Re: annoying protest song writing contest
HEY HEY! HO HO! THIS TIRED CHANT HAS GOT TO GO! Ethan Young, Monthly Review Press
Re: Ultraright Marxism: sounding the alarm
Lou, This is great. It would be useful to get some details on the genesis and development of the LM/RCP group. I'll ask around, but I know of no special experts on the flow chart of the British far left. Anyway, I am also very concerned about people moving right (and ultraright) while maintaining a left cover. In the intelligencia it's particularly prickly, as relatively solid critiques of the excesses (in the name of rebellion) of pomo, identity politics and cultural studies can bleed into attacks on legit writers, and on social movements that inspire some of the acad-o-babble. A similar approach can be found in Gillott's book, but not enough to make a case that it's anti-green. However, when it's back from the printer, I'll send you a copy. You might want to try to use the occasion as a means for exposing LM via a critique in the pages of MR or elsewhere. This is what Mao called "turning a bad thing into a good thing if you don't lift up a rock only to drop it on one's foot." Ethan At 07:29 AM 12/18/97 -0500, you wrote: (Posted originally on the Spoons Marxism list. The James Heartfield alluded to below is a leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a right-wing "Marxist" cult in England that produced the anti-environmentalist "Against Nature" documentary. They are best known for their glossy magazine LM that is handled by a commercial publisher. The rag defies conventional expectations not only of what Marxism is about, but how such a magazine can stay afloat financially. It is not out of order to speculate that they are the beneficiaries of ruling-class financial contributions since they are so closely aligned at this point with other right-wing think-tanks.) This is a first cut at a political analysis of the RCP, a British group to which James Heartfield belongs and which is led by a university professor by the name of Frank Furedi. It is extremely important to get a handle on this outfit because it is the first example since the early 1970s of a Marxist group breaking with the left and mutating in a right-wing direction. The previous instance was the well-known case of Lyndon Larouche's Labor Committees which developed ties to the Reagan administration, the Klan, Teamster thugs, etc. Furedi's organization stands at the precipice of the right-wing and the only question is how soon it will be when they cut all ties to the left and resurface as a conventional right-wing outfit. What's important to understand is that it may retain an identification with Marxist literature and discourse *even* after having made this break. Larouche dumped Marx altogether after 1973 and started quoting German philosophers of the 19th century in a demented fashion. Furedi might find it convenient to continue to write Marxish books and the LM magazine could conceivably continue to give favorable reviews to books like Doug Henwood's "Wall Street." That is what has a lot of people confused on the Spoons lists. How can somebody who quotes Marx with such erudition be a right-winger? The problem we are facing is that Marx-quoting is not necessarily Marxism. Marxism is a political movement aimed at the overthrow of capitalist property relations. If you take a look at the participants in LM's TV show, you simply can not have the illusion any longer that this group is part of the left. And if it still is, it is only a matter of time when they make a full break. The participants in "Against Nature" include politicians, policy wonks and writers who have been part of the conservative movement internationally for many years. They have been connected at one time or another to the same ideological causes that functioned so prominently during the Reagan administration: Reverend Moon's Church, the Cato Institute, the "Wise Use" movement, the Hudson Institute et al. This is no accident. Frank Furedi made a deliberate political choice, just as Larouche did when he first started working with right-wing activists in the 1970s. Some people on the Spoons lists are revolutionary socialists who have a dogmatic hostility toward the "greens". This might have led them in the past to excuse the RCP, but we can not underestimate the significance of the political ties of the participants on "Against Nature". They are the same think-tanks that pushed for low-intensity warfare in the 1980s, attacked the trade union movement, fought against black and feminist "entitlements" and in general acted as the ideological shock-troops of the Thatcher and Reagan administrations. This is a very important but confusing question for the left. Lyndon Larouche was a palpably insane sort of figure, while people like Heartfield have a sort of bland, almost academic, style. When you combine this "style" with Marxist erudition, it can have a disorienting effect on people who have an intellectualized approach to Marxism, which tends to be the case on the Spoons lists. But, make no mistake, this group is not part of the left. It is mounting a powerful attack on
[PEN-L:12711] Re: Clinton Aide Brokered Union Credit Card
At 12:47 PM 9/30/97 -0700, you wrote:
This was illegible. Is another format possible?
Roger
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From: pen-l
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [PEN-L:12670] Re: Clinton Aide Brokered Union Credit Card Deal
Date: Monday, September 29, 1997 12:12PM
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The following column ("Welcome to Washington") by Ira Stoltz appeared on the front
page of
the New York weekly *Forward,* September 26, 1997. The *Forward* is the
English-language
off-shoot of the Yiddish *Vorwerts.*
Sixties Radicals in Eye of Storm over Teamsters
Erstwhile Foes of AFL Nudging Labor to Left
[byline] Forward Staff
WASHINGTON - At the center of the scandal surrounding the Teamsters election are a
handful
of radicals, who, after years of fighting against the anti-communist labor unions
during the Cold
War, now have emerged in influential positions close to the leadership of the AFL-CIO
and the
Teamsters.
One Alumnus of Students for a Democratic Society, Michael Ansara, pled guilty last
week in
connection with a conspiracy to raise illegal campaign funds for Teamsters president
Ron Carey.
Hovering on the edges of the Teamsters scandal are three other SDS alumni: the
executive
director of Citizen Action, Ira Arlook; an official at the American Federation of
State, County,
and Municipal Employees, Paul Booth; and an official at the Democratic National
Committee,
Heather Booth.
The presence of these people in the midst of a union scandal that is reaching all the
way to the
offices of the AFL-CIO's top two elected officials is extraordinary, because, through
the Cold
war, most of the American labor movement was fighting against Soviet communism. The SDS
and its leaders, on the other hand, were advocating that America disarm itself and end
the
Vietnam War. Now the American labor leaders who won that struggle for free trade unions
overseas have been overthrown at home by a group that is bringing the labor federation
into
trouble with law enforcement authorities in America. The reversal of the Teamsters
election is
highlighting an ideological shift within the labor movement.
"All those people were against labor, but now, [AFL-CIO president John] Sweeney is
their man.
It's the new labor movement," said one historian of the democratic Party, Ronald
Radosh. Mr.
Radosh said those involved in the Teamsters matter were not the violent, underground
faction of
the SDS, but, nevertheless, people who had once viewed the AFL-CIO as a pro-war, middle
class, "reactionary force."
"It just shows this link now between the left and Labor," said the author of "Epitaph
for
American Labor," Max Green.
The transformation could be seen one night here last week, when the AFL-CIO president,
John
Sweeney, was accepting an award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. On the
other
side of town, the man Sweeney defeated in the election two years ago, the former
secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, Thomas Donahue, was sitting behind the
neo-conservative
intellectual, Irving Kristol, at a lecture by political scientist Seymour Martin
Lipset about George
Washington. The lecture was sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy, a force
for
the kind of international engagement that the AFL-CIO has traditionally supported, but
that SDS
opposed.
The ongoing federal criminal investigation is preventing some of the activists from
talking to the
press about their activities. Mr. Booth didn't return a phone call. Ms. Booth, through
a
spokesman, declined to comment. Mr. Arlook's spokesman did not return a call about the
matter.
Mr. Ansara could not be reached for comment.
Still, Democratic party activists in Washington acknowledge that Mr. Carey's Campaign
attracted a host pf activists who usually collect around the campaigns of the likes of
the Rev.
Jesse Jackson, George McGovern or Eugene McCarthy - all opponents of the foreign
policy long
advanced by the AFL-CIO. Unlike some SDS alumni who turned conservative, the ones
involved
in the Carey campaign have remained active in the Democratic Party's left wing,
although their
political views are hard to illuminate because of their refusal to talk to the press.
Mr. Arlook, Mr. Booth and Ms. Booth have not been charged with any crimes. The
organization
Mr. Arlook heads, however, was used as a conduit to funnel illegal contributions to
Mr. Carey's
campaign. Mr. Booth is described by colleagues as having played a key role in
marshalling
support and contributions for the Carey campaign from among his colleagues at AFSCME.
Colleagues also said he had a close relationship with Mr. Ansara. Ms. Booth, a founder
of
Citizen Action, now works as the DNC's liaison to labor, although at
[PEN-L:12673] Re: New Russian Joke
At 11:46 AM 9/29/97 -0700, you wrote: Here's a "New Russian" joke that my parents shared with me. One New Russian, proudly wearing a fancy new tie, walks up to another New Russian and says, "Look, Sergei, I went to New York and bought this beautiful tie for $2,000." The second New Russian responds, "Fool! You could have stayed in Moscow and bought the same tie for $1,500!" Steven Zahniser [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11625] Re: William S. Burroughs
Louis: I heard Burroughs speak at a rally in Grant Park, Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention, after the first police violence broke out. He was brilliant and penetrating. See the issue of Esquire in late 68 on the convention for more from the old reptillian reprobate. Ethan Young At 09:09 AM 8/5/97 -0700, you wrote: William S. Burroughs' death has been on my mind. Long before I was a Marxist, I was a youthful member of the beat generation. In 1960 I read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and a year or so later I read Burroughs' Naked Lunch. These two works deepened my outsider identity. It was the 1960s radicalization that transformed my outsider status into one of revolutionary as I became conscious of the social and economic forces that were arrayed against me and the working class. On the Road and Naked Lunch are two dialectically opposed works that add up to a penetrating critique of the Eisenhower era. On the Road emphasized the sunny, Whitmanesque, positive aspects of America where the open road, truck-stops, jazz clubs and automats serve as proof of the wonders of this country as long as you look in the right places. After reading On the Road I dedicated myself to a search for these right places. Naked Lunch offered a completely different view of the world. It was a cold-turkey nightmare of urban decay, sexual perdition and self-loathing. When I read Naked Lunch I was attuned to the essential clarity of Burroughs' vision. Yes, this also was America. From that moment on, I was always sensitive to the Kerouac-esque and Burroughs-esque dual nature of American society. What America certainly was not was the television lies of "Leave it to Beaver" or "Life With Father." Burroughs' literary landscape was inhabited by grotesque mechanical objects that took on a terrifying life of their own. Surgical instruments, suppositories, diesel engines, radios, etc. were transformed into ghoulish objects capable of torture and death. They grew arms and legs and stalked about the miserable apartments that the Naked Lunch characters--such as they were--inhabited. Oddly enough, there is a certain affinity between Naked Lunch and the gothic novels of Stephen King. King's novels' central device is to take inanimate objects and invest them with ghastly qualities, such as the homicidal car Christine. Certainly one can imagine the influence of Burroughs on King. As a English major at the University of Maine, he was taught by instructors who consciously identified with the beat movement. Occasionally you will see epigraphs to the chapters of his novels that are drawn from this outsider literature. Burroughs' relationship to the left was non-existent. As the ultimate misanthrope, it is difficult to imagine him speaking from the platform of a peace rally like Allen Ginsburg. It is also impossible to imagine him as a reactionary like Kerouac in his dying, alcoholic latter years. What Burroughs did articulate was a savage hatred for the destruction industrial society wrought on the United States. There is a powerful video that I saw once that simply consists of William S. Burroughs sitting on a chair ruminating on Thanksgiving. It is a jeremiad against the destruction of the Indians, buffaloes and forests in the name of Progress. The New York Times obituary concludes in this vein: "To the end of his life, Mr. Burroughs remained pessimistic about the future for mankind. In 'Ghost of a Chance,' he lamented the destruction of rain forests and creatures and wrote: 'All going, to make way for more and more devalued human stock, with less and less of the wild spark, the priceless ingredient--energy into matter. A vast mudslide of soulless sludge.'" Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:9834] BOOK PARTY
On Wednesday, May 7th, 5:30pm, the editors and staff of Monthly Review Press will host a reception for Doug Dowd to celebrate the publication of his new book, BLUES FOR AMERICA: A CRITIQUE, A LAMENT, AND SOME MEMORIES. Please join us at 122 West 27th Street, 10th floor, NYC, (212) 691-2555. Advance Praise for BLUES FOR AMERICA: "BLUES FOR AMERICA is a scholar's deft survey of everything that happened between the 1920s and the 1990s related with surprising wit and an amazingly gracious turn of phrase ..."--BARBARA EHRENREICH "A vivid, witty, moving account of much of the history of this century by someone who was there when it mattered ..."--NOAM CHOMSKY "Personal, provocative, and elegantly written, BLUES FOR AMERICA ought to be widely read, and relished ..."--JONATHAN KOZOL "It is rare to find a book written with style and loaded with substance, an education in itself, and a pleasure to read."--HOWARD ZINN In BLUES FOR AMERICA, Doug Dowd has written a narrative filled with incisive observations and biting humor that is at once autobiography and an economic history of the perplexing "American Century." DOUG DOWD is a distinguished economist and professorial lecturer in International Economics at the Bologna Center, Johns Hopkins University, Bologna, Italy. A national figure in the movement to end the Vietnam War, Dowd has taught at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Santa Cruz; San Jose State and San Francisco State Universities; and Cornell University, where he was Chair of the Economics Department. He has received Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, and is the author of several books.
