A Maoist A Drift

"The Communist Necessity,” by J Moufawad-Paul, 2014

This thin volume is intended to make the rounds of young, dissatisfied anti-IMF and Occupy protesters, who realize the spark went out of those prairie lightning strikes.  It attempts to theoretically challenge ‘movementism’ – which is the practice of focusing on the immediate struggle or events, not the goal.  This ultimately results in disorganization, a lack of clear or transitional demands and a lack of theory.   Spontaneity and events, as the debates between Marxists and anarchists starting in the 1830s can tell you, ‘do not last.’ Nor are they irrelevant.  But without an organization of some kind, when struggles erupt, they can only last longer by taking an organizational, preferably mass form.  Certainly many anti-globalization and Occupy protesters, and now ‘Black Lives Matter’ protesters, need to look at history.  Practice and events teach lessons that have parallels in history and eventually contribute to or reinforce certain theories.

The fall of the sclerotic USSR and the crimes of so-called socialism turned many youth away from ‘communism.’  Moufawad-Paul, who is a Canadian Ph.D adjunct professor, seeks to reinvigorate the communist tradition somewhat, but also by not learning from history.  While a laudable goal, with some accurate insights, his specifics and methods are confused and repeat some of the same forms of abstentionism found in ‘movementism.’  For instance, he opposes any electoral action, any unity between left groups or being involved in trade union work.  What replaces this is an exclusive focus on supporting 4 ‘third world’ guerrilla struggles and a vague nod to 'Leninism.' 

As such, this dull short treatise ‘might’ give every guerrilla-warfare Walter Mitty a warm feeling.  Perhaps those academic Canadians inspired by Moufawad-Paul will start practicing their cold-weather survival skills and First Nation’s language attributes while preparing for guerrilla warfare in the Canadian arctic tundra.  Or those pudgy white Minnesotans riding desks can visualize yurts in the northern woods of Minnesota housing revolutionary fighters.  But wait folks.  There is also the Tupamaro / Baader-Meinhof route too.  Time to learn the dark web, get off Facebook, practice bomb-making, form a cell and finally buy that long rifle!  No? 

The sub-textual appeal in this treatise to ‘first world’ romanticism, guilt and 3^rd-world cheerleaderism is obvious.  This is not the first time that North American leftists have been prone to this. 

Some significant quotes in this volume come from what seems like the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party’s (“RCP”) theoretical journal.  The RCP that I know is an ultra-left pro-Mao/China split from the U.S. SDS in 1969.  It became exclusively pro-Mao and anti-China in 1978 after the defeat of the 'Gang of Four.'  It has changed little since, except it has become even smaller.  Now that Occupy has petered out, the inspirational sources cited by Moufawad-Paul that we should exclusively look up to are:  The Peruvian Communist Party (aka Sendero Luminoso), the Indian Naxalites – CPI (Maoist), the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Communist (Maoist) Party of Nepal and the ‘proposed’ Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan. What are people in other countries supposed to do, you may ask?  

Anyway, let’s look at the ‘approved’ list.  A.  The Nepalese Maoists actually were voted into office, so were able to change from a guerrilla organization to an electoral front.  A no-no for Moufawad-Paul.  Their victory is an historic advance for Nepal – especially the overthrowing of the monarchy.  I know of hardly any leftist who opposed this.  Now, however, they are sinking into reformism.  B.  Moufawad-Paul dishonestly suggests that Arundhati Roy is now some kind of a supporter of the Indian CPI (Maoist) because of her book, “Walking With the Comrades.” (reviewed below.)  A more careful reading of that book indicates that she defends them, approves of their championing of Adivasi peoples, but does not endorse all of their ideology, organization or tactics.  Similarly, few international left groups criticize the Adivasi for protecting themselves and their land by military and organizational means from the extractive corporations and the bloodthirsty Indian government. 

C.  Sendero-Luminoso (“SL”) was a peasant-based organization in the jungles and mountains of Peru, whose leader, philosophy professor Alberto Guzman, was caught in 1992.  Their name in English – ‘shining path’ – comes from a quote by the great Peruvian Marxist, Jose Mariategui. (“Jose Carlos Mariategui – an Anthology” reviewed below.)  Incidentally, Mariategui was not an advocate of guerrilla warfare, but of a united ‘workers front.’  SL proclaimed the need for an armed social revolution and began guerrilla war.  In the process they used brutal tactics against anyone who opposed them, not just the Peruvian government or military - this included peasants, trade unionists and civilians. Which was quite different from the approach taken by Mariategui or Che Guevara in Bolivia right next door.  Instead of being a ‘fish in the water of the people’ it was at times more like a shark.  Yet it has to be defended by the left from attacks by the Bolivian government.  It still exists in a shrunken state, fighting for a peace treaty it can live with.

D.  Most odd of these is the ‘projected’ existence of the Communist (Maoist) party of Afghanistan.  It would take a lot of scrounging (read 'impossible') to come up with one Maoist organization in the world that defended the Afghan Communist Party governments of Karmal and Taraki in 1978-1979 or the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan against the U.S. imperialists and Islamists.  This was back when there actually was a secular population in Afghanistan that had not been killed.  Not a peep from the Maoists at that time.  Instead we get this ‘consolation prize’ 37 years later.  (The secret reason?  The Soviets were ‘capitalists!’)

Moufawad-Paul makes much of the word ‘communism,’ as if it is some kind of talismanic forbidden fruit.  Here in El Norte the post-Maoist Progressive Labor Party in 1982's “Road to Revolution IV” called for going ‘straight to communism’ and bypassing socialism and all that.  I suggest the comrade read that document – if he can stomach it - to see that leftist enthusiasm for a word means little.

There is also a bit of anti-Trotskyist rhetoric that sounds like a rehash of tired 20^th Century Stalinism.  History has already decided who was right in that battle.  Moufawad-Paul  says that the Russian and Chinese revolutions (and the Yugoslav, etc.?) failed, but has no clue why.  His pantheon of heroes is “Marx, Lenin …Mao…”  You can put those faces on an internet button and they already have. That somewhat problematic period between 1923 and 1949 seems to be missing, as does the period after 1976. With the collapse of most of the workers states by the actions of those (Party) bureaucracies, another bureaucracy and its ideology is not really a solution.  That is if we are actually learning from the past, and not merely mouthing the words.  The dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the party are two different things.  That is the lesson of history, crude as that may be. 

Moufawad-Paul seems to have also made the long march through the word-bound provinces of the Frankfurt School, neo-Marxism, semiotics, metaphysics and post-structuralism.  He cites Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser, Guattari, Badiou, Negri, Hart, Derrida at different times – an ad hoc group of influences to graft onto Mao, Lenin and Marx.   He polemicizes with the Situationists, the Invisible Committee and other irrelevant forces, even using a lack of capitalization to describe ‘marxism’ – just like ee cummings!  This is the face of modern academic confusion – and perhaps of actual unfamiliarity with being a cadre in a centralist ‘anti-revisionist’ party organization. 

With the development of a dominant urban world population which is becoming proletarianized or casualized, and the increasing education of billions around the world, the chances of rural revolution and all-knowing bureaucracies are getting slimmer by the day.  But also the chance of a barbaric response to crisis is increasing, as capitalism gains a choke-hold on the whole world economy and every interstice in it.  This we are seeing recently in Mexico, Yemen and Ukraine, as failed states increase one by one due to the American ruling class's destructive and aggressive foreign policy.  The Americans have their 'sights' set on destroying Belarus next, if sources close to Patrick Smith are to be believed. After that?  Regime change in Russia. 

AND ON ANOTHER SUBJECT - SYRIZA and Greece

The election results in Greece on Sunday, in which Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) won, will encourage the people of Spain to vote for Podemos and the people of Ireland to vote for Sinn Fein, all leftist anti-austerity parties.  Even New Labour in Britain is threatened by the Greens, who have taken up the anti-austerity cudgel.  These mostly new formations, heavily influenced by youth, are to the left of the 2^nd International group of Social-Democratic parties in Europe, which have now conclusively failed.   

Something new is aborning.  What the mainstream news organizations miss about Syriza is that it is a ‘coalition’ of forces - Maoist, Trotskyist, Ex-Greek CP, Left-PASOK and Green organizations are all currents in the membership.   The people who say – ‘leftists can never collaborate’ are wrong.  The Greek Communist Party (“KKE”), which has a base in the trade unions, gained 1 less delegate to the Greek parliament than Golden Dawn, yet refuse to work with Syriza.  The KKE’s position is to the left of Syriza, as they clearly understand that Greece has to leave the Eurozone and NATO, and not stay under the domination of the German and international bankers.  Greece should follow Argentina out of the IMF/World Bank nightmare of SAPs.  Yet taking an organizationally sectarian path by the KKE at this particular moment weakens their influence on the left in Syriza.  Syriza itself may be thinking that Greece will be thrown out of the Euro-zone, and then the onus would be on the EU for that.  But it is not clear that is their strategy.  

Syriza itself is not just an electoral party.  It has developed deep roots in local food banks, homeless shelters, land and building occupations, legal aide, rural towns and various economic co-operatives that have arisen in the face of the decimation of the Greek economy. Even some trade unionists are supporting Syriza now.  One could say that Syriza is not based on work-sites, but 'geographic sites.'  Is it proletarian?  I do not think one segment of Greek capital supports it.  But it combines working class and middle class elements, which will definately cause problems down the road.

On Sunday the Syriza Finance Minister said Greece would refuse to negotiate with the "Troika."  Importantly, Syriza has come out against EU sanctions against Russia, which has led the German foreign minister to make noises about throwing Greece out of the EU for that.  Syriza denounced the influence of fascist and billionaire capitalists in the new West Ukrainian regime.  All it takes is for one member of the EU to oppose a policy of the EU and it supposedly cannot be carried out.  If the fascists in Golden Dawn begin to attack Syriza physically, then the stage is set for a civil war in Greece between the classes, and the possibility of overwhelming all of the corrupt pro-fascist Greek oligarchs and expropriating them.

The Syriza victory shows part of the way forward.  It is an organization of a 'new type' that is filling the role of an aggressive left Social-Democracy.  Political activity – which anarchist elements in Occupy refuse to engage in, as does Moufawad-Paul  – and unity of left organizations  - which many small sectarian left organizations refuse to engage in, as does Moufawad-Paul – are needed to combat the assault of capital. Combine this with massive labor strikes and a social reorganization / cooperation of an economic base in society, and the groundwork for a new class-wide resistance can occur.  This might create new, larger authoritative left organizations that can actually gain widespread support from the various sectors of the working class, and impact politics directly. Out of this a revolutionary organization in actual fact may emerge.

If I may paraphrase Mariategui, a world-wide ‘worker’s front’ is needed to overwhelm capital. Not a series of isolated 'leaders' alone in their tiny left organizations, or cheer-leading for 4 guerrilla movements.  A "Left Front" is transitional to that.  Ultimately this process could bring new mass revolutionary parties into being in several countries.  Something new is aborning.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog

January 31, 2015

The Society of Denial

"The Maze Runner” a film, 2014

This is another post-apocalyptic ‘young adult’ (teenager!) story about life in a strange new world.  It is similar to the ‘Hunger Games’ series, ‘Divergent,’ ‘Planet of the Apes,’ and ‘World War Z’ and material now showing up on network TV in shows like ‘The 100.’  Older film versions of this trend include ‘Mad Max,’ ‘Terminator,’ ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘The Matrix.'  It resonates with even older written stories like ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘Lord of the Flies.’ In this case it portrays boys making a life without adults.  One theory about the massive flood of post-apocalyptic fiction aimed at young people is that it deals with corporate society’s deep denial that anything is fundamentally wrong.  Instead these stories intimate that there is a hidden, dreadful story not being told, examined or dealt with.  In that sense these books and films reflect a form of cultural dissent.

The Maze Runner

Once each month, disoriented boys are lifted up in a rumbling factory elevator into ‘The Glade” – a green oasis surrounded by very high walls.  They remember almost nothing.  There a group of mostly white boys led by a black teenager, Alby, grow crops, make homemade liquor, pledge to work and not to harm each other.   They are divided up into ‘builders,’ ‘slicers’ and ‘runners’ - sort of primitive communism inside a prison.  They have built huts, a tower and oddly enough, have a punishment cell dug in the ground.

Each morning the narrow tall gates of one wall open, and each evening they close.  “Maze runners” have been running the maze that surrounds the Glade for 3 years trying to find a way out.  They have not succeeded.  Yet if they are caught in the maze after the doors close, they do not survive, being attacked by something called ‘grievers’ – which turn out to be huge mechanical spiders.  Into this world of boys comes Thomas, a white kid, who immediately wants to know how to get out, and can’t understand why ‘they’ have locked them inside.  Who ‘they’ is, is, as usual, unclear. 

In the failed attempt at 'diversity,' there are no Latinos in this group of boys, just white, black and Asian. Thomas, the last boy lifted up, immediately rescues Alby and the Asian runner, Minho, and in the process, lures a griever to its death as the maze changes and crushes one.  This is the first griever that has ever been killed.  Like most American movies, in this film stock 'leader’ worship is high.  No one can seem to do anything unless a smart and forceful person tells them to do it.  This pattern reflects the lack of community in the U.S., where single ‘heroes’ dominate film after film and the society at large, when very few have ever been in a democratic group or even know how to work together outside a job.  Reflecting this, Alby and Minho have hidden from the rest of the boys that they think there is no exit from the Maze.  Another stock character is part of the group, the thuggish rule-bound authoritarian, this time played by a big kid named Gally.  Gally opposes ever leaving the Glade. There is even the stock chubby/pathetic Piggy / Samwell Tarly stand-in called Chuck.

The final situation is set up when a teenage girl is lifted into the Glade with a note that indicates she is 'the last one.'   With her help, Thomas eventually remembers/understands that this place is not a prison but a test, and that the point IS to get out.  (While they say that the ‘ivy’ does not climb high enough to get to the top of the walls, there are enough trees for wood to build a tower/ladder to the top of the wall, then haul ladders up and make ladder bridges across the walls of the maze and out, but that would have spoiled the story!)

Thomas convinces the majority that he has discovered the way out in an earlier run through the maze.  Gally stays with the minority, fearing the grievers.  The rest take poles and various half-assed weapons and head out, several dying, unbelievably fighting off the giant grievers, until they dial the exit code on some digital panel (a code which has not been discussed until the very last seconds) and race out of the maze. 

This is the first of a 3 part series, so what is outside besides a sequel?  Dead people.  A destroyed lab.  Yes it was an experiment, and all the ‘scientists’ are dead. The point was to find young humans smart or gutsy enough to get out. So it has that creepy bourgeois ‘chosen’ ones vibe going again.  Unbelievably, Gally has somehow followed them out and is intent on stopping them.  At that moment what looks like American soldiers come storming in and shoot Gally just as he kills the saintly loser Chuck, who melodramatically takes a bullet for the chosen Thomas.  Then the soldiers take the kids out on camo helicopters and fly over the Iraqi desert – or some such place.  You see, the world burned up.   Global warming?  No one is telling. 

This film is a rush, and one of the more intense YA films and worth watching.  The author did not want to reveal what caused this situation, unlike more political authors like Edward Abbey, who makes it clear in 'Good News' that it was a corporate civilization that used up nature.  Suzanne Collins, who wrote the 'Hunger Games' series, also makes it clear that inequality is the cause of the misery of most of the districts.  This inability by so many YA authors to identify actual causes reflects their real political cowardice. 

“The Hunger Games,” Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” World War Z,” “The Road,” “Cloud Atlas,” and the novel in which the film “Blade Runner” was based on, are reviewed below.  Another post-apocalyptic book reviewed is:  “Good News.”  Use blog search box, upper left.

Red Frog

January 27, 2015

Religion is Politics by Other Means

"Annihilation of Caste,” by B.R. Ambedkar, 1936, a response by Mohandas Gandhi, 1936, with a long Introduction “The Doctor and the Saint,” by Arundhati Roy, 2014, with extensive notes by S. Anand

This historic document lays out the rationale for rejecting the Indian caste system and its religious foundation, Hinduism.  By its nature it is a revolutionary book.  It was written by one of the authors of the Indian Constitution, who was born a member of an “untouchable” caste.  Roy’s long introduction, some 124 pages, goes into detail on Ambedkar’s conflicts with Hindu nationalist Mohandas Gandhi.  The introduction stands alone as the best collection of quotes showing the reactionary Gandhi.

Roy reveals the ‘other’ Gandhi behind his well-crafted image.  Gandhi was a consummate politician who contradicted himself frequently, collaborated and made unprincipled compromises with the British, looked down on South African blacks (Kaffirs) and Indian ‘untouchables’ in South Africa and in India, and was well-funded by wealthy Indian businessmen for his whole career. He was actually a representative of these castes and upper classes, in spite of his cleverly constructed image of the village ‘saint’ in peasant garb. 

At the key moment in Indian history which was to decide if ‘untouchables’ would be given a protected vote, Gandhi said he would fast ‘to the death’ if untouchables were able to get a reserved communal vote status, which would allow them to vote on their own political representatives free of caste Hindus.  Gandhi, a Bania sub-caste of the businessmen caste, did oppose untouchability by praising the jobs ‘untouchables’ were consigned to do – like cleaning latrines or shit-covered railroad tracks. Yet because he was a religious Hindu, he opposed getting rid of the caste system itself, as it is encased in Hindu scripture and practice.  And because he was a politician who claimed all power to the Congress Party for all Hindus, he didn’t want the Hindu electorate split. Muslims and Sikh’s did get communal vote status, but not untouchables.  Gandhi basically black-mailed Ambedkar by threatening to kill himself.  This defeat was memorialized in the signing of the “Poona Pact’ in 1932, something Ambedkar regretted to the end of his days.  Even today, the caste system, while legally weaker, wrecks havoc on the Indian working-classes.  Just on one issue, rape, many rapes are of lower or no-caste women who are supposed to be subservient to any of the higher or designated castes.  The police do not interfere for the most part, and that is the reason why. 

Ambedkar and Roy point out that the official USSR-aligned Communists in India did not know how to deal with caste either, because, as she puts it, these Marxists of the CPI and CPI(M) were ‘people of the book.’  If it’s not literally in the book – ‘The Communist Manifesto,’ ‘Capital,’ etc. – then they could not synthesize it. (Which reminds us of some present Marxists!!)  Ambedkar was a pro-labor socialist who once ran on the Independent Labour Party ticket in Bombay.  He and the CP could not agree on fighting for Dalit rights within the working class movement.  Ambedkar addresses the limitations of the socialists he knew, who only thought about economic issues.  Everything else was not important to them, including social issues like caste. 

I see no real conflict with fighting caste and class together, as they are intertwined yet not identical.   It is similar to fighting racism and sexism in the U.S. as part of the class struggle, where racism and sexism exist partly outside class.  Caste exists in India somewhat in the same way as ethnically-coded or sex-coded labour-force jobs exist in the U.S.  In India these jobs are coded by the religion instead. Caste is hereditary, so the children of Dalits must remain Dalits – even if they become lawyers, as did Ambedkar.  Gandhi wanted ‘untouchables’ respected, but he still wanted them to stay in their social/class place for all eternity.  

To most people, caste seems as absurd as the Hindu religion and all its blue gods, animal slaughtering and bathing in polluted rivers full of human ashes.  Even religious ideas like karma (and not in the “My Name is Earl” sense) justify present oppression as a punishment from former life.  By the way, if reincarnation is true, why has the world population suddenly expanded exponentially?  Perhaps suddenly more dogs and monkeys have been good and been promoted?!

What are some details of hereditary ‘untouchability’?  Almost what it says….  You can’t touch a person of the 4 main designated castes. (There were 4,000 sub-castes!)  One of those designated castes are ‘shudras’ – menials, who do the work for the other 3 – priest/ intellectual Brahmins, soldier/ warrior Kshatriyas, landowner/ moneylender/ businessman Vaishyas.  The untouchables (called variously in these texts untouchables, Dalits, no-caste, outcasts (where we got the word…), Depressed Classes or untouchable Shudras) are forbidden to walk on the same streets, to enter the same temples, to drink or get water from the same wells, to eat with the other castes, to hold a job outside their role and certainly most of all not to intermarry.  If they objected, they could be killed or shunned and deprived of their livelihood, land, house or belongings.  In a way, it is Indian Jim Crow, yet courtesy of the ‘holy’ Hindu religion, not state law.  Untouchables are not the same as indigenous forest people, the Adivasi, and to Roy, one of Ambedkar’s biggest failures was not to see the Dalit’s struggle aligned with the Adivasi.  The Adivasi are an oppressed tribal people and the base for the present guerrilla war in India against corporate control of their land.  

Ambedkar is an exponent of reason, but he knows that Hinduism is not reasonable.  This document, a speech to a group of Hindu social reformers, was cancelled by them because it hinted that he was rejecting the whole Hindu religion.  Ambedkar later converted to Buddhism.  The great fear of the Hindu upper castes and the Congress Party was that they would lose clout if millions of Hindu untouchables decided to convert to Islam or Christianity or Buddhism, attempting to escape the prohibitions of caste.  Many have done so anyway.

Ambedkar goes into a long polemic against Hindu justifications for caste by using the 150 year-old slogans of the French Revolution - ‘liberty, equality & fraternity.’  He makes fun of the caste designations as not much different than that great reactionary Plato’s 3 ‘natural’ classes of ‘law-givers,’ 'labouring and trading people,’ and ‘warriors.’   He points out the justifications for caste exist in the Hindu ‘holy’ books and stories, the shastras and Vedas, like the ‘Law of Manu.’ He cites one important Bhagavad Gita story of Rama justifiably killing Shambuka, the latter being a person who wanted to transgress his Shudra caste and become a Brahmin.   He also accuses caste of being anti-female, because Hindu society is particularly resistant to women soldiers and priests - and those are two whole ostensible castes.  He points out that the untouchables (and the Shudras) were not allowed to have weapons, and hence could not defend themselves.  (Shudra's seem to have two sides - pure and impure - which fall in and out of the caste system, so it is somewhat confusing.  Ambedkar seems to be a proponent of the caste Shudras too, as they are the majority ‘designated’ menial caste in India.  Menials mean workers and small farmers.)  Socially he thinks that inter-marriage is a key way to break down caste divisions.  He points out that the Marxist slogan, “You have nothing to lose but your chains,’ works only if those with lighter chains, to retain their privilege, don’t oppose those with the heavier ones.  Unfortunately caste works as an excellent way to divide a rebellion, much as racism and nationalism works in the U.S.

In the debate between the two, Ambedkar makes a crack at Gandhi, pointing out that Gandhi himself was of the businessman caste, a “Bania’, but became an attorney, then promoted himself to ‘Mahatma’ status – a godly man, a Brahmin.  Gandhi’s son married a Brahmin, so both broke caste.  “Saints’ can break cast, but the common people cannot. Ambedkar says, “What Hindu’s call religion is really law, or at best legalizes class ethics.”  Gandhi’s responds about the 'truth' of the Hindu religion: “It lives in the experiences of its saints and seers, in their lives and sayings.”  Ambedkar responds that none of the famous seers cited by Gandhi opposed caste (‘chaturvarna’), in fact they supported it.  Gandhi:  “Caste has nothing to do with religion.  It is a custom whose origin I do not know.”  Ambedkar responds to this willful ignorance by noting that the Hindu holy books are full of support for ‘varna.’  Gandhi ignores the religious mentions of the system of caste, decreed by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, Gandhi’s favorite book.  Ambedkar points out that earlier in his life, Gandhi was opposed to inter-drinking, inter-dining and inter-marriage as a more orthodox Hindu, and thought of untouchables as ancestrally unclean and stupid.  All typical caste mentality for a religious Hindu, an attitude that Gandhi did not fundamentally change.  

This book raises the question of the present permeability of castes, which is certainly going on among the higher castes.  But as indicated by Roy’s statistics, the class/caste system in India has not really changed the majority of Indian society.  Caste is a religious justification for the Indian class system. Gandhi justified caste by saying it was needed to ensure ‘social stability’ and ‘order.’  This shows that Gandhi was what Marxists call a bourgeois nationalist, interested in independence from colonial Britain so that the Indian bourgeoisie could exploit their ‘own’ working-class more effectively.  Ambedekar reminds me of W.E.B. Dubois and his discussion of ethnic oppression in the U.S. Ambedkar was opposed to this and this is why he is essential reading for any opponent of the Indian class and caste system.

 Review of W.E.B. Dubois’ classic “Souls of Black Folk,” below.  Other non-fiction books on India reviewed below:  “Walking with the Comrades,” “The God Market,” Capitalism – A Ghost Story,” “Field Notes on Democracy” and  commentary "Women are the Secret Revolutionaries."  Use blog search box, upper left.  

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog

January 24, 2015

What They Never Bring Up on MLK Day

"Orders to Kill – The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” by William F Pepper, with a forward by Dexter Scott King, 1995

This book cracks the case of the assassination of Martin Luther King.  It is the powerful result of a 20 year legal search for information and facts carried out by Pepper, James Earl Ray’s defense attorney.  It names the assassin – who is now dead and was a member of the Memphis police department, sharp-shooter Earl Clark.

Pepper describes how they set up Ray as the assassin – luring Ray to Memphis for a gun deal, renting a hotel room for him across from the Lorraine Motel, dropping a bag with a decoy weapon on the street outside.  How the real murder rifle was stashed at a coffee shop, Jim’s Grill, across from the Lorraine.  How King’s room was mysteriously changed to the second floor for a better shot.  How King was also triangulated by Special Forces military sharpshooters and police on two high buildings around the motel, as described by participants.  Witnesses describe someone in the row of bushes in the empty lot across from the Lorraine – a direct shot.  How a key hedge was cut down the day after the murder to make the official story work better, as well as some branches that blocked the view from the ostensible shooter’s window.  How they tried to get Ray to escape from prison so he could be shot.

A civil jury acquitted Ray of the crime, but the award was ignored.  The King family believes that Ray never shot King.  Multiple witnesses admitted to being part of the conspiracy or knowing who shot King, or heard orders to do the shooting.  CIA/NSA people were caught in a photo coming down off the wall across from the motel.  A incognito military intelligence officer was kneeling over King on the balcony a minute after the shooting.  Shooters and conspirators were tied to the Mob of Carlos Marcello – the same pattern that was used in the Kennedy assassinations.  One contract offered to the Mob was put out by the FBI.  Essentially this was the same MO as the hits on the Kennedy brothers by the same security/military faction inside the government. 

The film “Selma” created a controversy about the ‘mixed’ relationship of LBJ with King.  It is significant that few, except Earl Ofari Hutchinson, have pointed out that LBJ allowed Hoover to continue his known campaign against King, even appointing him ‘life-time’ FBI director.  Quite an endorsement, which shows that LBJ was playing both sides of the fence. 

As the film ostensibly shows, King was not a beloved cuddly grandfather dreaming of better days - but had become a ‘dangerous radical.’  The Right accused King of being a Communist and never backed-off this position.  The minute King went beyond fighting Jim Crow and denounced the Vietnam War, backed striking workers and attempted to bring integration north, he was attacked by hundreds of newspapers and written off by Johnson.  This gave Hoover – and probably James Jesus Angleton of the CIA - all the political cover they needed to participate in the assassination. It should be noted that LBJ was president or vice president, and Hoover head of the FBI during every key assassination of the 1960s - the Kennedy brothers, King, Malcolm X and many Black Panthers like Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.  The fact that Hoover dressed in women's clothes and was a self-hating gay is the least of it.

Just as in a suburb, where the trees they cut down lend their names to 'Aspen Drive," so the man they shot gets his own holiday - after years of resistance to it.  This book is essential reading for an understanding of the 1960s and of the 'deep state' existing underneath capitalism. 

Black Lives Matter, today and yesterday!

P.S. - Two hard-cover copies of this hard-to-find book are now in stock for $10 a piece.  

Red Frog

January 20, 2015

World Capitalism is the Breeding Ground

Modern De Facto Slavery - “A Crime So Monstrous:  Face-to-Face With Modern-Day Slavery.”

Slavery – at least chattel slavery – was outlawed in all of the countries in the world over a long timeline.  For instance, Russia abolished slavery in 1723 but kept serfdom.  Serfdom was abolished in 1917 after the Russian revolution. The slave revolution in Haiti outlawed slavery in 1804.  Mexico got rid of it starting in 1810.  Spain banned human bondage in most of its colonies in 1811 – except some islands in the Caribbean like Cuba.  It was outlawed in the United Kingdom in 1833.  Cuba finally abolished slavery in 1862.  In 1865 after the Civil War it was outlawed in the U.S. with the passing of the 13^th Amendment.  Other countries like China abolished human enslavement in 1910, Afghanistan in 1922, Saudi Arabia in 1962, a bunch of Gulf Islamic states in the 1960s and lastly, Sunni Islamist Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981 and finally also made it a crime in 2007.  De jure slavery no longer exists anywhere in the world. 

However, capitalism still exists. With capitalism, private property and the profit motive, there is an incentive to continue de facto slavery.  Not the chattel slaves of the old days, nor the ubiquitous wage slaves of today – but people forcibly held against their will, mostly in debt bondage, paid little or nothing, and never getting out of debt, or getting away.  This is the sort of slavery that exists between chattel and wage – though some wage slaves have so much debt it can also last a lifetime.  Sort of like modern U.S. prison labor or Jim Crow prisons in the South, but without any bogus legal reasons or sentence limitations.  Debt and forced slavery have arisen to the point that now there are more slaves in the world than there were in 1860 or at any other time in history.  According to reporter Benjamin Skinner, there are 27 million de facto slaves world-wide, based on estimates by NGOs and governments. 

Capitalist neo-liberal India, that most self-congratulatory of countries, has the most (mostly debt) slaves of any country.  Indian Dalit / Advasi workers and farmers of despised 'no-castes’ are born with a debt from their parents and, after working a lifetime for the landlord or owner, their children inherit that debt, continuing the work.  India exports these 'untouchable' workers to other countries – 5.5 million work in the Gulf states.  Narendra Modi, president of India and a (former?) member of the pro-fascist Hindu RSS - which sympathized with Hitler and Mussolini - will be doing nothing for these low-castes.  This is why you find copies of Mein Kampf for sale in newspaper stalls across India.  And why conditions for Indian workers in the Gulf are horrendous.

Romania is a league leader in the trafficking of sex slaves.  Recent news stories have described Asian fishing vessels using slaves locked on boats to harvest shrimp.  Others describe guarded labor camps in Mexico that produce vegetables, especially tomatoes and avocados, for the U.S. market.   Sudan has 12,000 people in bondage because of the civil war there.  210 years after Haiti’s revolution led by Toussaint L’Overture, according to Skinner, 300,000 child slaves now live in Haiti.  You can buy one for $50.  Estimates are that in the U.S. there are up to 17,000 women forced into prostitution and held against their will each year.   Not to mention undocumented immigrants held in sweatshops against their will in New York, Los Angeles and other cities.   

The wealthy Islamic gulf states of the Middle-East, notable for banning chattel slavery last, have imposed brutal Kafala conditions on migrant workers instead.  These workers do all the manual labor for the Arab Islamic aristocracies. The virtual slavery of female Asian domestics or sex slaves, or blue-collar workers continues, as passports are withheld so workers cannot escape. 

In the Middle East it is called the ‘Kafala’ system - Under the scheme the employer, to all extent and purposes, “owns” the migrant worker, who cannot change employers unless the sponsor decides to 'lease' them to someone else.”  In Qatar 90% of the population are migrants.  Many are virtually imprisoned. Many Indian, Bangladeshi, Nepalese and North Korean migrants have died building Qatar's 2022 World Cup facilities - almost one a day in 2014 according to the Guardian. Some reports say Nepalese are dying at 3-4 a day, as they are a mountain people working in desert conditions. The North Korean state pockets 90% of the wages of their forced laborers, as its autarkic economy is desperate for cash.  In Abu Dhabi / Dubai, migrants are 95% of workforce.  Females work as personal servants in a form of indentured servitude.  Women are also forced into the sex trade for jet-set businessmen.  All have their passports confiscated.  Workers are denied payment of their paltry wages for months, and most are shorted at the end.  There are no unions, no health and safety, so heat exhaustion and overwork lead to suicides.  The governments lie about deaths.  A shantytown called Sonapur in Abu Dhabi contains 300,000 workers.  Sonapur means ‘the golden city’ in Hindi.  It contains broken sewage systems, dysentery from bad water, overcrowding and misery.  The gold is for others.

Why has slavery returned?  A lot of modern anti-slavery organizations might not admit it, but its roots lie in modern globalist capitalism.  Capitalism is a petrie dish for modern enslavement.  It endures as the profiteer’s governments look the other way.  Laws are not enforced. The almighty dollar or dinar or euro or peso or rupee rule, not the working classes. Private property is still the law of most lands and this includes human labor and human beings.   

If the money-people can make a super profit without the 'free' wage system, so much the better!!  They don’t really need chattel slavery anymore.  De facto slavery conforms to the capitalist idea that all things are commodities, including human beings themselves, yet without any of the legal problematics.  Just as chattel slavery dragged down the whole U.S. working class in the 1860s, so this kind of de facto slavery is a dead weight on struggles of workers, especially in India and the Gulf states.  

Coming Soon:  All this is found in a new book by Benjamin Skinner:  “A Crime So Monstrous:  Face-to-Face With Modern-Day Slavery.”  This book will be ordered by Mayday Books.

Red Frog

January 17, 2015

The Feminist Past is Prologue

"Fortunes of Feminism – From State-Managed Capitalism to Neo-Liberal Crisis,” by Nancy Fraser, 2013.

This is a collection of 25 essays from the 1980s to 2008 by Fraser, a feminist ‘social philosopher’ at the New School in New York.  Like attorneys who use turgid or constipated words and structure instead of clear and simple ones, these essays by a professor are larded with an academic jargon that seems derived from what is called ‘critical theory.’  Which seems a somewhat unspecific name.  There are few books by feminists interested in material theory, which is why I am reviewing it.  Fraser seems to be influenced by the Frankfurt School of neo-Marxist sociology and by Max Weber and Hannah Arendt.  In an odd way, it is somewhat of a companion volume to Lise Vogel’s “Marxism and the Oppression of Women” (also reviewed below). 

Here is an example of Fraser’s jargon.  After talking about feminists ignoring the global ‘poor’ she says:  “Naming this second, meta-political injustice ‘misframing,’ I argue for a post-Westphalian theory of democratic justice which prolematizes unjust frames.”  What she really means is:  “I argue for an internationalist perspective which includes the global poor.”  The scary part is that you can understand the jargon by the end of the book.  Her favorite word is ‘androcentrism’ which, from the Greek, means ‘male-centered.’  Her second favorite is ‘late capitalism,’ a term of triumphalism that has certainly outliving its applicability, given it was first coined in 1902 and later taken up by the Frankfurt School and others after WWII.   Her third is ‘post-industrial’ – a term that is both narrowly nationalist and absolutely untrue.  No society on earth is ‘post-industrial.’

Periods of Feminism

The period covered by Fraser is from the 1970s, when ‘second-wave’ feminism was at high tide, to feminism’s decay into cultural criticism under the neo-liberal/neo-conservative period of Reagan/ Thatcher, the Bushes & Clinton in the 1990’s, and ending in the economic crisis of 2008.  Her estimate is that socialistic economic and material analyses will once again play a role in feminism due to economic factors, and the best aspects of ‘second wave’ feminism will be back. 

What is ‘second wave’ feminism?  Well, that which came after the first wave, which were the original suffragettes like Mary Wollenstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony, and activists like Margaret Sanger.  Suffrage was one main result of the first wave - New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote in 1893, while the U.S. gained it in 1920, 27 years later.  The only two countries in the world where women still can’t vote are Saudi Arabia and the Vatican – both theocracies loyal to U.S. power.  The second wave started in the post-war period with Simone du Beauvoir, Betty Friedan and ended with a ‘New Left’ feminism linked to Marxism.  The gains of ‘second wave’ feminism in the U.S. were the legalization of abortion, making gender discrimination in jobs illegal, making domestic violence and rape in marriage illegal, mandating equal pay for equal work, ending bars against women in certain jobs, the development of contraceptives, Title IX sports equality and full contract authority for women.  These of course are only legal steps and so fall short of actual social equality.  They are also still under attack.

The Chapters

At any rate, if you can get by the sometimes stultifying jargon, the essays track leftish arguments with sociologist Jurgen Habermas, fellow feminist Judith Butler and post-modernists Lacan, Julia Kristeva and Sassure – the founder of structuralism.  I.E. some of the same people that popped up in the book, “Fashionable Nonsense,” (reviewed below.).  Fraser follows the arguments of Vogel on the direct connection of the family to the capitalist economy, linking the ‘domestic’ and personal spheres with the economic, state and political spheres.  Fraser's analysis rejects the low-status identity of women as an ideological component of women’s economic role.  Instead she pictures this as part of two areas - cultural and economic - somehow independent,  'side-by-side' phenomena.  Her assertion, which she does not back up, is that women’s inferior cultural role is not ‘super-structural,' i.e. an active reflection or interaction with their economic role. 

Fraser takes on the pragmatic sociological philosophy of Habermas by arguing that his description of society isolates the family and the domestic sphere from the economic and public spheres, which consequently puts many women and their issues in a ghetto.  She also criticizes Habermas for ignoring any gender identification of the various areas of society  Though since the 1970s, the sexual identity of certain jobs or roles has changed in the developed capitalist countries, though not decisively. I don’t think many people care about Habermas, but then these essays were written awhile ago.  They are perhaps valuable for pointing out that even world-class intellectuals like Habermas ignored gender in his sociological theory. 

Fraser has an excellent history of the term ‘dependency.’  At present the word “dependency’ downgrades mostly women who do home-based, unpaid carework.  Carework is defined as taking care of babies, elderly parents, sick relatives or even a husband who does nothing at home.  Part of it features the individualizing process of ‘psychologizing’ many poor women who do carework - aka liberals and conservatives using psychology to avoid a systemic analyses.  Fraser contrasts this with what she calls two ‘thought experiment’ solutions to this problem in the ‘post-industrial welfare state.’  One is a full employment model and one is a ‘caregiver’ model which compensates those who stay at home to do the necessary work of taking care of others.  She shows the feminist limitations of both models, and suggests a combination of the two.  She then says that, under the present ‘post-industrial welfare state’ they are virtually impossible. Her analysis is completely confined to capitalism and smacks more of academic social work than anything else.

Fraser Takes on More Secular Mysticism

Fraser’s makes a philosophical attack on feminist disciples of post-modernist language structuralism and neo-Freudian psychology.  She starts with Sassure, moves to Lacan, and ends up with Kristeva, who calls herself a ‘post-feminist.’ (which means we no longer need feminism!)  Fraser basically takes their structuralist and post-structuralist theories apart as static, individualist, verbally-based theories that have no connection with history, class or movements.  She points out their idealist nature makes them unable to actually intersect with the real world and help women.  Sort of a linguistic Platonism to my mind.  She instead supports a pragmatic description of language, which does just that. 

Fraser’s next target is Judith Butler, another somewhat leftish feminist who disagrees with Fraser’s take on the ‘two’ (actually three) areas of struggle for Fraser – economic, cultural and political.  Fraser refers to the low-status of women as the key feminist cultural issue - something that has an independent life from the economy.  They argue about the roots of gay oppression, which Butler thinks is caused by the capitalist economy, while Fraser says it is both economic and cultural.  Fraser points to the fact that modern capitalist corporations are all for hiring gay workers and getting gay customers.   To buffer her own analysis, Fraser makes fun of the old-time Soviet description of the ‘base’ and the ‘superstructure’ as a description of the relation between economy and culture/ideology - as if all Marxists describe battleships instead of a living system.  These heavy terms are not nimble enough to capture the interrelations between the material life of a society and its cultural or political expressions, but they certainly allocate economic and material reality the ultimate role. Fraser uses the 'proof' of Soviet and eastern European workers' states to make her point, but the political limitations of those states are obvious.  By ignoring the fundamental role of material reality, Fraser edges into idealism – as culture becomes an equal force to economic and materiel forces.

It all comes to a head in her last chapter, written during the economic crisis of 2008, in which she posits that the dominant cultural and liberal versions of feminism have intersected and actually merged with the new form of capitalist neo-liberalism.  Instead of taking on the economic roots of women’s oppression, feminism has focused on other issues more palatable to the capitalist economic system.  This is quite a stunning observation from Fraser, as she was invested in seeing the economy as just one of 3 ‘equal’ aspects of society.  Which shows that Fraser actually pays attention to historical development and that she is serious in wanting to revive what she calls ‘socialist-feminism.’   

I can only point out that advances in women and gay rights in the workforce and the army - absolutely justified as they are - still do not undermine either the profit system or imperialist militarism.  What I call the neo-liberal family – gay, married and childless, single, living together, divorced, dating, as well as married with children – does not weaken capitalism significantly, though it does free people culturally.    I think the reason is that the big capitalists can get labor from all over the world now, and do not need some U.S./ European families to produce as many babies to reproduce the U.S. working class.  Just as globalized corporations do not need all consumers to be U.S. citizens. The big capitalists also desire, as Vogel pointed out, to extract women and every group from the family into the labor force, which can then replace baby-making.  Ultimately capital wants to privatize every function of the family and in exchange, institute wage labor for everyone in it.  Even children!  That is, if it can’t get the work for free.

Fraser says “Henceforth, feminist theorists cannot avoid the question of capitalist society.” She shies away from Marxism, thinking it all ‘economist’ - and instead grasps for Karl Polyani, who incorporates certain feminist ideas in a book he wrote in 1944.  Fraser’s subsequent solutions are vague, professorial and seem disconnected from any actual struggles going on in the world.  She repeats her desire to take up the battle for economic, cultural and political struggles for women, but how this will actually work is left unsaid.  She ignores the class and ethnic basis of different kinds of feminism - which will generally lead women from different classes to focus on separate issues.  Her tripartite theoretical approach actually splits the movement.  What feminism needs now is a 'monist' struggle that is keyed on anti-capitalism - and uses every political and cultural angle to carry out that struggle, including the necessary fight against sexism.

I slogged through this academic jungle so you don’t have to … or perhaps you do.

Guardian comments on upper-class feminism 1/21/2015 -  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/21/feminists-obsessed-elite-metropolitan-lives-low-paid-females

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog

January 13, 2015

Je Suis Le Enragé

The Left and Islamic Literalism

The homicidal attack in France on the editorial offices of Charlie hebdo was an attack on the Left.  Albeit an odd, funny, anarchist version.  While nearly all Americans have never heard of it, reports indicate this magazine was anti-capitalist, anti-religion, anti-nationalist and an opponent of a long string of bureaucratic French governments.   They made fun of Christian Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism and Islam. Charlie hebdo did not support the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a decision also made by the French government of the time.  This earned the latter the reactionary ire of the American Bushites – which included numerous insults like changing the name of French fries to ‘Freedom’ fries, as well as insults about the fighting capacity of ‘surrender monkeys.’  Nor did they support other invasions of the Middle East.

In 2004 the editor at the time, Val, was quoted as saying about Charlie hebdo: (hebdo meaning 'weekly.")
"It demands loyalty to laicite, the defence of ecology, democratic principles, the ideals of the Enlightenment, the struggle against racism and anti-Semitism, and the condemnation of cruelty to animals." In essence, it was what the French call, "la resistance joyeuse."

According to various news reports, one or more suspects visited Yemen and were probably trained by Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula.  One of the men claimed in a 2005 video shown on French TV that they were radicalized by the 2003 invasions of the Middle East, led by the Americans.  An inman later showed them Islamic texts that called for violent jihad against unbelievers and infidels. A recent recording of the 'IS' hostage taker at the kosher supermarche indicates he thought that all French taxpayers are guilty. There is clearly an element of ‘blowback’ here, as that invasion was an international crime.  However, here the ‘blowback’ is directed not at the military forces responsible for the decimation of so many Muslim societies but at civilians who made fun of Mohammed.  This is two different things.  The French government did not support the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq, though they agreed to support the ‘NATO’ invasion of Afghanistan.  Death threats for any public figure 'insulting' Islam are common – remember Salman Rushdie.  This follows the assassination of Theo van Gogh by right-wing Dutch political Islamists for a film he did exposing the violent anti-female sentiments in the Qur’an and in Islamic-dominated societies.

Fascist and nationalist elements in France immediately seized on the incident and there are now reports of scattered attacks on mosques, Muslim-owned shops and Muslim civilians.   It seems that the best allies the National Front and Marie Le Pen have are the religious fascists of Al Qaeda.  And that is perhaps what both sides want.   The French government probably won’t be far behind.  Al Qaeda and IS will use this as a recruiting tool, and hope that the reaction will increase a false polarization in France & Europe.  This will only play into their hands of bourgeois governments to carry out repressive policies.

Some reformist leftists in the U.S. see only the ‘blowback’ side and do not see the reactionary, anti-working class side of Islamic reactionaries.  Back in 1979, several socialist groups in the U.S. uncritically supported Khomeini's leadership of that revolution because he was ‘anti-imperialist’ by opposing the U.S. – this while he smashed Iranian unions and jailed and killed Communists in the Tudeh party and others.  Any opposition to the U.S. from any source is not the same thing as ‘anti-imperialism.’ To call it so is to abandon any understanding of the class component of anti-imperialism.  It can be a form of reactionary nationalism – which the Khomeinite leadership of the revolution was.  Socialists have an international perspective and have to base their analysis on what class-conscious workers in each country would do, even one dominated by state-sanctioned Islam. 

The leader of Al Qaeda was a fundamentalist Saudi millionaire upset about U.S. bases in the ‘holy’ land.  The leadership of IS was formed in the vicious jails of Iraq during the second war.  Instead of being ‘anti-imperialist’ they decided to slaughter Shiites, Kurds, Yazidis, American reporters and Sunni tribalists who did not agree with their version of Islam.  Now this kind of Islam is after cartoonists.  Friday one of their compatriots seized hostages in a Kosher grocery and 4 were killed, so we can add Jews to the list. Who are their main targets though?  Actually not French cartoonists or Jews, but Muslim children in a Pakistani school or women and children in 5 villages in Nigeria - all horrifically murdered.  Muslims are the main targets of these 'rebel' Muslims.  Lots of civilian killing to be done.

Charlie bedbo is not the only leftist target, of course.  The lynchpin of conservative world Islamism is Saudi Arabia, a staunch U.S. ally.  Most of the attackers on 9/11 were from that country, and money for Al Qaeda came from Saudi millionaires and billionaires.  Saudi Arabia is a theocratic petroarchy dominated by a Royal Family that uses Salafist and Wahabbist Islamic ideology to justify their rule. They know religion is politics by other means.  The Saudi’s propagation of fundamentalist Sunni Islam is the ideological mainspring of their rule – and of terrorist jihadism.  Reza Aslan reported today that the Saudis have spent over $100 billion dollars promoting Wahabbism around the world.  The Iranian government does their best to spread Shiite Islam as well, as it strengthens their national goals.  The Saudis have funded various Islamist currents like the Muslim Brotherhoods, who have opposed Marxists and nationalists in the Middle East for years.  This has included opposing the PFLP and DFLP and even the PLO in Palestine.  They undermined Nasser in Egypt and continue an endless (and successful) opposition to the state-nationalism of the Baath parties in Syria and Iraq.  They also funded the war against the Barbak Karmal / CP governments in Afghanistan in 1978, which led to the killing of almost every secularist in that nation by U.S. and Saudi-backed jihadis and warlords. In essence, the U.S. and Saudi’s created ultra-rightist Islamic terror groups. 

Muslims who don’t support this kind of violent action say these people ‘are not Muslims.’  This facile statement doesn’t fly.  They cannot recognize that a wing of Islam based on texts and money is very much ‘Islamic.’  There are 164 jihadist verses in the Qur'an and fewer about peace, so it is similar to the Bible in that sense.  It is a 'pick and choose' religion in fact.  It is as if an American liberal Christian says that the killers of abortion doctors for religious reasons are ‘not Christians’ - instead of admitting that they are inspired by the conservative worldview of the Bible and various Christian churches.  Ideology can become a material force, given certain material preconditions.  It is politics by other means. 

Islamic literalists take the written words of the Qur'an and various hadiths as is, even though the texts reflect a tribalist understanding based on a material culture 1,500 years old.  This archaic religious ideology is dying in the face of capitalist modernism and the influence of the internet, though many of its proponents are not consciously aware of it. This I think is part of the reason that fundamentalist elements in every religion are getting aggressive and violent across the globe.  But it really reflects the dying material role of dominant theocracies, the bazaar economy and rural landlords, which are based on the extreme subjugation and exploitation of workers and women.  

Its 'soldiers' are mostly impoverished men who want to fight oppression in some way, but fall prey to a false opposition. 80% of the prison population in France is Muslims, so they are a great part of the underclass.  The left in Europe needs to recruit people of Middle-eastern origin to fight this counter-revolutionary force, forming Middle-Eastern sections.

‘Terror’ is not similar in all ways.  The ultra-left in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s and beyond used violence to terrorize individual capitalists, military figures, relevant installations and capitalist government bureaucrats.  Fascists and reactionaries on the other hand direct their terror against broad populations – bombing trains, public events, attacking national or ethnic groups or individuals.  This approach goes far back into the 1920s.  The reasons for these two approaches to ‘terror’ are political.  Leftists think the enemy is the army or the capitalists and their state, not the population.  Rightists are racist or nationalist and also authoritarian and against ‘rights’, and hence have no ideological problem with attacking national, religious or ethnic populations of workers or people, or ‘soft’ free-speech targets like satiric magazines or filmmakers.  Or taxpayers. 

It is, ultimately, a two-sided struggle. Nous Sommes Aussi Charlie!

History Note:   By the way, during the French Revolution ‘Les Enragés’ were a revolutionary group to the left of the centrist Jacobins.  Les Enragés attacked property rights and wanted the revolution to go beyond formal legal rights.  They represented the sans-culottes and the workers and were fore-runners of class-oriented anarchism and Marxism. 

Red Frog

January 10, 2015