THE ECONOMIST MAY 6, 2001
US Imperialism
The American flag is habitually burnt publically around the world by anti-imperialists while the Union flag of the United Kingdom rarely is, if ever. Second, the Stars and Stripes flies over the states of California and Texas, which America took by force from Mexico fewer than 150 years ago. Mexicans still call these states occupied territories. Unlike Britain, America has not yet decolonised, and continues to act in a brutal, imperialist fashion in many parts of the world. But what can one expect from a nation whose creation involved the genocide of one race and the subjugation of another.
David Short, Johannesburg
Letters are welcome and should be addressed to the Editor at The Economist, 25 St. James's Street, London SW1A 1HG.
FAX: 020 7839 2968
E-mail: letters@economist.com
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Local Boy Makes Good
“The Grass – A Young Man’s Journey to the Korean War” – Paul Zerby, 2009
Minneapolis’ own Paul Zerby has written a fictional account of a feisty young man from Fargo who ends up fighting in the Korean War. It is unknown how much of this is biography, and how much is fiction – but then, that is the essence of some kinds of literature. Zerby is a former lawyer and irascible DFL City Counsel person who represented the 2nd Ward on the West Bank. He himself was born in Fargo, went to the U and later shipped out for Korea. Writing this book seems to be something he has put off until ‘retirement’ – a story he has been carrying around for quite awhile.
Minneapolis’ own Paul Zerby has written a fictional account of a feisty young man from Fargo who ends up fighting in the Korean War. It is unknown how much of this is biography, and how much is fiction – but then, that is the essence of some kinds of literature. Zerby is a former lawyer and irascible DFL City Counsel person who represented the 2nd Ward on the West Bank. He himself was born in Fargo, went to the U and later shipped out for Korea. Writing this book seems to be something he has put off until ‘retirement’ – a story he has been carrying around for quite awhile.
 |
| Battle of the Pusan Peninsula and Witch'es Tit |
The lead character, high-schooler Tom Kelly, initially believes that the Korean war is worth fighting, to save ‘the American way of life,’ because there was no doubt that the “Communists were trying to take over the world.’ By the end of the book, after being in Korea for a combat tour, Kelly doesn’t believe that anyone should die for any ‘isms’ anymore. It is not quite clear how this transformation happens – contact with warfare does not make all soldiers into pacifists. Kelly is quite an odd conglomeration of characteristics. He is a kid who talks about Hemingway without ever being seen reading him; who is loud, foul-mouthed and drinks Jack Daniels constantly, even at school; is mostly driven by sexual urgings in his relationships with women - i.e. a thoroughly conventional male. Yet he is also somehow class-consciousness, bookish, anti-racist and not afraid of authority. I have met this kind of person in the cold North, but they are certainly a rarity.
The book starts by tracing Kelly’s life in Fargo, North Dakota, when one of his friends comes home in a box from Korea; where he romances an upper-class, conservative Christian named Moira who fancies herself an edgy progressive; and when he finally leaves his Democratic-populist, working-class parents to go to school at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, not to the agriculture school in Fargo. Throughout the book, Moira attempts to win him back, even though she will not have sex with him. This is the early ‘50s, after all, and she is an endless source of frustration to Tom.
In Minneapolis, Kelly starts taking classes, working part-time, and also joins ROTC. His first sexual experience is with a waitress at work who he doesn’t like that much except for sex. He also meets various leftists from the Socialist Workers Party, whom he calls ‘pseudo-intellectuals,’ and also the pivotal person in this narrative, Professor Theodore R Williams. Williams is a left-wing professor, and also the only black professor at the U at that time. Oddly enough, this professor seems to be modeled on the first black professor at the U that Nelson Peery helped get hired. (See the review of “Black Radical,” below.) The real professor’s name was Forrest O. Wiggins. He was hired as an instructor in the philosophy department in 1946 (when Peery helped get him hired), and terminated by the U administration in 1952 for political reasons (which Zerby probably protested.) As you might notice, discussing politics with the SWP and joining ROTC are usually mutually-exclusive activities. It certainly never happened in the 60s to my knowledge.
Kelly disagrees with but respects Williams. Williams comes out against the Korean War in public; like a fool, Kelly’s girlfriend Moira publicizes his stance in the Minnesota Daily; the administration decides to fire Williams, and, in an epic scene, Kelly leads a protest of hundreds of students against the firing by publicly arguing with the head of the University, Chancellor Werrecker. Kelly finishes the discussion by leading a foul-mouthed chant against the decision. That gets Kelly kicked out of ROTC and the University, and he heads back to Fargo, now known as a ‘communist sympathizer’ and a ‘nigger lover.’ During that time these designations were badges of honor, at least in retrospect. However, it seems unlikely that many real Tom Kellys earned them.
The hidden war in Korea – ignored by most of the population, somewhat like Iraq and Afghanistan – comes back to center stage. In 1952, Kelly decides to join the Army against the wishes of his family, his girlfriend, and his more radical friends like Will Lindeman, because he wants to ‘do the right thing.’ He is sent to boot camp in North Carolina, which also happens to be near the poor black college Professor Williams has been exiled to. At boot camp, he watches as a fat, slow soldier, Schlumpberger, who has been hazed and insulted for weeks, intentionally stands up in a live-fire exercise and get chopped in two by bullets. This starts the horrified Kelly on a writing jag, as he feels partly responsible for the suicide.
Kelly goes to visit Williams, who is thankful to see him, but is appalled that Kelly has joined the Army. The Professor feels somehow responsible for this. Kelly sees what happens to people that stand up to the power structure – Williams has aged, and he has become unhappy, as has his wife. The family is now poorer. Right before shipping out, Kelly has a 30-day furlough which he spends in New York City with a new woman he has met, Anna, and fantasizes about being a writer or going to Columbia. He spends most of the time trying to get this woman ‘in the sack’ – which is the slangy way Kelly usually puts things. On the last night, he succeeds. And they pledge their love.
Kelly lands at Pusan, and is immediately put in the field, where he shoots a young North Korean close-up on a hill called the “Witches Tit.” Then follow various maneuvers that take him through fields of exploding bodies, shit-soaked and pointless mud advances, deadly friendly fire, and trench warfare. He spends his 15 month tour along the 38th Parallel, as the two sides alternatively negotiate and fight. Nearly at the end of his term, he tries to help a black solider avoid court marshal by pretending the soldier is sick, not asleep on watch. At this point, he has already told his brass, Lieutenant Winton, that he does not believe in fighting the war anymore. Winton, a stiff West Pointer, is angered, and at the trial of the soldier, Kelly lies and is called a ‘nigger-lover’ again. Of course, Kelly later marries Anna and reluctantly returns to Korea’s DMZ in 2007 as a grandfather. He sees how Seoul has changed from a destitute, bomb-wracked town to a city of shining glass and skyscrapers.
I’ve read a lot of anti-war novels and this is one of the milder ones. Its real topic is the 50s in America, where most of the action takes place. The combination of the slangy attitude and the intellectuality of the lead character seem in conflict, and give Kelly an air of class unreality. Of course, he could, indeed be based on Paul Zerby … and Mr. Zerby is quite real.
And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, 9/22/2009
The book starts by tracing Kelly’s life in Fargo, North Dakota, when one of his friends comes home in a box from Korea; where he romances an upper-class, conservative Christian named Moira who fancies herself an edgy progressive; and when he finally leaves his Democratic-populist, working-class parents to go to school at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, not to the agriculture school in Fargo. Throughout the book, Moira attempts to win him back, even though she will not have sex with him. This is the early ‘50s, after all, and she is an endless source of frustration to Tom.
In Minneapolis, Kelly starts taking classes, working part-time, and also joins ROTC. His first sexual experience is with a waitress at work who he doesn’t like that much except for sex. He also meets various leftists from the Socialist Workers Party, whom he calls ‘pseudo-intellectuals,’ and also the pivotal person in this narrative, Professor Theodore R Williams. Williams is a left-wing professor, and also the only black professor at the U at that time. Oddly enough, this professor seems to be modeled on the first black professor at the U that Nelson Peery helped get hired. (See the review of “Black Radical,” below.) The real professor’s name was Forrest O. Wiggins. He was hired as an instructor in the philosophy department in 1946 (when Peery helped get him hired), and terminated by the U administration in 1952 for political reasons (which Zerby probably protested.) As you might notice, discussing politics with the SWP and joining ROTC are usually mutually-exclusive activities. It certainly never happened in the 60s to my knowledge.
Kelly disagrees with but respects Williams. Williams comes out against the Korean War in public; like a fool, Kelly’s girlfriend Moira publicizes his stance in the Minnesota Daily; the administration decides to fire Williams, and, in an epic scene, Kelly leads a protest of hundreds of students against the firing by publicly arguing with the head of the University, Chancellor Werrecker. Kelly finishes the discussion by leading a foul-mouthed chant against the decision. That gets Kelly kicked out of ROTC and the University, and he heads back to Fargo, now known as a ‘communist sympathizer’ and a ‘nigger lover.’ During that time these designations were badges of honor, at least in retrospect. However, it seems unlikely that many real Tom Kellys earned them.
The hidden war in Korea – ignored by most of the population, somewhat like Iraq and Afghanistan – comes back to center stage. In 1952, Kelly decides to join the Army against the wishes of his family, his girlfriend, and his more radical friends like Will Lindeman, because he wants to ‘do the right thing.’ He is sent to boot camp in North Carolina, which also happens to be near the poor black college Professor Williams has been exiled to. At boot camp, he watches as a fat, slow soldier, Schlumpberger, who has been hazed and insulted for weeks, intentionally stands up in a live-fire exercise and get chopped in two by bullets. This starts the horrified Kelly on a writing jag, as he feels partly responsible for the suicide.
Kelly goes to visit Williams, who is thankful to see him, but is appalled that Kelly has joined the Army. The Professor feels somehow responsible for this. Kelly sees what happens to people that stand up to the power structure – Williams has aged, and he has become unhappy, as has his wife. The family is now poorer. Right before shipping out, Kelly has a 30-day furlough which he spends in New York City with a new woman he has met, Anna, and fantasizes about being a writer or going to Columbia. He spends most of the time trying to get this woman ‘in the sack’ – which is the slangy way Kelly usually puts things. On the last night, he succeeds. And they pledge their love.
Kelly lands at Pusan, and is immediately put in the field, where he shoots a young North Korean close-up on a hill called the “Witches Tit.” Then follow various maneuvers that take him through fields of exploding bodies, shit-soaked and pointless mud advances, deadly friendly fire, and trench warfare. He spends his 15 month tour along the 38th Parallel, as the two sides alternatively negotiate and fight. Nearly at the end of his term, he tries to help a black solider avoid court marshal by pretending the soldier is sick, not asleep on watch. At this point, he has already told his brass, Lieutenant Winton, that he does not believe in fighting the war anymore. Winton, a stiff West Pointer, is angered, and at the trial of the soldier, Kelly lies and is called a ‘nigger-lover’ again. Of course, Kelly later marries Anna and reluctantly returns to Korea’s DMZ in 2007 as a grandfather. He sees how Seoul has changed from a destitute, bomb-wracked town to a city of shining glass and skyscrapers.
I’ve read a lot of anti-war novels and this is one of the milder ones. Its real topic is the 50s in America, where most of the action takes place. The combination of the slangy attitude and the intellectuality of the lead character seem in conflict, and give Kelly an air of class unreality. Of course, he could, indeed be based on Paul Zerby … and Mr. Zerby is quite real.
And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, 9/22/2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
The pathetic "Left" in the USA
As I've been arguing for quite some time, the problem in the USA is not the right; it's the left. More specifically, what masquerades as the left in the land of the free and the home of the brave. It's no use blaming the right: they're attack dogs for an entrenched plutocracy and they do their assigned job well. The fault lies with a pathetic, spineless, and gutless grouping that likes to masquerade as "left." If the US had a vocal and militant left, it probably wouldn't be up sh!t creek on so many fronts -- imperialistic quagmires in the Middle East, health care "reform," and the growing disparity between the rich few and a growing army of dispossessed -- to name but a few.
It seems Chris Hedges is of like opinion in his latest essay:
My apologies for not reviewing some book but unlike my erudite friend, Red Frog, I am in Norway and lack access to books.
It seems Chris Hedges is of like opinion in his latest essay:
The right wing is not wrong. It is not the problem. We are the problem. If we do
not tap into the justifiable anger sweeping across the nation, if we do not
militantly push back against corporate fraud and imperial wars that we cannot
win or afford, the political vacuum we have created will be filled with
right-wing lunatics and proto-fascists. The goons will inherit power not because
they are astute, but because we are weak and inept.
My apologies for not reviewing some book but unlike my erudite friend, Red Frog, I am in Norway and lack access to books.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Apres Le Deluge, C'est Moi
“The Coming Insurrection” by the Invisible Committee, 2007 French edition, 2009 English Ed.
This slim philosophical book was written by friends of a group of anarchists in Tarnac, France, who were arrested in 2008 for supposedly planning a ‘terrorist’ attack on the French rail system’s electrical lines. This book issues out of the ‘ecole superieure’ and the hated French school system, not the lumpen proletariat, of which the authors are enamored. It is written in beautiful, elliptic prose, and initially traces the psychological and personal deterioration of French society and its citizens. It advocates communism, but seems to primarily advocate revolution in order to end personal and social alienation.
There is much to value here. What it does say about the hidden personal problems of French citizens is no doubt accurate, and similar to our society. Both populations live in advanced, deteriorating capitalist societies, with all of the psychological ramifications that that implies – compulsive overwork, weak social bonds, passivity, bad relationships, crumbling marriages, and alienated selves. Capitalism’s vaunted strength – its emphasis on “YOU” the individual, is a vast commercial lie. Behind that lie wait SWAT teams, prisons, surveillance, rent-a-guards, predator drones and all manner of silent compulsion.
The Invisible Committee’s sensitivity to the social breakdown in France comes after the 2005 riots by mostly Arab youth, when 2 youth were gunned down by the French flics. These riots lasted for months because of the close coordination of the youth of these neighborhoods, and the authors maintain that these are the only real communities in France. They also draw present inspiration from the 2007 Greek riots, led by left-anarchist forces, that successfully stymied the Greek state. The present economic slide across Europe is adding fuel to this fire of spontaneous struggle.
They direct part of their attention to the notion of over-work in France, Japan and the U.S. Their analysis is a reflection of the collapse in secure labor, and the growth in the unemployed, the lumpen-proletariat, the partially-employed, the street merchant, the transitory worker, the temp, the homeless and hidden homeless. Except for the upper-middle class of high-level engineers, lawyers, programmers and managers who they quite rightly identify as people who ‘never stop working,’ advanced capitalism is creating, all over the world, a vast army of the unemployed and the marginally productive. The’ flexibility’ and ‘mobility’ favored by late capital for their workforce is only a reflection of this basic collapse in stability. In essence, it repeats the obvious assertion that we, as workers, are wage slaves. And who wants to be a slave of any kind?
The Committee also disdains every organized force on the left in France. They wish to be ‘as impenetrable to state intervention as a gypsy camp.’ I quote: “Becoming autonomous could just as easily mean learning to fight in the street, to occupy empty houses, to cease working, to love each other madly, and to shoplift.” Shoplifting, of course, is just an understood cost of doing business.
The Committee is acutely aware of the vulnerability of the advanced urban metropolis. Their view of low-level war in the metropolises of the world is very similar to Mike Davis’s view in “Planet of Slums” (reviewed on the blog below) – it is the new battleground, already recognized by the ruling elites’ military forces. They give credit to Blanqui for being the first to think of non-linear warfare, a philosophy that has been adopted by various western military forces. Given the interconnectedness of everything, they believe electrical grids can be brought down with careful explosions that will turn the lights off across Europe. They insist French society is quite similar to the USSR under Andropov … the French rulers no longer even pretend to rule in the name of the people anymore. The class basis of these two, however, escapes them.
The Committee considers ‘environmentalism’ under capitalism to be an attempt by capital to save the same people who … destroyed the planet. Capital’s new version of environmentalism will create super-profits for some corporations, and allow the state to exert further control over the population. This is precisely the plan of Al Gore and Barack Obama, of course. The Committee favors a bloody planetary collapse as better than further capitalist crisis management. As a photographic negative of the capitalists (See Naomi Klein “Shock Doctrine”, reviewed below) they also believe that disaster can be beneficial, but in an opposite way - bringing people closer to reality and rebellion.
They cite Hurricane Katrina as an example, an event Klein also cited to draw a different lesson. The failure by the Bush administration over Katrina undermined his political support, and threw some of it to Obama. The Committee contend that the growth in community organizations in the wake of the hurricane proves that disasters are beneficial. However, pro-union laws were put in abeyance after Katrina. The same firms that made out like bandits in Iraq also made billions on Katrina. The whole school system was privatized into charter schools. The City of New Orleans was depopulated of some black residents permanently. Many are still scattered across the U.S. or living in trailers. Whole neighborhoods are empty patchworks of homes. Many died or were injured.
The Committee notes that, in the homeland of the idea of the ‘nation,’ the concept of the French national state has ended, They conclude as to ‘civilization’ as a whole – "We have a corpse on our backs.” Hyperbole is their metier naturelle.
Instead of seeing events as atrocities or indignities, they point out that events should be looked at as part of low-level warfare. They advocate avoiding far left, activist and community groups, and forming secret and unbreakable communes and ‘base committees’ to prepare for an insurrection now. For money, the communes are to rely on hustling, some work, public funds, trafficking, theft, dumpster diving and fraud. This frees up people’s time for revolutionary activities – target practice, learning to set broken bones, pick locks, run pirate radio stations, learn urban agricultural practices, develop expertise in computers and other technical skills. They want to create different-sized free territories in the cities, geographic spaces opaque to the military, but known to the residents. They advocate personal travel around Europe and the world to make contacts. They also advocate sabotage at a minimum of risk and time, and for maximum damage. They believe in becoming anonymous, not public; developing the ability of self-defense; and destroying government computer databases. This is mostly common anarchism.
The Committee eventually advocates linking up all the communes for an insurrection, perhaps at a moment of crisis. They oppose assemblies or mass voting at these critical times, believe in ‘blocking the economy’ through shutdowns; liberating territory without direct confrontations and deposing local officials. They think a military insurrection is only the very last step, basing themselves on the experience of the Paris Commune.
The philosophic conflict between Marxism and anarchism has been a long one, and I will not get into it here. Some of these things Marxists can agree with and are useful counter-weights to liberalism. For instance, actual Marxist organizations have both a public and a non-public face. However, in much of this, it is Blanqui again – a select, ultra-leftist conspiracy of rage. I cannot assess the class character of the proponents, but again, the document has the air of the bourgeois ‘ecole superieure.’ Events have shown that many kinds of public legal struggle, like mass marches, have become increasingly futile in advanced capitalist countries, which certainly accounts for this document. What is truly significant is that this book was even written. It is a thermometer held to the temper of the times.
And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, September 8, 2009
This slim philosophical book was written by friends of a group of anarchists in Tarnac, France, who were arrested in 2008 for supposedly planning a ‘terrorist’ attack on the French rail system’s electrical lines. This book issues out of the ‘ecole superieure’ and the hated French school system, not the lumpen proletariat, of which the authors are enamored. It is written in beautiful, elliptic prose, and initially traces the psychological and personal deterioration of French society and its citizens. It advocates communism, but seems to primarily advocate revolution in order to end personal and social alienation.
The Invisible Committee’s sensitivity to the social breakdown in France comes after the 2005 riots by mostly Arab youth, when 2 youth were gunned down by the French flics. These riots lasted for months because of the close coordination of the youth of these neighborhoods, and the authors maintain that these are the only real communities in France. They also draw present inspiration from the 2007 Greek riots, led by left-anarchist forces, that successfully stymied the Greek state. The present economic slide across Europe is adding fuel to this fire of spontaneous struggle.
They direct part of their attention to the notion of over-work in France, Japan and the U.S. Their analysis is a reflection of the collapse in secure labor, and the growth in the unemployed, the lumpen-proletariat, the partially-employed, the street merchant, the transitory worker, the temp, the homeless and hidden homeless. Except for the upper-middle class of high-level engineers, lawyers, programmers and managers who they quite rightly identify as people who ‘never stop working,’ advanced capitalism is creating, all over the world, a vast army of the unemployed and the marginally productive. The’ flexibility’ and ‘mobility’ favored by late capital for their workforce is only a reflection of this basic collapse in stability. In essence, it repeats the obvious assertion that we, as workers, are wage slaves. And who wants to be a slave of any kind?
The Committee also disdains every organized force on the left in France. They wish to be ‘as impenetrable to state intervention as a gypsy camp.’ I quote: “Becoming autonomous could just as easily mean learning to fight in the street, to occupy empty houses, to cease working, to love each other madly, and to shoplift.” Shoplifting, of course, is just an understood cost of doing business.
The Committee is acutely aware of the vulnerability of the advanced urban metropolis. Their view of low-level war in the metropolises of the world is very similar to Mike Davis’s view in “Planet of Slums” (reviewed on the blog below) – it is the new battleground, already recognized by the ruling elites’ military forces. They give credit to Blanqui for being the first to think of non-linear warfare, a philosophy that has been adopted by various western military forces. Given the interconnectedness of everything, they believe electrical grids can be brought down with careful explosions that will turn the lights off across Europe. They insist French society is quite similar to the USSR under Andropov … the French rulers no longer even pretend to rule in the name of the people anymore. The class basis of these two, however, escapes them.
The Committee considers ‘environmentalism’ under capitalism to be an attempt by capital to save the same people who … destroyed the planet. Capital’s new version of environmentalism will create super-profits for some corporations, and allow the state to exert further control over the population. This is precisely the plan of Al Gore and Barack Obama, of course. The Committee favors a bloody planetary collapse as better than further capitalist crisis management. As a photographic negative of the capitalists (See Naomi Klein “Shock Doctrine”, reviewed below) they also believe that disaster can be beneficial, but in an opposite way - bringing people closer to reality and rebellion.
They cite Hurricane Katrina as an example, an event Klein also cited to draw a different lesson. The failure by the Bush administration over Katrina undermined his political support, and threw some of it to Obama. The Committee contend that the growth in community organizations in the wake of the hurricane proves that disasters are beneficial. However, pro-union laws were put in abeyance after Katrina. The same firms that made out like bandits in Iraq also made billions on Katrina. The whole school system was privatized into charter schools. The City of New Orleans was depopulated of some black residents permanently. Many are still scattered across the U.S. or living in trailers. Whole neighborhoods are empty patchworks of homes. Many died or were injured.
And to this day, the Corps of Engineers STILL doesn’t think a Category 5 hurricane dike is necessary. You will look long and hard to find ‘gains’ – only misery, and humans coping with misery. Sometimes disasters don’t create rebellion – they create destruction. Tell the survivors of the Tsunami in India about its benefits. Oppression oppresses. It does not automatically create rebellion. Or as King Louis XV once said, "Apres le Deluge, c'est moi."
The Committee notes that, in the homeland of the idea of the ‘nation,’ the concept of the French national state has ended, They conclude as to ‘civilization’ as a whole – "We have a corpse on our backs.” Hyperbole is their metier naturelle.
Instead of seeing events as atrocities or indignities, they point out that events should be looked at as part of low-level warfare. They advocate avoiding far left, activist and community groups, and forming secret and unbreakable communes and ‘base committees’ to prepare for an insurrection now. For money, the communes are to rely on hustling, some work, public funds, trafficking, theft, dumpster diving and fraud. This frees up people’s time for revolutionary activities – target practice, learning to set broken bones, pick locks, run pirate radio stations, learn urban agricultural practices, develop expertise in computers and other technical skills. They want to create different-sized free territories in the cities, geographic spaces opaque to the military, but known to the residents. They advocate personal travel around Europe and the world to make contacts. They also advocate sabotage at a minimum of risk and time, and for maximum damage. They believe in becoming anonymous, not public; developing the ability of self-defense; and destroying government computer databases. This is mostly common anarchism.
The Committee eventually advocates linking up all the communes for an insurrection, perhaps at a moment of crisis. They oppose assemblies or mass voting at these critical times, believe in ‘blocking the economy’ through shutdowns; liberating territory without direct confrontations and deposing local officials. They think a military insurrection is only the very last step, basing themselves on the experience of the Paris Commune.
The philosophic conflict between Marxism and anarchism has been a long one, and I will not get into it here. Some of these things Marxists can agree with and are useful counter-weights to liberalism. For instance, actual Marxist organizations have both a public and a non-public face. However, in much of this, it is Blanqui again – a select, ultra-leftist conspiracy of rage. I cannot assess the class character of the proponents, but again, the document has the air of the bourgeois ‘ecole superieure.’ Events have shown that many kinds of public legal struggle, like mass marches, have become increasingly futile in advanced capitalist countries, which certainly accounts for this document. What is truly significant is that this book was even written. It is a thermometer held to the temper of the times.
And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, September 8, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Imperialism and Financialism
The following is a lucidly written essay by Nitzan and Bichler on the evolution of the terms "imperialism" and "financialism" among Marxists:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15054
It's a 13-page printout and I've never seen the terms so clearly discussed. Like many people, I grew up with Baran and Sweeezy's "Monopoly Capital"; and like many others I've read Foster and Magdoff's recent "The Great Financial Crisis." But I've been blissfully ignorant of how the discussion among Marxists has gradually shifted over the decades -- partly because the same terms are used.
Nitzan and Bichler are famous for their 2002 book, "The Global Political Economy of Israel," which perhaps Mayday Books had in stock some years back.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15054
It's a 13-page printout and I've never seen the terms so clearly discussed. Like many people, I grew up with Baran and Sweeezy's "Monopoly Capital"; and like many others I've read Foster and Magdoff's recent "The Great Financial Crisis." But I've been blissfully ignorant of how the discussion among Marxists has gradually shifted over the decades -- partly because the same terms are used.
Nitzan and Bichler are famous for their 2002 book, "The Global Political Economy of Israel," which perhaps Mayday Books had in stock some years back.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Have You Cashed Out Today?
“The Great Crash, 1929,” by John Kenneth Galbraith, with 1988 forward, 1954 – 1988
This classic, recently cited by Rolling Stone’s Matt Tiabbi in his roaring Goldman Sachs take-down, should be read by everyone interested in the present market meltdown. In elegant, humorous, evenly-paced prose, Galbraith elucidates the story of the 1929 crash month by month, week by week, nailing every pompous fool, while staying remarkably even-handed. He follows it up with a short section relating the crash to the Great Depression. Galbraith is best known as a Keynesian, which in this day and age signifies a veritable revolutionary. However, Galbraith insists that ‘robbery’ is an individual failing, not a failing of any one class. He is, after all, a defender of a humanized capitalism.
In Galbraith’s 1988 forward (written right after the 1987 crash) he insists that market bubbles are based on 3 things: “a vested interest in euphoria;’ the ‘speculative instinct’ and tax reductions that benefit the wealthy. Contrary to the trickle-down, supply- side theory that says when rich people get money, they buy plant and equipment, and put people to work (such generous wonders!) – Galbraith points out that they actually put their money into speculation and luxury goods. I.E. tax cuts for the rich are very good for yacht builders and hedge funds, not capital improvement.
During 1929 there was no FDIC; no insider-trading rules, no government regulation of the NYSE, no wall between banks and capital markets; no rules on margin; no rules on leverage or assets on hand; no rules on price manipulation; no rules on public disclosures, no rules barring insider trading, and a confirmed overall policy of no government intervention. Imaginative financial products were encouraged. Inflation was feared; deficits were hated and a balanced budget was the goal of all good Republicans and Democrats. It is for you to decide how much this looks like today’s picture.
Investment trusts were one of the new financial inventions, buying stock in many other companies, including other investment trusts. At their height, they controlled $3B in assets. Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation was one of the largest and most prominent investment trusts, cited by Taibbi when he pointed out Goldman’s continuing role in ‘bringing down the house.’ These trusts were similar to the present mutual fund. However, they were so highly leveraged that only tiny real assets controlled massive amounts of what later became illusory capital. One investment trust, highly secretive, successfully solicited funds ‘for an Undertaking which shall in due time be revealed.’ And no one laughed.
Prior to the meltdown in October and November 1929, the market had an incredible run-up. People felt that it would never end, and that they all deserved to make ridiculous amounts of money for essentially doing nothing. Harvard and Yale professors, captains of industry, the press (with the notable exception of the New York Times and Standard & Poor’s) and government politicians like Hoover all joined in the chorus. But as Galbraith points out, every run-up has the seeds of its own destruction within it. Most players, of course, think they can get out in time. What made 1929 unique was that it teased the speculators and ‘investors’ into believing they could turn the market around – with positive thoughts, with ‘organized intervention’ (the banks agreeing to support the market by buying stock…which happened several times) and, even, companies buying their OWN stock to prop up the price. In effect, as Galbraith says, ‘swindling themselves,’ as the stock was then nearly worthless.
One myth Galbraith punctures is that ‘everyone’ was in the market in 1929. He points out that the market dominated the culture, and made brokers and corporate insiders into cocktail-party heroes. As he slyly puts it, “Wisdom, itself, is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion.” And “it is far, far better to be wrong in a respectable way than to be right for the wrong reasons.” By his calculation, out of a population of 120 million, 1.5 million owned stock, and of those, 600,000 were speculators on margin. This, really, is a small proportion of the whole population.
Tuesday, October 29, 1929 was probably the most devastating day on any market in history – 33,000,000 shares would have traded all day if the volume had kept up with what happened in the first ½ hour. As Galbraith says, the first week was the slaughter of the market innocents, but “during the second week there is some evidence that it was the well-to-do and the wealthy who were being subjected to a leveling process comparable in magnitude and suddenness to that presided over a decade before by Lenin.” The ‘Crash,’ or should we say ‘Slide,’ lead to a continual decline in stock prices for 3 years, until 1932.
Another myth he takes a shot at is that a good number of speculators and bankers later committed suicide. While we might find this myth oddly comforting, unfortunately the rates for New York City rose only after time, and he attributes this to the Depression itself. It was the poor hurling themselves off bridges, not the rich. What he found more interesting – and what we are finding anew – is that embezzlement, fraud and financial weakness were suddenly revealed on a massive scale. 1929 revealed crooks like Chase Bank’s Albert Wiggins, National City Bank’s Charles Mitchell and even the head of the New York Stock Exchange itself, Richard Whitney. The latter’s indictment was the day the business class surrendered to Roosevelt. In today's Great Recession, Bernie Madoff has become the largest swindler in world history – stealing billions. Here in Minneapolis we have several large Ponzi thieves of our very own - Tom Petters and Denny Hecker to name two. The whole nation is now dotted with indicted schemers and embezzlers who presided over failed hedge funds and businesses that were highly leveraged on the basis of … lies. Seeing what was behind these illusory fortunes is the inevitable aftermath of a broken bubble.
Galbraith talks of tax cuts as a Keynesian response to a financial crisis. It is, indeed, the only action Hoover took, and Galbraith applauds it. Hoover’s mistake was to announce the crisis over, and over, and over again. And he paid with his job.
Galbraith thinks the Crash is related to the Great Depression in 5 ways. Conventional wisdom has it that cheap money (the Federal Reserve lowered rates in mid-1929) caused the speculation. He asserts there are times when money is cheap and yet speculation does NOT occur because the pre-requisite ‘euphoria’ is not present. (Note to the Austrian monetarist followers of Ron Paul.)
Galbraith’s 5 reasons:
1. Bad Distribution of Income. 5% of the population has 1/3rd of the income. The collapse in buying power of the rich affected production more that it might now – they were vital to consumerism and to savings and investment.
2. Bad Corporate Structure. Instead of being prudent, American business was full of ‘grafters, promoters, swindlers, imposters and frauds.’ Investment trusts and holding companies were inherently unstable, as they had little real assets. I.E. too much leverage.
3. Bad Banking Structure. A domino effect of one failing bank lead to it knocking down the next one, and so on. 346 banks failed in the first 6 months of 1929, for instance.
4. The high balance of payments account with the rest of the world. The U.S. was a ‘creditor’ nation. Dangerous loans made around the world could not be paid back. In addition, the tariff was increased, which damaged farm and industrial exports.
5. Poor state of economic intelligence. No matter the economic situation, the parties supported an increase in taxes or reduction in spending, to balance the budget and to stop inflation. As Galbraith puts it, “The simple precepts of a simple world did not hold amid the growing complexities of the early thirties.”
Galbraith ends the book with a excessively sanguine conclusion, as he points out in 1988 that the laws passed in the 30s mitigate some of these 5 problems. However, in 1988 when he wrote the last intro, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act had not been passed, and Glass-Steagall had not been repealed. Nor had requirements for bank assets been lowered farther - something the SEC allowed to happen in 2004. For instance, some present banks like Ing have 42 to 1 ratios of debt to assets. In addition, the distribution of income has gotten increasingly worse since 1988. And of key interest - government regulators do not actually have to USE the laws they have. The slavishness of the government to Wall Street reached a nadir under Clinton and Bush - also after 1988.
The U.S. is now a debtor nation, which has allowed us – so far – to blackmail holders of dollars and Treasuries into continued support. And the FDIC has prevented – so far – a run on the banks, because of the experience with the Depression. However, the FDIC will need to be re-funded very soon. The ruling class HAS learned that passivity is not its own reward – which accounts for the massive bi-partisan action to save some brokerage firms and banks by Bush and now Obama - an action which to this point has succeeded for the big banks.
And I bought it at May Day books used-book section –
Red Frog, 9/1/2009
This classic, recently cited by Rolling Stone’s Matt Tiabbi in his roaring Goldman Sachs take-down, should be read by everyone interested in the present market meltdown. In elegant, humorous, evenly-paced prose, Galbraith elucidates the story of the 1929 crash month by month, week by week, nailing every pompous fool, while staying remarkably even-handed. He follows it up with a short section relating the crash to the Great Depression. Galbraith is best known as a Keynesian, which in this day and age signifies a veritable revolutionary. However, Galbraith insists that ‘robbery’ is an individual failing, not a failing of any one class. He is, after all, a defender of a humanized capitalism.
During 1929 there was no FDIC; no insider-trading rules, no government regulation of the NYSE, no wall between banks and capital markets; no rules on margin; no rules on leverage or assets on hand; no rules on price manipulation; no rules on public disclosures, no rules barring insider trading, and a confirmed overall policy of no government intervention. Imaginative financial products were encouraged. Inflation was feared; deficits were hated and a balanced budget was the goal of all good Republicans and Democrats. It is for you to decide how much this looks like today’s picture.
Investment trusts were one of the new financial inventions, buying stock in many other companies, including other investment trusts. At their height, they controlled $3B in assets. Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation was one of the largest and most prominent investment trusts, cited by Taibbi when he pointed out Goldman’s continuing role in ‘bringing down the house.’ These trusts were similar to the present mutual fund. However, they were so highly leveraged that only tiny real assets controlled massive amounts of what later became illusory capital. One investment trust, highly secretive, successfully solicited funds ‘for an Undertaking which shall in due time be revealed.’ And no one laughed.
Prior to the meltdown in October and November 1929, the market had an incredible run-up. People felt that it would never end, and that they all deserved to make ridiculous amounts of money for essentially doing nothing. Harvard and Yale professors, captains of industry, the press (with the notable exception of the New York Times and Standard & Poor’s) and government politicians like Hoover all joined in the chorus. But as Galbraith points out, every run-up has the seeds of its own destruction within it. Most players, of course, think they can get out in time. What made 1929 unique was that it teased the speculators and ‘investors’ into believing they could turn the market around – with positive thoughts, with ‘organized intervention’ (the banks agreeing to support the market by buying stock…which happened several times) and, even, companies buying their OWN stock to prop up the price. In effect, as Galbraith says, ‘swindling themselves,’ as the stock was then nearly worthless.
One myth Galbraith punctures is that ‘everyone’ was in the market in 1929. He points out that the market dominated the culture, and made brokers and corporate insiders into cocktail-party heroes. As he slyly puts it, “Wisdom, itself, is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion.” And “it is far, far better to be wrong in a respectable way than to be right for the wrong reasons.” By his calculation, out of a population of 120 million, 1.5 million owned stock, and of those, 600,000 were speculators on margin. This, really, is a small proportion of the whole population.
Tuesday, October 29, 1929 was probably the most devastating day on any market in history – 33,000,000 shares would have traded all day if the volume had kept up with what happened in the first ½ hour. As Galbraith says, the first week was the slaughter of the market innocents, but “during the second week there is some evidence that it was the well-to-do and the wealthy who were being subjected to a leveling process comparable in magnitude and suddenness to that presided over a decade before by Lenin.” The ‘Crash,’ or should we say ‘Slide,’ lead to a continual decline in stock prices for 3 years, until 1932.
Another myth he takes a shot at is that a good number of speculators and bankers later committed suicide. While we might find this myth oddly comforting, unfortunately the rates for New York City rose only after time, and he attributes this to the Depression itself. It was the poor hurling themselves off bridges, not the rich. What he found more interesting – and what we are finding anew – is that embezzlement, fraud and financial weakness were suddenly revealed on a massive scale. 1929 revealed crooks like Chase Bank’s Albert Wiggins, National City Bank’s Charles Mitchell and even the head of the New York Stock Exchange itself, Richard Whitney. The latter’s indictment was the day the business class surrendered to Roosevelt. In today's Great Recession, Bernie Madoff has become the largest swindler in world history – stealing billions. Here in Minneapolis we have several large Ponzi thieves of our very own - Tom Petters and Denny Hecker to name two. The whole nation is now dotted with indicted schemers and embezzlers who presided over failed hedge funds and businesses that were highly leveraged on the basis of … lies. Seeing what was behind these illusory fortunes is the inevitable aftermath of a broken bubble.
Galbraith talks of tax cuts as a Keynesian response to a financial crisis. It is, indeed, the only action Hoover took, and Galbraith applauds it. Hoover’s mistake was to announce the crisis over, and over, and over again. And he paid with his job.
Galbraith thinks the Crash is related to the Great Depression in 5 ways. Conventional wisdom has it that cheap money (the Federal Reserve lowered rates in mid-1929) caused the speculation. He asserts there are times when money is cheap and yet speculation does NOT occur because the pre-requisite ‘euphoria’ is not present. (Note to the Austrian monetarist followers of Ron Paul.)
Galbraith’s 5 reasons:
1. Bad Distribution of Income. 5% of the population has 1/3rd of the income. The collapse in buying power of the rich affected production more that it might now – they were vital to consumerism and to savings and investment.
2. Bad Corporate Structure. Instead of being prudent, American business was full of ‘grafters, promoters, swindlers, imposters and frauds.’ Investment trusts and holding companies were inherently unstable, as they had little real assets. I.E. too much leverage.
3. Bad Banking Structure. A domino effect of one failing bank lead to it knocking down the next one, and so on. 346 banks failed in the first 6 months of 1929, for instance.
4. The high balance of payments account with the rest of the world. The U.S. was a ‘creditor’ nation. Dangerous loans made around the world could not be paid back. In addition, the tariff was increased, which damaged farm and industrial exports.
5. Poor state of economic intelligence. No matter the economic situation, the parties supported an increase in taxes or reduction in spending, to balance the budget and to stop inflation. As Galbraith puts it, “The simple precepts of a simple world did not hold amid the growing complexities of the early thirties.”
Galbraith ends the book with a excessively sanguine conclusion, as he points out in 1988 that the laws passed in the 30s mitigate some of these 5 problems. However, in 1988 when he wrote the last intro, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act had not been passed, and Glass-Steagall had not been repealed. Nor had requirements for bank assets been lowered farther - something the SEC allowed to happen in 2004. For instance, some present banks like Ing have 42 to 1 ratios of debt to assets. In addition, the distribution of income has gotten increasingly worse since 1988. And of key interest - government regulators do not actually have to USE the laws they have. The slavishness of the government to Wall Street reached a nadir under Clinton and Bush - also after 1988.
The U.S. is now a debtor nation, which has allowed us – so far – to blackmail holders of dollars and Treasuries into continued support. And the FDIC has prevented – so far – a run on the banks, because of the experience with the Depression. However, the FDIC will need to be re-funded very soon. The ruling class HAS learned that passivity is not its own reward – which accounts for the massive bi-partisan action to save some brokerage firms and banks by Bush and now Obama - an action which to this point has succeeded for the big banks.
And I bought it at May Day books used-book section –
Red Frog, 9/1/2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
You Must Comply
Stacked Chairs
Making sure Mayday's chairs are stored correctly is an important task in book store management. Here, for the record, are two images of perfectly stacked chairs in Mayday's "chair alcove".
The bricks in back of this archway block off one of the old tunnels that run through the West Bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Come the revolution, we'll probably need to break down those walls and reclaim the tunnels as we fight for a better world!
Ravenmn
Making sure Mayday's chairs are stored correctly is an important task in book store management. Here, for the record, are two images of perfectly stacked chairs in Mayday's "chair alcove".
The bricks in back of this archway block off one of the old tunnels that run through the West Bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Come the revolution, we'll probably need to break down those walls and reclaim the tunnels as we fight for a better world!
Ravenmn
Friday, August 21, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Join the Army and Get Radicalized
“Black Radical; The Education of an American Revolutionary” – by Nelson Peery, 2007
Minnesota’s own Nelson Peery tells his story of his revolutionary awakening after World War II. He came home as a soldier and ran into discrimination and poverty in the North and heard about lynchings in the South. After the war, Peery and his 6 brothers became members or supporters of the Communist Party (“CP”), while their father became a well-known and professional anti-communist in Minneapolis and later Los Angeles. Later Peery left the CP to form the Communist Labor Party ("CLP"). This book can be seen as Part 2 of Peery’s earlier memoir, “Black Fire,” about his life in rural American Minnesota, the depression and World War II.
The book starts with him coming home after 4 years of combat. Peery’s experience in the Pacific war paralleled that of many black soldiers – not only in World War II, but also in the Civil War and World War I. Combat empowered black men and some women to feel both competent to handle any physical threat and entitled to equal rights with white people. It, in an odd sense, was the incubator for revolutionary and egalitarian feelings. Black ex-soldiers formed the heart of the anti-discrimination and anti-Jim Crow movement that developed after World War II. Educated not on the pablum of non-violence and obsequiousness, but on combat cohesion and the risking of their lives for ‘democracy,’ black soldiers after World War II were changed men. The 90 years of post-Civil War neo-confederate rule, the result of the defeat of Reconstruction, was about to end, in both north and south.
Peery re-joins his neighborhood after the war, but cannot just blend back into the aimless life of partial work and partying. He joins the Communist Party (at their office on Fifth and Hennepin), greatly influenced by people like Paul Robeson and W.E.B Dubois. Later he joins the Party group at the University of Minnesota, where he starts reading Marxism more deeply. He was part of a group that got the first black professor hired at the U in the late 40s. In an incredible scene during this period, Leadbelly tours Minneapolis and Peery invites him over to his home to meet the ‘Red Bishop' of the English Anglican church. At the families' south Minneapolis house, Leadbelly performs an impromptu concert for the bishop, and 200 other people show up.
The Party then asked Peery to leave the U and get a working-class job. With some trepidation, he agreed. Fearing the ordinary unskilled union jobs usually assigned blacks, he walked upstairs in the union hall to the office of the Bricklayers Union, and got a job as the first black bricklayer in Minneapolis through plain moxie and a threat of a lawsuit. Peery worked construction for awhile and learned the trade from the Swedes on the job. As the Red Purge picked up in the United States, mostly targeted at unionists and workers, Peery was then assigned by the CP to go ‘underground’ in Detroit. The CP was afraid the whole organization would be outlawed, rounded up and incarcerated in jail, much as some of their leaders were due to the Smith Act. In Detroit he meets one of the Scottsboro boys hiding there, who had been heavily marked by his experience in prison. Perry lost contact with the Party organization due to its own disorganization. Peery eventually decides to re-emerge on his own, contacts the CP again, and is then assigned to work in Cleveland. There he joins a black Party club that helps initiate a major boycott of the Cleveland Sears for their refusal to hire blacks.
Problems in the Party start to surface. Peery initially made the mistake of going to a CP convention in New York and criticizing Tito when Tito was Stalin’s darling. For this, he is roundly denounced by the Party leadership at the convention meeting. The very next day Stalin denounced Tito, and then the U.S. Party also decided to denounce Tito. Peery, of course, was suddenly back in favor. Peery did not fail to notice that ‘thinking’ in the CP was not an independent process.
It is somewhat difficult in this book to figure out exactly which political or strategic issues lead to the break between Peery and many black comrades on the one hand, and the CP on the other. It is clear during the McCarthy and 50's period that the white leadership was afraid of getting deeply involved in anti-racist activities that might involve illegalities. The Party lost its nerve, and it meant that more radical comrades were asked to leave. The black comrades in Cleveland, through their anti-discrimination work, had stood up to the East Cleveland white racists, the FBI and the Cleveland police in their work in the mass Negro Labor Council. Some were expelled for refusing to leave the Negro Labor Counsel. Peery was also expelled for something similar to this reason, though his conflicts with various leaders over other issues seemed to play a role too.
Peery’s first marriage, to a non-political women, fell apart in Cleveland, and he moved to New York. In New York, he met his politicized second wife, Sue Ying. After the departure from the CP and move to New York, Peery joined the Provisional Organizing Committee (POC) ("…to reconstitute a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party in the United States of America"), who were a group of ex-CP’ers in the city. There, in one significant moment, he describes having the idea of giving political speeches on street corners in Harlem. His Marxist speeches were made not far from the headquarters of the Black Muslims. In the audience was a young Muslim, Malcolm X. Later, Malcolm started giving street corner speeches, and of course, drew far vaster crowds than Peery. The implication is that Peery gave the idea of talking on the streets to Malcolm.
Then Peery and Ying moved to Los Angeles’ Watts district for the POC, and helped form the California Communist League, and later, the CLP, his own organization. You see, he seemed to have a habit of pissing-off the leaders of every organization he was part of, until the CLP. While in California, Peery was involved in the 1965 Watts uprising, which he characterizes not as a ‘riot’ but as a people’s rebellion against white privilege and the police state in Watts. During Watts, he sees the unorganized black masses of Los Angeles almost overcome the strength of the cops and state, though at the cost of many dead, wounded and arrested.
This is a personal, non-rhetorical book, combining both private and political details. What runs throughout this second part of his memoir is how Peery always understood that black nationalism, no matter how radical or phrased, is ultimately a dead end in defeating capitalism and institutional racism. While he well knew that many white people, even those who call themselves communists, are flawed, he also knew that no overthrow of American capital can occur without black, white and Latino workers uniting. And this is the ‘red’ thread that runs through all his organizing - his bedrock commitment to a united working-class movement.
And you can buy it at May Day Books!
Red Frog, August 17, 2009
Minnesota’s own Nelson Peery tells his story of his revolutionary awakening after World War II. He came home as a soldier and ran into discrimination and poverty in the North and heard about lynchings in the South. After the war, Peery and his 6 brothers became members or supporters of the Communist Party (“CP”), while their father became a well-known and professional anti-communist in Minneapolis and later Los Angeles. Later Peery left the CP to form the Communist Labor Party ("CLP"). This book can be seen as Part 2 of Peery’s earlier memoir, “Black Fire,” about his life in rural American Minnesota, the depression and World War II.
Peery re-joins his neighborhood after the war, but cannot just blend back into the aimless life of partial work and partying. He joins the Communist Party (at their office on Fifth and Hennepin), greatly influenced by people like Paul Robeson and W.E.B Dubois. Later he joins the Party group at the University of Minnesota, where he starts reading Marxism more deeply. He was part of a group that got the first black professor hired at the U in the late 40s. In an incredible scene during this period, Leadbelly tours Minneapolis and Peery invites him over to his home to meet the ‘Red Bishop' of the English Anglican church. At the families' south Minneapolis house, Leadbelly performs an impromptu concert for the bishop, and 200 other people show up.
The Party then asked Peery to leave the U and get a working-class job. With some trepidation, he agreed. Fearing the ordinary unskilled union jobs usually assigned blacks, he walked upstairs in the union hall to the office of the Bricklayers Union, and got a job as the first black bricklayer in Minneapolis through plain moxie and a threat of a lawsuit. Peery worked construction for awhile and learned the trade from the Swedes on the job. As the Red Purge picked up in the United States, mostly targeted at unionists and workers, Peery was then assigned by the CP to go ‘underground’ in Detroit. The CP was afraid the whole organization would be outlawed, rounded up and incarcerated in jail, much as some of their leaders were due to the Smith Act. In Detroit he meets one of the Scottsboro boys hiding there, who had been heavily marked by his experience in prison. Perry lost contact with the Party organization due to its own disorganization. Peery eventually decides to re-emerge on his own, contacts the CP again, and is then assigned to work in Cleveland. There he joins a black Party club that helps initiate a major boycott of the Cleveland Sears for their refusal to hire blacks.
Problems in the Party start to surface. Peery initially made the mistake of going to a CP convention in New York and criticizing Tito when Tito was Stalin’s darling. For this, he is roundly denounced by the Party leadership at the convention meeting. The very next day Stalin denounced Tito, and then the U.S. Party also decided to denounce Tito. Peery, of course, was suddenly back in favor. Peery did not fail to notice that ‘thinking’ in the CP was not an independent process.
It is somewhat difficult in this book to figure out exactly which political or strategic issues lead to the break between Peery and many black comrades on the one hand, and the CP on the other. It is clear during the McCarthy and 50's period that the white leadership was afraid of getting deeply involved in anti-racist activities that might involve illegalities. The Party lost its nerve, and it meant that more radical comrades were asked to leave. The black comrades in Cleveland, through their anti-discrimination work, had stood up to the East Cleveland white racists, the FBI and the Cleveland police in their work in the mass Negro Labor Council. Some were expelled for refusing to leave the Negro Labor Counsel. Peery was also expelled for something similar to this reason, though his conflicts with various leaders over other issues seemed to play a role too.
Peery’s first marriage, to a non-political women, fell apart in Cleveland, and he moved to New York. In New York, he met his politicized second wife, Sue Ying. After the departure from the CP and move to New York, Peery joined the Provisional Organizing Committee (POC) ("…to reconstitute a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party in the United States of America"), who were a group of ex-CP’ers in the city. There, in one significant moment, he describes having the idea of giving political speeches on street corners in Harlem. His Marxist speeches were made not far from the headquarters of the Black Muslims. In the audience was a young Muslim, Malcolm X. Later, Malcolm started giving street corner speeches, and of course, drew far vaster crowds than Peery. The implication is that Peery gave the idea of talking on the streets to Malcolm.
Then Peery and Ying moved to Los Angeles’ Watts district for the POC, and helped form the California Communist League, and later, the CLP, his own organization. You see, he seemed to have a habit of pissing-off the leaders of every organization he was part of, until the CLP. While in California, Peery was involved in the 1965 Watts uprising, which he characterizes not as a ‘riot’ but as a people’s rebellion against white privilege and the police state in Watts. During Watts, he sees the unorganized black masses of Los Angeles almost overcome the strength of the cops and state, though at the cost of many dead, wounded and arrested.
This is a personal, non-rhetorical book, combining both private and political details. What runs throughout this second part of his memoir is how Peery always understood that black nationalism, no matter how radical or phrased, is ultimately a dead end in defeating capitalism and institutional racism. While he well knew that many white people, even those who call themselves communists, are flawed, he also knew that no overthrow of American capital can occur without black, white and Latino workers uniting. And this is the ‘red’ thread that runs through all his organizing - his bedrock commitment to a united working-class movement.
And you can buy it at May Day Books!
Red Frog, August 17, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Best Health Care in the World
BEST HEALTH CARE IN THE WORLD.
The U.S. health care is very good for many people including me---but it is not very good for the 40 million plus who have no care. And it is not very good for the 90,000 people who die each year from infections acquired in hospitals and the same number w ho die due to incorrect drug treatment. Except for the first mentioned the care here is a disgrace. This is the richest country in the world. What’s wrong? More than 100 years ago, Germany put in a national plan. Europe and the rest of the industrialized world have had it for 50 years or more. The profit system is blamed, yet Germany did it under the capitalist profit system?
As an advocate of socialist principles, I believe that in a true socialist society , this would never even be a question; it would automatically be instituted.
Tom R. Dooley. 8/15/09
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
There's a Killer on the Loose
“American Assassination – The Strange Death of Paul Wellstone” – by Four Arrows and Jim Fetzer, 2004
Are you a ‘conspiracy nut?’ This is the bourgeois media’s eternal phrase for anyone who believes conspiracies are possible. Intellectually, of course, conspiracies are very possible. Intellectually, of course, the ruling-class media is allergic even to the phrase “intellectual.” So is their analysis of the impossibility of conspiracies based on facts? No. Only on oft-repeated myths or cherry-picking.
 |
| Heavily controlled 'crash' site of Wellstone plane? |
Assassination is an essential tool of the armed bourgeois state's political rule. You will notice that the overwhelming majority of targets are those on the liberal or left side of the spectrum – something mathematically impossible based on the laws of probability. As of 2004, there were 47 ‘accidental’ deaths by plane crash or some other method for U.S. politicians or whistleblowers, also illustrating a mathematical impossibility of 2-1 majority of liberal or ‘troublemakers’ having ‘accidents.’ If Obama strays off the ranch, he too will be the target of assassination. Recently, the Secret Service refused to arrest a gun-toting Republican at a "town hall' anti health-care reform rally, held right outside the site of Obama's appearance.
The recent 2009 revelation that Dick Cheney had set up an assassination squad ostensibly limited only to Al Quaeda is no surprise. Since killing Al Quaeda members has been official public policy for years, this secret Cheney hit squad had something more about it than the supine major press wants to delve into. After all, why would it be secret, even to the Congress, if it was only duplicating U.S. policy? The key lies in revelations by journalist Seymour Hersch, who has information that this unit was actually operating on domestic terrain too.
We are all familiar with how the FBI ‘loses’ much crucial evidence over and over again, in various politically sensitive cases, from the Kennedy assassinations onward. What is interesting is the involvement since 1996 of an ostensibly 'objective' agency, the NTSB – the National Transportation Safety Board – in covering up evidence in controversial crashes. The present head of the NTSB, Carol Carmody, is a former CIA officer. Within hours of a few crashes, this supposedly ‘scientific’ NTSB head has rushed to microphones to assure people that the crash is ‘only an accident.’ Prior to any scientific investigation, the legendary ‘forte’ of this supposedly neutral government agency. How does she know? You may well ask.
Now to the specifics of this book:
- The Sheriff of St. Louis County confirmed that Minneapolis FBI was on-site at Wellstone's plane crash site, just below Eveleth in northern Minnesota, between 12:00 noon and 1:00 p.m. The crash site was publicly identified at 10:50 a.m. One of the controllers at the airport thought the FBI was there by at least 1:00 pm. No one has claimed they notified the FBI of the crash. It is impossible to get from Minneapolis to Eveleth, even by air, in that time period, without already being on the road. (The FBI claimed they used the Duluth airport, not the Eveleth airport, which necessitated a car rental and drive as well.)
The FBI claimed it got there at 3:30 p.m., and verified it was a Minneapolis evidence crew. Washington D.C. Capitol Police got on-site at 4:00 p.m. The NTSB, the ‘official’ investigators, got there at 8:00-9:00 p.m., also from Washington.
Around 6:00 P.M. the FBI announced there was no ‘terrorist’ connection about the crash to the national news – 2-3 hours before the arrival of the NTSB, the official investigators.
It is NTSB policy that ONLY the NTSB can investigate a crash. The FBI is supposedly not allowed to investigate crashes until the NTSB determines they are criminal matters. The NTSB had not done so.
Carmody announced the initial NTSB focus was recovering the ‘voice data recorder.’ There was none required on this plane, but sometimes they are installed. A voice data recorder might reveal it was not an accident, and could have accounted for the speed of the FBI intervention, and Carmody’s concern. No voice recorder was found, or, if found, was made public.
Weather was blamed by the media for the accident. However, many other similar planes were flying. Visibility was around 2-5 miles, temperatures on the ground were 36 degrees, winds were light to non-existent, the clouds were higher than normal, and icing was not a major problem for any other plane in the area. Local reporters and weather experts said weather was not a factor – only the national news and some government types floated these ideas.
Dick Cheney personally told Wellstone that “There will be severe ramifications for you and the State of Minnesota’ if he continued to oppose the Bush administration on the war. Wellstone was enemy number one in the Senate for the White House across many fronts – asbestos, the Iraq War, the control of the SEC, the Homeland Security and Patriot acts, labor issues and tax cuts.
The guidance system at the airport and the planes mechanical condition were fine, and the NTSB agreed with this finding.
The NTSB said they only have public hearings in ‘high profile cases.’ No hearing was held in the Wellstone crash. They have hearings in almost 50% of cases.
It was known for several days that Wellstone was going to fly up north instead of appearing with Ted Kennedy for a fundraiser. Wellstone used the same pilot 12 times. While the Wellstone boys later sued the aviation firm over an ‘unqualified’ pilot - one has to ask why Wellstone used this same ‘unqualified’ pilot 12 times, if he was so incompetent?
The FBI and Capitol Police were omitted from the listed parties to the investigation by the NTSB. This in spite of the fact that the FBI were the first one’s on the scene after emergency personnel, and later ruled it ‘an accident’ several hours later. The Capitol Police also arrived before the NTSB, and also began investigating.- Carmody much later agreed it was “an accident” too, before her 11 month investigation closed, although NTSB rules indicate no verbalization of cause can be made before a report is officially issued.
First responders were ordered by the FBI not to take photos of the wreckage.
The plane turned almost 180 degrees before it crashed, and was last known going 85 knots -- and hit the ground at a 30 degree angle. A stall is at 69 knots. Stalling was later blamed for the crash. Why would a 'stall' make a plane turn 180 degrees?
Two witnesses heard the plane’s engines going ‘on and off’ and ‘quiet.’ One witness said they heard a ‘bang’ while the plane was in the air. A witness aid they saw fire and blue smoke in the tail. On the ground, it was confirmed the tail was burned, though gas tanks are in the wings. KSTP reporters said the fuselage was a ‘fire pit.’ Mechanics did not understand why the fuselage or tail would burn, when the fuel was in the wings, which were separated at the crash site. Instead of black smoke for fuel, the smoke from the fuselage was blue, which means electrical smoke.
Cell phone call in the immediate area broken up at 10:18 a.m. At 10:19 a.m. the Wellstone plane started its unexplained turn and plunge. The NTSB says it is not aware of ‘electro-magnetic pulse’ weapons. However, electro-magnetic impulses have lead many planes to crash. According to Fetzer, weapons that produce these pulses exist, and they can bring down planes. Time magazine reports their use in Iraq. Rayethon holds many of the patents, some developed in 1993. That is why individuals cannot use electronic devices during takeoff and landing of an airplane.
The NTSB never considered a ‘non-accident’ scenario. This from a supposedly ‘scientific’ body. Not considering sabotage as one scenario is a political decision. It underlines their investigations of nearly every other recent plane crash.
Carmody also worked on the plane crash of Democratic Senator Carnahan in Missouri, who died 2 years earlier, a few days before his senate election in Missouri against John Ashcroft. The NTSB also ruled that crash an accident. What is interesting is that Carnahan's widow took his place and won against Ashcroft. This time, Sheila Wellstone was also on the plane with Wellstone, and died too. So she could not take Wellstone's place on the ballot. This is either an 'accident,' or it implies that this time that option would be unavailable.
The assassination of Wellstone was predicted by a website, Vox Fux, which said it would relate to a tight electoral contest, and look like the Carnahan crash. This web-site was taken down by the government later. A former CIA contact with close ties to the CIA/FBI asserted to the authors that the Wellstone crash was not an accident.
The lead pilot, Conry, was a careful, experienced flier, especially concerned with weather issues. The FAA had re-certified Conry two days before the crash. The co-pilot was also very experienced, and could have easily taken over from a sleepy pilot. The Star Tribune concentrated on the ‘sleepy pilot’ theory, of course.
Both electrical communication and control of the airplane ended at the same time. Hitting a flock of birds or some other ‘catastrophic’ event would normally have been reported, as all power would not be out. Instead all electrical systems failed simultaneously.
Logs of planes arriving in Duluth that day have disappeared. From what I can tell from the book, the car rental logs have also not been found. The FBI said they landed in Duluth and rented a car.
The official NTSB report blamed pilot error for causing the plane to stall, not weather, and not the plane. They highlighted Conry’s prior felony conviction. His felony does not, of course, explain why the plane turned, instead of just dropping down. Nor does it explain why the pilots let the plane stall, in spite of a very loud ‘stall’ horn. It is only useful in a campaign of character assissination.
NTSB simulations of the stall failed to duplicate what happened to Wellstone’s plane.
Opponents of the authors assert that some ‘unexplained event’ caused the crash, not sabotage or the official NTSB explanation. But they cannot verbalize what ‘unexplained event’ that would be.
2 of the 5 NTSB members are HW Bush appointees. Only one is an actual aviation expert. One, again, is a former CIA agent. A real police investigation would start with the questions 'who had the motive, ability, and the most to gain' from the death of Paul Wellstone. The tentative answer here, of course, is Dick Cheney and those around him.
Why, as a radical, would anyone care what happens to Paul Wellstone, a left-liberal in the capitalist Democratic Party? Well, for those whose vanilla schematic of the world is that there are no divisions within the ruling class, or that the Democratic Party is one completely uniform body, that makes sense. However, when divisions arise between the rulers, or a few Democratic Party members stray from the 'path,' then we are left blind to the consequences if conflicts erupt. Leaving out facts, and replacing them with political generalizations makes Marxists into preachers, not scientists. And we are, above all, scientists.
Essentially, Four Arrows and Fetzer argue that the most logical and explanatory answer to what happened to Wellstone’s flight was that it was not an accident, but was sabotage of some sort – an electro-magnetic pulse, small plane-attached bomb, or some combination. This is the only thing that scientifically explains the long string of facts and strange, fraudulent or contradictory happenings concerning this somewhat simple event.
And I bought it at MayDay Books!
Red Frog, 8/12/2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Is ideology important?
I was at a meeting at Mayday Books about ten days back. This was one where anyone who was so inclined was allowed to speak for two minutes, ostensibly on the economic crisis. And what a farrago of nonsense I had to endure (for over two hours). The people at the meeting who understood the roots of the economic crisis could probably be counted on a crippled hand. The rest ranted on whatever took their fancy. These people don't seem to understand that just proclaiming that one is "of the Left" doesn't necessarily make it so. Some theoretical understanding and some responsibility in utterance is called for. Without viewing the world through an ideological prism, one cannot be of the Left. All that is left is inchoate moral outrage and the simplistic and puerile thinking that those in charge are "evil"; and that once these "evil" and "greedy" people are supplanted, everything will be hunky-dory. This is the rubbish one has to endure at these meetings. I remember a meeting two or three years back when one person stood and proudly announced, "I hate Bush." So ...? The problem has never been Bush. This is an imbecile's view of social and political reality. Bush has gone and Obama is in. What has changed? You could put an archangel in the White House and the structure and dynamic of the empire would not change an iota. The aircraft carriers, the foreign bases, the wars of aggression, and the assassinations and the torture would continue unabated (as they are in the Obama administration). Someone has to say this out loud: Ignoramuses who have never cracked a book and never learnt to think and who then go to these worthless meetings and self-importantly spout drivel are not going to accomplish anything. These meetings are an exercise in futility and other than stoking the egos of a pack of sorry losers accomplish precious little else.
Friday, June 26, 2009
The tottering US imperium
Dedicated empire-watchers like myself have long been arguing that the days of the US imperium are numbered. But the argument for this position quickly becomes a little more intricate than I would wish. The imperium has two foundations -- financial and military -- and they are mutually reinforcing. The collapse of one has grave implications for the other. Without the ability to run huge fiscal deficits -- and as a concomitant have them financed by foreigners such as the Chinese and Japanese -- the US military complex cannot be sustained even for a year or two. Yet there is now a growing reluctance to finance these deficits when the value of the paper these foreigners buy (in return for real goods and services) becomes increasingly dubious. This growing scepticism and reluctance is what we've been seeing the last few months, and in particular at the meeting in Yekaterinburg a few days ago attended by SCO and BRIC countries (see Hudson's article here for an excellent analysis).
Every week now there are a handful of articles in serious publications worrying about the fate of the dollar. The crux of the problem is an utterly irrational US financial and political system whose dynamics no-one understands -- not even those at the helm of affairs in the US. For instance, no-one knows what the consequences of "quantitative easing" are going to be -- is it going to be deflation or Weimar-style hyper-inflation? No-one knows. Even I don't know. All serious people agree, however, that the house of cards that is now the US economy, is looking increasingly fragile and unsteady. The US today is not the juggernaut of half a century ago. Most people also agree that this is a time of transition as the US loses its top-dog position and we enter a more confusing multi-polar world whose rules and dynamics are unclear.
The catalyst for this post was a well-crafted article in the Daily Telegraph.
Every week now there are a handful of articles in serious publications worrying about the fate of the dollar. The crux of the problem is an utterly irrational US financial and political system whose dynamics no-one understands -- not even those at the helm of affairs in the US. For instance, no-one knows what the consequences of "quantitative easing" are going to be -- is it going to be deflation or Weimar-style hyper-inflation? No-one knows. Even I don't know. All serious people agree, however, that the house of cards that is now the US economy, is looking increasingly fragile and unsteady. The US today is not the juggernaut of half a century ago. Most people also agree that this is a time of transition as the US loses its top-dog position and we enter a more confusing multi-polar world whose rules and dynamics are unclear.
The catalyst for this post was a well-crafted article in the Daily Telegraph.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The effectiveness of strikes in difficult economic times
Here is an interesting article in today's Guardian:
American capitalism is unequivocally demonstrating that it does not work -- except for an insignificant minority of capitalist. Yet without insistent countervailing pressure from labor, absolutely nothing will change. We can already see this clearly. And conditions for American labor -- and by implication the mass of American people -- are continuing to steadily deteriorate.
The most recent walkouts have naturally focused on jobs, as insecurity grips the labour market. But they also show that, as one leading trade unionist puts it, "it isn't inevitable that employers have the whip hand, even during a recession, and collective action can deliver results" – while passivity guarantees that jobs, pay and conditions are culled, squeezed and slashed.
Second, they underline the irrelevance of anti-union legislation when workers are determined and well-organised. Every single one of the walkouts at Lindsey and at dozens of other power stations and refineries has been illegal under what Tony Blair boasted were "the most restrictive union laws in the western world". But so far no employer has even hinted at a visit to the courts, so counter-productive would that be in the real industrial world.
It's now become obvious that only by defying or ignoring the anti-democratic legislation bequeathed by Margaret Thatcher – which outlaws, for example, all solidarity action – will there ever be the political will to ditch or replace it with something more reasonable.
This is precisely what should be occurring in the United States. American workers need to be organising and striking. And even more importantly, they need to be aiming for political power. Had American labor not relinquished claims to political power eons ago, the social, economic, and political texture of the country would be radically different today. As it is, American labor gets into a one-night stand with the Democratic Party at election time -- a party that is indistinguishable from the Republicans in its obeisance and fealty to capital.American capitalism is unequivocally demonstrating that it does not work -- except for an insignificant minority of capitalist. Yet without insistent countervailing pressure from labor, absolutely nothing will change. We can already see this clearly. And conditions for American labor -- and by implication the mass of American people -- are continuing to steadily deteriorate.
Friday, June 19, 2009
SUV's under Socialism?
Ecology & Marxism – Do They Connect?
Most older Marxists – no matter what tradition – were brought up thinking that the ‘production’ of material goods was one of the only gauges to measure the well-being of the proletariat. Marxism developed against capital, but Marxism also developed in a world where resources were just being developed, or ‘exploited.’ Hence Lenin and Trotsky were for industrializing the primitive, mostly agrarian Soviet Union (quite rightly) and Stalin took this to the ultimate extreme, favoring giant industrial building projects over closing a ‘scissors’ of any kind – the 'scissors' being the relationship with the countryside and peasantry. Instead, it was widened. We can see this today in the deformed workers’ state in China, which has become the productive marvel of the world under its’ mostly planned economy and mixed economy, while depopulating its impoverished rural areas.
However, a look back at the Soviet Union shows some of the niggling flaws in an approach that favors production over anything else. Visit Baku and see the devastation of dry holes, rusting oil derricks and poisoned soils for miles around the city. Watch the Aral Sea shrink, as it is used for cotton irrigation across the plains – to the point where the lake is disappearing. And then there is Chernobyl, which continues to affect hundreds of thousands of citizens with the aftermath of radioactive poisoning. Regarding China, an excellent article in Mother Jones in 2007, "China's Pollution Problem Goes Global" by Jacques Leslie shows what pell-mell production has done to China and her people, exclusively from an environmental and health point of view. It is devastating.
As materialists first and necrophiliacs last, Marxists have to examine this new (actually not so new) phenomenon, and integrate it into our program. A good case can be made that environmentalism should be considered an essential part of an updated transitional program. Where environmentalism would fit into the bureaucratic/Stalinist model of the minimum/maximum ‘program’ conundrum, or the Maoist ‘mass’ line, I really do not know.
The most prominent synthesizer of Marxism and environmentalism in the U.S. is John Bellamy Foster, the editor of Monthly Review, a long running left-Marxist journal in the U.S. Foster wrote “Marx’s Ecology – Materialism and Nature” in 2000. This ground-breaking work looked at the works of Marx and Engels and how they noted environmental pollution and the ill-effects of capitalist production on the health of the working classes of England and Germany. Polluted water, leveled forests, smoke-filled air, work accidents, bad food, early death– it was all noted as part of the exploitation of the working classes. Environmental ‘racism’ would be no surprise to Marx or Engels. Foster has just come out with a new book called “The Ecological Revolution – Making Peace with the Planet.” I have not read the book yet, but his thesis is that human survival – and the survival of our class – is based on a revolutionary transformation of our relationship with the planet. He points out that capitalism cannot succeed at this task, as ‘profit’ demands the unending exploitation of people, plants, animals, air, water and land. So it has been from the beginning of the capitalist mode of production. Only socialism, which is based on scientific planning and not profit, can make the switch to a sustainable economy. Real socialism is not based exclusively on the unthinking exploitation of nature.
We are all familiar with the position – from ostensible Marxists no less - that anything less than an SUV in every driveway, a 10,000 sq. foot house on every lot, and a 4x4 in every woods is the due of the working class. Bicycling, growing your own food, shutting off the lights, eating organic, reusing and repairing, vegetarianism, grey-water systems and other environmental methods in building, saying no to bottled water, getting rid of throw-away products, solar or wind power - you get the idea – are all expensive and ‘petit-bourgeois’ deviations from working class needs. This by the way is also the view of right-wing Republican populism. This interesting congruence should raise a ‘red flag’ in the best possible sense.
While it is true that many of these practices did not solely originate from the working class, it is also true that they did not originate from corporate America. American workers have been buying used goods, or repairing broken ones, or eschewing the ease of expensive throwaways since the class began. If one has been to Hanoi recently, bicycles outnumber cars or trucks – though small scooters are now the majority. Vietnamese food is not grown with massive inputs of chemical oil-based fertilizers, as this costs too much. It is fresh and organic – horrors - and is reputed to be the best food in the world, if you listen to people like Anthony Bourdain, or even your own stomach. Anyone following the development of Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet workers’ state will find out that the Cubans have developed organic agriculture to an extent not seen anywhere else in the world. Their army of scientists has been devoted to this issue. This was occasioned by the end of cheap Soviet oil imports. If Cuba had been a capitalist society, they would have gone into debt as a nation to buy more oil from OPEC or the United States. The Cubans refused to go this route. Interestingly, urban gardens in Havana now account for much of the fresh food in the city. North Korea also faced this situation in 1989 too. Instead of switching over to another mode of agriculture, hundreds of thousands or more died of starvation. This does not reflect well on the entrenched bureaucrats in Pyongyang in comparison to the cadres in Havana.
More importantly, an SUV in every driveway, a 10,000 sq. foot house and a 4X4 actually impact the environment of the rest of the world. Internationalists do not consume in a state of oblivion. The constant flow of scientific data now indicates that global warming is past the point of no return, and that it is affecting the third world even more than the first world. Which is one reason the Republican Party pooh-poohs global climate change as an erroneous ‘theory’ – they couldn’t care less about people in Bangladesh or New Orleans. Unless Marxists can refute the science behind global climate change, Marxists are obligated to follow what it indicates. And by all indications, global warming is now farther alone than most thought only two years ago.
The other fact that will dominate future development in the world is the issue of oil. American capitalism was based on early and massive exploitation of oil – the most useful and powerful energy source ever discovered. To some extent, the immense growth in the Soviet Union was also based on drilling for oil. Oil is the key commodity for the recent development of capital. US imperialism cut off the oil supply to Japan, which was one of the sparks behind the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Battle of the Bulge was won because the Nazi tanks ran out of … gasoline from Rumania. The two wars in the Gulf were directly based on control of this most precious of commodities. Arguments can be made over the importance of oil to the wars in Afghanistan and in the former Yugoslavia. And as oil dwindles it will become more precious, more expensive, more destructive, but also more marginal. The oil age is over, and Marxists should read the handwriting on the wall.
I have to agree with Foster that without a Marxism infused with environmentalism, we will be unable to cope with the destruction of our biosphere, or the depletion of oil, and hence our ability as a class to lead the way to the future. As the saying goes, an unlimited appetite for ‘goods’ has now run up against the limited objective carrying capacity of the planet. The effect of bourgeois ‘globalism’ has created its opposite - a sense of a some world-wide alternative to a runaway cheap-labor, oil-war Dickensianism.
Enlightened Democratic capital thinks there is a purely technical fix to this – turbines, solar panels and a massive grid. And this project is indeed part of the solution. However, conservation is not a concept that is bankable, even under ‘enlightened’ capitalism. Nor is the need to control production, and eliminate anything that is unsustainable. Capital and its commodification of everything cannot do this – without moving towards social control.
Note my use of the word ‘enlightened’ – most capital is not enlightened and will fight the other wing of capital, and the working class, to the death. This is partly what we see in the battle between the Republican and Democrat parties – the clash of outmoded production, and an ostensibly ‘new’ production. Al Gore and Obama want to grow or transform a new generation of capitalists to meet this situation – witness what they are attempting to do with Chrysler and GM. However, they are also representatives of that whole capitalist class. Given this, they cannot carry through this battle to the end, and will instead protect all wings of capital. The collapse of the capitalist world economy is already hindering efforts to accomplish this transition in time. Money for a new grid is being dumping into warfare or the dead banking system by the Democrats. One of their solutions, the proposed market for ‘pollution credits’ will only create another unregulated gold rush in pollution derivatives – and, as has been proved in Europe, will not slow carbon production significantly. The declining dollar will make deficit financing even more difficult for U.S. imperialism - including infrastructure improvements related to a green economy.
Of course, China, which has created itself as the workhouse of world capital, has many of the same dilemmas. What they have as an advantage, however, is some centralized planning control. Overnight they shut hundreds of small coal plants. Overnight they ordered an end to the production of plastic bags. Overnight they decreed that all new skyscrapers built in Shanghai and Beijing would be ‘green’ - if that is even possible. This is the benefit of a theoretically planned economy, not one dominated by a short-term market and millions of individual bourgeois decisions. Because global warming and peak oil are not ‘short term’ issues, the short term corporate shareholder is not the best judge of where an economy should go. Nor is a government theoretically and financially based on these same shareholders able to chart a real solution.
Both books by Foster are available at May Day books.
Red Frog, 6/19/2009
Most older Marxists – no matter what tradition – were brought up thinking that the ‘production’ of material goods was one of the only gauges to measure the well-being of the proletariat. Marxism developed against capital, but Marxism also developed in a world where resources were just being developed, or ‘exploited.’ Hence Lenin and Trotsky were for industrializing the primitive, mostly agrarian Soviet Union (quite rightly) and Stalin took this to the ultimate extreme, favoring giant industrial building projects over closing a ‘scissors’ of any kind – the 'scissors' being the relationship with the countryside and peasantry. Instead, it was widened. We can see this today in the deformed workers’ state in China, which has become the productive marvel of the world under its’ mostly planned economy and mixed economy, while depopulating its impoverished rural areas.
 |
| The Aral 'Sea' |
As materialists first and necrophiliacs last, Marxists have to examine this new (actually not so new) phenomenon, and integrate it into our program. A good case can be made that environmentalism should be considered an essential part of an updated transitional program. Where environmentalism would fit into the bureaucratic/Stalinist model of the minimum/maximum ‘program’ conundrum, or the Maoist ‘mass’ line, I really do not know.
The most prominent synthesizer of Marxism and environmentalism in the U.S. is John Bellamy Foster, the editor of Monthly Review, a long running left-Marxist journal in the U.S. Foster wrote “Marx’s Ecology – Materialism and Nature” in 2000. This ground-breaking work looked at the works of Marx and Engels and how they noted environmental pollution and the ill-effects of capitalist production on the health of the working classes of England and Germany. Polluted water, leveled forests, smoke-filled air, work accidents, bad food, early death– it was all noted as part of the exploitation of the working classes. Environmental ‘racism’ would be no surprise to Marx or Engels. Foster has just come out with a new book called “The Ecological Revolution – Making Peace with the Planet.” I have not read the book yet, but his thesis is that human survival – and the survival of our class – is based on a revolutionary transformation of our relationship with the planet. He points out that capitalism cannot succeed at this task, as ‘profit’ demands the unending exploitation of people, plants, animals, air, water and land. So it has been from the beginning of the capitalist mode of production. Only socialism, which is based on scientific planning and not profit, can make the switch to a sustainable economy. Real socialism is not based exclusively on the unthinking exploitation of nature.
We are all familiar with the position – from ostensible Marxists no less - that anything less than an SUV in every driveway, a 10,000 sq. foot house on every lot, and a 4x4 in every woods is the due of the working class. Bicycling, growing your own food, shutting off the lights, eating organic, reusing and repairing, vegetarianism, grey-water systems and other environmental methods in building, saying no to bottled water, getting rid of throw-away products, solar or wind power - you get the idea – are all expensive and ‘petit-bourgeois’ deviations from working class needs. This by the way is also the view of right-wing Republican populism. This interesting congruence should raise a ‘red flag’ in the best possible sense.
While it is true that many of these practices did not solely originate from the working class, it is also true that they did not originate from corporate America. American workers have been buying used goods, or repairing broken ones, or eschewing the ease of expensive throwaways since the class began. If one has been to Hanoi recently, bicycles outnumber cars or trucks – though small scooters are now the majority. Vietnamese food is not grown with massive inputs of chemical oil-based fertilizers, as this costs too much. It is fresh and organic – horrors - and is reputed to be the best food in the world, if you listen to people like Anthony Bourdain, or even your own stomach. Anyone following the development of Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet workers’ state will find out that the Cubans have developed organic agriculture to an extent not seen anywhere else in the world. Their army of scientists has been devoted to this issue. This was occasioned by the end of cheap Soviet oil imports. If Cuba had been a capitalist society, they would have gone into debt as a nation to buy more oil from OPEC or the United States. The Cubans refused to go this route. Interestingly, urban gardens in Havana now account for much of the fresh food in the city. North Korea also faced this situation in 1989 too. Instead of switching over to another mode of agriculture, hundreds of thousands or more died of starvation. This does not reflect well on the entrenched bureaucrats in Pyongyang in comparison to the cadres in Havana.
More importantly, an SUV in every driveway, a 10,000 sq. foot house and a 4X4 actually impact the environment of the rest of the world. Internationalists do not consume in a state of oblivion. The constant flow of scientific data now indicates that global warming is past the point of no return, and that it is affecting the third world even more than the first world. Which is one reason the Republican Party pooh-poohs global climate change as an erroneous ‘theory’ – they couldn’t care less about people in Bangladesh or New Orleans. Unless Marxists can refute the science behind global climate change, Marxists are obligated to follow what it indicates. And by all indications, global warming is now farther alone than most thought only two years ago.
The other fact that will dominate future development in the world is the issue of oil. American capitalism was based on early and massive exploitation of oil – the most useful and powerful energy source ever discovered. To some extent, the immense growth in the Soviet Union was also based on drilling for oil. Oil is the key commodity for the recent development of capital. US imperialism cut off the oil supply to Japan, which was one of the sparks behind the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Battle of the Bulge was won because the Nazi tanks ran out of … gasoline from Rumania. The two wars in the Gulf were directly based on control of this most precious of commodities. Arguments can be made over the importance of oil to the wars in Afghanistan and in the former Yugoslavia. And as oil dwindles it will become more precious, more expensive, more destructive, but also more marginal. The oil age is over, and Marxists should read the handwriting on the wall.
I have to agree with Foster that without a Marxism infused with environmentalism, we will be unable to cope with the destruction of our biosphere, or the depletion of oil, and hence our ability as a class to lead the way to the future. As the saying goes, an unlimited appetite for ‘goods’ has now run up against the limited objective carrying capacity of the planet. The effect of bourgeois ‘globalism’ has created its opposite - a sense of a some world-wide alternative to a runaway cheap-labor, oil-war Dickensianism.
Enlightened Democratic capital thinks there is a purely technical fix to this – turbines, solar panels and a massive grid. And this project is indeed part of the solution. However, conservation is not a concept that is bankable, even under ‘enlightened’ capitalism. Nor is the need to control production, and eliminate anything that is unsustainable. Capital and its commodification of everything cannot do this – without moving towards social control.
Note my use of the word ‘enlightened’ – most capital is not enlightened and will fight the other wing of capital, and the working class, to the death. This is partly what we see in the battle between the Republican and Democrat parties – the clash of outmoded production, and an ostensibly ‘new’ production. Al Gore and Obama want to grow or transform a new generation of capitalists to meet this situation – witness what they are attempting to do with Chrysler and GM. However, they are also representatives of that whole capitalist class. Given this, they cannot carry through this battle to the end, and will instead protect all wings of capital. The collapse of the capitalist world economy is already hindering efforts to accomplish this transition in time. Money for a new grid is being dumping into warfare or the dead banking system by the Democrats. One of their solutions, the proposed market for ‘pollution credits’ will only create another unregulated gold rush in pollution derivatives – and, as has been proved in Europe, will not slow carbon production significantly. The declining dollar will make deficit financing even more difficult for U.S. imperialism - including infrastructure improvements related to a green economy.
Of course, China, which has created itself as the workhouse of world capital, has many of the same dilemmas. What they have as an advantage, however, is some centralized planning control. Overnight they shut hundreds of small coal plants. Overnight they ordered an end to the production of plastic bags. Overnight they decreed that all new skyscrapers built in Shanghai and Beijing would be ‘green’ - if that is even possible. This is the benefit of a theoretically planned economy, not one dominated by a short-term market and millions of individual bourgeois decisions. Because global warming and peak oil are not ‘short term’ issues, the short term corporate shareholder is not the best judge of where an economy should go. Nor is a government theoretically and financially based on these same shareholders able to chart a real solution.
Both books by Foster are available at May Day books.
Red Frog, 6/19/2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
NO SOCIAL SECURITY FOR YOU, DUDE!
The Wizards of Wall Street have convinced millions of younger Americans that there will be no money for their Social Security retirement This could happen if we let the finance thieves run things and it would have come partly true if the Bush plan for privatizing the system had been enacted.
As of now, our planet is quite sick BUT with intelligent planning it can support 2 or 3 billion more persons for a millennium or two and, as always, there is more than enough labor to create the wealth needed to provide economic security for everyone. The same would be true for our health care system. Or is this overly optimistic?
The Wizards of Wall Street have convinced millions of younger Americans that there will be no money for their Social Security retirement This could happen if we let the finance thieves run things and it would have come partly true if the Bush plan for privatizing the system had been enacted.
As of now, our planet is quite sick BUT with intelligent planning it can support 2 or 3 billion more persons for a millennium or two and, as always, there is more than enough labor to create the wealth needed to provide economic security for everyone. The same would be true for our health care system. Or is this overly optimistic?
Bye-bye, US hegemony
In the last few days there have been three articles devoted to the imminent demise of US financial hegemony -- a corollary of which will be the loss of US military hegemony.
1) An essay by Michael Hudson on "de-dollarisation,"
2) An essay by W. Joseph Stroupe on the move out of dollars and US Treasuries,
3) And an essay by Chris Hedges on how bankrupt the US imperium is.
These essays are of interest to someone like myself who for years has known that the US-dominated financial system is utterly unsustainable but yet was never able to figure out what kind of tectonic changes would have to occur for the demise of the old system and its replacement by a multi-polar system. In the past few months we've begun to receive intimations, suggestions, of what an emerging new set-up may look like. It appears that both the world's major central banks and private investors are becoming increasingly averse to both dollars and US treasuries. This means it will not be possible for the US to deficit-finance its budget. And since half the budget deficit for this year is defence-related, this suggests the US is going to have to trim its sails. Drastically.
I always enjoy everything Michael Hudson writes. If memory serves, I bought one of his two books -- "Global Fracture" -- at Mayday some years back, and this was my introduction to his historical analysis of how the US-dominated financial order came into being. In the essay listed above he examines how, inter alia, the emerging BRIC powers, are trying to diversify out of dollars -- primarily for economic reasons (no-one wants to be left holding a bag of worthless paper), but also with an eye to reducing USA's deficit-financed bellicose stance towards the rest of the world. But in order to get out of the present system, they have to devise a new one, however tentatively and uncertainly. This is what the current SCO meeting in Yekaterinburg is all about.
The second essay, by Stroupe, confines itself to discussing how Washington's policies of exploding budget deficits is undermining faith in both dollars and Treasuries, and how this will likely accelerate a trend towards a new global around based around the major emerging economies rather than the USA and UK.
And the final essay, by Chris Hedges, rewords some of Hudson's essay, and points out some of the dire domestic implications for the United States. Some of these can be questioned but will no doubt divert those who enjoy doomsday scenarios.
1) An essay by Michael Hudson on "de-dollarisation,"
2) An essay by W. Joseph Stroupe on the move out of dollars and US Treasuries,
3) And an essay by Chris Hedges on how bankrupt the US imperium is.
These essays are of interest to someone like myself who for years has known that the US-dominated financial system is utterly unsustainable but yet was never able to figure out what kind of tectonic changes would have to occur for the demise of the old system and its replacement by a multi-polar system. In the past few months we've begun to receive intimations, suggestions, of what an emerging new set-up may look like. It appears that both the world's major central banks and private investors are becoming increasingly averse to both dollars and US treasuries. This means it will not be possible for the US to deficit-finance its budget. And since half the budget deficit for this year is defence-related, this suggests the US is going to have to trim its sails. Drastically.
I always enjoy everything Michael Hudson writes. If memory serves, I bought one of his two books -- "Global Fracture" -- at Mayday some years back, and this was my introduction to his historical analysis of how the US-dominated financial order came into being. In the essay listed above he examines how, inter alia, the emerging BRIC powers, are trying to diversify out of dollars -- primarily for economic reasons (no-one wants to be left holding a bag of worthless paper), but also with an eye to reducing USA's deficit-financed bellicose stance towards the rest of the world. But in order to get out of the present system, they have to devise a new one, however tentatively and uncertainly. This is what the current SCO meeting in Yekaterinburg is all about.
The second essay, by Stroupe, confines itself to discussing how Washington's policies of exploding budget deficits is undermining faith in both dollars and Treasuries, and how this will likely accelerate a trend towards a new global around based around the major emerging economies rather than the USA and UK.
And the final essay, by Chris Hedges, rewords some of Hudson's essay, and points out some of the dire domestic implications for the United States. Some of these can be questioned but will no doubt divert those who enjoy doomsday scenarios.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Not Socialist Realism...
Let Us Now Praise the Dead!
The Grateful Dead got their start in 1965 in the Bay area. They are on tour this summer again, 45 years after they got their start as the Warlocks in 1964. The survivors – Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzman, Mickey Hart – were joined on this summer’s tour for the second time by Allman Brother’s member Warren Haynes, and by keyboardist Jeff Chimenti of Ratdog, who is the permanent keyboardist now. Former core members Jerry Garcia and Rod ‘Pigpen’ McKernan, lyricists Robert Hunter and John Barlow, and keyboard players Keith Godchaux, Tom Constanten, and Vince Melnick, along with female vocalist Donna Godchaux, were all inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 as members of the Grateful Dead. People like Stanley Owsley, the creator of LSD, was their soundman for many years. They are the most long-running rock act in the U.S. The only acts that have been around longer are doing an ‘oldies’ style show at casinos. I don't think I go out on a limb when I say they are the best live rock band - ever.
Let us examine what the Dead have done to music.
They came out of a scene in San Francisco that was not controlled by corporate music interests. It was the product of an artistic community of musicians and the cultural impact of the unique times and a unique place – San Francisco. Other bands like the Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Country Joe & The Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape and Janis Joplin/Big Brother came out of that same organic scene. In fact, at Monterey, they and the other San Francisco bands faced off with the more commercial groups from Los Angeles. The Dead played free shows and benefits constantly. They fought and succeeded in controlling their studio sound from record one. They are one of the main historical links between the Beat Generation of the 50’s and the counter-culture of the 60’s –working with Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsburg at “Acid Tests” – and traveling with Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady on the ‘bus.’ Their style of music is an amalgamation of blues, country, folk, bluegrass, rhythm & blues, 50’s rock, electronica and jazz into a peculiarly American style. First called ‘psychedelic’, they became the originator of the ‘jam band’ scene, which has spawned imitators like Phish, Widespread Panic and festivals like Bonnaroo and ‘10,000 Lakes’ across the U.S. In effect, they encompass almost every popular U.S. musical style. Their use of drugs to enhance music creativity and collectivity is almost unique, but also predictably destructive.
The Dead started out as a cover band, and continue to play covers of Rolling Stones, Dylan and the Beatles, along with blues, country and 50’s covers. They make each cover song their own, which is why they can get away with it. Listen to Pigpen singing “King Bee” and compare it to Jagger, and you will see McKernan rips the throat out of the song, while Jagger sounds like a mincing boy. They are the best cover band in the country, and in this process, show their respect to other musicians, and to popular music’s traditions.
The Dead are the most recorded live group in history, playing more than 2,350 concerts, including three at the Great Pyramids in Giza. They encouraged their live shows by allowing music tapers, not discouraging them, and not suing people who recorded them ‘illicitly.’ They were the first group to sell soundboard CDs to fans after each show. Until recently they sold their own tickets so that people did not have to go through Ticketmaster – a conglomeration of thieves. They are followed by both young and old at live concerts, not just elderly fans in wheelchairs and oxygen tanks. Their fan base is, to put it mildly, very dedicated. Very few bands have such numbers of people who drive from one concert to another. Concerts range up to 3+ hours normally, so that the audience gets their money’s worth. Marijuana is a standard item at concerts, shared by many, and hence the band plays a non-public role in efforts for the legalization of this, and other, drugs. A Dead concert is a sort of semi-religious event, heightened by the marijuana as communion, much as peyote is used in Native American Church. People dance for nearly the whole 3 hours, so it has something of the nature of an ecstatic St. Vitus dance. They like outdoor arenas due to the clear sound outside. Essentially, the heart of the Dead sound is jazz improvisation, by every musician, not just one. Set lists vary from night to night, and songs are played as themes, not copies. So one song can have many versions, segueing into each other, which stretches the music out. This is the heart of their jazz approach, and one reason people like Wynton Marsalis play with them.
Garcia started as a bluegrass player, Lesh as a classical musician, Pig Pen as a blues man, and Kreutzmann as a jazz drummer – incorporating their styles at the very beginning. No other band has two such accomplished drummers as Kreutzmann and Hart – making the Dead sound heavily rhythmic and intricate. Hart himself has become a top ‘world music’ drummer. Every concert includes a 15-20 minutes “drums & space” set allowing these two to stretch out, which includes an electronic section that the other members come in on.
Since day one, sound quality and instrument quality was a number one concern. They were tired of the low quality PA systems offered bands. Their interest in giving the audience the best sound possible lead to the Wall of Sound – a massive distortion-free sound system with 7 separate instrument systems - being developed by Owsley and Alembic Studios. The Dead recorded their albums on 4 and 8 track systems long before any other band, including the Beatles. They even went independent for awhile, putting out their own albums. Their staff was large, and paid well – until they could no longer support so many people. Graphically, the Dead still rely on striking graphics and light shows at their concerts. No other band has so many ‘logos,’ symbols and emblematic/thematic visuals – strutting bears, skulls alone, and crossed with roses, terrapins, Uncle Sam as a skeleton, and others. Most music acts pay little attention to artwork – but the Dead, and the San Francisco sound they came out of – revered visuals.
The Dead have done it their own way from the beginning, not following the clichés of the music business. They came out of a collective music scene, and the way the band toured and played was an extension of that collectivity. Which is why so many musicians have been part of the band. They represent the best of American popular music creativity and artistic freedom. So let us praise the Dead. They are growing old, and will one day no longer be able to play. They are the great American ‘rock’ band. Period.
And you cannot buy them at May Day books.
Red Frog – 6/7/2009
The Grateful Dead got their start in 1965 in the Bay area. They are on tour this summer again, 45 years after they got their start as the Warlocks in 1964. The survivors – Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzman, Mickey Hart – were joined on this summer’s tour for the second time by Allman Brother’s member Warren Haynes, and by keyboardist Jeff Chimenti of Ratdog, who is the permanent keyboardist now. Former core members Jerry Garcia and Rod ‘Pigpen’ McKernan, lyricists Robert Hunter and John Barlow, and keyboard players Keith Godchaux, Tom Constanten, and Vince Melnick, along with female vocalist Donna Godchaux, were all inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 as members of the Grateful Dead. People like Stanley Owsley, the creator of LSD, was their soundman for many years. They are the most long-running rock act in the U.S. The only acts that have been around longer are doing an ‘oldies’ style show at casinos. I don't think I go out on a limb when I say they are the best live rock band - ever.
 |
| Fare Thee Well at Soldier Field, Chicago |
They came out of a scene in San Francisco that was not controlled by corporate music interests. It was the product of an artistic community of musicians and the cultural impact of the unique times and a unique place – San Francisco. Other bands like the Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Country Joe & The Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape and Janis Joplin/Big Brother came out of that same organic scene. In fact, at Monterey, they and the other San Francisco bands faced off with the more commercial groups from Los Angeles. The Dead played free shows and benefits constantly. They fought and succeeded in controlling their studio sound from record one. They are one of the main historical links between the Beat Generation of the 50’s and the counter-culture of the 60’s –working with Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsburg at “Acid Tests” – and traveling with Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady on the ‘bus.’ Their style of music is an amalgamation of blues, country, folk, bluegrass, rhythm & blues, 50’s rock, electronica and jazz into a peculiarly American style. First called ‘psychedelic’, they became the originator of the ‘jam band’ scene, which has spawned imitators like Phish, Widespread Panic and festivals like Bonnaroo and ‘10,000 Lakes’ across the U.S. In effect, they encompass almost every popular U.S. musical style. Their use of drugs to enhance music creativity and collectivity is almost unique, but also predictably destructive.
The Dead started out as a cover band, and continue to play covers of Rolling Stones, Dylan and the Beatles, along with blues, country and 50’s covers. They make each cover song their own, which is why they can get away with it. Listen to Pigpen singing “King Bee” and compare it to Jagger, and you will see McKernan rips the throat out of the song, while Jagger sounds like a mincing boy. They are the best cover band in the country, and in this process, show their respect to other musicians, and to popular music’s traditions.
The Dead are the most recorded live group in history, playing more than 2,350 concerts, including three at the Great Pyramids in Giza. They encouraged their live shows by allowing music tapers, not discouraging them, and not suing people who recorded them ‘illicitly.’ They were the first group to sell soundboard CDs to fans after each show. Until recently they sold their own tickets so that people did not have to go through Ticketmaster – a conglomeration of thieves. They are followed by both young and old at live concerts, not just elderly fans in wheelchairs and oxygen tanks. Their fan base is, to put it mildly, very dedicated. Very few bands have such numbers of people who drive from one concert to another. Concerts range up to 3+ hours normally, so that the audience gets their money’s worth. Marijuana is a standard item at concerts, shared by many, and hence the band plays a non-public role in efforts for the legalization of this, and other, drugs. A Dead concert is a sort of semi-religious event, heightened by the marijuana as communion, much as peyote is used in Native American Church. People dance for nearly the whole 3 hours, so it has something of the nature of an ecstatic St. Vitus dance. They like outdoor arenas due to the clear sound outside. Essentially, the heart of the Dead sound is jazz improvisation, by every musician, not just one. Set lists vary from night to night, and songs are played as themes, not copies. So one song can have many versions, segueing into each other, which stretches the music out. This is the heart of their jazz approach, and one reason people like Wynton Marsalis play with them.
Garcia started as a bluegrass player, Lesh as a classical musician, Pig Pen as a blues man, and Kreutzmann as a jazz drummer – incorporating their styles at the very beginning. No other band has two such accomplished drummers as Kreutzmann and Hart – making the Dead sound heavily rhythmic and intricate. Hart himself has become a top ‘world music’ drummer. Every concert includes a 15-20 minutes “drums & space” set allowing these two to stretch out, which includes an electronic section that the other members come in on.
Since day one, sound quality and instrument quality was a number one concern. They were tired of the low quality PA systems offered bands. Their interest in giving the audience the best sound possible lead to the Wall of Sound – a massive distortion-free sound system with 7 separate instrument systems - being developed by Owsley and Alembic Studios. The Dead recorded their albums on 4 and 8 track systems long before any other band, including the Beatles. They even went independent for awhile, putting out their own albums. Their staff was large, and paid well – until they could no longer support so many people. Graphically, the Dead still rely on striking graphics and light shows at their concerts. No other band has so many ‘logos,’ symbols and emblematic/thematic visuals – strutting bears, skulls alone, and crossed with roses, terrapins, Uncle Sam as a skeleton, and others. Most music acts pay little attention to artwork – but the Dead, and the San Francisco sound they came out of – revered visuals.
The Dead have done it their own way from the beginning, not following the clichés of the music business. They came out of a collective music scene, and the way the band toured and played was an extension of that collectivity. Which is why so many musicians have been part of the band. They represent the best of American popular music creativity and artistic freedom. So let us praise the Dead. They are growing old, and will one day no longer be able to play. They are the great American ‘rock’ band. Period.
And you cannot buy them at May Day books.
Red Frog – 6/7/2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
California Upholds Ban on Gay Marriage: Build a National Movement for Equal Rights Now! | ||
 | ||
| May 31, 2009 By Dan DiMaggio | ||
| ||
On Tuesday, May 26, in a 6-1 ruling, California’s Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage. In response to this ruling and the continued discrimination faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people across the country, activists have called for a National March for Equality in Washington, D.C. the weekend of October 10-11 to demand full, equal rights for all LGBT people. Just hours after the verdict on Prop 8 was released, thousands took to the streets in protest across the country, in an echo of the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated on November 15 after the initial passage of this reactionary law. According to DayofDecision.com, there were events organized in over 115 cities, including rallies of 15,000 in Los Angeles, 5,000 in San Francisco, 3,000 in San Diego, and over 1,000 in Seattle. Another 4,000 marched in Fresno on Saturday, including hundreds who marched 14.5 miles in an effort to reach people in more socially conservative areas. The ruling on Prop 8 in California is a major slap in the face to equal rights, even though the court did agree to recognize the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California prior to the passage of Prop 8 in November 2008. Yet while the California decision is a huge setback, recent months have witnessed a number of victories for the gay rights movement. New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Iowa have all legalized same-sex marriage, bringing the total number of states that have legalized marriage equality to six. In addition the movement is making a huge dent in the battle for hearts and minds. 44 percent of Americans now say same-sex marriage should be legal (up from just 21 percent in November 2004). This includes 58 percent of those ages 18-34 (CNN, 5/4/09). There is a widespread feeling of confidence among many LGBT people and activists that the tide may be finally turning, despite the California ruling – although a major struggle lies ahead. As Robin Tyler, one of the plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 suit, said, “No civil rights movement has ever lost. Never. We will win. It’s not an ‘if’ it’s a when. Only we are going to have to fight like hell.” Tyler, who was married while same-sex marriage was legal in California, founded the website DayofDecision.com, which was responsible for the protests Tuesday evening. Activists are now gearing up to put an initiative to overturn Prop 8 on the California ballot in 2010. There is also a major lawsuit being filed in the federal court system, arguing that California’s ban on gay marriage violates the constitutional right to due process and equal protection under the law. Yet many major LGBT rights organizations oppose this strategy, saying it is too soon to aim for a challenge at the national Supreme Court level given the current balance on the court. We can't rely on corporate politicians or the courts to defend our rights, much less expand them. Rather than waiting for a supposedly more favorable balance on the court, now is the time to step up the movement in the streets, which can change the relationship of forces in society and build public support for LGBT rights. Now is the perfect time to seize on the momentum generated by recent victories and the outrage at the passage of Proposition 8 in California (and the state supreme court’s refusal to reverse it) to go all out in organizing the national demonstration for equal rights for all LGBT people on October 10-11. Such a demonstration will help link up all the many efforts in different states and localities to push for marriage equality and broader LGBT rights. Crucially, the mobilization will demand that the Obama administration repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, as well as demanding marriage equality at a national level. While Obama promised to repeal DOMA during his campaign, his administration has yet to make any moves in this direction. Expressing the growing frustration and anger of some in the LGBT community at the timidity of Democratic politicians on this issue, Tyler said, “If the National Democratic party does not, after 35 years of promises to our community, make sure we have full equal rights in this country, the gay divorce you are going to see is the gay communities divorce from the Democratic party. We are a civil rights movement. It’s time we acted like one.” The national march this fall will allow LGBT rights activists to boldly campaign in their communities, schools, and unions to mobilize and build support. It will place the issue in the national spotlight and highlight the broad support for equal rights for all that exists, giving confidence to the millions who support marriage equality that they are part of a broader movement. As the National March for Equality organizers put it in their call, “As members of every race, class, faith, and community, we see the struggle for LGBT equality as part of a larger movement for peace and social justice.” The call for a national demonstration on October 10-11 should be enthusiastically supported by all progressive organizations, linked to the struggle against all forms of oppression and for equality and real justice for all. As socialists, dedicated to building a world free of exploitation, we wholeheartedly support the call for a national demonstration for equal rights for LGBT people in Washington on October 10-11. We link the struggle for equal rights for LGBT people to the need to replace this rotten capitalist system, which gives rise not only to economic crises and wars, but also feeds off of sexism, racism, and homophobia. Ultimately, it is only through mobilizing a powerful mass movement that we can transform society. As the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said, “Without struggle, there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and it never will.” | ||
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
