[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1
Ralph:Yes, this is a crossroads . . . a conjuncture of the election of the first black president and a major crisis of capitalism. Those two facts are interdependent, interrelated, and quite important, but I've yet to see an insightful elucidation of the nature of that importance. Decisive in this is not the election of a black president, but the fact that Cracker America, almost half of the white electorate, voted for McCain and is out for Obama's blood. I saw a documentary last night on HBO: Right America: Feeling Wronged: a survey of white Americans who hate Obama. These aren't just white people, these are the whitest people you ever saw, the redneck kind that make your blood run cold. The kind not shy about telling you what they think about niggers. Granted, they are dinosaurs, and hopefully they will die out soon, but not soon enough. Now the question is: how will Cracker America react to 'socialist' Obama's handling of the economic crisis? ^^ CB; The racists are a danger, but the important factor in this election is the great mass ofWhite Americans who voted _for_ Obama.That's what is new. The racists have alwaysbeen here. This election was a point of tipping from the racists' majority to an anti-racist majority of the electorate. The racists are a danger. This is a crossroads, a crisis for the American system with, of course, danger and opportunity, massesof Whites with new thinking and openness. Which side are you on ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1
Now that American society is undergoing a profound revolution in the society machinery ^^^ CB: What is the evidence and argument that _society_ is going through a profound revolution in machinery ? What characteristics of today's new machinery make the revolution _profound_ in comparison with the revolutions in machinery in the last 100 years ? Why is American society undergoing this and not the whole world ? If it is the whole world then why not say the whole world ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 3B
Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2 Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By Elíades Acosta Matos raises a question whose answer is both! _http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=800Ite_ (http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=800Ite) Section 3B The African American Question (AAQ) has undergone great changes since WW II. Few people today even attempt to describe the question in its long tortured historical features. The quantify thing and viewing progress through mirror images, 300 million mirrors, is enough to give one tired hands. Historically, the description of the AAQ, was one of caste; a special question of class because of the color question; a national or national-colonial question, because the blacks suffered a pretty obvious oppression. The most visible change the African American people and all of America have lived is the destruction of Jim Crow; the mechanization of agriculture; the impact of the technological revolution and the reformation of relations between and within classes - without changing the property relations. American society has been reformed in my lifetime. Descriptions of the African American Question were based on observation over a long period of time. The first observation was that since the color line was the dominant factor of their oppression and isolation, all African Americans regardless of their education and economic status, were subject to the same or similar exploitation, segregation and oppression. Second, that this material oppression, supported and held in place with passive and aggressive support of the Anglo American peoples and layers of the working class itself, produced all the essential features of a distinct culture of the Negro, existing as a distinct people in American society. The general conclusion of this observation by Marxists was that racial discrimination - the color line, was a form of class exploitation and therefore could not be fundamentally overcome short of the overthrow and destruction of the capital and the reorganization of society on the basis of economic communism. Life has proven this political projection wrong. The relations between and within classes has been reformed. The idea of America electing a black President did not exist as a sober thought as little as 24 months ago. Yet, there it is. Someone asks Our we free yet? How far have we advanced? How is freedom, emancipation or political liberty to be quantified short of the overthrow of the power of capital? Four distinct elements have intervened to change the situation of the African American since WWII. First and foremost is the determined struggle of the African American people themselves. Very seldom in history has such a small group, roughly 12 -15% of the population, waged and carried out such an unbroken, determined and militant , brutal and bloody struggle against such a pervasive and brutal ideology justifying second class citizenship and a violent state apparatus. Without this element none of the other elements could have brought about change. The individual as masses makes a difference in shaping history and creates the various shades and shapes of social relations that arise in correspondence to production relations. The second element was the mechanization of Southern agriculture and the tractoring off the land of eleven million sharecroppers - six million white and five million black. This distinct process - changes in the productive forces, was the economic and social basis of the Civil Rights Movement, inasmuch as this mass had to go somewhere in their quest for a livelihood. Sharecropping might not sound like a real job and class category but it is. The share of the sharecropper is legal ownership of a portion of the commodity, rather than the very straight forward sale of ones labor ability to institutional capital. Third, the Cold War was the context for the totality of all the previous stages - phase, of struggle. The intense struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union opened doors that would have remained shut to blacks, as both competed for the hearts and minds of the colonial peoples. The existence of newly liberated Peoples China was the greatest world wide blow against the deadly ideology of white superiority, ever delivered in world history. China’s existence was a beacon of hope to the hundreds of millions of slaves of modern imperialism. Tiny Cuba, who population is that of New York City, overthrew the slave master and Batista. After the 1965 Watts Rebellion and then Detroit 1967, emancipation had to be just around the corner. Talk about the longest city block. A complex combination of Soviet power + Peoples China and the emergence of the Third World movements force
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The elec...
CB: What is the evidence and argument that _society_ is going through a profound revolution in machinery ? What characteristics of today's new machinery make the revolution _profound_ in comparison with the revolutions in machinery in the last 100 years ? Why is American society undergoing this and not the whole world ? If it is the whole world then why not say the whole world ? Reply Thanks for the correct that should be can't - cannot. You are correct. The entire world is entering and firmly within a revolution in the mode of production with some countries more advanced than others. Development of and revolution in the productive forces are always uneven and combined as a law of development. Actually, every single improvement in the productive forces - quantitative or qualitative, are eventually spread throughout the world. I will be more careful so as not to give the impression that talking about America means only in America. The inside of a computer is different - a different technology, from machines founded on the principles of mechanical motion using a structure of mechanical gears, levers, fly wheels and transfer bars. Find an old adding machine used by HR block - from 30 years ago, disassemble it, lay all it parts on a table; then take your computer , disassemble it, lay all its parts on the table and the difference your eyes are looking at is the difference between a system of mechanical gears, levers, fly wheels and what you see as the components of your computer. That is how one can see the difference. I did describe the why and how in a critique of an article by John Case, writer of Political Affairs some time ago. The process is extremely interesting because each incremental grafting onto an existing system, a qualitatively new technology runs into barriers that are the pathways of the old system. At a certain stage of development a further grafting onto is not possible and the entire system one is dealing with is totally reconfigured. The difference between the old memo printing machines, all radical groups had in the 1960's and 1970's and modern printers is profound. The new printing machines are not modified Gestetners. The long history of transition from Gutenberg cold type press, modified by the industrial revolution with complex gears and levers, to today's printing machines is breathtaking. I was trained in the 8 th and 9 th grade to set cold type and become a printer, only to become aware of the change wave when our group purchased one of IBM's new typesetting machines in 1969/70. By 1980 Compugraphic over took IBM in the typesetting field. Apple 1984 Computer - with its famous 1984 won't be 1984 commercial, was a turning point and this technological regime sunk companies like Compugraphic, more or less. Then the welding and paint shops in plants began change and the first generation of advance robotics were introduced. The current generation of advanced robotics are not inhibited in their movement and motion like the first. The devices I play music with today are fundamentally different from my old Maranx 2045 and Technics turntables. Turntables still exist, but even today'e 1970ish CD players are being replaced. You basically cannot tune up your car today. I tried because the number 3 piston was misfiring. Today's automobile engines could not be designed like this 25 - 35 years ago. Boy was I pissed. There goes $150 bucks. We crossed the threshold separating mechanical driven motion some time ago. Grafting on the new technological regime to the existing system is the meaning of revolution in the machinery of society. All revolution in the machinery begin with the incremental - quantitative, grafting onto, the existing machinery, a qualitatively new kind of or enhanced device, instrument, tool, energy source, machine, or technology. Such was the exact same case with the revolution from simple manufacture to industry. Eventually a new or enhanced external energy source has to come into existence for the further expansion of the new technology. We are not driving my fathers old Oldsmobile. If you are implying that society is not going through a revolution in the machinery of society, bringing to an end expansion on the old basis of that, which made the industrial revolution, well industrial - founded on mechanical motion principles, then how does one explain the technological regime of the computer and this stage of advanced robotics? The semi-conductor - integrated chip, is truly revolutionary. WL. **Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filingncid=emlcntusyelp0004) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
Obama is - expresses, this changed reality, and was called forth to do the impossible. Obama supersedes and leaps over the long night, that was the era of the rise and fall of the black political leader. A peculiar political phenomenon brought to life by Jim Crow segregation. Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2 Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By Elíades Acosta Matos raises a question whose answer is both! _http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=800Ite_ (http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=800Ite) Part 4 Death of a Salesman. The election of Barack Obama closes out a period of American history and opens the door to the Third American Revolution: proletarian revolution, because of time, place and space outlined in part 1. Barack Obama has the demeanor, oratory and uses much of the language symbols of the black leader in American history. Or does he; or is it American history, with its persistent recycling of Give me liberty or give me death? Obama, rather than President Barack Obama, has a personal familiarity to it that can be quite discomforting, but is called forth due to his personal qualities and living link as momentary American history. Obama resurrected the dead undying Lincoln. Towards a more perfect Union. Communists rooted in American history fail to appropriate this same history at their peril. Obama collected the dreams and realized dreams of an older generation that is our nation of immigrants. And former slaves. Don’t matter what kind of ship carried you to America, we are all in the same boat. Who lacks the courage or manliness to apply this formula on a class basis and bias? Here is the real cultural war being waged against a certain infantile 1960ish counter culture amongst the left. Obama’s wielding of the politics of change is not reducible to demagogy, although electoral politics and much of all politics involves demagogy in the shape of the inspiring but unachievable driving vision. This includes communist politics and the demand for economic communism, whose emancipation of the proletariat is forever blocked, from full realization by an existing material configuration that is division of labor and productive force development; even after the criminal bourgeoisie has been swept from the furthers corner of earth. Even Jesus wept. . . . . Over the barriers. . Marx shifted his projection of world revolution as a doctrine of combat. Marx faced his very own quantifying dilemma. Engels explained why the programmatic demands of the Manifesto were obsolete. Lenin’s lament, built iron and steel socialism. Then the loop of logic carries us back to the future/present Marx; world revolution for this generations. It is precisely because Marx himself could not quantify the progression of the proletarian revolution the he and Engels wrote numerous prefaces to the Communists Manifesto, after the fact. These prefaces alone are worth their weight in good to the communist revolution. Voting America expressed its desire for real change, which it cannot yet define or articulate as a coherent vision because of its lack of class consciousness. At least this is how the American people understand their own actions expressed in Obama’s election, I would dare say. Therefore Obama is to be quantified, with instruments from the previous configuration of American history. To do such is to leave - liquidate (Lenin’s word) the last period, this time forever. Peering through the surface of the process dialectic of vision, cause and change; is the machinery of society; the outer expression of the underlying revolutionary process, felt and experienced as the fight in the political sphere. What Marxists generally call the superstructure, the ideological battle and what Americans once and generally call - with contempt, politics and arguing religion. Politics in our country at all times express shifting political alliances and shifting structural relations or the living institutions that hold together the unity of the productive forces and the social relations - (if you will), of living economic and political America. This shifting always is bound up with the North/South political axis, due to slavery. Obama in the flesh completes a social and political process, which actually matured with the Clinton administration. This period actually begins with Bush 1, but he was quickly silenced after floating the concept of the new world order. No political grouping or social movement in America can accomplish any of its goals without impacting and carrying with them 50 - 70 million people as a political and social base. Obama must be quantified. He will be quantified. The last period liquidates itself on the basis of itself. That Obama is
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
As much as I love Billy Stewart, even he's not helping draw whatever conclusions I'm supposed to draw from Obama. I'm not seeing anything here but a political vacuum for the communist alternative you're talking about. Everybody in America believes in capital, jobs, and wage labor. -Original Message- From: waistli...@aol.com Sent: Feb 27, 2009 9:31 AM To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 . Obama’s campaign momentarily created a gravitational pull strong enough to pull a large section of our working class spontaneously gravitating to the right, as their first political impulse. This is due precisely to the fact that labor is tied to capital by a thousand threads and the impulse to recapture economic security - a job, means spontaneously recreating the capital-labor bond. The spontaneous impulse to recapture a lost past and stability. Here is where we meet the fascist danger in the flesh. This does not mean pushing Obama to the left, but rather establishing economic communism, devoid of its historic ideology as a form of Sovietism, as a political pole. Obama and no one else is to be pushed to the left. Rather, establishing a communist polarity will compelled everything in the middle to seek refuge with this pole as a consistent fighter against fascism. Obama has to be quantified while knowing such quantification is bound to be wrong, outside stating he is the chief political representative/executive of imperial capital. This of course is no quantification but a qualification or quality. Obama is capital personified. Knowing this and a dime won't even shine ones shoes, on Broadway. Obama also brings to an end the peculiar phenomenon of the black leader. A historical character that pushed himself unto history as the product result of open fascism in the Jim Crow South and his police state cousin in the North’s Negro conclaves. At the close of the Civil War the blacks began their spontaneous drift throughout American society. With the overthrow of Reconstruction and the institution of fascism and Jim Crow the structural relations within and between classes in America were recast. The black leader emerges as the go between - navigator, between the structures separating black society from white. Between 1865 and the 1890’s there were leaders and political leaders in government that were black. These leaders were not the peculiar phenomenon of the black leader. The counter revolution was the condition for the birth of the Black leader. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 5
Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2 Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By Elíades Acosta Matos raises a question whose answer is both! (http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=800Ite) Obama: Change or Continuity? Part 5 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (November 29, 1908 – April 4, 1972) was a pastor who represented Harlem between 1945 and 1971. In 1944 Powell was elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives, representing the 22nd congressional district, which included Harlem. He was the first black Congressman from New York, and the first from any Northern state other than Illinois in the Post-Reconstruction Era. As one of only two black Congressmen, Powell challenged the informal ban on black representatives using Capitol facilities reserved for members only. He took black constituents to dine with him in the whites only House restaurant. He clashed with the many segregationists in his own party. As one of the modern first, the story of the black leader as politician basically begins here, but (!!!) becomes a political force - summed up in the cry, Black Power, in the mid 1960’s, with the election of Carl Stokes as Cleveland Ohio and America’s first big city Mayor. Carl Burton Stokes served as the 51st mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. Elected on November 7, 1967, but took office on Jan 1, 1968, he was tied to be the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city with Mayor Richard G. Hatcher Gary Indiana. Fellow Ohioan Robert C. Henry was the first African American mayor of any U.S. city. Thus Stokes becomes a marker - boundary, in the opening of the Black Power Movement, and what would later become the post Jim Crow era. It would seem that the post Jim Crow era, as an era emerges after the era of Black Power, whose closing some date with the 1983 election of Harold Washington as Chicago Mayor. Still other point to the 1990 election of David Norman Dinkins, as the first black elected Mayor of New York City from 1990 through 1993, as the definitive close of Black Power. Lets look at one of the quantitative boundary Obama completes. Breaking into any point in history is a tricky business. Let’s examine an outline of the migration of blacks from South to North. Let’ s take away the color factor. Blacks have basically improved their economic status in the North at the same rate as any other immigrants, and probably a little better than the Italian immigrant first arriving in the US. The improvement of the economic and then the social conditions of these blacks has proceeding in a pretty normal way consistent with our history. At certain point of Irish immigration, suddenly there was Irish domination of politics in their areas of concentration. Similarly for the Italian, the Norwegian, the Polish, Mexicans and the process is taking place in real time with the Arab immigrants. Likewise, there was an emergence of black politics as the blacks moved into the slums previously occupied by various white ethics at the bottom of the industrial social ladder. The difference is that the black politician’s influence and electability was limited to the so-called Black ghetto, while the ethnic white influence merged into the exiting nationwide ideological and political sphere or more importantly the nationwide political infrastructure. American politics call this going national. The concentration of blacks in the proletarian slums was the condition for the rise of black politics and black politicians, and the meaning of the Black Power Movement. More often than not the black politicians interest resided more with the maintenance of segregation (not Jim Crow) and isolation of their constituency - (the basis of their power), than with the striving of the masses they were to represent. Not for one moment could the historic Daley machine in Chicago exist for ten minutes, without the support of the black political criminals, who cries for public housing hides the segregation implied in black politics. 3,000 people concentrated into a segregated conclave, be the y white, black, brown or Red is a dream for all bourgeois politicians: a captive market. This dynamic reveals the exact same path of the black trade union leaders and was the base for emergence of groups like the CBTU (Coalition of Black Trade Unionists) in the mid 1970s. Obama entered this world of Chicago politics while it was in flux, but this story is not really about Obama, but why he expressed a specific definable process in our history. A process filled with intersection of class interest, intrigue, sex, drugs and murder. Obama as the man from the land of Lincoln? His mother born in Kansas . . . Bloody Kansas, the line drawn in the battle against the Slave Oligarchy and the cause of the birth of the Republican Party! Obama
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
As much as I love Billy Stewart, even he's not helping draw whatever conclusions I'm supposed to draw from Obama. I'm not seeing anything here but a political vacuum for the communist alternative you're talking about. Everybody in America believes in capital, jobs, and wage labor. Reply Most in America passively and aggressively supported Jim Crow until than magnificent struggle broke out on DECEMBER 4, 1955 in Montgomery Alabama. Then it would take a decade of intense struggle to outlaw lynching and get the Voting Rights Act and later fair housing legislation. Then it would take another twenty years for blacks to become fused into the national political sphere. Then it would take another 20 years to get our first Black President. We are at the very beginning and Obama's election might be analogous to something like Montgomery 1955. To optimistic? WL. **Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filingncid=emlcntusyelp0004) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
As much as I love Billy Stewart, even he's not helping draw whatever conclusions I'm supposed to draw from Obama. I'm not seeing anything here but a political vacuum for the communist alternative you're talking about. Everybody in America believes in capital, jobs, and wage labor. Reply Yo . . . what is meant by a communist pole - polarity is a politic held together by the simple belief that society most provide for people who have little or no money and cannot pay their bills. That's it. The only way for people to have socially necessary means of life, when people cannot buy them due to lack of money, is for society to give them these things. That it! All that cramp about glorious workers, and workers councils and workers democracy; Stalin vs Trotsky and so on is useless and means nothing. The masses themselves are going to strive for greater political liberty as a spontaneous impulse. As a fight I am feeling economic communism as stated above. Everything else as political ideology is more or less useless. I believe this is the stage we are at. WL WL. **Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filingncid=emlcntusyelp0004) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
All of these marxist reference points are of historical value, only. And the various political sects are only good for distributing literature to the tiny number of people interested in these perspectives, plus coalition action which everyone does anyway. This financial crisis points the way towards the obsolescence of capital as the engine of jobs, prosperity, and wage labor, but nobody is prepared to go there. The very notion is taboo. Yet this ridiculous stimulus package opens up the entire system to scrutiny. But that also means we are at a juncture of great danger. The bourgeoisie itself is probably divided between the thugs of the far right and the sensibly bourgeoisie that wants to see Obama succeed, sensitive to the severe consequences of his failure. Obama will hold the class structure of America together as best he can, and his self-deceiving ideology is the engine by which he got there and will proceed, with all the ridiculous Americanist rhetoric intact. The most noteworthy aspect of taking the high road is that Obama can appear, and probably believes he is, totally nonpartisan, bipartisan, or whatever, all along being forced to take more liberal or social democratic measures to correct the heinous state of affairs he has bequeathed. A shift in the overall political direction of the country won't depend on him, but if popular pressure forces him to move to the left, he would do so. And that's the only way any president gets anything done, whether it be Lincoln, FDR, or LBJ, the only presidents good for anything since the Founding Fathers. -Original Message- From: waistli...@aol.com Sent: Feb 27, 2009 10:40 AM To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4 As much as I love Billy Stewart, even he's not helping draw whatever conclusions I'm supposed to draw from Obama. I'm not seeing anything here but a political vacuum for the communist alternative you're talking about. Everybody in America believes in capital, jobs, and wage labor. Reply Yo . . . what is meant by a communist pole - polarity is a politic held together by the simple belief that society most provide for people who have little or no money and cannot pay their bills. That's it. The only way for people to have socially necessary means of life, when people cannot buy them due to lack of money, is for society to give them these things. That it! All that cramp about glorious workers, and workers councils and workers democracy; Stalin vs Trotsky and so on is useless and means nothing. The masses themselves are going to strive for greater political liberty as a spontaneous impulse. As a fight I am feeling economic communism as stated above. Everything else as political ideology is more or less useless. I believe this is the stage we are at. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 6/end
6. Cultural nuances/end Barack Obama is/as a black man, keenly aware of the color factor in American and world history and sensitive to the nuances of culture. I own and have read his autobiography Dreams From My Father, written in 1995 at the age of 33 at the same time of purchasing and reading Sidney Poitier Measure of A Man. Mr. Poitier introduced the #16 quotes of the 100 Years . . . .100 Movie Quotes in the movie In The Heat of The Night, where he plays the role of a Northern Black detective sent South to unravel a murder. His famous line was: They call me Mister Tibbs. Both of these men, proud, determined and elegant in their own right and individuality, manifest the story of the American melting pot, as America’s little discussed and little understood black underbelly. In 1963, Poitier became the first black man to win a USA Academy Award for Best Actor, and of course Obama is the first black man to become President. Neither are Negro, but most certainly black, in the same way that a second and third generation English man or German immigrant lives the metamorphosis in America, that is the American melting pot and emerges as Anglo American. The same can be said of say Minister Louis Farrakhan, Marcus Garvey and even WEB Du Bois. Let’s isolate Minister Louis for a moment to examine how the American story has played itself out and unravel a quantifying of American history and individuals that seem to defies logic. Farrakhan was born in New York, Bronx, and raised as Eugene Walcott within the West Indian community in the Roxbury section of Boston Massachusetts. His mother, Sarah Mae Manning, had emigrated from Saint Kitts and Nevis in the 1920’s; his father, Percival Clarke, was a Jamaican cab driver from New York. As a child, he received training as a violinist. At the age of six, he was given his first violin and by the age of thirteen, he had played with the Boston College Orchestra and the Boston Civic Symphony. A year later, he went on to win national competitions, and was one of the first black performers to appear on Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, where he also - naturally, won an award. A central focus of his youth was the Episcopal St. Cyprian's Church in Boston's Roxbury section, a part of Boston which also produced the great Leonard Bernstein. All of these men, noble and elegant in their own right and historical experience, manifest the striving and realization of the American Dream, to one degree or another, rather than the plight and circumstance of the Negro; meaning those people emerging from the melting pot of slavery and then formed under 90 years of structural Jim Crow. All these men are African American but that tell one virtually nothing, in the same way that whites as Anglo American informs one of next to nothing. Basically, Anglo American and African American means Americans with white and black skin, when in fact the individual has a real history. The experience of Jim Crow + white chauvinism, NOT Southern slavery + Jim Crow + white chauvinism, also shaped and impacted all of these men, but their experience mirrors, that of the European immigrant, to a vast degree, including Malcolm X. Malcolm’s mother Louise Little was born in Grenada, with Malcolm stating, she looked like a white woman, because of her Scottish father. Interesting yes? Barack Obama wonderful book, Dreams from My Father, is the immigrant story, a black immigrant, rather than the history of the Negro People, and his acute awareness of this living history accounts for his unique and individual ability to cross the color line. When Obama writes, My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there, what is meant is that my identity is not defined on the basis of the color factor in American history. The words of Obama reveals why no self respecting Marxist, born and reared as part of the baby boomers, can deploy the concept race, other than the petty bourgeois intellectuals unable to fully digest dialectics without opportunist sauce. The very concept of race is an ideological trap designed to obscure not just classes and class intersection, but prevents disclosing that, which is specific and critical to American society. Actually, lumping all blacks together under the rubric race is to lump all European ethnic together as a dominating race, rather than a historically oppressing peoples with classes amongst them; classes that began polarizing in a different manner the moment the barriers of Jim Crow began falling. It is accurate to insist that the election of Obama inaugurates the class struggle in America, with a section of the intelligentsia as black, fighting its last pitched battle to impose the concept of race on the emerging fighting section of our fighting proletariat. I have the most personal responsibility to
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
All of these marxist reference points are of historical value, only. And the various political sects are only good for distributing literature to the tiny number of people interested in these perspectives, plus coalition action which everyone does anyway. This financial crisis points the way towards the obsolescence of capital as the engine of jobs, prosperity, and wage labor, but nobody is prepared to go there. The very notion is taboo. Yet this ridiculous stimulus package opens up the entire system to scrutiny. But that also means we are at a juncture of great danger. The bourgeoisie itself is probably divided between the thugs of the far right and the sensibly bourgeoisie that wants to see Obama succeed, sensitive to the severe consequences of his failure. Obama will hold the class structure of America together as best he can, and his self-deceiving ideology is the engine by which he got there and will proceed, with all the ridiculous Americanist rhetoric intact. The most noteworthy aspect of taking the high road is that Obama can appear, and probably believes he is, totally nonpartisan, bipartisan, or whatever, all along being forced to take more liberal or social democratic measures to correct the heinous state of affairs he has bequeathed. A shift in the overall political direction of the country won't depend on him, but if popular pressure forces him to move to the left, he would do so. And that's the only way any president gets anything done, whether it be Lincoln, FDR, or LBJ, the only presidents good for anything since the Founding Fathers. Reply Agreed. 100% This thing about the founding fathers and their wisdom is not everyone's story. :-) WL. **Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filingncid=emlcntusyelp0004) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
The most noteworthy aspect of taking the high road is that Obama can appear, and probably believes he is, totally nonpartisan, bipartisan, or whatever, CB: Well isn't he ? That's basically what you say here. all along being forced to take more liberal or social democratic measures to correct the heinous state of affairs he has bequeathed. A shift in the overall political direction of the country won't depend on him, but if popular pressure forces him to move to the left, he would do so. ^^ CB: Which is what he says. Changes comes from the bottom up. And that's the only way any president gets anything done, whether it be Lincoln, FDR, or LBJ, the only presidents good for anything since the Founding Fathers. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
Obama has not been in office very long and his bipartisan rhetoric, will in practice be jettisoned; is being jettisoned as he pointedly state I won the election, and the real Obama will emerge. The real Obama is of course the CEO for capital, and everything he stated and promised in the election campaign. His job is to institutionalize the new/changing social relations of production, expressing this new stage in the decay of capital and the technological revolution. As a traditional Roosevelt type Democrat he will expand the social safety net, primarily for what in all his campaign speeches, he calls the hard working middle class and sections of the poorest workers. Interestingly, Bush W. and Reagan's administration busted the budget and expanded government, only directing government funds where they wanted them. The Democrats want a different direction. Only social revolution can stop certain things. The huge mass that was once dubbed the reserve army of labor, was called such precisely because it was a reserve to be thrown into the battle for production during peak period of production. No level of production and consumption today can throw this huge mass of labor into the production process, because of what Marx called the progress of industry. This mass of labor has been rendered superfluous to the production of capital as an expanded value in the absolute sense. Here is the 800 lb. gorilla in the living room many deny exist, with other claiming it is not really a gorilla at all. From reserve army to a permanent caste of proletarians shut out the civic society of the bourgeoisie. Change most certainly must be from the bottom up. Here is the bottom. Below is how the late Comrade Mark Jones described this mass Oct. 1998 - a description I agreed with and wrote about alongside him in 1999/2000. The precocious success of 'decarbonisation' and dematerialisation has produced this outcome, one where the greatest reserve army of labour in history -- more than half of humankind: confronts the greatest accumulation of productive power known to history, across a social nomansland which leaves each inaccessible to the other and has resulted in locking the majority of humankind out of the benefits of production and indeed out of society and in a sense, out of history. (Note: inaccessible to the other and has resulted in locking the majority of humankind out of the benefits of production = locked out the civic society of the bourgeoisie = from reserve of industry to permanent outcast) Any real new upswing or serious resumption of production (I do not mean the kind of illusory boomlets which always occur within real depressions, and did for example throughout the 1930s, when the 'turning of the corner' was monotonously proclaimed and always proven wrong within days or weeks) is certain to be short-lived since it must press against the absolute limit of valorisation inscribed within the mode of production itself, and which history has now as it were brought to the surface. (end quote) (Note: is certain to be short-lived since it must press against the absolute limit of valorisation inscribed within the mode of production itself, = the historical limit of capitalist production). WL. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) The most noteworthy aspect of taking the high road is that Obama can appear, and probably believes he is, totally nonpartisan, bipartisan, or whatever, CB: Well isn't he ? That's basically what you say here. all along being forced to take more liberal or social democratic measures to correct the heinous state of affairs he has bequeathed. A shift in the overall political direction of the country won't depend on him, but if popular pressure forces him to move to the left, he would do so. ^^ CB: Which is what he says. Changes comes from the bottom up. **Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filingncid=emlcntusyelp0004) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Definition of symbolic
Another crucial element is that human language is symbolic: the sound of words (or their shape, when written) bear no relation to what they represent.[64] In other words, their meaning is arbitrary. That words have meaning is a matter of convention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture#Biological_Anthropology:_the_Evolution_of_Culture Linguists Charles Hockett and R. Ascher have identified thirten design-features of language, some shared by other forms of animal connunication. One feature that distinguishes human language is its tremendous productivity; in other words, competent speakers of a language are capable of producing an infinite number of original utterances. This productivity seems to be made possible by a few critical features unique to human language. One is “duality of patterning,” meaning that human language consists of the articulation of several distinct processes, each with its own set of rules: combining phonemes to produce morphemes, combining morphemes to produce words, and combining words to produce sentences. This means that a person can master a relatively limited number of signals and sets of rules, to create infinite combinations. Another crucial element is that human language is symbolic: the sound of words (or their shape, when written) bear no relation to what they represent.[64] In other words, their meaning is arbitrary. That words have meaning is a matter of convention. Since the meaning of words are arbitrary, any word may have several meanings, and any object may be referred to using a variety of words; the actual word used to describe a particular object depends on the context, the intention of the speaker, and the ability of the listener to judge these appropriately. As Tomasello notes, ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Number of Unemployed Tops 5 Million
Number of Unemployed Tops 5 Million By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP posted: 22 HOURS 21 MINUTES WASHINGTON (Feb. 26) - As bad as it is already, the economy keeps getting worse — and government figures Thursday provided more evidence that the downward spiral won't end anytime soon. The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits topped 5 million for the first time since record-keeping began in 1967. And the number of first-time claims hit 667,000, the highest level in more than a quarter-century. Both figures were worse than experts expected. Orders for cars, computers, machinery and other durable goods plunged a larger-than-expected 5.2 percent in January as global economic troubles reduced demand from customers at home and abroad. We have been looking for signs that the economy's rate of decline might be slowing, but can't find any, said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at the IHS Global Insight consulting firm. (_http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/number-of-unemployed-tops-5-milli on/359638_ (http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/number-of-unemployed-tops-5-million/359638) ) This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) **Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filingncid=emlcntusyelp0004) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
The huge mass that was once dubbed the reserve army of labor, was called such precisely because it was a reserve to be thrown into the battle for production during peak period of production. No level of production and consumption today can throw this huge mass of labor into the production process, because of what Marx called the progress of industry. This mass of labor has been rendered superfluous to the production of capital as an expanded value in the absolute sense. Here is the 800 lb. gorilla in the living room many deny exist, with other claiming it is not really a gorilla at all. From reserve army to a permanent caste of proletarians shut out the civic society of the bourgeoisie. ^^ CB: True. But there never is a time when there hasn't been mass unemployment, even in the boom phase of cycles. Bourgeois economics defines fullemployment as 4% unemployment. Maybe the lowest percentage will get bigger under your analysis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 6/end
Barack Obama wonderful book, Dreams from My Father, is the immigrant story, a black immigrant, rather than the history of the Negro People, and his acute awareness of this living history accounts for his unique and individual ability to cross the color line. When Obama writes, My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there, what is meant is that my identity is not defined on the basis of the color factor in American history. The words of Obama reveals why no self respecting Marxist, born and reared as part of the baby boomers, can deploy the concept race, other than the petty bourgeois intellectuals unable to fully digest dialectics without opportunist sauce. ^ CB: Obama's words don't mean that. Unlike most Black people he was raised by White parents and grandparents. This gave him an unusual ability to understand both aspects of his Duboisian double consciousness. It allows him to be a uniter, not a divider. Obama is not an immigrant. He had little contact with his immigrant father. He was raised by US natives ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity 6/end
Obama as a uniter is an interesting Marxist approach. Perhaps if all of us was raised by a white parent and white grandparents, we too would be uniters. Why not just read his book - Dreams from my father? And then describe how being raised, during his formative years, where he was raised mirror the life of blacks in American Northern or Southern cities and country side. I do not write Obama is an immigrant. His story - meaning the story that he tells, and to a large degree the live he has lived, is that of the story of the immigrant and their first generation offspring. If you disagree with an interpretation why not simply state something to the effect that my interpretation is unless you are saying what Obama means is I was raised by one white parent and white grandparents and therefore I am a uniter, with the small physiological disposition of the descendants of Southern slavery. Without question he is African American, but that does not really tell much. Uniter! Trust me on the following: Obama is CEO for the capitalist class. WL. Barack Obama wonderful book, Dreams from My Father, is the immigrant story, a black immigrant, rather than the history of the Negro People, and his acute awareness of this living history accounts for his unique and individual ability to cross the color line. When Obama writes, My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there, what is meant is that my identity is not defined on the basis of the color factor in American history. The words of Obama reveals why no self respecting Marxist, born and reared as part of the baby boomers, can deploy the concept race, other than the petty bourgeois intellectuals unable to fully digest dialectics without opportunist sauce. ^ CB: Obama's words don't mean that. Unlike most Black people he was raised by White parents and grandparents. This gave him an unusual ability to understand both aspects of his Duboisian double consciousness. It allows him to be a uniter, not a divider. Obama is not an immigrant. He had little contact with his immigrant father. He was raised by US natives **Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filingncid=emlcntusyelp0004) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
