mandela 5. Sir Isaac Newton 6. Albert Einstein 7. Martin Luther King 8. Sir Winston Churchill 9. Charles Darwin 10. Karl Marx I see the only change on the final result above was that Jesus Christ moved up from 7th to 3rd place demoting Nelson Mandela. Well at least our man beat Adam Smith, and Darwin was a materialist and Mandela and Martin Luther King are democrats, and da Vinci and Einstein were eccentric scientists. As for Jesus, he was rather arkward too, but I would have thought he should have been disqualified as far as human beings of this millenium are concerned. So perhaps Marx was ninth. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Nation
At 23:30 01/01/00 +1100, Rob wrote: . > Not quite Lenin, I'll admit, but no longer cozy Kautskyism either. . >Any of that hold any water, ya reckon? Surely. It is necessary to shift the framework of analysis of political economy to the global level. The one place on the industrialised planet that could not publicly celebrate the millenium was Seattle. Good. Rob is also right that the *nature* of the war that NATO fought in Kosovo was deeply suspect. Not much credibility there for the global gendarme. But I would emphasise two points economically. 1) The accumulation of surplus must also be analysed at a global level. In terms of exchange value it is a zero sum game, even if improved productivity increases the volume of use values. 2) As I wrote in my notes on "imperialism", Lenin has been proved more correct than Kautsky, in emphasising finance capital. TNC's are essentially masses of finance capital stabilising themselves across the globe and over time, despite the fluctuations of the business cycle and of the exchange rates. The concept also has the merit of seeing the phenomena as something more profound than just a set of policies (although of course they have policies to maximise their returns). They are the most abstract from of capital that at present exists. But they are virtually untamed at the global level, still less trussed up and ready for the oven. But I agree with Hugh, (even though I suspect he may wish to leave me out of the greetings to revolutionaries) that sometime in the next millenium, and probably within the next century, we should be celebrating a socialist thanksgiving, with turkey the main item on the menu. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: imperialisms
At 14:57 30/12/99 -0500, you wrote: >Our friend Bob is always disparaging Kautsky but couldn't it >be the case that Lenin was right concerning pre-WW I Europe >whereas Kautsky's concept of a super-imperialism may well >have validity for the world we live in now? > >Jim F. Highly likely. I tried checking in "Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Revolution" by Massimo Salvadori 1976 Verso paperback 1990. The picture is mixed. It is common in marxism space for people to write confidently that there were some deficiciencies in the description of imperialism given by Lenin as based on Hobson's writings. Kautsky's work certainly has deficiencies too, and it is complex to disentangle the errors of political judgement, the explanations, the limitations of analysis, and the change in the objective conditions. The issue of voting for the war credits, and trying to resist or modify them while maintaining unity of the German SDP is one question. Another is whether he could make a principled distinction between calling for the defeat of ones own imperialist country, and making one's support conditional only on it not waging an aggressive war. There is the wider question of how much genuine socialists should depend on progressing purely through bourgeois democracy. But in terms of the theory of ultra-imperialism - Kautsky does, as Lenin charged, appear to see imperialism as the control of agricultural resources by industrial capital. Finance capital is not emphasised for him in the way it is by Lenin. For Kautsky imperialism is about empires of industrial heartlands with agricultural colonies. For him therefore ulta-imperialism is an alternative policy whereby out of class interests the industrial capitalists of the world could come to see it is better to overcome war and promote free trade. In one sense this is indeed a policy subject to conscious control rather than a higher phase of capitalism independent of the will of any individual. But it does not appear to recognise the chaotic dynamics of the clashes of blocs of finance capital. Kautsky appears to have been complacent about the dominance of liberal bourgeois democracy. In his analysis of the effects of the war Kautsky appears to have been more realistic about the likely shifts in the balance of forces internationally: 1) the decline of Europe 2) the rise of anti-imperialist struggles in the colonies 3) the ascent of the United States destined to assume the leadership of the capitalist world 4) the end of Tsarist Russia. This sort of theorizing is an attempt to reflect in thought the contradictions in the external world and we ought to keep our attention focussed on the external world. What people are trying to get at with concepts like "ultra-imperialism" is the way finance capital can interpenetrate and may promote free trade and the reduction of the risk of big wars between large states. On the other hand the contradictions do not disappear and the terms of cooperation can cover up skirmishing for dominance between different imperialisms. EG the Kosovo war was in part an attempt by the USA supported by the UK to show Europe it could give leadership and impose a solution. The concealed recriminations and the rapid decision on forming a 50,000 strong European-only defence force, are a reflection of the contradictions. There can be both contention and collusion between different imperialisms (by which I mean blocs of finance capital). Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Ali BBC sportsperson of the century
On 23rd December John wrote: >My problem is that part of this enforced celebration means that I no >longer have access to a computer over this period, so I will just >have to save up all my posts until everything reopens. I look forward >to reading everyone else when I return. > On 21/12/99 GMT, John wrote: >You go on to say that 'images of positive role models are >important.' This seems to be at the heart of you enthusiasm for this >poll. This sounds very much like bourgeois race relations speak to me. >Without raising the whole rather complex and long-winded issue of the >nature of racism for marxists (unless someone's determined I do), >surely racism is more than just an ideological issue of white people >having 'incorrect' views and black people having low self-esteem. Yes. I think racism is a form of national oppression (but that is indeed a big question). Yes 'positive role models' is liberal speak but more than that. It is not restricted to "a racially conceived version of the individualist idea of the Great Men theory of history". An awareness of class and national oppression is absorbed in childhood. A child notices whether their mother or father is treated with respect and by whom; what is talked about where, and what is not talked about. Much of this is subconscious or only semi-conscious. >> Like Hugh, (who essentially agrees with me apart from having to take >> a customary swipe at reformism) I also remember the black power >> salute at the Olympics. That took courage. > >Can you explain in greater detail how this historical event manifests >itself in a BBC poll which in itself amount to a revolutionary change? >What is the actual mechanism Where by one can go from what I admit was >a significant and courageous action to a material effect in present day >society? What REAL individual, significant (however small) >revolutionary change has occurred? What sort of minor individual >changes does Gramski refer to? Isn't it, at best, all part of the ebb >and flow of politics (ripple across the ideological superstructural >pool? Or is it, in fact, politically insignificant or down right >reactionary? It is all part of the ripples across the ideological superstructural pool. But when a gathering of mainly white men stand in respect for a black sportsman, that is a ripple worth noticing. >> It is worth a hundred lectures against racism and a thousand >> lectures in praise of proletarian internationalism. It is itself a >> concrete act of proletarian internationalism. > >How? Surely the idea of BBC Xmas lectures against racism and a 1000 >programme series on proletarian internationalism might just have some >effect? That I could imagine would have a real effect on one or more >people who in turn would contribute significantly to revolutionary >change. I know I wouldn't object to it. . >Absolutely astonished & bemused, >John Well we are obviously approaching this question from very different subjective, practical, and theoretical positions. That could be creative but the gap is wide at the moment and we will not bridge it if we get irritated with each other, which I suspect we would if we tried to force each other to agree. I feel your remarks above assume that the way forward in revolutionary change is through clear-sighted marxists becoming more clear sighted. I am in favour of this but I think the process of revolutionary change, spread out over several decades, involves the subconscious of the masses. They need to experience in practice the issues that marxists think they can see clearly in consciousness. BTW my piece was concerned about the consciousness of the mainly white male audience that voted Ali BBC sportsperson of the century. Since then I have been struck by watching a video of Ali standing up against the Vietnam war and in favour of black assertiveness. He achieved what Paul Robeson did not succeed in doing - turning the black population of the USA against an imperialist war. He was less educated than Robeson, and rougher in his language. He did not communicate in educated diction. There will also be political differences that I suspect Charles Brown knows in much more detail than I do. But his mind was extraordinarily nimble and intelligent in asserting the justice of his position. He risked prison, risked never being able to fight again in any country of the world, risked isolation from his community. Not the foremost marxist theoretician of his decade but a brave internationalist. Because when it came down to it his nationalism was internationalist. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger. What is the abstract concept of proletarian internationalism if it cannot express itself in concrete deeds like this? So when he accepted the gift in person of the BBC t
Re: M-TH: Re: Fictitious capital
At 00:21 22/12/99 +0100, you wrote: >>Given the large amounts of fictitious capital in existence in the form of >>bonds and shares >>etc and the long run rise in the price of shares it must be that the >>accumulation of >>capital in the West has been sufficient to sustain this bull market. > >Why? > >How? Broadly, yes. I am not sure that this hangs on the technical Marxian meaning of fictitious capital. The USA escaped the crisis of liquidity just. Critical was the bail our of LTCM. More capital was destroyed in Asia. This balanced the picture in the world as a whole and the US could become the world's engine of growth, generously accumulating even more so that people could sell to it on credit. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Marx/Engels Internet Archive
Well can you get the quotation on the duopoly with these search methods?? >"We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately >take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt >ends -- the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of >politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate >and plunder it." Apart from getting a loop back to the archive button, if you go directly to the web page quoted, and type in "two great cartels" you get a large number of Trotskyist references but not the Engels text. Thank goodness the Exeter mirror site, although very out of date, is still in existence. What about the Colorado.EDU site? I realise that vast amounts of unpaid labour have gone into all this, but the present situation appears a potentially serious loss of a valuable resource. Chris Burford London At 10:49 20/12/99 +0100, you wrote: >Good news! > >After Chris B's note about the Marx/Engels Internet Archive not having a >search engine I checked it out and wrote to the Archive to ask about it. >This is their reply. > >Cheers, > >Hugh > >___ > > >Greetings, and thank you for your inquiry. > >We're in the process of moving the marxists.org site to a new server >that will support a search engine. We hope to complete this move >within the week. In the meanwhile our UK mirror has a search >capability: > >http://www.marxists.org.uk/search.shtml > >This mirror is perfectly up-to-date. > >>This has no search engine, and lacks much of the other supportive >>material, >>and I suspect, texts of the earlier site. > >On the contrary, the marxists.org site has vastly more content than >the original marx.org site, which was pulled by its administrator >many months ago. We mirror all of its original content and much more >besides. Please clarify this point to your comrades. It's a painful >misperception. > >If you have further questions please don't hesitate to contact me. > >Best, > >Tim Delaney >Director, Marx/Engels Internet Archive >http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ >mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- > > --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Engels on Two Party Duopoly
At 08:27 18/12/99 -0800, you wrote: > Found this F. Engels quote on a libertarian list. Any ideas on the direct >source? > Michael Pugliese > >"We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately >take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt >ends -- the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of >politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate >and plunder it." > >-- Friedrich Engels FREDERICK ENGELS London, on the 20th anniversary of the Paris Commune, March 18, 1891. Introduction to Civil War in France This should not just be on a libertarian list. It is in praise of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as illustrated in the Paris Commune of 1871! I only got this by going to the Exeter mirror site of the Marx Engels Archive. This has a warning that it is "fearfully out of date", and advice to go the the "Marxists" archive. What has happened to the Marx Engels Internet Archive at Colorado, which has a search engine? This is a serious loss. This used to be at http://csf.COLORADO.EDU/psn/marx/ When I clicked on this recently it took me straight to the "Marxists.org Internet Archive" This has a drop down menu with Marx Engels as the first choice. When you click on "Enter Archive" you at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ This has no search engine, and lacks much of the other supportive material, and I suspect, texts of the earlier site. Hopefully there is just a problem of links. Does anyone know? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Ali BBC sportsperson of the century
Charles Brown and John Walker made some interesting criticisms of my post a few days ago about Ali winning the BBC sportsperson of the century award. I agree there are reservations about boxing. It is dangerous. Fortunately there has been no suggestion that Ali's Parkinson's disease comes from that. It is true it is invariably about working class people fighting. But so are most mass spectator sports. It was not mentioned but I would agree there have to be reservations about the ideological significance of black islam. That was not mentioned last week. It is a sign of racism and the marginal position of black people in the reserve army of labour that Black people have had to win respect through some specialist contributions in music, including jazz, and in sports such as athletics and boxing. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was marginalised as a serious composer in Britain. Paul Robeson had to fight to win respect as a footballer and went onto the stage because racism prevented him winning a respected place in law. If the contributions of black people to modern society were restricted to boxing, the images would be negative - they would be merely the gladiators of the empire. But it is more than that and images of positive role models are important. Like Hugh, (who essentially agrees with me apart from having to take a customary swipe at reformism) I also remember the black power salute at the Olympics. That took courage. Robeson was marginalised from the black community when he came out against the Korean War. Ali came out against the Vietnam war and won. Less politically conscious, less eloquent, but no less brave. I am glad to say both were respected by many white people in Britain. I really know nothing about boxing but the BBC expert sportsreporter claimed his skill and ability reached new heights. Certainly he trained hard enough. And was fighting fit within a short space of coming out of prison. Nelson Mandela also used pride about boxing to make links with the black community in the USA. In England there has been a fight over 20 - 30 years against racism in sport. The fascists particularly tried to recruit at football matches. That battle has been largely won, although we should not be complacent. The BBC vote clinched it. What happened last week at the BBC ceremony is not important as a verdict on Ali (No doubt Charles Brown has more detailed knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of Ali's political position than I do.) What happened last week at the BBC ceremony was important for the consciousness of white English people. The votes were over a million (I do not know the total). No doubt the age profile may have been middle aged on average and predominantly men. When you see a hall of mainly white men standing up and applauding three black men, shall we say it is better that it happens than it does not. It is a liberation for the white people, quite apart from more obvious benefits. It is worth a hundred lectures against racism and a thousand lectures in praise of proletarian internationalism. It is iteself a concrete act of proletarian internationalism. If we abolish boxing, let us do it together, but meanwhile let us respect skill, courage, and dignity in the face of great difficulty. That is the real revolutionary significance. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Historical vs Dialectical materialism.
At 09:42 14/12/99 GMT, you wrote: >Chris, > >As I work in the university library I have tried to find some of the >papers of Schorlemmer but I have not suceeded in locating anything of >interest. I have looked through all his published works in English >but do not know enough about chenistry to spot the interesting bits. >All the biographies are in German from the commemorations in the GDR, >but I do not read German. > >As the geatest communist in Germany as Marx and Engels described him >it is a pity there is not more on him especially in Britain where he >lived all his adult life and who was so significant in Organic >Chemistry (in fact the world's first professor of the subject). He >really did come to communism because of the its scientific >rationale. > >What is the 2000 page document you are referring to? What other >information on him do you have? I would greatly appreciate more >information on him? > >Regards, > >John In July 1998 there was some correspondence about this on Marxism-and-Sciences, a list which essentially withered after its transfer to Emory, despite occasional postings from Charles Brown. [My view is it has to move, or the issues have to be pursued on a list like this - but that is another question.] One correspondent responded to an appeal to get further information about Marx's unpublished manuscripts because he lived in Manchester and there was reference to 2000 pages of manuscripts by Schorlemmer. Shortly after saying that he had emailed the man in charge of manuscripts, he announced with an exclamation mark that he had found the Schorlemmer manuscripts in the rare books section of the John Rylands Library. We heard no more. Perhaps he is still there! Please report back. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Historical vs Dialectical materialism.
At 12:07 13/12/99 GMT, John Walker wrote: >Here are a few more quotes from Marx OWN writings on dialectics >existing in nature: Bravo!! If you are in Manchester have you been able to inspect in the rare books section of the John Rylands University Library for the 2000 page documents of the chemist Schorlemmer who was a friend of Marx and Engels. They might just possibly contain some reference to the two, or show some attempts at the application of dialectics. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Ali BBC sportsperson of the century
At 09:09 13/12/99 GMT, John Walker wrote: >Chris actually wrote that: >> One of the problems of a Gramscian concept of revolutionary change in a >> developed capitalist society it what individual changes are significant, >> however small. > >If Mohammad Ali was voted Sports personality of the century is really >such a revolutionary change odd that the rest of you report of the >event fails to mention he avoidance of fighting in Vietnam. I wrote: >Mohammed Ali won the century and received an introduction that >specifically noted his political courage in going to prison rather than >fight in the Vietnam war. John wrote > In his acceptance speach he made no mention of >the new conflicts the USA is involved in, so it hardly has any >contemporary relevance. What do you expect? He did not speak about islam either. But in a wider sense the votes he got were symbolic of more than boxing. I do not think a Gramsian approach is necessarily desparate at all. Could you spell out what are your criticisms of it? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Ali BBC sportsperson of the century
One of the problems of a Gramscian concept of revolutionary change in a developed capitalist society it what individual changes are significant, however small. Last night felt like one of them. The BBC had its votes for outstanding sports people of the year and the century. Mohammed Ali won the century and received an introduction that specifically noted his political courage in going to prison rather than fight in the Vietnam war. He got more votes than the four other nominees together. >>> Ali, the three-times world heavyweight champion, received a standing ovation as he collected the trophy at the Sports Personality awards. And boxing celebrated a double triumph as current world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year. The 57-year-old, who received the award from former world boxing champion Evander Holyfield, said: "I would like to thank the British people for giving me such a big welcome and all the people concerned with the award." And he joked: "I had a good time boxing. I enjoyed it - and I may come back." Ali, who has Parkinson's Disease, also issued a statement which said: "Ever since I first came here in 1963 to fight Henry Cooper, I have loved the people of England. "They have always been extremely warm and welcoming to me, which is why I am especially honoured to accept the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century. "I give thanks to God and to all the people in the UK who have supported me over the years." << Flanked by Lennox Lewis, with his stylish dreadlocks, current heavy-weight champion, and a smiling Evander Holyfield, as the audience all stood in applause, this was a moment of pride and respect for the contribution that black people have achieved in English speaking lands. The openness and good humour with which Ali dealt with his Parkisons problem was also a model of dignity in copying with disability without being socially excluded. A small but real shift of power in took place last night in civil society in Britain. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Historical vs Dialectical materialism.
At 16:04 10/12/99 GMT, Russ wrote: > >Lew writes: > >>Whether Engels turned this materialist methodology into a metaphysics >>(as I believe) or not, the issue now is one of political practice. In >>what way does "dialectical materialism" contribute to the struggle for >>socialism? > >It hinders the struggle by turning Marx into a metaphysician. Eh? Let's take an example. This morning "Science" announces that a group of researchers believe they have found the approximately 300 genes that are indispensible for life in a bacterium. They now plan to assemble these genes artificially and see if they have created life. This is a fine example of dialectical materialism, dialectical because everything is connected to everything else, and because quantitative changes lead to qualitative ones at certain times. The researchers have proposed a debate because churches are disturbed. The bad reason why churches are disturbed is because they have an idealist view of the sanctity of Life which separates it from the material universe. The good reason why the churches are disturbed is that they represent conservative alarm at the developments of science and technology and a strong feeling that these must be brought under social control. This challenges the private ownership of the means of production. Only a dialectical materialist approach to this latest scientific discovery can help progressive working people take a relevant political stand. >Off on my travels and I await the explanations, hope all is resolved on my >return. >(fat chance) > >Russ Damn. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: What is value ?
I see on his website the author presents this as "Facts From The Fringe An irregular and irreverent serving of economic tidbits" He is really criticising concepts such as "unlocking shareholder value", which are of increasing interest to the bourgeoisified working class as they increasingly invest directly in shares. But Jim Stanford is of course not using the term in the marxist sense and does not make a distinction between exchange value (which is a proportion of the total capital-producing labour of the society and is far from infinite) and use value (which is related to the subjective socially conditioned determination of needs). We need this distinction to guard against neo-classical subjectivist theories of value which just have a grain of truth in them because of the shifting nature of social estimate of what has use value. "Facts from the Fringe" looks a lively column but a slightly more propagandist approach might be of interest to those who are concerned about the value of shares going down, as well as the hoping about some going up. >>>> Indeed, what is value if it can disappear so abruptly and violently thanks to a few mis-spoken words? I am thinking that perhaps the term "value" should be promptly reclaimed, and used once again to describe things with rather more lasting, worldly characteristics-things like labour, beauty, and knowledge. Jim Stanford is an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, and author of a book recently published by James Lorimer & Co. which does not feature his picture. <<< Amazon say his books are out print. He is apparently also the Chair of the Progressive Economics Forum of the CEA. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Historical vs Dialectical materialism.
I have been holding back from this debate because it was very thoroughly thrashed out to the point of exhaustion previously. Lots of examples were gathered of Marx's dialectical attitude to the natural world. The biggest example of Marx's dialectics in Capital, particularly volume 1, itself. I would suggest that anyone who reads it and does not accept from page 1 that for Marx iron, paper, diamonds, dozens of watches, yards of linen and tons of iron, all have a dialectical nature - is doomed ideologically to corrupt themselves and others. I confess I find the anti-dm position as baffling and as incredible as Andrew Austin (formerly of this list) used to denounce the dm supporters. That does not help to convince of course, but I simply do not understand what mixture of prejudice, misunderstanding, or possibly fear of ridicule, leads to such an entrenched attitude. It seems to me that in essence those who restrict marxism to historical materialism are making profound errors about the role of conciousness in life, and have a sort of vitalist view of human activity, in distinction to the rest of the animal kingdom and the universe. It is as if Marx begins and ends with the following proposition from the Manifesto which the anti-dm group read as purely a conscious political process: "Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." Now this passage is clearly a core example of historical materialism. But those who are opposed to dm, I suggest are forced to read this to refer only to conscious political movements. However Marx and Engels are clear that politics and other features of the superstructure are only partially independent and coherent. Ultimately they are reflections in consciousness of the material economic base. Marx's marginal notes on Wagner make clear that for Marx, humanity is an animal species and there is a continuous development from animal to man. Now the anti-dm group would presumably say there are qualitative changes on the way. But I would say not in this fundamental respect: that large aspects of human social life process is non-conscious. Similarly I suggest that Marx's comments on animals and men, are quote open to the new understanding that animals too are sentient beings. Now is this just a diversionary argument about consciousness? I suspect not. Because if the anti dm group say dialectics are restricted to the human world, they must be saying that dialectics consist of only *conscious* oppositions, eg of serf against landowner, proletarian against capitalist. But just because we consciously use dialectics to analyse the world does not mean that the contradictory nature of the world is restricted to human activity which is conscious. So I would ask the anti-dm critics to say why dialectics are manifested in the human world and not in the animal and inanimate world, if they do not argue it is to do with conscious processes. Yet Marx's political economy clearly deals repeatedly with processes that are at best often only semi-conscious. What possible motive could Marx have for finding dialectics in human society but not in the structure of aliphatic carbon molecules?? What the dispute is not about is treating Engels' schema as a dogma. Not even Stalin did that. I have to assume that the passion of the anti-dm group is in a belief that they must save marxism from loony Hegelianism. I on the contrary believe that if we are to use marxism in the renewed fight against capital we must go to the core ideas of marxism, the citadels of the law of value and dialectical materialism, and then we must apply them again non-dogmatically to the external world. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: [PEN-L:14223] Re: Marx at Seattle
At 05/12/99 Doug wrote: >Chris Burford wrote: > >>Despite the openly declared attacks on world capitalism, I have heard no >>reports yet of pictures of Marx among the demonstrators at Seattle. > >Didn't see it, but I heard there was a giant one at a demo on Thursday. So Marx was there at Seattle. The old mole was there. Doug will not mind me quoting from his introduction way back on 19th June on LBO-talk to the Guardian summary of June 18th in London:- >Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 11:37:33 -0400 >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: London riot >Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >[We Americans have so much to learn...] > >Guardian (London) - June 19, 1999 > >DAY THE CITY TURNED INTO A BATTLEGROUND Well, you Americans learn pretty fast! The day we hear of the resignation of the Seattle police chief is as good a day as any to applaud the tremendous spirit of tens of thousands of north Americans, shaking off the corruptions of imperialism, to challenge, as Doug said, not just globalisation, but capitalism itself. >From his daily reports:- "large, varied, imaginative, and spirited movement" "One of the many amazing things about this week is how things have kept evolving, growing, surprising." "The movement itself should be seen as part of a worldwide mobilization which is increasingly positioning itself as anti-capitalist rather than merely anti-globalization" On at least one occasion according to Doug, Marx was named to applause. Speakers denounced capitalism by name. This movement is now irreversible. No matter that the bravest were anarchists. They often are. No matter that those brave attacks require more detailed reforming campaigns to sustain their credibility. Others will also carry that forward. No matter that the actions were not all totally logically coherent and in full logical consciousness. Revolutions are a process, not a mathematical formula. The agencies of world capitalism are in disarray. A new global alignment of forces has emerged that is specifically anti-capitalist. The editorial in this week's sober New Scientist confirms the depth of the challenge to world capitalism in a way that complements the gut anti-capitalism of the protestors. Capitalism Kills! That appears to be the core agitational position that will be the slogan for the new socialist world revolution. That phrase, or phrases around it, are comarable to Land! Peace! Bread! for the Russian revolution. Just ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have a new alignment in world politics. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Marx at Seattle
Despite the openly declared attacks on world capitalism, I have heard no reports yet of pictures of Marx among the demonstrators at Seattle. Perhaps his followers have not done enough to link the law of value with global economic conditions. Marx himself suggested a more insidious and unconscious process of revolutionary development in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. Today the mole is digging away vigorously within 10 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall. "But the revolution is thoroughgoing. It is still traveling through purgatory. It does its work methodically. By December 2, 1851, it had completed half of its preparatory work; now it is completing the other half. It first completed the parliamentary power in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has achieved this, it completes the executive power, reduces it to its purest expression, isolates it, sets it up against itself as the sole target, in order to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. And when it has accomplished this second half of its preliminary work, Europe will leap from its seat and exult: Well burrowed, old mole!" Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Reforming capitalism for Seattle.
The FT leader article on Seattle, talks about conceding ground in the management of the world economy. Although Seattle is about the WTO, significantly the FT tackles the question of the IMF, seeing the structures for managing world capitalism as interdependent. As indeed do the protestors. [Any attempt to limit the protests to the WTO alone would be short-sighted. On this the anarchists may be more correct in their instincts than conscientious lobbyists for one of the progressive interest groups. Th whole picture is about the whole working of global capitalism.] The FT claims that the IMF already accepts that the unfettered rights of short term fund holders were arbitrary. That of course is a big shift, and it is still working through. (I note the Hang Seng index is over 15000 BTW) But the FT expresses concern about the narrow consent base of the west and signals strongly that for the first time the West should accept a non-European as the successor to Michel Camdessus as managing director of the IMF. Note it presents this argument in terms of appeasing the third world. However one of the likely candidates is Sakakibara from Japan who has just won the sponsorship of the ASEAN countries. This would reinforce the capitalist world being split into three main power groups, USA, Europe and Japan, unable to work together efficiently for the greater accumulation of Capital. FT:- >The IMF, though, is >starting to see the virtues of transparency. In choosing >the successor to Michel Camdessus, it has a chance to >prove that it is not in the hands of western Europe. > >The WTO, despite the force of the protests against it, is >probably the most inclusive of the three; its decisions are >reached by consensus. The Uruguay round was >weighted towards the west, but this was partly because >the developing world did not do enough to push its own >interests. Developing nations now have a much clearer >agenda of what they want to gain from WTO talks. > > < snip > > >A perception that these three international institutions >are properly reflecting the desires of the developing world >would do much to defuse the critics' arguments. So that is the FT's reformist solution. Already quite a shift. Below is a more thoughtful reformatory solution, which would actually address the formal power structures of the world economy: It should be supported. Open and democratic elections of IMF officials! Note interesting points in this article. Over 50 countries having their economic policy supervised by IMF. Although India has only 2% of the IMF votes the developing and post-communist economies have about 40 per cent of the IMF votes, enough to force the candidates to confront issues of interest to the poorer countries. - if the managing director was not appointed behind closed doors. Note also the author's interesting sketch of three different perspectives for the IMF, the USA's, Gordon Brown's and his own. Financial Times, 15 Nov 99 by Jeffrey Sachs - Time to end backroom poker game The IMF's new managing director must be chosen by an open and democratic process, says Jeffrey Sachs Michel Camdessus has wisely recognised that the International Monetary Fund needs a renewal of vision and leadership. The cognoscenti of the world financial system expect his successor as managing director to emerge from the backroom poker game of European politics, as has always happened in the past. Will it be a German this time instead of Frenchmen, they wonder breathlessly. In the meantime, the developing world - 85 per cent of the world's population and nearly 100 per cent of the receiving end of IMF policies - is expected to stand by and wait for the result. This is no way for a global institution that preaches transparency, good governance and democracy to function. The position of IMF managing director is one of the most important in the world. The IMF, wrongly I would assert, now has programmes in more than 50 countries, and is negotiating with at least a dozen more. Hundreds of millions of people depend on the quality of IMF leadership. In truth, they often depend more on IMF leadership than on their own political leaders, so intrusive has the IMF become in the weak and vulnerable nations of the world. Yet the IMF's legitimacy is dangerously low. It is already the object of riots and unrest throughout the developing world, as well as scorn in the US Congress and even in much of the financial world. There is little chance of regaining global legitimacy if the developing countries have no role in the selection of a new managing director, including the real possibility of a successful candidate from a developing country. At a time when the gulf between the world's richest and poorest is the widest in history, one might expect some more serious attention to ways to improve the prospects of the poorest countries - including the appropriate roles of international institutions. And yet, with the horse-trading t
M-TH: Crisis *for* capitalism at Seattle
increased concern about the social consequences of economic activities is mirrored in the return to power of centre-left governments in the leading European nations. The rhetoric of economic efficiency that dominated the 1980s has given way to Third Way politics, which is an attempt to combine economic growth with social justice. The international community has already taken on board one of the main lessons of the Asian crisis. There is now a widespread consensus that short-term capital flows can be excessively destabilising in all but the best-run countries. Even the International Monetary Fund, a staunch supporter of capital account liberalisation prior to the Asian crisis, now accepts this. But opposition to free capital flows has extended into a mistrust of all forms of globalisation, including trade. ... Part of the reason why the NGOs' objections to free trade have acquired such force is that international organisations have lost much of their moral authority. The Cold War had given the US and Europe a natural leadership role over countries outside the Communist bloc; when the Berlin Wall came down, this role fell with it. Yet the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank remain, in the public eye at least, western institutions. The IMF and the World Bank lost a great deal of credibility following the Asian crisis. " Certain reformist answers by the FT follow, which are the subject of a separate post as this one is long enough already. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Stephen Jay Gould on Biological & Cultural Determinisms
Good quote. I am copying it to marxism-thaxis. Chris Burford London At 14:10 25/11/99 -0500, you wrote: >Stephen Jay Gould writes in "Nurturing Nature," _An Urchin in the Storm: >Essays about Books and Ideas_ (NY: Norton, 1987): > >* ..._Not in Our Genes_ [by R.C. Lewontine, Steven Rose, and Leon J. >Kamin] is an important and timely book, for it not only exposes the >fallacies of biological determinism...but also presents a positive view of >human behavior that could propel us past the stupefying sterility of >nature-nurture arguments. A proper understanding of biology and culture >both affirms the great importance of biology in human behavior and also >explains why biology makes us free. The old equation of biology with >restriction, with the inherent (as opposed to malleable) side of the false >dichotomy between nature and nurture, rests upon errors of thinking as old >as Western culture itself. The critics of biological determinism do not >uphold the equally fallacious (and equally cruel and restrictive) view that >human culture cancels biology. Biological determinism has limited the >lives of millions by misidentifying their socioeconomic disadvantages as >inborn deficiencies, but cultural determinism can be just as cruel in >attributing severe congenital diseases, autism for instance, to >psychobabble about too much parental love, or too little. (148) * --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Mother
>How's this for a great piece of journalism?
>
>Mother Knows Best
>
>Once convinced that they should expend their precious parental
>energy, mothers go to great lengths to rear their young. Most impressive is
>the Australian social spider. As her spiderlings mature, she begins to
>turn to mush. As she liquefies, her children suck her up. Sated from this
>sacrificial meal of mother, they exercise better manners and forgo
>eating one another as well.
>
>
>It's from a review by Helen Fisher of "Mother Nature" by Sarah B. Hrdy
>(Scientific American, Dec 1999, p 98). The review is entitled "Mother
>Nature is an Old Lady with Bad Habits".
Well pretty good actually, as a piece of journalism. There is such a burst
of popular science literature that we can't be intellectually snobby even
if the article does not scan metrically. I prefer New Scientist, but I
think Scientific American is also very good.
True, one model of the ageing female worker under advanced capitalism is
that she should exhaust her own claims within the social life process, to
nurture her adolescents and stop them fighting each other before she
dissolves in a post-menopausal post-modernistic miasma.
But I am not convinced this Australian "social" spider is entirely
representative of Motherhood as a Platonic ideal. I am not sure what Rob
would say about this is a symbol of Australian nurturance. Over amiable
though he is, I trust he does not feel obliged to follow this example
sacrifice as list moderator, as much the mother as the father of our
labours, not forgetting Bill of course.
Besides it can happen the other way round - what about all those little
rabbits that get eaten by their frightened mothers?
("Dead! ... and never called me Mother!" - not surprisingly!)
Just because rabbits are alien mammalian imports to Australasia does not
deny their place in the animal kingdom, even on this list. Evolutionary
psychology is a little more complicated.
So are we to interpret Horace as an evolutionary psychologist?
>> naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.
>>
>> You can drive her away with a pitchfork -- Nature runs right back!
>>
>> Horace, ars poetica, x.
Dazzled though I am buy Hugh's literary range (rather likelatent Stalinists
on the Central Committee being torn between irritation and wonder, as
Trotsky read French novels during the more boring speeches) I have, despite
myself, to agree with the following:
>The polemical thrust of the signature quote is against proclamationist
>and voluntarist politics, and against cultural relativism. We are animals,
>and our being precedes our thought -- it's not the other way around, we're
>not spirits whose thought can determine our being as if our bodies and
>their needs were infinitely malleable. Fairly malleable, yes, completely
>and voluntarily malleable, no. We are subject to biological and ecological
>constraints and these must be scientifically determined and acknowledged
>for us to get anywhere in changing the world and ourselves for the better.
It is quite clear from, among other things Marx's Marginal notes on Wagner,
that he regarded human beings as inseparable from the animal kingdom; as
animals.
The problem with "evolutionary psychology" is the reductionism of its
presentation, but not if it is interpreted dialectically. Interpreted
dialectically, it is impossible seriously to deny that we evolved in the
course of the struggle to adapt to our environment. We are a
self-perpetuating species in a self-perpetuating biosphere.
Abstract reified ideals of Motherhood are socially conditioned and shift
with the mode of production.
Apple pie however, is as materially real as liquified spiders, and
fortunately more appetising.
Chris Burford
London
--- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Imperialist appeasement of Russian sub-imperialism
Thursday, 25 November, 1999, BBC: No 'Cold War' over Chechnya The United States has signalled that it does not want to link international aid to Russia with the war in Chechnya. * That would be embarrassing. For its own imperialist reasons the USA would rather appease Russian aggression against the right of the Chechens to self-determination. US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, said that the war in Chechnya must not be allowed to damage relations between Russia and the West, and turn Russia back into a Cold War enemy. * Naturally not, it would rather allow Russia to develop as a sub-imperialism so long as it can be run by Yeltsin and the oligarchs in alliance with western imperialism. She was speaking after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered more than $100m be added to the Chechnya war budget. Some US officials have recently suggested Washington might block International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans if Russian military action in Chechnya intensified. Mrs Albright said that the two issues, of IMF loans and the war, should be kept separate. "We believe it is very important for there to be economic stability in Russia. That is in our national interest," she said. "The last thing I think that we should be doing is trying to turn Russia back into an enemy. We spent 50 years in that mode." She added that the recent 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall "made it apparent to me one more time how much time was lost during the Cold War." Mrs Albright reiterated that the Chechen conflict should be solved through political dialogue. Our correspondent in Washington, Richard Lister, says this is a politically awkward situation for Washington. * Ha! The US is facing an uncomfortable choice. Either it can give financial support to a government whose military tactics it roundly condemns, or withhold assistance and jeopardise both relations with Russia and the economic stability of the region as a whole. The army was promised the extra funds in October, but the IMF warned that it would suspend help if military spending ran out of control. * How embarrassing! Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Washington and Moscow
I am surprised to read Rob's arguments that Russia is not going to win. This war is well-supplied logistically and they are already digging in and are prepared to surround Grozny and shell it throughout a long winter. They persist in ruling out negotiations. The one thing that can be said for them is unlike in Kosovo and East Timor, the local population has not been terrorised by para-military fascists. On the main theoretical difference between Dave and Bob, I am alarmed to find myself agreeing with both of them. Rather than argue however between Russia as a developing imperialist state or as a colony, I would like to suggest a formula I heard at a seminar on the world economy in London 8 days ago. It was from someone from a Trotskyist background. It was that there are such things as sub-imperialisms. The definition would be where the entity keeps some share of surplus value for itself. I think despite our many other differences all of us can see that the West has been particularly soft on Yeltsin for entirely discreditable reasons. It is essentially allowing him to play the idea of becoming a sub-imperialism. They calculate that he will have to compromise and accept a subordinate position within a global capitalism dominated by the US. BTW I note contributors denouncing the possibility of a western "humanitarian intervention" into Chechnya. What you are not distinguishing is between a military attack and financial pressure, of the sort that got the Indonesian troops to withdraw from East Timor. It is quite clear that the west could have imposed the latter, and for *imperialist* reasons decided not to. They would rather do business with a corrupt Yeltsin/Putin regime that oppresses subject nationalities, than a lefter Primakov type regime. Perhaps Dave or Bob will not buy it, but what about "sub-imperialism" as a relevant half-way concept for what Russia under Yeltsin is trying to achieve? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: IT stocks?
At 18:08 22/11/99 +1100, you wrote: >G'day Bob, > >Doug's probably fast asleep just now, so here's an interesting piece he >posted on his list the other day. I'd be interested in Thaxist views on >this meself. > >Cheers, >Rob. > >[From the bear's den at <http://www.LeMetropoleCafe.com>] > >Frank Veneroso - Veneroso Associates - November 19, 1999 > >The US Economy: The Stock Market >Shades of the Souk al Manakh >Is This the Moral Hazard Meltup? Probably Not. I am glad you reposted this. In view of the volume of correspondence on LBO-talk I think there is often a role for the issues to be discussed on a specifically marxism list. And unlike Louis Proyect, you and Bill do not censor the debate. But at this stage just a question please. What is moral hazard, and is there a marxist equivalent for it? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Preobrazhensky - the LOV - Primitive Socialist Accumulation
by workers who do not sell their labour power, is not commodity production. I think if a socialised cooperative sector had continued longer, and if we ever get nearer to that again, then the law of value remains. In principle a cooperative could go bankrupt, or might at least have to trim back its economic activities while the society allocated more access to credit to another enterprise. But such a cooperative sector could be under overall state guidance of a socialist orientated state. >With the existence of simple commodity production under the NEP it was >clear that there was great *dual* pressure on the new system and its >political protective armour. On the one hand from inside, with the >capitalist enclave within the socialist enclave within the imperialist >world-market, and on the other from the outside, with the pressures of the >world-market screaming to the peasants (and the less-conscious workers) >that "here you have cheap cheap cheap goods that are better than the >expensive crap the Bolshies are forcing you to queue for". Preobrazhensky >calls this the scissors crisis (the curves for supply and demand, for world >prices and internal prices opening away from each other on the graph just >like a pair of scissors). This dual pressure was an expression of the Law >of Value. Is this not similar to the situation that exists in the world capitalist market today, that it is very hard for less developed countries to catch up in the accumulation of surplus and get relative surplus value on a global scale from innovations in the means of production? A socialist state, like some nationalist states, might be able to retain a portion of the surplus separate from the centralising effects of the world capitalist market, but it would be vulnerable to the removal of barriers to a global capitalist market. Essentially the issue when discussing the law of value is which society are we judging is the benchmark for the prevailing methods of production within which productive labour power is distributed. >The proto-socialist economy of the new system was an expression >of what will replace the law of value worldwide if capitalism does not just >collapse into barbarism -- ie conscious, rational cooperative planning for >production and distribution by freely associated social producers. The >history of the past few decades shows very clearly that the political >aspects of it all are paramount. The political treachery of the Stalinist >bureaucrats worked initially to weaken the protective armour of the new >system and then eventually at a certain point to ditch it altogether and >hand over the whole thing to the imperialists by opening up to capitalist >restoration. I do not want to disguise the crimes against socialist legality, but this sounds like demonology: the political treachery of the Stalinist bureaucrats. The premature nationalisation of major areas of the economy may have been a strategic mistake but bureaucrats may have started off by trying to work their guts out. Does the term "political treachery" imply *conscious* "political treachery? Surely this is a question of non-antagonistic contradradictions becoming anatagonistic. > This >contradiction between the relations of production (hopeless and >suffocating) and the forces of production (which have the potential to >create a world of plenty and full individual development for all) is the >fundamental motive force behind all the conflicts at present tearing the >world apart, and indicates that until it begins to be solved, consciously >and internationally and forcibly, by the internationally organized >revolutionary working class, the whole tragic farce will just repeat itself >for ever until catastrophe ensues. I regret Hugh going on to making general manifesto points as if every theoretical article had to be a propaganda leaflet. I can see the sense of the need for a conscious political decisions about how to foster the socialist sector after the revolution in Russia. But the politics of what we do now is quite a sweep along from the contradictory slave owning Roman Empire with which Hugh began his article. Despite my prejudices against Trotskyism, I have enough respect for Hugh not to need to be dazzled each time. But since he poses the need for the revolutionary working class to begin consciously to solve the contradiction between the relations of production and the forces of production on a world scale... What reforms does he think revolutionary activists should fight for at the WTO meeting at Seattle? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: 'Natural Capitalism' praised by Clinton
In Florence at the conference of Centre Left parties today, Clinton has just plugged this book again. It is already number 387 in the Amazon book list. >From the Amazon reviews below it looks as if it shows a number of ways capitalism can be reformed to reduce the explotation of the environment. The reference to neighbourhood land use *might* imply some sort of socialisation of land short of outright public ownership (as called for in the Communist Manifesto) But it will create illusions that there can be a solution short of the abolition of capitalism to the uneven accumulation of capital on a world scale, and the law that the large the stock of capital the larger the global reserve army of labour. These technical innovations might even intensify the relative immiseration of Africa through the workings of the global capitalist system. Does anyone know this book and can critique it? Chris Burford London __ Natural Capitalism : Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, Paul Hawkin Our Price: $18.87 You Save: $8.08 (30%) Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours. Hardcover - (September 1999) 396 pages Reviews Amazon.com In Natural Capitalism, three top strategists show how leading-edge companies are practicing "a new type of industrialism" that is more efficient and profitable while saving the environment and creating jobs. Paul Hawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins write that in the next century, cars will get 200 miles per gallon without compromising safety and power, manufacturers will relentlessly recycle their products, and the world's standard of living will jump without further damaging natural resources. "Is this the vision of a utopia? In fact, the changes described here could come about in the decades to come as the result of economic and technological trends already in place," the authors write. They call their approach natural capitalism because it's based on the principle that business can be good for the environment. For instance, Interface of Atlanta doubled revenues and employment and tripled profits by creating an environmentally friendly system of recycling floor coverings for businesses. The authors also describe how the next generation of cars is closer than we might think. Manufacturers are already perfecting vehicles that are ultralight, aerodynamic, and fueled by hybrid gas-electric systems. If natural capitalism continues to blossom, so much money and resources will be saved that societies will be able to focus on issues such as housing, contend Hawken, author of a book and PBS series called Growing a Business, and the Lovinses, who cofounded and directed the Rocky Mountain Institute, an environmental think tank. The book is a fascinating and provocative read for public-policy makers, as well as environmentalists and capitalists alike. --Dan Ring >From Booklist , September 1, 1999 Hawken is the author of The Ecology of Commerce (1993) and is best known for his PBS series Growing a Business. Amory and Hunter Lovins founded the Rocky Mountain Institute, which promotes efficient resource use, and Amory has been called the "godfather" of alternative energy. The three have joined forces here to set a blueprint for sustainable development. The authors argue that it is possible for companies to reduce energy and materials consumption by up to 90 percent but still increase profits, production, and employment. They outline the four strategies that underlie "natural capitalism" and, using hypercars and neighborhood land use and superefficient buildings as examples, show how these strategies are being applied. They also identify ways resources are being wasted and explain the principles of "resource productivity." Throughout their book, the authors indicate new business opportunities that will be created by practicing "natural capitalism." David Rouse >From Kirkus Reviews A critique of the present economic system and its destructive effects on natural assets, coupled with ideas about how to make it work better. The Lovinses, directors of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a resource policy center, and business author Hawken (The Ecology of Commerce, 1993, etc.) merge their talents and experiences here to offer practical guidelines for reducing the environmental messes made by the industrial world, including pollution, transportation congestion, erosion, and wasted energy of all types. While suggesting solutions, however, they use a good deal of space to attack both contemporary enterprises and those dating to the Industrial Revolution. Targets include specific technologies, corporations, and general business practices, as well as wasteful consumer habits. The aluminum can, for example, is ex
Re: M-TH: Washington and Moscow
At 11:55 19/11/99 -, George wrote: penetratingly about the contradictions. However I think the following paragraph gets the balance wrong: >Despite Russia apparent determination to bring Chchnea under its control Russia has made >concession to be included in a final document to be signed which involves ging the OSCE >both a political and humanitarian role in the Chechnea.The fact that Russia has made such >a concession even if it were to turn out to be a merely paper concession is an indication >of both Russian internal weakness and growing isolation from the West. The press releases from the OSCE tried to present it that Moscow had made concessions on Chechnya, but (unless it is to be more willing to resettle the civilian population) there are none! The west has decided to go along with Yeltsin and Putin because it prefers them to a Primakov type more left wing regime that would accomodate the Communists. They previously censored Yeltsin for declaring war on Chechnya. It is rumoured that Russia insisted on the USA and the rest of OESC recognising that Chechnya was its territory otherwise it would veto US action against Iraq. This is an imperialist compromise, not in the interests of the people of Iraq, of Chechnya, nor of Russia. I am not in favour of Nato bombing the Russian army, but when you compare what the IMF and the west did financially to Indonesia to force it to disgorge East Timor, you can see its recent stance on Chechnya as not imperialist aggression but imperialist appeasement of aggression. Yeltsin is up to his neck in corruption and they could pull the rug on his government any time they wanted, if they preferred the alternative. Which they do not - for imperialist reasons. Witness this article in the New York Times for evidence that the IMF can dictate policy from Jakarta to Moscow: >The New York Times >November 10, 1999 >Longtime I.M.F. Director Resigns in Midterm >By DAVID E. SANGER >WASHINGTON -- Michel Camdessus resigned Tuesday in the middle of his third >term as chief of the International Monetary Fund, setting off a >behind-the-scenes struggle involving the Clinton administration and big >European nations over who will direct the agency that is in effect >dictating national economic policy from Russia to Indonesia and Africa. >Camdessus, who has steered the I.M.F. for nearly 13 years through a >succession of economic crises, said Tuesday that "entirely personal >reasons" had prompted his resignation two years before the end of his term. >Colleagues said constant travel and a succession of international crises had exhausted >him. But in a half-hour conversation in his office here Tuesday afternoon, the >67-year-old former central banker in France appeared vigorous, telling >tales of political intrigue, responding to attacks from conservatives in the U.S. >Congress who had accused him of wasting billions in bailing out Russia, and >arguing that his much-attacked prescriptions saved Asia from a far worse >economic fate. And in discussing the fund's growing political impact throughout the world, >he acknowledged for the first time that its actions in Indonesia served as >a catalyst in forcing out the man who led the nation, the world's fourth-most >populous. "We created the conditions that obliged President Suharto to leave his >job," Camdessus said. "That was not our intention," he said, but quickly added >that soon after Suharto's resignation he traveled to Moscow to warn Russian >President Boris Yeltsin that the same forces could end his control of >Russia unless he acted to contain them. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Further socialisation of health care in UK
One of the main ways that the Labour government has not taken the National Health Service in a socialist direction is the "Private Finance Initiative", for the funding of premises. However the following announcement last week marks a significant turn in the move from General Practioners, the bed-rock of the British NHS, being petty bourgeois independent professionals, to being regulated employees in a social system of production. Even under the former Conservative government, the policy was to gather together GP's in better organised collective practices, performing a number of multi-disciplinary health tasks. The catch was that the Conservatives were boosting the GP's practices as surrogate customers with their own fund-holding budget in order to promote an "internal market" within the gigantic NHS, one of the largest state economic units west of the former iron curtain. This NHS worked on the communist principle of to each according to his need. (It had been modelled on collective health schemes set up in the colliery towns of South Wales). But the GP base was a petty bourgeois mode of production. Now within two years of the election, the Labour Government has brought separate fund-holding GP's, with very little strident opposition, into Primary Care Groups covering populations of 100,000, and has dropped talk of an internal market. These PCG's may become Trusts directly managing much of local health care. The formulas on this note that all GP's may remain independent self-employed agents. The sub-text is that the government is opening the door to them being directly employed by their local primary care trust. The material logic of all this is that health care has moved beyond what a professional can do in his/her front room, with a nurse attached, and needs skilled managers, and complex information systems. A complex social form of production. Now the announcement on Friday sets up, again without effective opposition from the professional bodies, a mechanism of quality control for the medical labour force. This brings them an important step closer to being employed, highly skilled workers. This is a prosaic step in realising the dramatic words of the Communist Manifesto, in one of the increasingly important sectors of the economy, health provision: "The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers." Whether this step is one that ultimately favours socialism, as I believe, or a more rational delivery of an essentially bourgeois state health system, it is certainly a more socialised form of organisation of the service. I would have thought that other capitalist countries need something similar to the British system of general practitioners who can broker access to specialised health resources, in order to move towards socialised health care. Extract from the somewhat hyped press-release follow. Chris Burford London Friday 12th November 1999 Health Secretary Alan Milburn today published ground-breaking proposals to tackle the problem of poorly performing doctors. The tough new proposals, aimed at protecting patients and driving up standards, will ensure that all NHS doctors provide a first class service, using their skill, education, dedication and commitment to give the very best possible care for their patients. Current NHS disciplinary procedures are bureaucratic, legalistic and ineffective. The new measures would ensure that NHS trusts and health authorities must be able to take action quickly to detect emerging problems and resolve them quickly and fairly. The comprehensive package of measures will: - ensure that all NHS doctors' practice is monitored to pick up problems early, ensure that poor performance is tackled swiftly, and ensure tough action is taken in response. The proposals, drawn up by Chief Medical Officer Professor Liam Donaldson, completely overhaul key aspects of the the NHS, which have remained largely unchanged since 1948. For hospital doctors the plans would end the protracted delays, expensive suspensions on full pay, and legalistic inflexibility of the old arrangement through four key reforms: - all doctors to participate in external clinical audit and take part in an annual appraisal of their performance. - they set up new independent and impartial "Assessment and Support Centres" where doctors suspected of poor practice will be referred. They will be looked at to see if they need retraining, or if their poor standards cannot be put right the centres will advise employers accordingly who can the take necessary action as well as notifying the GMC. - they make clear that doctors being investigated for personal misconduct (for example sexual assault, fraud)
M-TH: Re: [PEN-L:13501] WTO and value
army. Although rises in productivity may mask the workings of exchange value, I suggest therefore that the greater the capital in the metropolitan countries the greater the reserve army of labour in the countries of the third world, and the greater the relative difference in exchange value between them. These contradictions will not be resolved until we have expropriated and socialised global capital. So I would say to George, that the entry of China to the WTO does not weaken the relevance of the marxian theory of value, but it does suggest we should apply it in the form of a field theory analogous to a gravitational field. I would appreciate comments and criticisms on this contribution. I am copying it also to marxism-thaxis at Utah. Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Whither the Family
I think I agree with much of the thrust of the posts by John and Simon. If I understand them correctly they are both criticising the social and psychological effects of capitalism. I think this is a very important area of criticism of late capitalist society, and is essential for the battle for ideological hegemony of socialist ideas. However I have differences with the precise wording of the distinctions they make and would like to discuss this more. It is an area that Marx did not illuminate particularly strongly as his interests lay elsewhere. >Domestic work is part of private production and falls outside the >realm of social production. To be consistent with Marx's terminology I would not say "private production" here. I would say "outside the realm of commodity production". This BTW is not completely true. Capitalism has been able to produce commodities that save on domestic labour, like vacuums and washing machines. Companies may sell as a commodity the service of visiting your home and power-cleaning the carpets. Domestic servants may hire themselves for a few hours a week. Human beings meet many needs for each other. This is all part of the "social life process" of our species. Only a subset of these activities are organised through commodity exchange, and only a subset of this subset are organised for the production of surplus value by capital. Nevertheless the incessant drive for capitalist accumulation means that this compartment constantly eats into the quality of the other life processes with damaging effects, even at the same time as it produces an over-abundance of consumer durables. Nor do I think the distinction is quite that capitalism deals with material reality and human intercourse deals with sentiment. The majority of commodities meet needs of the imagination, especially now as the social surplus rises. Growth areas are in "quality" products that somehow have associated with them the smell of social richness that capitalism actually destroys. Designer labels give a sense of community with those to whom you wish to belong. Electronic gadgets create groups across the internet. Massive expansion of air tourism pollutes the atmosphere and carries people to idyllic settings which they do not enter with any organic relationship, but merely photograph for their cosy social charm and leave, without any understanding of the contradictions which their hosts have to work through to make their own social life process coherent. No the distinction is not that capitalism is about the material, and socialists are about the spiritual. The critique of what capitalism does to the spiritual/social, needs to grasp the essence of how commodity production under capitalism eats like a cancer into all other compartments of an organic "social life process". Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
