Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Revolutionary literature
What were Sartre's tacit assumptions ? Existentialism is sort of European libertarianism. So, maybe Sartre's individualist anthropology is a tacit assumption. On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 7:43 PM, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote: I believe that John Strachey cited Lawrence as an exemplar of the fascist unconscious, which I think is correct. In any case, Eagleton's futile exercise reminds me of how CLR James' ridiculed Sartre's conception of engaged literature in the late '40s / early '50s. Inter alia, James wrote that he didn't care about what political party an author belonged to; what mattered was the tacit assumptions embodied in the work itself. Of course, he was opposed to Popular Front historiography and Popular Front cultural criticism. On 11/29/2010 7:14 PM, Mason Akhnaten wrote: What does one want to focus on...the absence of genuinely revolutionary art, or that only radical conservatism could produce the most significant literature... Words like genuinely complicate the matter to no end. So perhaps concentrate on the most significant literature--and I think there are plenty of works of worldwide significance that certainly are not produced by radical conservatism. Yes, Brecht of course... I think Louis mentioned the surrealists and their milieu. I would think Lorca is agreed upon as one of the preeminent dramatists of 20th century Spain, and it would be improper to call him a conservative. It actually looks like many of the significant figures in 20th century theatre were not politically conservative--I would hope GB Shaw's image hasn't suffered in the academy, and then you have Harold Pinter more recently. It isn't that these playwrights must be 'genuinely revolutionary', the fact they are not conservative weakens Eagleton's claim. You can't really throw Upton Sinclair in there...seems doubtful than anyone would agree upon the man as one of the most significant in literature. If you do, may as well throw in Richard Wright or any number of second-rate literary figures. Obviously Orwell and Huxley do not have the same stature as Lawrence or Joyce, but their works are widely read and their works are often listed among the best of the century--and no one would call either of these men politically conservative. Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be look at one of those critics list of most significant authors and look at trends between academic popularity and political attitude. So, there may be some exceptions to Eagleton's sweeping statement, but a couple that have been named (Brecht and Lorca) are notable for the historical circumstances surrounding their development as authors. So perhaps a look at notable exceptions--and if there are trends amongst these exceptions--would be fruitful. [also, some of Pound's poetic works celebrate fascism- The Pisan Cantos, for example. it is not simply restricted to some speeches on Mussolini] On 11/29/10, c bcb31...@gmail.com wrote: M.F. Kalfat mf at kalfat.net In *Marxism and Literary Criticism*, Eagleton concludes a section entitled Base and Superstructure in chapter one, Literature and History with this: Whether those insights are in political terms ‘progressive’ or ‘reactionary’ (Conrad's are certainly the latter) is not the point – any more than it is to the point that most of the agreed major writers of the twentieth century – Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Lawrence – are political conservatives who each had truck with fascism. Marxist criticism, rather than apologising for that fact, explains it – sees that, *in the absence of genuinely revolutionary art*, only a radical conservativism, hostile like Marxism to the withered values of liberal bourgeois society, could produce the most significant literature. [emphasis added] Is it a case of total absence? Is it inevitable in a capitalist society? Could there be exceptions? Can you name some of these if any? For practical purposes, let's stick to modern literature. -- محمد فتحي كلفت Mahammad Fathy Kalfat ^^ CB: It would seem that genuinely revolutionary art might be hard to purvey very widely in capitalist society. You know the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of its ruling classes and all that. Anyway Three Penny Opera by Bertolt Brecht ? The Jungle - Upton Sinclair ? ___ 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 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 mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
[Marxism-Thaxis] Capitalism and It's Discontents
Original Message - From: Tony B. To: Cy Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2010 12:53 PM Subject: Capitalism and It's Discontents Cy, Don't know whether you might be interested in this or not...it's a tiny-tad behind the 'times' ..but, really, not much. The piece was only ever published in our local 'Mayday' mag (Hamilton, couple thousand readers)...and I gots to thinking that it deserved a better fate. It might, in fact, serve as a nice overview of the present world economic crisisAnyways, if you care for it, it's yours for the website... Cheers, Tony PS I've here stitched the 3 parts together into one essay.. Capitalism and It's Discontents The Political Economy of Global Dispossession (Part One) Listening to the steady, hypnotic drone of the well-disciplined phalanxes of corporate and Wall Street apologists, one would never guess that the present crisis in American - indeed, global - capitalism is anything other than the unfolding of some, more or less, natural physical law. Just a quirk, a blip, a stumble, a curious aberration, an ineluctable 'storm' on the high seas of high finance. Just something the 'market' sometimes does. But then, hopefully, that is if one is not fatally in thrall to the spell cast by the high priests of 'classical' economics who, over the past three decades, have raised the 'free market' to the status of a secular religion, one wakes to remember the facts of the case. And the facts, in a nutshell, are these: Despite being an 'engine of technical innovation' and of having delivered a relative consumer 'paradise' to a minority subset of the world's population, capitalism, today, has done so at the expense of roughly 2.8 billion people who live on less than $2 a day; 1.2 billion of whom live on less than a dollar a day. It has done so at the expense of the 30,000 people (85% of whom are children under the age of 5) who die every day from starvation, malnutrition and easily treatable diseases - in short, of poverty, and whose preventable deaths would cost a trifling fraction of a per cent of the war (-crime) in Iraq, or of the funds just spent to rescue Wall Street from its own debt-pyramiding schemes. It has done so at the expense of deliberately ensnaring (as I'll discuss in Part Two) the entire Third World within a spider web of unsupportable - and ultimately unpayable - loans in what, effectively, amounts to a global loan-sharking operation of such staggering scale as to leave any respectable Mafia racketeer starry-eyed in wonder. It has done so at the expense of forging a dramatically increasing polarization of wealth - both beyond and within the core of the First World itself. It has done so at the expense of global security and peace through the creation and exponential growth of a state/private military-industrial complex that has finally achieved what Orwell only imagined - a culture, ideology and practice of endless war. It has done so at the expense of whatever limited domain of political democracy has ever been achieved in this tyranny-prone world. And it has done so at the expense - perhaps irredeemable - of the natural capital and life-support systems of the planet. Still, these constitute a mere representative sample of the obscenities inherent in an economic way of life whose essential structure of exploitation and concentration of oligarchical power is mostly obscured from view by a system of indoctrination (the media) that is integral to its very operation and continued existence. Occasionally, however, the curtain is, a la the Wizard of Oz, inadvertently drawn back to reveal the naked greed and parasitism of the whole shebang. Precisely such an opportunity has been afforded us by the present US financial meltdown, to which we now turn. Socialism For The Rich The US Treasury's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the two giant quasi-government enterprises that, together, hold over 80% of the home mortgages in the United States) in early September added a cool $5.3 trillion to the US government debt, effectively doubling it. The prime motivation for the takeover was not, however, to protect US mortgage holders (ha!) - millions of whom have already lost their homes with millions more likely to default over the coming year, and whose only 'bailout' so far has consisted of little more than some patronizing advice on 'how to refinance' their personal catastrophes - but was, instead, driven by the foreign central banks of the likes of China and Japan which hold $1.7 trillion of Fannie and Freddie's debt. These latter were showing signs of preparing to dump their holdings of said worthless paper (see 'Into the Abyss' , #37), an action which would have threatened a good part of the whole crazy process that sees foreign-held US dollars recycled back into the United States in order to finance the $800 billion per year US trade deficit (part and parcel of so-called 'dollar hegemony', more on that in Part Two). Without those foreign
[Marxism-Thaxis] Energy problem solved?
Subject: Re: [A-List] Energy problem solved? To: The A-List a-l...@lists.econ.utah.edu Message-ID: 20101127170719.92714685xtfgc...@mail.telepac.pt Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15 Presently hydrogen is obtained from methane (CH4). It's expensive to extract the four atoms of hydrogen from each methane molecule. No way to extract methane from water (H2O) because energy consumption (electricity) in electrolysis is more higher that energy proportionated by hydrogen. Therefore, the better solution is to use directly the fuel methane in Natural Gas Vehicles. The future of world transportation after the Hubbert Peak, when begin the depletion of oil, will be with compressed natural gas (CNG) or liquefied natural gas (LNG) -- it's the better solution in the next decades. Jorge Figueiredo Citando Tony B. t...@cogeco.ca: GOOD POINT, TODD. ? ? - ORIGINAL MESSAGE - FROM: Todd Boyle TO: The A-List SENT: Friday, November 26, 2010 4:47 PM SUBJECT: Re: [A-List] Energy problem solved? What we need are technologies that provide liquid fuel from sunshine, not hydrogen gas which has to be maintaind under such high pressure or low temperatures the tanks are heavy. and dangerous.? it's really quite unsuited for any transportation except *maybe* heavy rail. And in fact there are technologies. For example palmoil plantations in Indonesia etc.? But you know what?? This is not our domain of expertise, and it has so many brilliant people working on it, our contribution here is zero.?? Meanwhile humanity plunges thru chaos and crisis and war, for the lack of understanding political economy which is so excellently understood here on A-List, Todd At 07:31 PM 11/25/2010, you wrote: But does it take more or less energy to produce the hydrogen than the energy the hydrogen provides? On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 20:52:17 -0500 Tony B. t...@cogeco.ca wrote: - Original Message - From: Brasscheck TV n...@brasschecktv.com To: Antony t...@cogeco.ca Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2010 5:26 AM Subject: Energy problem solved? Antony Water = Hydrogen and oxygen Hydrogen is a great fuel. What if you could make it at home, easily, cheaply, safely? You can. MIT has the patent. Our sister site Forbidden Knowledge TV let us in on the secret. Start your exploration here... Video: http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/page/724.html - Brasscheck P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and videos with friends and colleagues. That's how we grow. Thanks. ___ 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] Crises of Capitalism
Charles Brown http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0feature=player_embedded RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism www.youtube.com In this RSA Animate, renowned academic David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane? This is based on a lecture at the RSA (www.theRSA.org). ___ 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] Stalin Wasn't Stallin (Gospel)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvFRuio-3fI Stalin Wasn't Stallin' (Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet) www.youtube.com That's the original song from 1943, recorded by the a capella gospel group Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet. This song praises the efforts of the Soviets to stop Hitler and his armies and drive them back to Germany. ___ 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] Poverty Fuels Anger During General Strike in Portugal
Poverty Fuels Anger During General Strike in Portugal By Emilio Rappold Monsters and Critics Nov 24, 201 http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/business/features/article_1601310.php/Poverty-fuels-anger-during-general-strike-in-Portugal-News-Feature Lisbon - Fatima, 82, barely has enough to eat herself, yet she has come to distribute bread buns to pickets in front of a Lisbon post office to express her support for Wednesday's general strike in Portugal. 'I fully back the strike, because we are hungry,' she fumes. 'Two of my three sons have no job,' the petite woman complains. 'When did we last see such a situation in Portugal?' Anger over tightening economic conditions and the perception of a social injustice boosted support for the strike, the biggest in Portugal since 1988. 'This is without doubt the worst crisis' since the Carnation Revolution ended a four-decade, right-wing dictatorship in 1974, says Eugenio Fonseca, president of the Portuguese branch of the Catholic organization Caritas which comes to the aid of the poor. The number of people helped by Caritas soared by 30 per cent to more than 60,000 this year - and the organization says it does not have enough resources to attend to all those in need. About 600,000 Portuguese aged over 65 years are undernourished or even suffer from outright hunger, according to a recent study by the organization NutriAction. The social organization Banco Alimentar, which feeds about 240,000 people daily, says 27 per cent of the 10- million-strong population goes without eating at least one day per month. 'People are furious. They have no future perspectives,' Banco Alimentar head Isabel Jonet said. 'But the poor do not allow themselves to be manipulated,' she told the weekly Expresso. 'If the state tries to do that, it will get dangerous here,' she warned. There is not much hope of the situation improving soon, says Eva Gaspar, editor-in-chief of the economic newspaper Jornal de Negocios. 'The social situation is getting worse,' she told the German Press Agency dpa. 'We have a record unemployment (of over 10 per cent). But an even worse aspect is, that people remain unemployed for longer and longer periods.' 'And only about half of the jobless get financial support from the state,' Gaspar explained. One of the main reasons for the growth of poverty is an unfair taxation system, Caritas' Fonseca believes. While big companies and rich Portuguese often pay few taxes, Prime Minister Jose Socrates' government is trying to fix Portugal's economic woes by squeezing more money out of the poor and the middle classes, other critics complain. The strike was protesting an austerity budget aimed at restoring the confidence of financial markets amid concern that Portugal might need an international bailout similar to those requested by Greece and Ireland. The austerity budget, which is expected to get the definitive seal of approval from parliament on Friday, slashes public sector salaries by 5 per cent, freezes pensions, raises value added and income tax, and cuts social spending. Socrates' economic policies 'demand too many sacrifices from workers, while leaving out many (wealthy citizens) who could pay much more,' said Joao Proenca, leader of the trade union confederation UGT. 'I will only have soup for supper,' Fatima grumbled. 'Socrates should not sleep peacefully tonight.' ___ 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
