tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66799009053566915312024-03-13T04:26:56.594-07:00ZZ's blogCommentaries on current events, political economy, and the Communist movement from a Marxist-Leninist perspective.
Zigedy highly recommends the Marxist-Leninist website, MLToday.com, where many of his longer articles appear.zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.comBlogger383125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-21226100024635102062024-03-08T17:12:00.000-08:002024-03-13T04:26:01.258-07:00 Peoples’ China: What Lies Ahead?<blockquote><i style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Whither China?</b> was the name of a widely circulated pamphlet authored by the respected Anglo-Indian Marxist author, R. Palme Dutt. Writing in 1966, with The People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the throes of the “Cultural Revolution,” the pamphlet sought to shed light on the PRC’s tortured road from liberation in 1949 to a vast upheaval disrupting all aspects of Chinese society as well as foreign relations. To most people – across the entire political spectrum—developments within this Asian giant were a challenge to understand. To be sure, there were zealots outside of the PRC who hung on every word uttered by The Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao, and stood by every release explaining Chinese events in the <b>People’s Daily</b>, <b>Red Flag</b> and <b>Peking Review</b>. A few Communist Parties and many middle-class intellectuals embraced the Cultural Revolution as a rite of purification. Yet for most, as with Palme Dutt, the paramount question remained: Where is the PRC going? </i></blockquote><p></p><blockquote> <span style="font-size: x-large; font-style: italic;">Today, forty-five years later, the question remains open.</span></blockquote><span style="font-size: x-large; font-style: italic;"></span><p></p><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">I <a href="https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/search?q=prc">wrote</a> the above thirteen years ago. I contend that the question remains open today. Much has changed, however. In 2011, China-bashing was widespread especially where jobs had disappeared in manufacturing, but largely tempered by a Western business sector anxious to exploit low wages and the Chinese domestic market. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">But almost simultaneously with the 2011 posting, the Obama administration made official its “pivot to Asia,” directed explicitly at Peoples’ China. As the Brookings Institute ‘diplomatically’<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-american-pivot-to-asia/"> put </a>it, “Washington is still very much focused on sustaining a constructive U.S.-China relationship, but it has now brought disparate elements together in a strategically integrated fashion that explicitly affirms and promises to sustain American leadership throughout Asia for the foreseeable future.” More explicitly, they intend “to establish a strong and credible American presence across Asia to both encourage constructive Chinese behavior and to provide confidence to other countries in the region that they need not yield to potential Chinese regional hegemony.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">To be sure, the officially declared Obama administration hostility to the PRC was neither a reaction to job loss nor to deindustrialization. The Administration showed no interest in recreating lost jobs or restoring the industrial cities in the Midwest. The real purpose is revealed in the simple phrase “Chinese regional hegemony.” Clearly, by 2011, ruling circles in the US had decided that the PRC was more than an economic cherry ready to be plucked. Instead, it had developed into an economic powerhouse, a true, even the true, competitor in global markets; indeed, it had become a robust threat to U.S. hegemony. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">With the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the anti-PRC campaign continued, though conducted in an accelerated, cruder fashion, employing sanctions, threats, ultimatums, and even legal chicanery (the detention of one of Huawei’s executives, the daughter of the company’s founder).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">The subsequent Biden administration pursued the same approach, adding another level of belligerence by stirring conflict in the South China Sea and reigniting the Taiwan issue. To anyone paying attention, successive administrations were intensifying aggression against the PRC, a process fueled by the eagerly compliant mainstream media.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">It has become commonplace on the left to explain the growing hostility to the PRC by the U.S. and its NATO satellites as the instigation of a new Cold War, a revival of the anti-Communist crusades strengthening after World War II. In the past, I have suggested as<a href="https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2021/01/its-now-bidens-cold-war.html"> much</a>. But that would be grossly misleading. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">The original Cold War was a struggle between capitalism and socialism. Whether Western critics will concede that the Soviet alternative was really socialism is irrelevant. It was a sharp and near-total alternative, and the West fought it as such. The Soviet Union did not organize its production to participate in global markets, it did not compete for global markets, nor did it threaten the profitability of capitalist enterprises through global competition. In short, the Soviet Union offered a potent option to Western capitalism, but not the threat of a rival for markets or profits. Moreover, Soviet foreign policy both condemned capitalism and explicitly sought to win other countries to socialist construction.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">The same cannot be said for the Western antagonism to the PRC. The West courted Peoples’ China assiduously from the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution through the entire Deng era. Western powers saw the PRC as either an ally against the Soviet Union, a source of cheap labor, an investment windfall, or a virgin market. But with China’s success in weathering the capitalist crisis of 2007-2009, the U.S. and its allies began to look at the PRC as a dangerous rival <i>within</i> the global system of capitalism. Chinese technologies more than rivaled the West’s; its share of global trade had grown dramatically; and its accumulation of capital and its export of capital were alarming to Western powers bent on pressing their own export of capital.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">In contrast to the actual Cold War, even the most ardent defender of the “Chinese road to socialism” cannot today cite many instances of PRC foreign policy strongly advocating, assisting, or even vigorously defending the fight for socialism anywhere outside of China. Indeed, the basic tenet of PRC policy-- the noninterference in the affairs of others, regardless of their ideologies or policies-- has more in common with Adam Smith than Vladimir Lenin. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">What the Soviet Union took as its internationalist mission-- support for those fighting capitalism-- is not to be found in the CPC’s foreign policy. Nothing demonstrates the differences more than the Soviet’s past solidarity and aid toward Cuba’s socialist construction and the contrasting PRC’s commercial and cultural relations and meager aid.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Accordingly, the PRC’s commercial relations with less developed countries can raise substantial issues. Recently, Ann Garrison, a highly respected solidarity activist, often focusing on imperialism in Africa, wrote a provocative</span> <span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/cobalt-red-how-blood-congo-powers-our-lives">article</a> for<b> Black Agenda Report</b>. In her review of <b>Cobalt Red, How the Blood of the Congo Powers our Lives</b>-- an account of corporate mining and labor exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo-- Garrison makes the following commentary guaranteed to raise the ire of devotees of the “Chinese road to socialism”:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">[The author of <b>Cobalt Red</b>] explains battery technology and the global dominance of battery manufacture by South Korean, Japanese, and, most of all, Chinese industrial titans. <i>Huge Chinese corporations so dominate Congolese cobalt mining, processing and battery manufacture that one has to ask why a communist government, however capitalist in fact, doesn’t at least somehow require more responsible sourcing of minerals processed and then advanced along the supply chain within its borders.</i> I hope that Kara’s book has or will be translated into Chinese. (my emphasis) </span></div></blockquote><div><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Predictably, rejoinders came fast and furious. In both an<a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/china-congo"> interview </a>and <a href="https://blackagendareport.com/index.php/disappointing-rush-judgment-chinas-role-congo">response</a> posted on <b>Black Agenda Report</b>, Garrison's critics struggled to explain why PRC-based corporations were <i>not</i> contributing to the impoverishment and exploitation of Congolese workers. They cited Chinese investments in infrastructure and in modernization; they noted huge increases in productivity wrought by Chinese technology; they reminded Garrison of the corruption of the DRC government and local capitalists, and even blamed capitalism itself. How, one critic asked, could the PRC be singled out, when other (admittedly capitalist) countries were doing it as well? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Yet none even made a feeble attempt to explain how the extraction of one of the most sought-after minerals in modern industry could leave the people of the mineral-rich DRC with one of the lowest-- if not the lowest-- median incomes in the entire world. This striking fact points to the enormous rate of exploitation engaged in cobalt, copper, and other resource extraction in this poverty-stricken African country (for a Marxist angle on this question, see Charles Andrews’s <a href="https://www.idcommunism.com/2024/01/china-plunders-congo-exploits-miners-antiimperialists-approve.html">article</a>, cited by Garrison, but seemingly misunderstood by her). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">In their zeal to defend the PRC’s Belt and Road initiative, these same defenders of the penetration of Chinese capital in poor countries often cite the frequent Chinese concept of “win-win” -- the idea that Chinese capital brings with it victory for both the capital supplier and those ‘benefitted’ by the capital. Theorists of the non-class “win-win” concept are never clear exactly who the beneficiaries are -- other capitalists, corrupt government officials, or the working class. Nevertheless, within the intensely competitive global capitalist system, this “win-win” is not sustainable and is contrary to both experience and the laws of capitalist development. Theoretically, it owes more to the thinking of David Ricardo than Karl Marx.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">The PRC’s vexing relationship to capitalism has produced contradictions at home as well as globally. The ongoing collapse of the largely private construction/real-estate industry is one very large example. Once a major factor in PRC growth, overproduction of housing is now a substantial drag on economic advance. Monthly sales of new homes by private developers peaked late in 2020 at over 1.5 trillion yuan and fell to a little more than .25 trillion yuan at the beginning of 2024. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">With the private real estate sector on the verge of bankruptcy and a huge number of residential properties unsold or unfinished, the PRC leadership is caught in a twenty-first-century version of the infamous scissors crisis that brought the Soviet NEP-- the experiment with capitalist development of the productive forces-- to a halt. If the government allows the private developers to fail, it will have harsh repercussions throughout the private sector, with banks, and foreign investors. If the government bails out the developers, it will remove the market consequences of capitalist excess and put the burden of sustaining capitalist failure on the backs of the Chinese people.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">According to <b>The Wall Street Journal</b>, the government, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is considering placing “the state back in charge of the property market, part of a push to rein in the private sector.” The <b>WSJ</b> editors<a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-real-estate-crisis-state-housing-656c5093"> construe </a>this as reviving “Socialist Ideas”-- a welcome thought, if true. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">The article claims that in CCP General Secretary Xi’s view, “too much credit moved into property speculation, adding risks to the financial system, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and diverting resources from what Xi considers to be the ‘real economy’-- sectors such as manufacturing and high-end technology.…” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Putting aside the question of how the private real estate sector was allowed to create an enormous bubble of unfinished and unsold homes, the move to return responsibility for housing to the public sector should be welcome, restoring price stability and planning, and eliminating speculation, overproduction, and economic disparities. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Unfortunately, there will be uncertain consequences and difficulties for banks, investors, and real estate buyers who purchased under the private regimen. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">It is worth noting that no Western capitalist country or Japan has or would address a real estate bubble by absorbing real estate into the public sector.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Under Xi’s leadership, the direction of the PRC’s ‘reforms’ may have shifted somewhat away from an infatuation with markets, private ownership, and foreign capital. The former “enrich yourselves” tolerance for wealth accumulation has been tempered by conscious efforts at raising the living standards of the poorest. Xi has made a priority of “targeted poverty alleviation,” with impressive success. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Western intellectuals harshly criticize the PRC’s ‘democracy’ because it rejects the multi-party, periodic election model long-favored in the West. These same intellectuals fetishize a form of democracy, regardless of whether that particular form earns the trust of those supposedly represented. The mere fact that a procedure purports to deliver democratic or representative results does not guarantee that it actually makes good on its promise.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">If China-critics were truly concerned with democratic or popular outcomes, they would turn to measures or surveys of public confidence, satisfaction, or trust in government to judge the respective systems. On this count, the PRC is always found at or near the top in public trust (for example, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1362804/trust-government-world/">here </a>and<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/01/22/the-countries-that-trust-their-government-most-and-least-infographic/?sh=3d2d7bc2777a"> here</a>). Moreover, Chinese society <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/trust">shows</a> high interpersonal or social trust, another measure of success in producing popular social cohesion by a government.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">It’s telling that with the Western obsession with democracy, there is little interest in holding bourgeois democracy up to any relevant measure of its trust or popularity. When it is done, the U.S. fares very poorly, with a six-decade decline in public trust, according to</span> <span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/public-trust-in-government-1958-2023/">Pew</a>. As recently as February 28, the most<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/02/28/representative-democracy-remains-a-popular-ideal-but-people-around-the-world-are-critical-of-how-its-working/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=d1476a92c7-Weekly_3-2-24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-d1476a92c7-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D"> recent</a> Pew poll shows that even people who <i>do</i> respect “representative democracy” are critical of how it's working. Their answer to their skepticism may be found “if more women, people from poor backgrounds and young adults held elective office”, say respondents. Those elites who so glibly talk of “our democracy,” in contrast to those including the CCP that they call “authoritarians,” might pause to listen to the people of their own country.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">The PRC has shocked Western critics with the breakneck pace of its adoption of non-emission energy production. In 2020, the Chinese anticipated generating 1200 gigawatts of solar and wind power by 2030. That goal and more will likely be reached by the end of 2024. Overall, the PRC expects to account for more new clean-energy capacity this year than the average growth in electricity demand over the last decade and a half. This means, of course, that emissions have likely peaked and will be receding in the years ahead-- an achievement well ahead of Western estimates and Western achievements, and a victory for the global environmental movement.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">At the same time, the PRC’s successful competition in the solar-panel market makes it the target of global competitors, a brutal struggle that undermines the espoused “win-win” approach. Despite the benign tone of “win-win,” market competition is not bound by polite resignation, but aggression, conflict, and, as Lenin affirmed, ultimately war. That is the inescapable logic of capitalism. PRC engagement with the market cannot negate it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Western leftists too often simplify the ‘Chinese Question’ by making it a parlor game revolving around whether China is or is not a socialist country, an error confusing a settled, accomplished state of affairs with a contested process. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">As long as capitalism exists and holds seats of political power, the process of building socialism remains unstable and unfinished. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">The 1936 Soviet constitution declared in Article One that the USSR was “a socialist state of workers and peasants,” a status that was under great duress over the subsequent following decades. The 1977 constitution stated even more boldly that the USSR was “a socialist state of the whole people…,” a state without classes and, by implication, class struggle. A decade and a half later, there was no USSR. Building socialism is a fragile process and one prone to reversals and defeats. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Thus, we should follow Palme Dutt’s sage advice and observe developments in the PRC with vigilance and a critical eye. If building socialism is a dynamic process, we should attend to its direction, rather than pronouncing its summary success or failure. The PRC is a complex creation with a complex-- often contradictory-- relationship with other countries as well as the socialist project. The cause of socialism is ill served by either ignoring or exaggerating both missteps and victories in the PRC’s revolutionary path.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span><br /><br /><br /></div>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-90339220565026431102024-02-20T12:59:00.000-08:002024-02-23T05:07:11.760-08:00Is There a Future for the Left?<blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">…the Left narrative, no matter how accurate and intellectually powerful it may be, cannot expect to catch the imagination of the citizenry without including a vision for a real alternative future. Moreover, working-class institutions need to be reinstituted for the enhancement of class consciousness and authentic socialist parties need to be rediscovered for the Left narrative to become politically effective. Social movements are important, but their actions rarely have lasting effects. Only political parties can succeed in forging the Left narrative into the policy agenda and turn it into a programmatic plan for social change. Understandably enough, this is quite a tall order, but the Left needs to win once again the hearts and minds of the laboring classes. But it needs the necessary political agencies and cultural instruments to do so. It cannot accomplish it on intellectual grounds alone, especially with the politics of identity acting as a spearhead for social transformation... The Communist Manifesto would have remained just a mere political document if it wasn’t for the existence of radical political parties across the globe to embrace it as their guide and vision for the emancipation of the working class from the yoke of capital. </i><i>The Left has a Great Story to Share About Alternatives to Capitalism-- But Sucks at Telling It</i>, CJ Polychroniou (<b>Common Dreams</b>)</span></blockquote><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">Shorn of the academic jargon, Polychroniou’s conclusion to his <b>Common Dreams</b> <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/left-alternatives-to-capitalism">article</a> gets a lot right about the failings of the US and European left and the road back to relevance.<br /><b><br />It is true that today the left’s unstated action model is a plethora of focused, but single-issue social movements.</b> However, that model has enjoyed, at best, limited success in the US since single-issue activism won big gains in the anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the movements effectively complemented a bloody defeat of US Cold War aggression and the other completed the formal constitutional promise of full-citizenship rights for Blacks, women, and other minorities. <br /><br />But substantial, larger, associated issues remain unresolved. US imperialism continues unabated with ever-more casualties and injustices; the inequalities suffered by oppressed groups remain intact, with a token stratum of those groups allowed through the door of privilege, even to elite status, but with most lagging far behind.<br /><br />Social movements have focused on specific policies (NAFTA, tax structure, minimum wage, healthcare, immigration reform), emerging trends (globalization, “neoliberalism”), gross inequality (Occupy), changes in governance (Arab spring, police reform), environmental degradation (fracking), or US foreign intervention among many other identifiable wrongs, all of which burn brightly in the beginning, then unfortunately just as quickly fade, as protest confronts the glacial, fractured electoral system. <br /><b><br />It is also true that most of the left operates and acts without any overarching program of reform or revolution.</b> The majority of US leftists, for example, enthusiastically, reluctantly, or by default rely upon the Democratic Party and electoral politics to drive broad, systemic change. They may hope that their issues will be embraced by the party’s policy makers, they may struggle with the party’s entrenched leaders for a suitable program, or they may simply defer to the Democrats out of desperation. DSA, a self-described ‘democratic’ socialist party, is very far from cutting the umbilical cord with the Democrats. While the Green Party expends impressive effort to achieve ballot status, it brings a hodge-podge of candidates to the ballot, seldom aligned with any kind of common program or larger goal. And the small Marxist parties have failed to impact the labor movement or pressure reform movements from the left, as last did the US Communist Party of Gus Hall’s era when anti-Communist repression was far more intense than today and the word “socialism” was then a term of abuse. <br /><b><br />But it is not just a program that is missing, but a vision as well. </b><br /><br />‘Anti-capitalism’ is not a vision, but a defiance; it expresses hostility and resistance, but not rejection. It gives us no alternative to capitalism. Most of the US left counts itself as anti-capitalist, but one can only guess at what that might mean. <br /><br />Some are more specific: they are anti-neoliberal capitalism, anti-disaster capitalism, anti-racial capitalism, or perhaps anti-monopoly capitalism. But, by implication, are they for some other kind of capitalism? Do they pine for the era before neoliberalism? Do they imagine capitalism without racism? Do they wish to turn the clock back to the stage before monopoly capitalism? An imagined time when capitalism did not spawn disasters?<br /><br />These are not political visions, they’re mere fantasies! <br /><br />The dominant alternative vision to capitalism until the collapse of real-existing-socialism in the late-twentieth century was Marxist socialism. From the rise of mass socialist parties in the final decades of the nineteenth century, the vision sketched by Marx and his followers dominated the hopes of ‘anti-capitalist’ working people. Whatever else the early Marxist militants meant by socialism, they agreed that socialism should end the exploitation of workers by capitalists; they envisioned ending capitalism once and for all and not merely managing it or buffering its worse aspects. <br /><br />With the birth of real-existing-socialism, creating, shaping, and developing the vision proved to be a lengthy, often messy process, as though serious onlookers would expect it to be otherwise. Previously rare or unheard-of levels of economic, cultural, and human growth were achieved. Enormous sacrifices were made. And internal and external enemies were met.<br /><br />Some leaders rose to meet challenges, some failed to do so. Mistakes were plentiful, as were acts of unparalleled heroism. The costs of change and of development were enormous, which any thoughtful observer would concede in a life-and-death struggle against capitalism. Ultimately, those living in the lands where socialism was won, no matter how briefly or for how long, must weigh the sacrifices against the gains made, and discount the judgment of smug, privileged foreign critics.<br /><br />Ironically, Polychroniou, who correctly steers the left away from aimlessly drifting in the political maelstrom of left-wing faddism and unmoored posturing, paints a picture of real-existing-socialism so without merit or achievement as to turn anyone away from the socialist alternative. <br /><br />Polychroniou, like his sometime collaborator, Noam Chomsky, often shows an impressive critical eye toward the failings of the capitalist system and of imperialism, but follows unfailingly the conventional, stereotypic Cold War demonization of real-existing-socialism; he cannot even credit twentieth-century socialism with being ‘real,’ calling it “actually-existing-socialism.” Like Chomsky, Polychroniou mistrusts the mainstream media at every turn, recognizing its obedience to the ruling class, but accepts everything it sells about the ruling class’s arch-enemy: the real-existing-socialism of the last century.<br /><br />As a result, Polychroniou’s often perceptive comments are diminished, lost before disdain for a project that he believes has proven, in reality, to be an unmitigated disaster. According to Polychroniou, “actually existing socialism” was “undemocratic,” undermining its “social, cultural, and economic achievements…” “Workers had <i>no</i> say in economic decisions… [T]he rulers possessed no wealth and had no private property of their own but made <i>all </i>of the decisions for the rest of society. The USSR was at best a ‘deformed workers’ state’.” [my emphasis]<br /><br />Polychroniou sees this ‘deformation’ as a huge impediment to the achievement of socialism. Consequently, he is surprised that its disappearance did not bring on a flowering-- a revival-- of interest and commitment to socialism. “Instead of feeling liberated by the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’ the western Left felt a loss of identity and entered a long period of intellectual confusion and political paralysis.” In other words, the Western Left suffered malaise, lost its bearings, and floundered at a time when Polychroniou thought his “real” socialism was within reach. <br /><br />Surely this bizarre psychologistic explanation of the failure of a Left unburdened by the legacy of Communism is as unsatisfying as Polychroniou’s comic strip characterization of over 70 years of real-existing-socialism. As he concedes, the so-called Western Left found its opportunity to fulfill its promise of a different alternative. But the promise collapsed before it got started, degenerating into scholastic quarrels over truth, identity, and forms of governance. <br /><br /><b>Still Polychroniou recognizes the urgent need for a Left political party -- a class-based organization of those committed to a common road to social change-- to serve as the vehicle for a program and a vision.</b> In his words, “[The] Left needs to win once again the hearts and minds of the laboring classes.” In his judgment, systemic change must be realized through the political party. However, he surely knows that the idea that radical political ideas can be realized through centrist parties has long been discredited, though far too many radical organizers continue to pursue that dead end in the US and Europe.<br /><br />It must be acknowledged that the popular idea that a Left political party can be constituted by addition, simply bringing all the various social movements together, is equally flawed, relying on the magical thinking that ideological proximity or contiguity is the same thing as the organic unity necessary for party-building. <br /><br />Similarly, the seductive idea that a political party can be constructed around the mere fact that it is new and different from the failed, bankrupt center-left parties of Europe and the US has been proven wrong by the corruption or decline of Europe’s new wave. From the German Greens to Spain’s Podemos, Italy’s Five Star, or Greece's SYRIZA, the promise of a shiny new toy filling the political vacuum left by a dying center-left is decidedly broken. <br /><br />Without a distinctive vision, without a concrete program, with only a pledge for more “democracy,” all of the new wave disappointed its idealistic followers, leaving many disgusted and disenchanted with political action.<br /><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">To his credit Polychroniou is critical of this trend. In a September, 2023 article <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/stefanos-kasselakis-syriza">(<i>Endgame for Syriza, The Unbearable Lightness of the Greek Left</i></a><i>)</i> in <b>Common Dreams</b>, he chronicles the rise and fall of Greece’s SYRIZA party, a new-wave, self-styled radical party that actually grasped the brass ring of political power in 2015, but soon capitulated to capital without a fight. Since SYRIZA’s fall from its former heights, Polychroniou ponders its future.<br /><br />“The answer to that mystery,” he says, “was revealed during the leadership election that was held just this past Sunday [September 24, 2023] when party members elected a gay, liberal, former <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/tag/goldman-sachs">Goldman Sachs</a> trader, shipping investor, and political neophyte Stefanos Kasselakis to head the once radical left-wing Syriza party.” The once “radical” SYRIZA has devolved into a nondescript liberal party of the center/center right (as has the German Greens). <br /><br />But he concludes his insightful essay on SYRIZA’s rapid decline with this bizarre note: “Under Kasselakis, Syriza will cease having affinity to leftist politics in any form or shape, which means that <b>Greece will now be left with a Leninist-Stalinist Communist Party as the only large-scale organized political force fighting for the interest of the working class.</b>” [my emphasis]<br /><br />Is the idea of the KKE-- the Greek Marxist-Leninist party </span><span style="font-size: xx-large;">“fighting for the interest of the working class”</span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> which he dismissively refers-- so distasteful to Polychroniou as to rule it out-of-hand? Would Greek working people be better off if the KKE were not fighting for their interests? Is the fourth largest political party in Greece declared “untouchable” by Polychroniou? Is he apologizing because Greece actually has a committed fighter for the interests of its working class? <br /><br />Polychroniou’s dismissal comes with no logic and no evidence. It is simply the deeply entrenched, unexamined anti-Communism that he shares with so many middle-strata, academic and intellectual leftists of his and past generations. Despite KKE’s long history of contesting capitalism and imperialism, its unwavering, heroic resistance to fascism, and its persistent promotion of a Greek society free of exploitation, Polychroniou and others of his ilk can find no circumstances in which they could even conditionally support “the only large-scale organized political force fighting for the interest of the working class” in Greece.<br /><b><br />Surely, this is the epitome of blind, foolish, and counterproductive anti-Communism.</b><br /><br />It is ironic that the KKE pointed out-- long before 2015 and Polychroniou-- that SYRIZA would not and could not answer the challenges facing Greece in the throes of crisis. At the time, intellectuals like Polychroniou, dismissed KKE’s assessment and charged it with sectarianism for refusing to join in coalition with the now admittedly discredited SYRIZA.<br /><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">*****</span></div><span style="font-size: x-large;">It is, however, a good thing that Polychroniou and others are reexamining the tactics and strategies of the European and US Left in the twenty-first century. It is difficult to reconcile the occurrence of economic catastrophes unseen since the Great Depression, numerous tragic and bloody wars of aggression and domination, and social and political crises with the lack of significant social change or revolution over the last quarter-century. The title of Vincent Bevins’s recent book, <b>If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution</b>, captures the dilemma well. Arguably more people have been motivated to protest existing conditions than ever before, but no revolutionary change has ensued. Why?<br /><br />The question, or one very much like it, is taken up by Anton Jäger and Arthur Borriello in their recent book, <b>The Populist Moment: The Left After the Great Recession</b>. Both books are the subject of a critical review in the 8 February 2024 issue of <b>The London Review of Books</b> (<i>A Circular Motion</i>, James Butler).<br /><br />Certainly, the failure of the Left and the current numerous fractures on the Left deserve serious retrospection and assessment. The way forward could well come from such study. <b>But it will falter if poisoned from the onset with mindless anti-Communism</b>. It will be prone to the same limiting calls to individualism, to identity, and the vacuous, vague, but always heralded cry for more “democracy.” A challenge to capitalism will require more than virtue-signaling.<br /><br />Surely, the lessons of a century of social upheaval, confrontation, and revolution animated by working-class organizations cannot be cavalierly dismissed. The role of Communists and Communist Parties was decisive in colossal social change in the twentieth century. Might they be decisive again?<br /><br />Greg Godels<br /><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com">zzsblogml@gmail.com</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></div>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-70874354756810154942024-01-26T16:53:00.000-08:002024-01-26T16:53:17.849-08:00Oil, Natural Gas, and Capitalism<span style="font-size: x-large;">The great powers-- the leading players in the imperialist system-- have always required a source for the energy to drive their economic engines. They needed energy resources to build and empower their military might; they needed energy to grow their national economies and power their vessels of trade and transportation. Indeed, their socio-economic systems would have collapsed without ample and available energy sources.<br /><br />At the dawn of the capitalist industrial era, that source came mainly from coal. Coal powered the machines that grew the productivity of labor to great new heights. It is reasonable to think that only those countries with easy access to coal could then become great capitalist powers.<br /><br />Beginning at the turn of the last century, oil-- an abundant, efficient, and easily stored and transported energy source-- became essential for the exercise of economic and military might. As modes of transportation became dependent upon petroleum products, an intense rivalry was stoked for access to oil, often found in more remote areas of the world, far removed from the great urban centers of the great capitalist powers.<br /><br />At the same time, the great capitalist powers accelerated their drive to dominate the entire world. Lenin and others saw this as a higher stage of capitalist development impelled by the dominance of monopoly capitalism, finance capital, and capital export.<br /><br />Access and control of energy resources played an extremely large role in motivating this development, leading to conflict and colonization over the areas offering abundant oil production.<br /><br />It could be said that “oil imperialism” was a critical factor in the course of the Second World War: Japan -- a country without adequate oil reserves-- needed to secure resources to pursue its imperialist mission; likewise, Germany’s eastward turn was prodded by its thirst for Soviet oil.<br /><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Constituting the leading imperialist power after WWII, the US had its own adequate petroleum resources, but sought to guarantee that global oil supplies would remain available to its clients in the crusade against Communism.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">After the end of the Cold War, new technologies unleashed huge reservoirs of oil and natural gas in the US. A once-stable international market was consequently disrupted, allowing US producers to reshape, even dominate, the global distribution of oil and natural gas.<br /><br />But in the decades to follow the end of the Cold War, those capitalist countries that were the most trusted anti-Communist allies were relying on long-established, existing sources of energy or had turned to convenient, adjacent, transit modes from the energy giant, the now-capitalist Russia.<br /><br />Europe, for example, had grown increasingly reliant on Soviet oil and gas even before European socialism’s fall. And OPEC’s distribution network and quasi-planned marketing maintained a persistent global stability of price and availability.<br /><br />From where would the US, undergoing a technological revolution with fracking, take its oil and gas bonanza?<br /><br />I began to discuss the US shift toward what I called “US oil and gas imperialism” seven years ago (<a href="http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2017/02/new-developments-in-political-economy.html">here</a>, <a href="http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2017/06/">here</a>, <a href="http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2017/07/more-on-energy-imperialism.html">here</a>,<a href="http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2017/12/economic-nationalism-what-it-means.html"> here</a> and <a href="https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2018/04/stirring-energy-pot.html">here</a>). I wrote in<a href="https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-us-economy-at-mid-year.html"> July of 2019</a>:<br /><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">US oil and gas imperialism is another feature of the new economic nationalism. With US oil production matching or exceeding every other global producer, and with natural gas extraction growing dramatically, the economic nationalists foresee the US now competing successfully for markets. The conventional explanation of the US aggression against oil-producing states must now be retired. The US is no longer solely obsessed with commanding and dominating existing oil producers-- US intervention is not simply about the oil in the way it has been in the past. That is, it is not simply acquiring oil resources that motivates US aggression, but commanding oil markets as well.</span></div></blockquote><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Thus, the US is also out to wreck competing oil and gas producers by sanctions, disruptions, and destruction.</u> The US corporations want the markets in order to peddle their own energy resources. The long trail of wrecked, dysfunctional, and economically strangled global oil producers attests to this new motivation and serves US energy corporations well. </span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I have been writing often of this shift of US imperial design for over two years. Nothing demonstrates the intent of the new energy imperialism as does the Department of Energy’s recent renaming of US natural gas as “Freedom Gas” and the product as “molecules of freedom.” <u>This silly branding is part of the campaign to win Europe and other gas-dependent markets from Russia and Iran/Qatar. Even though US liquified “freedom gas” is 20% more expensive than Russian gas, the Trump administration bullied Germany’s Angela Merkel to agree to two new LNG terminals in Germany. Her admission that LNG from the US would not break even for at least a decade demonstrates the aggressive face of the new US energy imperialism.</u></span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>US gas producers have stoked anti-Russia sentiment to draw Poland and the Baltic states into their LNG market nexus.</u> US LNG annual exports to Portugal and Spain grew from a tiny base to nearly 20 and 30 billion cubic feet, respectively, between 2016 and 2017.</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>And US crude oil exports soared after the crisis in the Straits of Hormuz. US oil shipping nearly doubled in the aftermath of the mysterious “attacks” in the Persian Gulf.</u> President Trump underscored the attractiveness of foregoing the Straits and buying from the US. Rather than taking the “dangerous journey,” Japan and PRChina should be reminded that “the US has just become (by far) the largest producer of energy in the world.” (my emphasis)</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />Writing in 2019, I was anticipating geopolitical events geared to shifting the natural gas market dramatically in favor of the US. I foresaw the “anti-Russia” push as targeting the natural gas market in Europe and “crisis” in the Middle East as disrupting shipments from traditional Middle East suppliers. </span></div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>Hostility and conflict would be the thumb-on-the-scales to offset the higher price (lower risk) of US liquified natural gas.</span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />Unlike the Cold War era, where the US postured as a protective shield for safe, durable, and inexpensive energy channels, the post-Cold War US policy places US immediate economic interests above the supposed alliance obligations; without consultation, the US tossed aside its role among its allies as the guarantor of peace and security and is taking on the role of international energy huckster.<br /><br />In 2022, the US secured a major victory in oil and gas imperialism with the war in Ukraine. As a result of a concerted campaign to destabilize Ukraine, separate it from Russia, and coax it into NATO’s anti-Putin alliance, the US drew Russia into a long, bloody war. The war proved to be a veritable gift for the US and its energy industry. Anti-Russia hysteria provoked the US’s European allies into breaking economic ties with Russia, including the big prize--cutting off Russia’s supplies of natural gas. Seduced by Cold War-like rhetoric and fear-mongering, European countries outdid each other with belligerence, culminating in refusing cheap Russian energy resources. To seal this self-defeating move on the part of US “allies,” the US organized the destruction of crucial Russian pipelines. Left with no alternative to Russian energy, Europe turned to their US “partner.”<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">US exports of oil to Europe more than doubled between 2021 and today. Likewise, disrupting natural gas distribution has paid off for the US with liquid natural gas (LNG) exports nearly doubling from 2018 to 2022. <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/americas-gas-bonanza-brings-biden-new-political-dilemmas-34404a5f">Quoting</a> <b>The Wall Street Journal</b>:<br /><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Russia’s invasion of Ukraine kicked U.S. [LNG] exports into overdrive. Since March 2022, U.S. developers have signed 57 supply agreements representing about 73 million metric tons of LNG annually… more than four times the number of contracts they signed between 2020 and 2021.</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Many of these contracts run for 20 years and underpin the construction of terminals that have yet to be built. LNG exports are expected to more than double [again!] from current levels by the end of this decade…</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />Thus, thanks to the war in Ukraine, US allies had the privilege of incurring the costs of liquefaction, shipping, and building LNG terminals to show their solidarity with the US-instigated war.<br /><br />Foolishly, European leaders rushed to show their support for the war, even at tremendous cost to their own economies.<br /><br />Likewise, the unfolding war in the Middle East plays into the hands of the US oil and natural gas imperialists. As the <b>WSJ</b> <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/shale-is-keeping-the-world-awash-with-oil-as-conflicts-abound-7da38717">concedes</a>:<br /><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In the longer term, the Red Sea situation could bring more business for U.S. LNG shippers, which are building out export capacity at Gulf Coast facilities and are vying for big contracts with big buyers in Europe, analysts said.</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The percentage of LNG tankers set to pass through the Suez Canal has dropped to its lowest point in at least a decade.</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />But the LNG will be coming from the West, thanks to the beneficence of the US government anticipating the changing energy market!<br /><br /><a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/the-red-sea-conflict-is-scrambling-shipping-europe-is-bearing-the-brunt-a0aac0e3">Paul Hannon and William Boston</a> put it well: “For the second time in three years, a conflict in Europe’s neighborhood is threatening to weaken a struggling economy, while a more robust U.S. is watching from a safe distance.” <br /><br />It is indeed an odd ally that takes advantage of the sacrifices that it imposes upon its friends to make. While US capitalism has enjoyed strong growth, thanks to two wars in other lands, its European friends have endured inflation and stagnation. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Germany, led by Social Democrats and Greens, has met the US-led call to war with enthusiasm, militarism, and aggression unseen since the Second World War. Germany has materially supported Ukraine second only to the US and matched the US’s shuttering of economic relations. Where the US has shown healthy growth for 2023, Germany has fallen into recession, its industrial sector racked by high energy costs and supply shortages-- a steep price to pay for following US leadership.<a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/europes-growth-engine-is-broken-38e1d91c"> “‘The threat of deindustrialization is real,’ said Max Jankowsky, chief executive of GL Giesserei Lossnitz, a 175- year-old foundry in the eastern German state of Saxony.”</a> German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s popular satisfaction is the lowest for a chancellor since 1997. Germany-- the leading power in the European Union, an industrial giant, the world’s fourth largest economy-- has been brought to its knees by US oil and gas imperialism. <br /><br />The people, and especially the left, need a constant reminder of the material interests behind global imperialism and the mechanism that powers it. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Imperialism is <i>not</i> a consequence of bad leadership from Trump, Biden, Johnson, or Modi or their ilk; it is not the product of neoliberalism or any other ideology; it is not the result of a lust for power. In short, imperialism is not a matter of moral choice or competence. Instead, it is an imperative of capitalism in its modern form. It is an expression of the rivalries generated by capitalist competition for markets, resources, and most tellingly, profits. When that competition reaches its greatest intensity, war ensues. <br /><br />Some would like to believe that we can break the link between capitalism, exploitation, inequality, poverty, environmental degradation, and war. They aver that a benign capitalism, regulated by enlightened governments, can escape the imperialist system. History shows no such eventuality. People are awakening to the impossibility of “fixing the system.”<br /><br />The left overlooks this at its peril.<br /><br />Greg Godels<br /><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com">zzsblogml@gmail.com</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></div>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-61164005348460695522024-01-15T15:30:00.000-08:002024-01-15T15:30:19.458-08:00The Willful Destruction of a People<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The US corporate media has maintained a near unanimous support for the Israeli destruction of Gaza-- the home of 2.2 million Palestinians. While pundits engage in parlor games over what degree of violence is “justified” by the Hamas attack upon Israel, while public intellectuals fall in line with the gutless unconditional support of Israeli punitive actions, tens of thousands of Palestinian people-- largely men, women, and children going about their day-to-day lives-- have been killed, maimed, wounded, or terrorized. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Corruption, racism, and cowardice come together to produce a rare near-total US ruling-class consensus behind the brutal action of the ultra-right, ultra-nationalist, and racist Israeli government. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The enforcement of this consensus is unprecedented and a truly appalling sight to behold. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The highly publicized clash over even an embarrassingly tepid pushback by elite administrators at elite universities over free speech-- a normally sacrosanct intellectual fallback-- underscores the complete, unconditional freedom-of-action that Israel enjoys with the rich and powerful in the US. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">While the machinations of donors and administrators at Harvard, Penn, and MIT should be of little more than entertainment value for most of us, the raw, public exercise of the power of wealth in shaping academic institutions should cause many to recoil. Those who naively believed in the independence and integrity of academia should be chastened accordingly. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Black Harvard President Gay would learn that neither her own elite background nor the thin armor of the faddish liberal DEI mutation of anti-racism would protect her from the vulgar bullying of wild-eyed Zionist billionaires and rightwing witch hunters.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Christopher Rufo, puffed up with his own role in bringing down Harvard’s Gay, concedes that he couldn’t have done it without the collaboration of the center-left that accepted any excuse to enforce support for Israel. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Despite the crude editorial endorsement of and overwhelming official enthusiasm for the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, a different message has gotten through to the US populace. Whether it is the heart-rending pictures of death and destruction, the cracks in the carefully hedged and vetted news stories, or the alternative media, a bold, determined movement against Israel’s vicious assault on Gaza has emerged to challenge the ruling-class monolith. Risking economic reprisals, future status, and public shaming, hundreds of thousands-- overwhelmingly youth-- have stood and marched for life and a future for Gaza and Palestine. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It is truly a remarkable moment of crass opportunism, slavish conformity, and viciousness confronted by high principle, self-sacrifice, and courage. It is this kind of moment that forces people to examine how their words and self-styled image coheres with reality. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The facts are effective in awakening people to the brutal fate of Palestinians as a people. Because the Israeli government is so blatantly indifferent to international outrage, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Wall Street Journal</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is embarrassed to report the truth-on-the-ground in Gaza. Whether reluctantly or not, a recent front-page news story--</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-destruction-bombing-israel-aa528542" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gaza’s Destruction Stands Out In Modern History</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (softened in the online edition to: </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Ruined Landscape of Gaza After Nearly Three Months of Bombing</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) -- describes an almost unimaginable living hell. Its lead is worth quoting in full:</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The war in the Gaza Strip is generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By mid-December, Israel had </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israeli-airstrike-hamas-commander-civilian-deaths-3b6be664?mod=world_lead_pos3" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dropped 29,000 bombs</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, munitions and shells on the strip. Nearly 70% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The bombing has damaged Byzantine churches and ancient mosques, factories and apartment buildings, shopping malls and luxury hotels, theaters and schools. Much of the </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israeli-siege-leaves-gaza-without-clean-water-causing-disease-41e2ab73" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">water</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, electrical, communications and </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-al-shifa-hospital-hamas-ca06fd21" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">healthcare</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Most of the strip’s 36 hospitals are shut down, and only eight are accepting patients. Citrus trees, olive groves and greenhouses have been obliterated. More than two-thirds of its schools are damaged.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">While most media mention the 22,000 or more deaths or the over 80,000 total Palestinian casualties, they dutifully treat the facts as allegations and with vastly more than warranted skepticism. Nonetheless, the numbers have shocked millions around the world.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WSJ</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> article goes further, offering comfortable, secure readers a taste of what life is like for those not physically harmed by Israeli bombs:</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the south, where more than a million </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-is-falling-into-absolute-chaos-aid-groups-say-5d37e9bf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">displaced residents</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have fled, Gazans sleep in the street and burn garbage to cook. Some 85% of the strip’s 2.2 million people have fled their homes and are confined by </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-war-civilian-death-grid-09888404" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Israeli evacuation orders</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to less than one-third of the strip, according to the United Nations…</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">According to analysis of satellite data by remote-sensing experts at the City University of New York and Oregon State University, as many as 80% of the buildings in northern Gaza, where the bombing has been most severe, are damaged or destroyed, a higher percentage than in Dresden [the site of murderous firebombing in WWII].</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WSJ</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> presents a set of facts and expert observations that are nothing if not damning of the Israeli tactics:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">・Robert Pape, political scientist at the University of Chicago: “What you are seeing in Gaza is in the top 25% of the most intense punishment campaigns in history.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">・” Some 85% of the strip’s 2.2 million people have fled their homes and are confined by Israeli evacuation orders to less than one-third of the strip, according to the United Nations.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">・” He Yin, an assistant professor of geography at Kent State University in Ohio, estimated that 20% of Gaza’s agricultural land has been damaged or destroyed. Winter wheat that should be sprouting around now isn’t visible, he said, suggesting it wasn’t planted.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">・” A World Bank analysis concluded that by Dec. 12, the war had damaged or destroyed 77% of health facilities, 72% of municipal services such as parks, courts and libraries, 68% of telecommunications infrastructure, and 76% of commercial sites, including the almost complete destruction of the industrial zone in the north. More than half of all roads, the World Bank found, have been damaged or destroyed. Some 342 schools have been damaged, according to the U.N., including 70 of its own schools.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">・Where the US dropped 3,678 munitions on the entire nation of Iraq in seven years, Israel has dropped 29,000 on tiny Gaza in a little over two months.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">・On Gaza city: “‘It’s not a livable city anymore,’ said Eyal Weizman, an Israeli-British architect who studies Israel’s approach to the built environment in the Palestinian territories. Any reconstruction, he said, will require ‘a whole system of underground infrastructure, because when you attack the subsoil, everything that runs through the ground—the water, the gas, the sewage—is torn.’”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">・” The level of damage in Gaza is almost double what it was during a 2014 conflict, which lasted 50 days, with five times as many completely destroyed buildings, according to the Shelter Cluster. In the current conflict, as of mid-December, more than 800,000 people had no home left to return to, the World Bank found.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To those seduced by a gutless media and a </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/10/congress-member-pro-israel-donations-military-support" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bought-and-sold political establishment</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, this picture constructed by one of the US’s most conservative papers should bring Israel’s crimes against Gaza into sharper relief; It should be painful to even imagine living under such conditions; it should remove the Gaza question from the realm of political debate to the basic issue of human dignity and survival.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Is there any humane answer beyond: Cease Fire Now!?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-42388208600661840382023-12-21T16:30:00.000-08:002023-12-21T16:30:41.710-08:00Socialism, Democracy, and the Division of Labor<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Professor Richard Wolff is a prominent, influential intellectual, with a big following on the left. He is an erudite, clear, and passionate speaker and writer. He is well-regarded for his exposition of Marx’s ideas-- a “go to” when the media tolerates a conversation critical of capitalism, one even advocating “socialism.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">For all of that, he does not represent Marx’s thought well, nor does he offer a viable, serious alternative to capitalism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is not a question of Wolff’s scholarship or his commitment to justice. It is, instead, a deep-seated, unwavering hostility to the real existing socialism of the twentieth century and the century’s leading Marxist exponents, the Communists. Of course, Wolff is not alone in this prejudice-- and it is a prejudice and not a reasoned conclusion. Since the intense US Red Scare of the 1950s, since the demonization of everything even vaguely linked to Soviet power or Communist and Workers’ Parties, this prejudice has contaminated social, cultural, and political life in this country. Every radical upsurge was forced to or willingly submitted to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ABC</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nything </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">B</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ut </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">C</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ommunism. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In its place, US leftists embraced a kind of radical democracy: the view that bringing the furniture of formal democracy-- “one person, one vote, full participation, and majority rule,” quoting Wolff-- into every institution, every practice, every activity-- would in due time sweep away the exploitation, the inequalities, the indignities of capitalism. Radical, comprehensive democratic practices would be necessary and substantially </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sufficient</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to trigger the march to socialism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">There is evidence that Marx and Engels once also believed that universal suffrage alone (as advocated by the Chartist movement in England) would be an adequate measure on the road to overcoming capitalism. Their practical experience in the 1848 revolutions and the lessons of the Paris Commune dispelled that illusion. They concluded that a revolutionary defeat of the existing order and the replacement of that order with a democracy in the service of the working class would be necessary for moving beyond capitalism. The furniture of formal democracy was sometimes useful, but often unreliable elements in that endeavor. Marx and Engels did not presume that bourgeois democracy would advance those interests or protect them.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But with anti-Communism established as the national religion of the US, generations of US leftists, from the sixties’ SDS to Occupy and DSA, were hostile to Soviet socialism and repelled by Communist ideology. As a result, a “rethought” Marxism became the nourishment for young activists and the sustenance of veteran Cold War radicals. The expansion of certain democratic practices served and serves as the lodestar of these movements.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Professor Wolff rose to prominence in this milieu and it is reflected in his thought. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A recent brief and commendably clear statement of Wolff’s views on the presumed shortcomings of real, existing twentieth-century socialism appears in the article,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://www.citywatchla.com/voices/28081-socialisms-self-criticism-and-real-democracy" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Socialism’s Self Criticism and Real Democracy</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Originally appearing in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">City Watch</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the piece has achieved wide currency: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Economy for All</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CounterPunch</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">LA Progressive</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NewsClick</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Countercurrents</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Eurasia Review</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and many others.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Because he takes it as a settled truth that the socialist countries lacked “real democracy,” Wolff poses the following challenge:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A certain irony of history made the absence of real democracy in socialist countries an ongoing target of many socialists in those countries…</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Because this time it is many socialists who make the encounter, they ask why modern socialism, a social movement critical of capitalism’s lack of real democracy, would itself merit a parallel criticism. Why have socialist experiments to date produced a self-criticism focused on their inability to create and maintain authentic democratic systems??</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wolff searches for an explanation for this presumed lack of democracy in “socialist experiments.” The search takes him to a common feature of capitalism and socialism (and he sometimes seems to suggest in previous social formations): </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The answer lies in the employer-employee relationship.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The employer-employee relation is indeed often a feature of capitalist and socialist enterprises. Soviet enterprises had managers who presumably hired individuals at state-owned enterprises. No doubt, it</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> could have</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reflected a hierarchical relationship; it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">could have</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reflected a relation of dominance; and, further, it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">could have</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reflected the exploitation relationship. But it need not do so simply because of the existence of an employer/employee relationship. That can easily be shown with a simple, mundane hypothetical example:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Faced with a plumbing catastrophe, Jones engages the Smith Plumbing Company. Jones hires Smith’s firm to fix the kitchen sink. Jones </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">employs</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Smith and company; Smith sends a worker, an </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">employee</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (but not an </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">employee</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of Jones), to make the repair. Jones is the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> employer</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and Smith’s company is his/her </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">employee</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Yet there is no hierarchy, no dominance, nor any exploitation by Jones.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Further, Smith has five employees, who Smith lords over, dominates, and exploits. Here, the employer-employee relationship generates entirely different, negative socially-significant outcomes. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">We have one innocuous, one exploitative employer/employee relationship. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Why does the employer/employee distinction fail to reveal anything relevant regarding real democracy or the struggle for socialism?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The character of employment, the nominal expression for the employer/employee relationship, is historically determined by the division of labor. Under capitalism, its character is tied to the exploitation relationship. That is, given that ownership of enterprises resides with private individuals or groups, owners establish employer/employee relations as hierarchical, dominating, and exploitative to secure surplus value. Capitalists </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">engage</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this particular division of labor to secure their ends.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But, presumably, under socialism, with social ownership of enterprises, a non-antagonistic, non-exploitative employer/employee relationship could be established strictly based on the division of labor. The “employer”/manager could be determined by credentials, test-results, past experience, past performance, seniority, or a host of other relevant, merit-based terms. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Formal democratic procedure is, thus, no unique, magic elixir. In these circumstances, Wolff’s democratic procedure-- election of “employer” -- might well clash with merit and/or efficiency.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is surely why Marx and Engels placed </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exploitation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and the relations between capitalists (owners of enterprises) and the proletariat (the workers) at the center of their analysis. They attend little specifically to the employer/employee relationship, except when it is shorthand for this exploitation nexus. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Moreover, Marx and Engels (and many of their successors) believed that a revolution was the most democratic expression of the popular will-- what Wolff might want to call “real democracy.” While they would undoubtedly find setbacks to democracy in the historical trajectory of twentieth-century socialism, they would also have seen the removal of the power of the capitalist class and the end of labor exploitation as marking the most broadly democratic advance since the French revolution. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where Wolff sees a surfeit of democracy (“socialism’s self-criticism”), others see a harbinger of a far more democratic future. Wolff says correctly: “Democracy is incompatible with class-divided economic systems.” I would add that democracy is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> only</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> possible with the elimination of class-divided economic systems. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fixated on democratic</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> form</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Professor Wolff is led away from the democratic </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">content</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of Marxist socialism and its realization in real, existing socialism. Further, he fixates on a particular democratic form associated with the capitalist republic that may or may not be the best mechanism for exercising the will or interests of the working class. Every revolutionary generation is faced with a different set of challenges. Nation-states typically suffer or gain from uneven development, as Lenin always stressed. The advance of industrialization, the degree of poverty, the levels of education, external and internal opposition, complex social strata, national conflict, and a host of other factors make the choice of democratic form a test for the first and later generations of revolutionaries.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Western Marxists, often quick to measure all by the democratic forms established by the bourgeois revolutions of past centuries, just as often fail to grasp these complexities. They are willing to forgo pressing the socialist project for the “purity” of so-called “real democracy.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In Wolff’s case, he chooses to secure this purity by basing his anti-capitalism around the idea of worker-owned cooperatives. To be sure, they could meet the cherished standards of “one person, one vote, full participation, and majority rule” in ways that the ultimate class conflict-- the overthrow of capitalism-- might not. It is possible that cooperatives can and do establish and survive on the margins of the capitalist system, but only a dreamer believes that these worker utopias will ever seriously challenge the behemoth of monopoly capitalism. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Wolff is not alone in retailing a polite version of Marxism rather than the radical ideas that the working class so desperately needs.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-18246497812264886832023-12-08T15:55:00.000-08:002023-12-08T15:59:51.220-08:00The Age of Hypocrisy: Liberalism and Its Discontents<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">These are difficult, perilous, and frustrating times. Many cherished beliefs are coming unraveled. Many once-shared values are no longer shared. And distrust of unshakeable institutions is widespread. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet it was only a little more than three decades ago that North America and European intellectuals joined in acknowledging the triumph of the Western world’s “gift” to all: political and economic liberalism. For nearly half a century, Western liberalism had waged a “cold” war against the most serious challenge to its dominance. Apart from the fascist counter-revolution of the 1930s against </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">political</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> liberalism, no movement shook the Western liberal establishment and its self-confidence as did revolutionary socialism. Seemingly, that threat ended in 1991.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In that crowning moment, many saw the values of the European enlightenment as proven to be universal and timeless. It was</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama" style="text-decoration: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Francis Fukuyama </span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who boldly stated the unstated in 1992: history had found its dialectical resolution with the victory of capitalism and its political institutions. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">If it was a victory in the minds of many, it was a victory in two respects: it proved that there were states-- nested in two continents, Europe and North America-- that won because they adhered to and promoted the victorious values and also that those values were, in fact, the most advanced, most righteous values of all time.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Europe’s sordid twentieth-century history of imperialism, war, and inhumanity make for a poor example of sustaining enlightenment thought, of meeting standards of equality, democracy, and social justice.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The US, on the other hand, embracing its isolation from European misanthropy, celebrating its youth, vigor, and revolutionary tradition, and whitewashing its own destruction of indigenous peoples, posed as the paragon of political and economic liberalism. Fixated on continental expansion (displacing native peoples), the US came late to the global imperialist scramble, relying more on economic coercion than military might in international affairs. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">With some merit, the US points to its progress: its endurance through a great civil war to cast off the bonds of chattel slavery, its past openness to immigration, its uninterrupted history of electoral practice and enduring social and political stability. Of course, on closer inspection, none of these glories bear the weight that they carry within the national mythology. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Nonetheless, for better or worse, they have stood as the best example of the West living up to standards set by the revolutionary transition from feudal despotism, from economic backwardness, and from religious oppression. The US Declaration of Independence remains one of the most advanced ideological reflections of those moments.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Ironically, soon after the dissolution of the USSR-- the ending of a great struggle for the allegiance of billions of people-- that US liberal image was quickly and greatly tarnished beyond repair. With the need to show an enlightened face to the world apparently gone, the mask came off, revealing a country ruled by an intolerant, privileged, and rapacious ruling class with little regard for the long-professed values of classical liberalism. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A refreshed militarism constructed around a ludicrous war on “terrorism” shaped a destructive, bullying foreign policy. The blowback jihadist attack upon US civilians in 2001 served as the excuse for a government war on citizens’ privacy and civil liberties that was unprecedented in its sweep and its technological sophistication. Little attempt, beyond a feeble, transparent weapons-of-mass-destruction lie, was made to clothe the unprovoked 2003 invasion of Iraq. After only a few years of the twenty-first century, an Orwellian curtain had dropped on US public and private life. The myth that the US was never an aggressor was in tatters.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Both Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib destroyed another myth, the deception that the liberal icon would never torture its prisoners. Philosophical musings about the efficacy of torture were no longer hypothetical. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">US pundits freely embraced imperialism, speaking openly of the Old World and ancient empires as precedents for US intervention globally and for the US role as global arbiter and enforcer. The US refused to accept international courts’ findings or democratically determined United Nations resolutions as binding. The negative findings of human rights organizations-- willing, useful tools in the Cold War-- were shrugged off when they were even modestly critical of US practices.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Liberalism’s promise of universality and equality before the law was shattered by an explosion of racially skewed, draconian incarcerations in the 1990s, filling the US prison system beyond capacity and making a mockery of judicial process and fairness. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The vast inequalities of wealth and income in the US-- rising geometrically over the last fifty years-- are like sand in the gears of the heralded liberal political mechanism: frequent, informed, and trusted elections. As more than half of the jaded citizens do not bother to register or vote, as election to most significant offices requires a campaign investment well beyond the means of most citizens, as most candidates have sold their souls to wealthy funders, as the media sensationalizes and trivializes issues, the value of “democratic” procedures diminishes sharply. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The sharpest edge of these economic inequalities strikes those minority populations historically denied full participation in civic life-- the center-piece of liberalism. Racism, anti-immigrant nationalism, and intolerance rage through the former liberal bastions of Europe and North America.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The failings of economic liberalism have only added to the stresses on political liberalism. Global capitalism has endured several severe shocks since the dawn of the twenty-first century: financial crises, debt crises, and now inflation. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Contrary to Francis Fukuyama and other smug celebrants of Communism’s “demise,” the wheels began to rapidly fall off of the liberal train. By 2023, confidence in the destiny of liberalism had collapsed. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Voters have little recourse but to stay the course or to turn to a new populism with one foot in the past (“Make America Great Again!”) and one foot in the promise of a vague, shapeless future without the corruption and hypocrisy of the mainstream parties. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: xx-large; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: x-large; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be sure, hip, youth-driven new movements arose to meet the collapse of mainstream consensus, promising new, fresh wine in shiny new bottles. Movements like OCCUPY and formations like SYRIZA, PODEMOS, and FIVE STAR dazzled many with their ultra-liberal, ultra-tolerant agenda, aimed at an educated middle and upper-middle strata economically relatively secure, but pushing past older lifestyle and cultural frontiers. When these movements matured, often into politically influential parties confronting the old guard, they proved to be the same old wine, leaving their supporters with an ugly taste.</span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Today’s politics are at a miserable impasse, with much noise and fractiousness, but, nonetheless, still contained in the narrow vessel of classical liberalism in one flavor or another. Remarkably, the unease among the intellectual strata and the anger of the citizenry has stoked a kind of tribalism. Academics and pundits write and speak of saving “our democracy” as though anyone believes that we can have democracy when candidates, votes, and the news are bought and sold. Their right-wing-oriented counterparts celebrate the sanctity and virtues of the US Constitution, as though it were from God rather than enlightenment reason.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But left and right, in the confines of mainstream politics, are now ready to cast away the tolerance and civility of liberalism to thwart-- even proscribe-- their political opponents. Freedom of expression, of speech, of association, of advocacy carry little value in today’s sordid world with liberalism’s most self-righteous advocates violating liberalism’s most sacred values and supporting censorship and cancellation. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The once hallowed doctrine of rights has been stretched so far beyond human rights as to be trivial and meaningless, by including corporations, all organic creatures, and even inanimate objects. All now widely accepted to be rights-bearers.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Liberty-- the cornerstone of liberal constitutions-- is today divorced from its roots in liberation and reduced to personalized and individualized self-indulgence, the decadent product of corporate consumerism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The few remaining true-believing liberals-- people like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi-- are roasted by all sides for their defense of free speech for everyone and “neutral” journalism. In an age of gross hypocrisy, they are true naïfs.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">If Karl Marx were alive, he would not be surprised by this turn. He associated classical liberalism’s emergence with the origin and maturation of capitalism. The rise of the bourgeoisie as a class spawned its own ideology, an ideology that broke the chains of hereditary noble privilege and religious obscurantism, and spread hope for the masses consigned to an unchanging future of peasant labor and grinding poverty. That hope for working people-- based on the potential of natural, universal human rights, fraternity, and universal suffrage-- served to cement the alliance of the bourgeoisie with working people against the nobility and its supporters. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Bourgeois ideology, classical liberalism, challenged the foundations of Medieval privilege based on Divine Right and on fixed stations in life. In place of the old thinking, enlightenment thinkers proposed natural rights-- the social counterparts to the natural laws of the emerging sciences. Like the laws of nature, social laws were to be grounded in reason and not God or birthright.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">For Western societies, the new ideology was a welcome gift, broadening political participation, enhancing social mobility, freeing economic and scientific development, and creating more democratic political institutions. Accompanying these advances came a conceit that the ascendant classes had revealed universal truths, that the new economic, social, and political orders were the best that could be devised.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Bourgeois academics have been obsessed with providing a rational foundation for this conceit for centuries, but without success.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The young Karl Marx would have none of it; writing dismissively of the bourgeois fetish for natural rights in </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bruno Bauer, Die Judenfrage</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, he said: “None of the supposed rights of man, therefore, go beyond the egoistic man… that is, an individual separated from the community, withdrawn into himself, wholly preoccupied with his private interest and acting in accord with his private caprice…” </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">He recognized that the bourgeois social apparatus-- classical liberalism-- “fit” and served, in its time, the emancipation, the liberation of the bourgeois class and to a limited degree the working class. But he also recognized that it was limited by its class perspective. With property and the sanctity of private ownership at the center of classical liberalism, the emancipation of humanity could not be completed. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the revolutions of 1848 that rocked Europe, all three classes-- the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat-- participated and forged temporary, unstable alliances to secure their diverse goals, a time beautifully captured by Marx’s </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eighteenth Brumaire</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. But the differences between the ascending bourgeois order and a future proletarian order were tersely conveyed by the popular slogan: “Not freedom to read, but freedom to feed!” </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Today, capitalism is moribund. Its decline was in plain sight in the last decades of the twentieth century, only to be lifted by its expansion in People’s China and the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Nonetheless, capitalism’s ability to deliver an adequate standard of living, safety, and security grows weaker with every economic crisis and war. It should come as no surprise that its political and social superstructure, inclusive of the ideologies of economic and political liberalism, would also be in crisis, showing similar signs of decline and dysfunction.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Just as political liberalism rose with the ascent of capitalism, it is falling with capitalism’s decline. The cancer of corruption and greed, the rot of political practice, and the decadence of culture and social media ensure the further demise of the institutions of classical liberalism. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">What will replace them?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It is a good time to recall and consider Rosa Luxemburg’s words: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-68590340419821800692023-11-22T13:07:00.000-08:002023-11-22T13:07:37.264-08:00The Ugly Face of Anti-Communism<span id="docs-internal-guid-e780600c-7fff-a111-2eb2-4867211bde25"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since the Russian revolution, the founding of the Communist International, and the organization of a revolutionary party “of a new type” in nearly every country, Communist and Workers Parties have been in the sights of every country’s bourgeoisie. In nearly all countries, the bourgeoisie, its political parties, its media, and its other henchmen have sought to thwart, even destroy the revolutionary vanguard of the workers. Thus, the existence of maneuvers or actions to suppress or repress Communist Parties comes as no surprise.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Throughout the last one hundred six years, a Communist Party’s size or influence has been reflected in the force or violence to which they are met. That, too, comes as no surprise.</span></p></span></span><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Of course Communists resist the repression that inevitably ensues from capitalism’s defenders. In some cases and on some rare occasions, a deeply embedded sense of fair play or principled belief in liberal values among the masses ensures that Communists enjoy a modicum of permitted activity in spite of the ruling bourgeoisie’s wishes.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">So it should come as no surprise that the bourgeoisie in Venezuela would like to bury the Communist Party, consigning it to the political margins or worse. Over the course of the Venezuelan Communist Party’s long and determined history of the defense of Venezuela’s workers, it has been attacked, repressed, and banned by bourgeois politicians or the military. In fact, since its birth in 1931 until 1969, the Party has known little more than five years of legality. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">It should come as no surprise, either, when a popular movement wins electoral victories against the established bourgeois parties, promising to defend Venezuela’s independence and to implement a people’s program, that Venezuela’s Communist Party would enthusiastically offer conditional support. With its own program based on revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, the vigorous support the Communists offered to the government of Hugo Chavez was necessarily conditional, though supportive.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The Chavez program was vaguely socialist-- drawing on Christian ethics, utopian socialism, and a motley assembly of enthusiastic volunteer academic advisors from around the world. Nonetheless, it drew the enmity of US imperialism and its allies for its foreign policy and resource independence. While it defied the influence of the domestic bourgeoisie, the Chavez government did not establish workers’ power or eliminate the bourgeoisie’s economic base.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Despite these weaknesses, the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) continued to defend the government and support it against US intervention and counter-revolutionary intrigue. The PCV continued its conditional support in the post-Chavez era-- with Maduro’s election-- but with emerging differences over domestic policy, especially with regards to the working class and corruption.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Over the last decade, the differences grew sharper. In the eyes of the PCV and in its own words: “It is on the reality of total rupture with the Unitary Framework Agreement [an agreement proposed before the 2018 election] and with the programmatic bases of the Bolivarian process initiated by Hugo Chavez that the PCV distanced itself from the Maduro government.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Of course the distancing does not mean abandoning joint patriotic resistance to US and other foreign intervention.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">In the wake of these political differences-- a common enough feature of center-left and left electoral formations-- the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice imposed a new leadership on the PCV on August 11, a wildly arbitrary and unjust move with no possible motivation other than to weaken and disable the PCV. Venezuela’s highest court summarily ruled that a new leadership-- composed of renegades, dissidents, and non-members-- should constitute a new leading body, negating the democratically elected leadership of the PCV from its last Congress in November of last year.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Venezuelan Communists were denied serious participation, due process, and the right to appeal this attempt to disable a historical instrument of the Venezuelan working class.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Some might dismiss this as a rogue court attacking the PCV, but the fact that the Venezuelan government had sought to deny electoral participation by the PCV earlier and that a prominent leader of the leading political party had mounted a campaign against the PCV, demonstrate that Maduro’s party was complicit in the court’s maneuvers. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Certainly the government, Maduro, and Maduro’s party have had every opportunity to denounce or resist the blatant attempt to disarm the working class’s most dedicated advocates, the Venezuelan Communists. They have not.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Clearly, this is an instance of raw anti-Communism, updated to the twenty-first century. Others can probe the reasons that Maduro and his party have succumbed to anti-Communism, but succumb they have. If they believe that creating a bogus Communist Party will deflect criticism or improve their electoral opportunities, it will not be the first time that fear of Communism leads to the suppression of political choices and dishonors the perpetrators.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">But the PCV will endure. Its cadre will find their way through this thicket of distraction and continue to fight for working people.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Many Communist and Workers’ Parties have rallied-- along with many other honest people-- in defense of the PCV and the cause of Venezuelan workers. They understand the cost of anti-Communism on the fate of working people.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">But many on the left have failed this moment. Their reasons constitute a basket of opportunism. They stare at their shoe tops, equivocate, plead ignorance, or soil the banner of solidarity. History will judge.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13.999999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-21058650045423450412023-11-08T15:41:00.000-08:002023-11-08T15:41:53.975-08:00“....exceeding 10 kilograms of explosives per individual”<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The November 2, 2023 edition of</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Wall Street Journal</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> acknowledges that “the three-week-long air campaign by Israel… is the most intense in its history and rivals any aerial bombardment this century,” according to “military analysts”. The Israelis have “hit more than 11,000 targets, with missiles, bombs, and artillery, in Gaza, an area that is half the size of New York City that is home to about two million people.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reporting only one week after the war began, the Turkish state-run news agency</span><a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-drops-6-000-bombs-in-gaza-in-6-days-nearly-matching-us-total-in-afghanistan-in-1-year-report/3017833" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> takes note</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the following comparisons: </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Washington Post, citing Marc Garlasco, a military adviser at the Dutch organization PAX for Peace, reported that Israel is “dropping in less than a week what the US was dropping in Afghanistan in a year, in a much smaller, much more densely populated area, where mistakes are going to be magnified.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Garlasco, who is also a former UN war crimes investigator in Libya, told the daily, citing records from the US Air Force Central Command, that the highest number of bombs dropped in a year for the war in Afghanistan was just over 7,423. According to the UN, during the entire war in Libya, NATO reported dropping more than 7,600 bombs and missiles from aircraft, the daily reported…</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Charles Lister, a senior fellow and director of the Extremism and Counterterrorism Program at the Middle East Institute, was also surprised by the figure.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">WOW -- 6,000 bombs in 6 days, in 365 km2 #Gaza,” Lister said on X.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">“For comparison, the international anti-#ISIS coalition dropped an average of ~2,500 bombs **per month, across 46,000 km2 in #Syria & #Iraq.**”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a </span><a href="https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5908/Israel-hits-Gaza-Strip-with-the-equivalent-of-two-nuclear-bombs" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">release</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on November 2,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reports:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Geneva - Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip since the start of its large-scale war on 7 October, equivalent to two nuclear bombs, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in a press release issued today.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">According to the Geneva-based human rights organisation, the Israeli army has admitted to bombing over 12,000 targets in the Gaza Strip, with a record tally of bombs exceeding 10 kilograms of explosives per individual. Euro-Med Monitor highlighted that the weight of the nuclear bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II in August 1945 was estimated at about 15,000 tons of explosives.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Due to technological developments affecting the potency of bombs, the explosives dropped on Gaza may be twice as powerful as a nuclear bomb. This means that the destructive power of the explosives dropped on Gaza exceeds that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Euro-Med Monitor said, noting that the area of the Japanese city is 900 square kilometres, while the area of Gaza does not exceed 360 square kilometres.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The rights group’s statement underlined that Israel uses bombs with huge destructive power, some of which range from 150 to 1,000 kilograms, and cited a recent statement by Israeli War Minister Yoav Gallant that declared that more than 10,000 bombs have been dropped on Gaza City alone.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Israel’s use of internationally banned weapons in its attacks on the Gaza Strip has been documented, said Euro-Med Monitor, especially the use of cluster and phosphorus bombs, which are waxy toxic substances that react quickly to oxygen and cause severe second- and third-degree burns.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">While comparisons are rough, they give some sense of the scale of the Israeli assault on Gaza which is lost in much of the media coverage. The assault on the civilian population of Gaza is savage. The immediacy of this catastrophe on the civilian population of Gaza vastly overshadows the questions that occupy the media, the punditry, and the politicians. They, and others, who fail to recognize this human disaster and fail to call for its ending will be judged harshly by history.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The world-wide outrage voiced by the people is in sharp contrast to the complacency of the elites. Despite the best efforts of elites to minimize and distort the facts and to threaten and ostracize resistance, millions have emphatically called for a ceasefire. The shameful attempt to stifle this resistance should not be forgotten when future political options are weighed.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The effectiveness of global resistance has forced the US State Department warmongers-- the slavish apologists for Israeli policies-- to call for a “humanitarian pause,” a tepid, cowardly attempt to save face in the wake of mass slaughter. Predictably, the extremist Israeli government has turned down this feeble request.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">As civilian deaths in Gaza climb obscenely, there is only one honest demand: Cease fire! End the war now!</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">*****</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Like the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza-- in the entire Middle East, for that matter-- can neither be understood nor judged without delving into its history. Simplistic accounts that place ethnicity, religion, or ideology ahead of the machinations of imperialism miss the point. Since the politics of oil has dominated great power interests in the Middle East, the traditional relations of the various peoples and their fate have been largely determined by those powers. Beginning with the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot agreement, the people of the region have been largely side-line observers of British and French imperial designs.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Matters changed after World War II with the upsurge in nationalism, both narrow nationalism and progressive national liberation. The Zionist “victory” over British rule in Palestine and the subsequent purging of Palestinian villages and residents led to a narrow nationalist, theocratic regime in Israel that quickly became a watchdog for US and NATO imperialism, joining in the suppression and manipulation of popular risings in the Middle East.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">At the same time, popular, secular, Arab nationalist, independent, proto-socialist movements arose, alongside existing worker and Communist parties, targeting both backward, feudal, and fundamentalist regimes installed or sustained throughout the Middle East by the West, as well as their Western puppeteers.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Arab nationalism and the inspiration of socialism-- encouraged by the 1952 revolution in Egypt-- grew into a powerful movement that, despite relentless efforts to undermine them, lingers to this day. The Ba’ath Party, Yasser Arafat’s PLO, and Quaddafi’s Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya were modern-day remnants of the 1952 revolution’s legacy.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Wherever these secular movements rose in stature, the Western powers and Israel sponsored anti-Communist, religious fundamentalists as a bulwark against secularism, progressive nationalism, and tolerance.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Famously, this sponsorship has often backfired on the sponsor-- what Chalmers Johnson cleverly dubbed “blowback” -- as it did when the US courted the mujahideen in Afghanistan. Opportunistically using Islamic fundamentalism to combat Afghani revolutionaries and Soviet assistance, the US enabled a powerful new reactionary force in the Middle East that led directly to the infamous jihadist attack on September 11, 2001.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hamas is a similar creature. Nourished and encouraged by Israel as an alternative to the secular PLO, it turned on its masters. As Avner Cohen, a former Israeli intelligence officer</span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> affirmed</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> recently in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Wall Street Journal:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since October 7, the regarded Israeli newspaper, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Haaretz</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, has posted a series of articles chronicling the Israeli government’s efforts to strengthen Hamas in order to ensure that Palestinian governance would be divided between the West Bank and Gaza: divide and conquer.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The great tragedy of the Palestinian people is brought forth by today's massacre at the hands of Zionist zealots: the death of thousands of civilians and the injury of many more. But its roots lie in the machinations of Western imperialism, the indifference, even hostility, of many Arab states, and the failings of the left.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kemal Okuyan, General Secretary of the Turkish Communist Party addresses the failing in a recent </span><a href="https://mltoday.com/welcoming-remarks-international-meeting-communist-and-workers-parties/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">speech</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Because today, political Islam has turned into an effective tool in the hands of the ruling classes not only to attack, divide or control the workers but also to gain advantage in the competition within the imperialist system. When its class-based characteristics is missed, in Europe and North America, political Islam is either viewed with an orientalist approach as "an anti-imperialist, even revolutionary revolt of the backward world," or, as in the case of ISIS, as a medieval barbarism. I regret to say that both approaches lead us to mistakes. It must be recognized that political Islam is an important reality of the modern world, it is fundamentally a class phenomenon and a problem that cannot be overcome by romanticism or feelings of terror. We will not allow the Palestinian resistance to be reduced to Hamas. But we need to answer the question why religion has become decisive in social dynamics of the Islamic world.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Comrades, the regression in the Middle East is ultimately due to the same reason as the decline of the working-class movement in the rest of the world today. This reason can be summarized as the abandonment of the class positions and the perspective of revolution. One of the most important, if not the only, reasons for the rise of right-wing populism or the far right in Europe today is the gaps left by the left. Capitalism constantly generates problems that require radical responses. The same mechanism is also at work in the Middle East, which has a very different historical, cultural and political background. Politics does not tolerate any gaps. The truth is that they are stealing the anger of the poor and they are stealing it from us. We cannot accept this. The moment we put aside the actuality of the revolution; we commit mistakes. Anti-US positions without the goal of socialism leads us to consider political Islam or the so-called national bourgeoisies as allies; putting democracy before socialism often leads us to co-operate with the US or the EU or other bourgeois forces. This is a vicious circle. This vicious circle traps us in Europe, Latin America or North America as much as it does in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt or Palestine. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The power of Okuyan’s analysis lies in underscoring the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance while insisting that Palestinian liberation requires different options, revolutionary options that will better serve the interests of the Palestinian masses. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Whatever else the Hamas attack has done, Israeli reaction has exposed the brutality of the Israeli regime to millions of people who were unaware or in denial of the oppression, abuse, and destruction of the Palestinian people in their historic homeland and in Gaza. Even the Western media has, to some extent, been forced to acknowledge the horrors of life in Gaza under Israeli attack, leaving their political patrons exposed for their sheer indifference and their lack of moral principle. Leaders of Arab countries are forced to face their unprincipled relations with Israel or face their outraged populations.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Yet the political strata continue to escalate both their support for Israel and their suppression of domestic resistance. They will pay dearly for this, as the Israeli government further shows its brutal face to the world.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The people of the world must demand the end of the Israeli attack on Gaza. That victory might begin the march to restoring dignity to the long-suffering Palestinian people.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-40198065422206204002023-10-25T10:45:00.001-07:002023-10-25T10:45:52.157-07:00An Overdue Look at the Environmental Crisis<h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 20pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 400; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’</span></span></h1><h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 20pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’</span></span></h1><h1 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 20pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”</span></span></h1><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">― Lewis Carroll,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/45962572" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Through the Looking Glass</span></a></span></p><p><b id="docs-internal-guid-e0958315-7fff-7abb-6db9-9db2bce34fc2" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Our global environmental crisis is widely understood to be reaching a crucial moment; the danger signals are flashing almost daily. Yet a certain complacency follows the many catastrophic climate events attributable to a critically injured environment. People talk easily of a climate Armageddon, while maintaining business as usual.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Is this fatalism? Are there onerous sacrifices necessary to save the planet? Are there insurmountable obstacles to finding solutions? Are we beyond the point-of-no-return? </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">These questions need urgent answers.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The truth is that some leftists have been addressing these problems and ringing the alarm for decades. But some of us, though recognizing the crisis, have paid only lip-service to its solutions, neglecting to apply the unique perspective that Marxism could bring. Looking at the crisis through the lens of class and exploitation surely offers a deeper understanding than the sensationalism and superficiality of the capitalist media and their punditry.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Mea culpa.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hopefully, my own absolution began with acquiring a copy of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Monthly Review</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s July-August issue devoted to perspectives on the environmental crisis from a left, Marxist-friendly perspective. Entitled </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Planned Degrowth: Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (volume 75, number 3), the volume offers eleven contributions, with an important, essential, introductory essay by John Bellamy Foster. Foster has labored productively in the vineyards of ecosocialism for some time. The journal number comes highly recommended.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Much of the popular response to the unfolding environmental disaster is reducible to cultural environmentalism. Advocates call for a change in consumption patterns-- switching from products whose production, reproduction, or disposal is most harmful to our land, water, or air. Some cultural environmentalists demand a radical overall cut in consumption, insist on the elimination of conspicuous consumption, or even pose a philosophical challenge to the very concept of consumerism so prevalent in capitalist societies. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But cultural environmentalism alone does not thoroughly address the institutions that encourage or incur needless carbon emissions, senseless waste, and the depletion of precious resources-- institutions like the military, the security, judicial, and penal system, the sales and marketing effort, mass entertainment, etc. Nor does it challenge capitalism itself.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">On a global level, conserving only the twentieth-century resources allocated for war making, the social wealth lost to the destruction of past wars and necessitated by the remedial costs of death and suffering would put us uncountable years behind our current rendezvous with disaster. Even eliminating today’s bloated military budgets and stopping the current wars would lessen the immediate crisis dramatically. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Most of the mainstream liberal and social democratic cultural environmentalists ignore these institutions that are deeply embedded in the capitalist infrastructure, instead opting for campaigns to eliminate or recycle the most energy-soaked articles of convenience-- cans, bottles, plastic bags, etc. or forcing the issue into the thick, impenetrable muck of bourgeois politics, legislative decision-making, and state regulation.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Green New Deal, the consensus approach of the techno-environmentalists, promises to restructure capitalism by rewarding positive changes in energy generation and use, while sanctioning corporate foot dragging and avoidance. Implementation rests with the commitment of political puppets of corporate power-- the political strata. Again, there is no substantial challenge to capitalism and its institutions with techno-environmentalism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The contributors to the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Monthly Review</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> anthology more or less understand the shortcomings of the liberal/social democratic approach. They grasp that capitalism-- with its insatiable thirst for accumulation-- cannot meet the challenge of environmental catastrophe. That reality animates all of the selections in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Planned Degrowth</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Yet, among the writers, there is little agreement on how to move beyond capitalism (of all the contributors, Ying Chen makes the strongest case for a robust, planned socialist economy genuinely independent of the capitalist mode of production).</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Resolving those differences is made all the more difficult by the ambiguities and confusions accompanying the central concepts of planning and degrowth. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It is commendable that nearly all of the participants understand that market forces alone are inadequate to extract humanity from the catastrophe awaiting us. Moreover, the alternative to markets necessarily is some form of economic planning-- some form of conscious human-based decision making. This alone is a departure from the left’s post-Soviet love-fest with market mechanisms and market socialism-- indeed, a welcome departure opening the way to a more robust socialism. But what form should the planning take? Who should make the plan?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Foster wisely sees the cause of environmental disaster in the capitalist’s insatiable need to “accumulate! accumulate!” -- borrowing Marx’s succinct summation. Accordingly, the challenge is to organize the economy around social usefulness, and not profit-- “focusing on use value rather than exchange value,” to employ Foster’s words.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Certainly, contrasting use value against exchange value, advantaging the former, requires some exiting from the market mechanism and a turn toward a different mechanism for the allocation of resources: conscious human decision-making, i.e. planning.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">This makes a neat, compelling argument for some form of planning.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Unfortunately, most of the contributors have little regard for the rich twentieth-century experience in planning afforded by the now-defunct European socialist community. It is fashionable, among Western academic Marxists (or Marxians, as they sometimes like to be called), to heap scorn on the Soviet central planning mechanism in its different iterations despite its relative successes even without the benefit of today’s astounding computational powers. Apart from Paul Cockshott and some of his colleagues, there is little interest in exploring how a similar planning mechanism could be optimized using available technologies.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Foster, to his credit, offers a very modest defense of Soviet planning, especially regarding its impact on the environment. But others acknowledge the need for planning without providing even a sketch of how that would be done. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Instead, several writers revisit the old New Left fetish of participatory democracy, as though the more fingers in the planning pie, the better, regardless of the results. This reaches the limits of absurdity with the Venezuelan rural commune proposed as the model for a planning mechanism to rescue the world economy from the throes of environmental crisis, a utopian fantasy.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other Western Marxist obsession is decentralization. Apparently, the political model beloved by the North American-European left is the Swiss canton, the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">landsgemeinde</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, combining the smallest possible political units with the most direct democracy. How such decentralized planning could successfully redirect a modern juggernaut economy to escape the tyranny of markets requires a giant leap of faith (As Nicolas Graham understates, “... it is quite difficult to imagine effective planning… without some coordinating authority and external arbiter.”) </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Planned Degrowth</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s other key idea, degrowth, is also underdeveloped. Informing this concept is the looming disaster cited by Foster and implicit with all of the authors: </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The world scientific consensus, as represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has established that the global average temperature needs to be kept below a 1.5-degree Centigrade increase over pre-industrial levels this century-- or else, with a disproportionately higher level of risk, “well below” a 2-degree Centigrade increase-- if climate destabilization is not to threaten absolute catastrophe… All of this is predicated on reaching net zero (in fact, real zero) carbon emissions by 2050, which gives a fifty-fifty chance that the climate-temperature boundary will not be exceeded.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Understandably, faced with these limits, most of us recognize that, in some sense or another, we cannot have our cake and eat it, too. That is, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">growing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">carbon emissions,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> growing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> consumption patterns, more broadly-- </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">growing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">GDP as support for</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> growing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> consumption or</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> growing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> population, and any and all other forms of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">growth</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that potentially increase carbon emissions cannot be simultaneously sustained without an existential threat to life on the planet.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But is it misleading, simplistic, and maybe even harmful to popularize </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">degrowth</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in general as the solution to the life-or-death challenge of carbon-emission limits? Are there different kinds of “growth” -- minimal emissions, emissions-neutral, or even emissions-free-- that sidestep the rendezvous with climate disaster? Would not market-free, planned economic growth, itself, forestall that rendezvous? Can we not envision a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">growing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, planned socialist economy that stems or reverses increases in emissions?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In the historically nuanced Marxist perspective, growth of the productive forces of society need not be coupled with an anarchical, unfettered, profit-driven economy, nor has it always been so associated. On the other hand, the preferred capitalist measuring stick of growth-- gross domestic product-- reflects that association: in the capitalist industrial era, growth (GDP), national wealth, the unregulated exploitation of carbon-based energy, and the exploitation of labor are inextricably bound. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">For Marxists, there is no such necessary link. Free of the wasteful uses of social wealth for class aggrandizement, class suppression, and endless accumulation, growth can be redefined as the unbounded improvement in both the quality and prospects of all human life. For example, the development of vaccines for Covid or future attacks of new viruses requires the further development of productive forces and constitutes a growth in social wealth, but with far less impact on the environment when undertaken outside the framework of the profit-driven capitalist system.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marx and Engels gave us a different perspective on growth in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The German Ideology</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, linking the development of forces of production directly to the improvement of humanity’s survivability and flourishing, while faced with ever-arising challenges from nature and other humans. They remind us that the mode of production is not only</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> what</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> people produce but</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> how</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> they produce. That ever-present, evolving challenge may, in some sense, at some time, require “growth,” but growth </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">away from</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> carbon emissions, waste, excess, inefficiency, and greed. Thus, we would define a new, humane concept of growth and production.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Foster comes close to recognizing this possibility by distinguishing “a quantitative as well a qualitative sense” of productive forces. But he seems to overlook that the qualitative expansion of productive forces might well be qualitative production, production independent of fossil fuels, carbon emissions, and environmental degradation-- production of new ideas, new living arrangements, new divisions of labor, etc. This would be a more refined notion of growth, far more useful than the BEA or OECD definition of gross domestic product that degrowth addresses. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Two contributors, Isikara and Narin, are dismissive of the explanatory power of the second law of thermodynamics in the social world. Yet it does capture the fundamental struggle that only humans wage with ultimately limited, but astonishing success against a system’s tendency toward disorder. The development of productive forces was-- qualitatively or quantitatively-- the primary effective human response to this law: the law of entropy. The idea of degrowth, so superficially compelling in its simplicity, fails to account for this universal struggle. The environmental crisis is only the latest chapter in the perpetual struggle against species extinction. Like previous struggles, it will take development (and in the broadest sense, growth) of the productive forces to win, even if only temporarily from the inevitable disorder of closed systems.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a just, viable solution to the environmental crisis is the gross inequalities found in the capitalist countries and found between the advanced capitalist countries and those less advanced. The weakness of the degrowth mantra aside, any immediate solution to the crisis will require limits to carbon emissions, limits that will fall unfairly upon the disadvantaged unless some compensatory distribution-- national and global affirmative action-- is established. In other words, should sacrifices be necessary, they must be fairly imposed. No poor country or poor population should be required or even asked to make commensurate sacrifices with wealthy countries or wealthy elites. More importantly, their development-- their ‘catching up’-- should not be delayed as long as they lag behind their wealthier counterparts. Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan make a powerful historico-empirical argument that capitalism can never meet this demand in their contribution. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The only large-scale affirmative action program ever effectively actuated was the post-World War II collaboration of the socialist countries, coordinated by the Council on Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA, known in the West as Comecon). The CMEA based itself on the Leninist doctrine and the history of intensive investment of Soviet resources in the former Russian empire’s disadvantaged oppressed nations. Cognizant of the uneven development produced and reproduced by class society, the Soviet Union proportionately devoted far more resources to the “backward” constituent republics than to the more advanced Russian Republic.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The CMEA sought to continue this policy with the post-war socialist community. For example, the Soviet Union would offer an extended contract for oil to Cuba at the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> lowest</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> market price of a previous period, while agreeing to purchase a fixed amount of sugar at the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> highest</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> market price of that period. In addition, the Soviet Union would grant the poorer member state favorable, extended payment terms. It should be noted that the Soviet beet crop was more than adequate to supply Soviet sugar needs at a</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> lower</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> cost. At the same time, the Soviet Union would provide grants and low-interest, long-term loans for Cuban infrastructure and industrial development.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">This, and most internal CMEA agreements, typified affirmative action on a massive scale to correct uneven development.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Given that capitalism has never known or even devised such a leveling, developmentally egalitarian approach in international affairs nor that any country today practices it (apart from socialist Cuba, generously, but with limited resources), the necessity for global affirmative action on the environment would seem to be a powerful argument for socialism among leftist activists. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">True to the history of Western Marxism, European-North American socialists find little worthwhile in the history of the Soviet Union, so the argument seldom sees the light of day.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is not to say that the contributors to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Degrowth Planning</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are unaware of the inequalities standing in the way of any fair and equitable answer to the environmental crisis. Foster is explicit: “At the same time, the poorer countries with low ecological footprints have to be allowed to develop in a general process that includes </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">contraction</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in throughput of energy and materials in the rich countries and the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">convergence</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of per capita consumption in physical terms in the world as a whole.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what is lacking with all the participants’ accounts is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">agency</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Who will tackle these challenges? Who will adopt a program that incorporates these considerations? Who will build a movement to move a program forward? </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It would be unfair to fault the twelve academics contributing to this issue for having no ready answer to these questions. Nonetheless, if theory is to matter, we must have practical answers (Isikara and Narin almost broach this issue, but deliver it in unnecessarily opaque academic language) and avoid utopia-spinning. Too often intellectuals deliver theory in the passive voice: “What is objectively necessary at this point in human history is therefore a revolutionary transformation… governing production, consumption, and distribution… a shift away from the system of monopoly capital, exploitation, expropriation, waste, and the endless drive to accumulation.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Yes, but who is to accomplish this and how are they to do it?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is far easier to say who will not do it!</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But surely it can be conceded that we need a class-based revolutionary party committed to a robust socialism that will wrest political and economic power from the capitalist class. Should we not be vigorously working toward that end if we want to avoid our date with doom?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite my reservations, I strongly recommend the special </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Monthly Review </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">issue devoted to the environmental crisis, entitled</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Planned Degrowth: ecosocialism and sustainable human development</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></p><div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13.999999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-88739629135939498932023-10-07T10:59:00.000-07:002023-10-07T10:59:16.506-07:00Our Dirty Little Secret Revealed<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I grew up in a small Midwestern town that was part of an industrial oasis located in the midst of corn and soybean fields. The oasis existed because bituminous coal had been discovered under the flat lands well over a hundred years ago. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The mines attracted thousands of workers from Eastern and Southern Europe, including my two grandfathers. The large immigrant working class, in turn, attracted industry as well. General Motors, General Electric, Hyster, and several other corporations soon made a home in this rural area. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">At the time of my birth, the mines were exhausted for profitable exploitation (My grandfather had the dubious distinction of being one of the last miners killed). But industry continued on until the deindustrialization that wracked the entire Midwest in the 1990s.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I probably first heard the expression “DP” in the late McCarthy era when family </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">and friends spoke of some people who were new to the area. My inquiring mind soon learned that these DPs were “displaced people” -- Eastern European refugees from camps in Western Europe relocating to the US through humanitarian agencies. In keeping with the tenor of the time, I was told that they were fleeing Communism. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Since Chicago was the choice of many of the first wave of Lithuanians arriving in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it was no surprise, then, that many Lithuanian DPs found their way to Chicago, then sometimes merged into the large Lithuanian immigrant community where I lived.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Given the time and the reigning sympathy for the “victims” of Communism, they were unsurprisingly welcome. Their children went to school with me and socialized with my circle of friends.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Later, when in graduate school and taking more than a superficial interest in European history, I had a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment about the DPs: What-- I asked myself-- were Lithuanians doing in Nazi Germany at the close of World War II? </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If they were anti-fascists, surely, they would have remained East. If they were forced laborers or prisoners-of-war, they would have been repatriated. Since the Nazis were not kind to the ordinary </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">untermenschen</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the East unless they were sympathizers or collaborators, it would be a reasonable assumption that many, if not most, traveled ahead of the Red Army across Poland and Eastern Germany with the help or acquiescence of the Nazis-- they were collaborators and would have been treated accordingly. Of course, there may have been myriad explanations for some displaced Lithuanians who found their way to these camps, but not thousands.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">This squared with my US experience. Unlike the impoverished peasant wave of immigrants who came to the US at the turn of the century, the post-World War II immigrants brought a heavy dose of cultural nationalism and tradition. The first wave had their cultural ties to the old country severed at Ellis Island when our names were butchered by the immigration officers. Assimilation was made easy in the mines, mills, and factories; and cultural identity grew thin.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Where the first wave was shaped by oppressive, exploitative working conditions and welcomed, even led progressive unionism and a solidarity culture, this second wave was decidedly conservative and battled to move many of the existing ethnic organizations away from their secular, progressive direction.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Of course, it was not only Lithuanians, but other Eastern and Central European peoples who were welcomed to the US and Canada because their anti-Communism was unwelcome in the country-of-origin, but welcome here. That ticket was valid for collaborators as well, especially if they had skills useful to the anti-Communist crusade.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Much of this history is rarely spoken. We all know about the Nazi, Werner von Braun, the father of the US missile and space program, but little else besides an occasional death-camp guard who flies too close to the flame and is exposed.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Therefore, the recent Canadian parliament fiasco comes as no surprise to those of us familiar with the embarrassing welcome mat extended to the fascists, ultra-nationalists, and collaborators with Nazism after World War II. Indeed, that collaboration with collaborators evolved into an open door for the exiled reactionaries from every anti-Communist, client regime that the US has sponsored since 1945. From the Cuban </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gusanos</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to Venezuelan </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">golpistas</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the US government has found a happy haven for the world’s most violent anti-democrats, thereby polluting our own politics.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">So, watching the standing ovation for a 98-year-old Ukrainian veteran of the Waffen-SS by every Canadian parliamentarian and most of the Canadian government only underscores the hypocrisy of Western governments that presume to lecture the world on democracy and human rights. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Imagine that people who want and expect to be taken seriously on world affairs wildly applauding a rare surviving participant in history’s greatest mass slaughter. It should be even more embarrassing that a mainstream corporate media had to be reluctantly goaded into indignation over this outrage, a media that wallows in sanctimonious self-righteousness and smugness.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Major media commentators have a short, selective memory.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Upon the July 5, 1986 death of Yaroslav Stetsko, the former Ukrainian Premier during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, President Ronald Reagan sent condolences to his widow celebrating his “courageous struggle” and closing with “Your cause is our cause. God bless you.” Stetsko had no doubt cherished the pictures taken with Reagan, Bush, and UN ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stetsko, a notorious anti-Semite, was instrumental in forming the infamous </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nachtigall</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Roland</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> battalions made up of Ukrainian fascists who worked alongside the Nazis in killing Jews, Communists, prisoners, gypsies, and members of the resistance. In July after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Stetsko sent a warm, fawning letter to Adolf Hitler expressing gratitude and admiration for the Nazi action and hoping for a victory against the Soviet Union. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">He is the ideological father of Svoboda, the ultra-nationalist, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, racist, Nazi-nostalgic party that, continuing Stetsko’s ideology, exercises far-too-much influence in modern Ukraine’s political life. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Outrages like the Canadian parliamentary fiasco and Reagan’s celebration of the life of a war criminal occur because no one in official circles or the capitalist media expects the public to know about the vast amount of collaboration with Nazism that occurred as the Wehrmacht and the SS marched East in their </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lebensraum im Osten</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> campaign. Nor are most people in North America aware that Nazis and their Eastern European collaborators were welcomed to our shores by the thousands.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Also, most people in North America have not learned of the incredible crimes committed against Jews and other ethnic groups, as well as Communists and anti-fascists in the Baltics, Ukraine, and Poland by the ultra-nationalists, fascists, anti-Semites, and anti-Communists of those countries (one mustn’t forget that fascist volunteers from Finland, Romania, Norway, Hungary, and Italy also fought with the Nazis on the Eastern front).</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Countless studies, memoirs, and documents exist recounting the role of Eastern European collaborators in ethnic and political murder, though they garner no interest from the pundits, the commentators, and the popularizers. Instead, a book like </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alliance for Murder: The Nazi-Ukrainian Nationalist Partnership in Genocide</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, ed. B.F. Sabrin (1991) goes unheralded, unreviewed, and relegated to a few library shelves. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gruesome first-person accounts and documents portray the terror, cruelty, and murder conducted by the Ukrainian nationalists. Told mainly by surviving Jewish victims, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alliance for Murder</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> focuses on the nationalist murders in the Tarnopol region of Ukraine but shows the systematic collaboration of the Ukrainian nationalists. The book quotes a former Nazi general, Otto Korfes:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">[The trenches] were filled with men, women, and children, mostly Jews. Every trench contained some 60-80 persons. We could hear their moans and shrieks as grenades exploded among them. On both sides of the trenches stood some 12 men dressed in civilian clothes. They were hurling grenades down the trenches… Later, officers of the Gestapo told us that those men were Banderists (July 3, 1941) [Banderists were followers of Stefan Bandera, a founder of the OUN nationalist organization].</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another book,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Fraud, Famine, and Fascism</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, by Douglas Tottle (1987), dared to challenge the mythology of a calculated, purposeful famine in the Ukraine organized by the Soviets. The so-called Holodomor has become the standard Western narrative that fuels and justifies Ukrainian hatred and contempt for Communism and Russia-- much like today’s Western angst over the Uyghurs in the Peoples’ Republic of China-- while distracting Westerners from the brutal actions of Ukrainian nationalism from its beginnings until today. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tottle’s book was of special interest because it came after Robert Conquest-- a serial contriver of Communist perfidy-- published his widely influential book on the 1930s famine-- </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Harvest of Sorrow</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Tottle, a Canadian union activist, former editor of the USW </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Challenger</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and a movement organizer, rocked the smug, well-connected Conquest’s carefully constructed anti-Soviet tome so effectively that the nationalist Ukrainian diaspora was rattled and motivated to hurriedly convene an “international commission” to determine the “truth” about Ukraine. Organized and hand-picked by the nationalist World Congress of Free Ukrainians, the inquiry set out to place its stamp of approval upon Conquest’s accusations and dismiss Tottle’s rejoinder. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The biographies of former top leaders of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians (later the Ukrainian World Congress) exhibits the political flavor of the organization: Anton Melnyk, member of Stepan Bandera’s fascistic OUN; Mykola Plaviuk, member of the Nazi-collaborationist Ukrainian National Army, 2nd Division; and Peter Savaryn, member of the notorious 14th Waffen-SS volunteer Division “Galicia.” With this illustrious group of former leaders of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, it is not difficult to imagine how objective their inquiry into the so-called Holodomor would be. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The ultimate tribute to the impact of Tottle’s research comes from the arch anti-Soviet pundit, Anne Applebaum, who proclaimed that Tottle-- a mere Canadian leftist with no elite credentials-- could not have written his book without Soviet help.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Citing Reuben Ainsztein, Tottle says: “In the first three months of Nazi occupation of Western Ukraine, 15 per cent of Gallician Jews-- 100,000 people-- were slaughtered by the joint action of the Germans and Ukrainian nationalists.”</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">He concludes:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">…collaboration between the Nazis and Ukrainian Nationalists began long before the war and continued throughout the war, even after the Germans were completely driven out of Ukrainian territory. The Nationalists were firmly locked into the Nazi occupation machine. Their police and punitive units mass-murdered Jews and Ukrainians alike. Vast numbers of Ukrainians were also rounded up, with the help of Ukrainian collaborators for shipment to Germany as slave laborers. Thousands of actions were carried out by Nationalist militias, SB, UPA and Ukrainian police units, often under German supervision. Nationalist-recruited troops served Hitler in Ukraine, Poland, Byelorussia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Ukrainian collaborators assisted in the murder of hundreds of thousands in death camps like Trblinka, Sobibor, Yanowska and Trawniki.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Max Blumenthal </span><a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2023/09/26/canadas-ukrainian-nazi-ottawas-policy" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">notes</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, after the war the Canadian government in “Ottawa placed thousands of Ukrainian veterans of Hitler’s army on the fast-track to citizenship” while classifying thousands of Jewish refugees as “enemy aliens.” Undoubtedly, the US government welcomed even a greater number of Nazi collaborators who were “proven” anti-Communists.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">If the brief glimpse into the sordid history of Ukrainian (and other Eastern European) collaborators afforded by the Canadian parliamentary fiasco serves any purpose, it is to remind us of the lingering disease of twentieth-century European nationalism and its ugly inhumanity. Those who turn their eyes away from this legacy and its continuing influence over today’s Ukrainian politics will never begin to understand the dynamics of the conflict within that country and with its neighbor. The symbols of Ukrainian nationalism, so readily embraced by Western armchair warriors raging at Putin, are dripping with the blood of Jews, Poles, Russians, Communists, partisans, and anti-fascists who encountered Ukrainian nationalism and its virulent practitioners.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-50735633082971964592023-09-29T13:00:00.001-07:002023-09-29T13:00:38.192-07:00Multipolarity: False Hope for the Left<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Since the end of the Cold War, important, profound changes in the relations between capitalist states, coupled with equally sharp changes in the content of those relations, have seduced left-wing intellectuals and academics to embrace those countries whose governments clash-- for untold reasons-- with the political or economic demands of the US and its allies. They began to uncritically see these countries as fellow combatants in the struggle for social justice, for example, as anti-imperialists. Even upstart rivals for spheres of interest were seen as anti-imperialist, if they opposed US hegemony. Stated crudely, they present the enemy of their enemy-- the US and the” West” -- as their friend.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Why did so many on the left subscribe to this fallacy?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">We must begin with the nature of imperialism in the Cold War.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Cold War sustained unique, though historically bound alignments. The world was divided between socialist-oriented countries led by Communist or Workers’ Parties, the leading capitalist powers and their neo-colonies, and the non-aligned countries refusing to join in the anti-Communist crusade organized by the capitalist powers. Such a clearly defined order with an equally clearly defined conflict between the leader of the socialist camp, the USSR, and the leader of the capitalist camp, the US, led many to believe that the era of classical imperialism, the era of inter-imperialist rivalries, was over. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">They were wrong.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The demise of the USSR and the emergence and intensification of numerous capitalist crises-- political, social, ecological, and, especially, economic-- created powerful centrifugal forces pulling apart the capitalist camp and dissolving its unity. In addition, global changes-- the mobility of capital, the ready marriage of capital and labor in new regions and countries, inexpensive, effective transportation, the emergence of new technologies, new classes of commodities, and the commodification of public, common, and freely accessed goods-- generated new competitors and intensified competition.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Crises and competition are the fertile soil of capitalist rivalries and state conflicts.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The world that emerged after 1991 had more in common with the world that Lenin knew before World War I than with the Cold War era and its clash of social systems and their blocs. Just as nineteenth-century capitalists strived to set the rules for peacefully carving up the world and establishing free trade by means of the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, the post-Cold War capitalist allies sought rules, alliances, trade agreements, and the elimination of barriers to capital movement, commodity exchange, and labor exploitation globally. Both periods were widely heralded as triumphant for capitalism and its inevitable reach to every corner of the globe. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But as the great nineteenth-century powers came to understand, uneven development, upstart rivals, and ruthless competition disrupted the promise of peace and harmony. After a promising interlude of relative peace-- the first period of modest Western harmony since the Napoleonic wars-- the new nineteenth century order began to unravel with economic instability, conflicts, military build-ups, colonial resistance, and nationalist wars.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Similarly, the post-Cold War capitalist powers enjoyed an interlude of rapidly expanding world trade-- so called “globalization” -- and the regulatory guidance of powerful international institutions. This harmony, too, proved elusive, to be shattered by a series of economic crises and regional wars at the turn of the twenty-first century. The so-called dot-com crisis marked “paid” on a decade of capitalist swagger and the ideology of there-is-no-alternative. Rocked again by a global “little” depression, a European debt crisis, a false debt-fueled recovery, a global public health disaster, and now a prolonged period of stagnation and inflation, the promised concord of capitalist rule has been shattered on the shoals of constant wars, social and political instability, and economic dysfunction.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">That is the capitalist world of today-- not so different from the capitalist world on the eve of 1914. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The most farsighted thinkers of the turn of the last century saw the end of capitalism’s nineteenth-century stability and apparent harmony as an opportunity. Lenin and others perceived the beginning of a new era ripe for revolutionary change. They foresaw a stage of capitalism bringing war, misery, and suffering on the masses in Europe and beyond. For these visionaries, the only escape from the despair inevitably wrought by the dominance of finance and monopoly organized in a global system of imperialism was revolution and socialism. The tragic First World War proved them right. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Today, without a vision to rescue working people-- those feeling the brunt of capitalism’s expanding crises, more frequent wars, displacement of people, and bankruptcy of solutions-- the field of politics is left to the right-wing opportunists, the faux-populists, the demagogues, the nostalgia peddlers, and other assorted hucksters of right and left. Bizarrely, most of the Euro-American left treat these charlatans as though they were aliens dropping from the sky, rather than the natural, logical product of the vacuum remaining from a left that lacks ideological clarity, cohesion, and a revolutionary program. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">More broadly, even “liberal” governments are turning to nationalism, trade barriers, tariffs, and sanctions, the traditional posture of the right. Largely not noted by the left, the Biden administration, for example, has continued most of the trade and sanction regimens, and even the immigration policies, of the Trump administration. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">As capitalism retrenches behind narrow self-interest, fierce, ruthless competition, and state-against-state conflict, the vast majority of the Euro-American left continues to circle-the-wagons around an increasingly discredited liberalism and social-democracy. With no answer to a world of ever-growing nation-state rivalries and global tensions, far too many on the left are locked into a defensive strategy that promises more of the same or a return to an imagined “golden age”: before Trump and right-wing populism or before Reagan, Thatcher and market fundamentalism. Failing to locate capitalism’s decadence in capitalism itself, this left promises to manage capitalism to better results-- a hundred-year-old delusion.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Equally delusional is the notion-- popular with a prominent section of the left-- that an emerging bloc or order constitutes the foundation of a powerful movement against imperialism when that bloc itself is made up of capitalist-dominated states or states with a major capitalist economic sector. If Lenin is right-- and we have overwhelming reasons to believe that he is-- capitalism is at the very core of the system of imperialist rivalry. How can capitalism-dependent states collaborate, putting aside their own self-interest, to create a world without competition, friction, conflict, and war between states, themselves made up of competing capitals? Is not capitalism the essence of imperialism, and rivalry, conflict, and war the inevitable outcome? Has there been a counter-tendency since Lenin wrote</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Imperialism</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in 1916?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Beginning thirteen years ago, with the foundation of a modestly alternative grouping of five powerful states denied access to the top, exclusive club of capitalist states, the BRICS alignment became a cause for some leftists. Based more on blind faith than anything promised by the BRICS members-- Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa-- leftists nonetheless cobbled together an ideological construct called “multipolarity.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">When radical political prospects appear dim, when the prospect of socialism seems remote, many on the left turn to the global chessboard, pretending that some chess pieces represent the social change that they long for in their own backyard. Frustrated with the long, hard road of winning the masses in their own country to a program serving working people, leftists in the US and EU invest vicariously in the actions of other governments that, for various reasons, are in opposition to the US and the EU governments. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">This surrogate identification must not be confused unthinkingly with solidarity or internationalism. Both solidarity and internationalism emerge with sympathy for other peoples and their interests or with their governments only when those governments are serving the people. Solidarity with Cuba, for example, is grounded on the long-standing resistance of the people of Cuba to the demands, coercion, and aggression of the US and its allies. Since the government of Cuba organizes and supports that resistance, it, too, earns our solidarity.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The zeal for multipolarity arises from a fact and a hope. It is indeed a fact that the US government may have lost some of its ability to impose its will on the rest of the world and that global powers have risen to challenge US domination. This accounts for some of the increasing conflict and chaos in international relations.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the multipolarity zealots interpret this as a setback to the system of imperialism when it is, at best, a setback for</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> US</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> imperialism. The fallacy is in assuming that the capitalist challengers are somehow benign and that they, magically, will restrain their interests in order to establish global harmony and peace. There is no basis in historical precedence or contemporary currency for this assumption, beyond mere hope.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Certainly, it is a radical misread of recent history and today’s events. In just the last weeks, relations between the governments of Canada and India reached a boiling point, conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out again, and two joined-at-the-hip reactionary governments, Poland and Ukraine sued and abused each other. All occurring without US government sponsorship. Venezuela’s government- a strong proponent of the multipolarity ideology-- is itself in a bitter conflict with Guyana over 160,000 square kilometers of oil-rich territory, rejecting a “consultative referendum” proposed by the government of Guyana. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The presence of multipolarity’s icons within BRICS hardly ensures that bringing down US hegemony will disable the imperialist system: members India and the PRC maintain festering relations that break out into open warfare from time to time. Brazil under Bolsonaro was openly hostile and confrontational with all the more progressive countries of Central and South America (which reminds us that imperialism is about governments and socio-economic systems and not simply countries), and Russia is hotly contesting with France over valuable resources in Central Africa.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">And the new members of BRICS carry even more contradictory baggage. Egypt and Ethiopia have a long-standing water dispute that will not be resolved by BRICS. Iran and Saudi Arabia have an existential dispute carried on by proxy, notably in Yemen. The Saudis are prepared to recognize Israel in order to acquire nuclear technology to match Iran, an action hardly suggestive of peace and prosperity. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Is there a common progressive, anti-capitalist, or anti-imperialist interest uniting this formation? Or are they united merely for expediency in this or any other bloc that will have them? Modi’s India, for example, accepts membership in nearly all international formations-- Western-oriented or otherwise. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is magical thinking to believe that without the heavy hand of the US empire, imperialist predation and conflict will melt away. Lenin scoffed at Kautsky’s notion that multipolar</span><a href="https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/search?q=kautsky" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> harmony</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (ultra-imperialism) would follow World War I, and events proved him right.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moreover, the idealism invested in multipolarity and BRICS has fallen far short of what contemporary leftists have thought, as Patrick Bond and others have </span><a href="https://links.org.au/brics-emerge-johannesburg-humbled-sub-not-anti-or-inter-imperialists" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shown</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (despite his use of the unhelpful concept of “sub-imperialism”). BRICS sets a very low bar in reordering global relations, contrary to the wishes of many on the left.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Activists in Johannesburg, during the most recent BRICS meeting, organized a BRICS-from-below event. Though spawned by the center-left, social democratic Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, the South African coordinator made a keen </span><a href="https://popularresistance.org/its-all-top-down-activists-hammer-brics-on-human-rights-and-environment/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">observation</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Trevor Ngwane, said, “BRICS wants leverage. Instead of saying, ‘We are capitalists fighting to be bigger capitalists’, they want to get strong, they start pretending that if they get strong, life will get better for the working class. We know that there will be a question: Does this mean you favour America?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">“During the Struggle, there was a party that used to say, ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow’, so we must not be swayed and convinced to choose between these two; we must find our own way as socialists towards socialism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">“The problem with BRICS projects is that it’s all top-down. It’s something organised by governments.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Yes, BRICS is organized by governments, capitalist-oriented governments for the most part, as Trevor Ngwane is keenly aware.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But more importantly, he challenges how BRICS (and by implication, multipolarity) is in any way related to the goal of socialism. It is socialism that is missing from BRICS and the multipolarity discussion. A program offered to working people that merely shuffles the deck of capitalist powers is no answer at all. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In a recent <a href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/09/summits-mark-rapidly-changing-world-order.html">discussion</a> of BRICS and the Eastern Economic Forum among three leading exponents of multipolarity, there is not one word about socialism. There is talk of development, of startups, of public-private partnerships, strategic priorities, and investments-- even of Russian hypersonic missiles-- but not one word about socialism. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">One discussant claims to capture BRICS with this piece of sophistry: “So we’re dealing really not only with a geographic split, but with a split of economic structures, a mixed public-private economy, not like the Western public-private partnership, which you socialize the losses and privatize the profits, but something where the aim is really not to make a profit, but to make the overall economy grow.” Capitalism with a human face?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For sure, there are multipolarity advocates who believe that they see multipolarity as a step towards socialism. They recognize in the deepening economic, social, political, and ecological crises facing capitalism that socialism may be a solution. But as John Smith so frankly puts it in an </span><a href="https://links.org.au/twenty-first-century-imperialism-multipolarity-and-capitalisms-final-crisis" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Interview</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: “Convincing people that socialism is necessary is not so difficult; what is much more difficult is to convince people that socialism is possible.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">We live in a time when, rather than joining with people, organizations, or parties that advocate, organize, and fight for socialism, many on our left have become observers of a chess game between capitalist governments, cheering any force that attempts to diminish US power. How this will or will not benefit the exploited masses of the world is of little count.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Smith, the author of a thoughtful </span><a href="https://monthlyreview.org/product/imperialism_in_the_twenty-first_century/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">analysis</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of twenty-first century imperialism, succinctly summarizes our challenge in the face of profound crises of capitalism:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Wherever we are subjectively, objectively, the necessity to begin a transition towards communism is posed by this existential crisis. There is no other way out for humanity than this. Anything that distracts us from this, any sort of fantasy that some kind of a multipolar world will be better in any way, must be dispelled because we do not have any more time to waste.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-2681698535312685412023-09-01T18:04:00.001-07:002023-09-01T18:04:27.521-07:00The Raging Battle Over a Song<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The swirling controversies around, fervent championing of, self-righteous denouncing of, and endless interpreting over Oliver Anthony’s song, </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rich Men to the North of Richmond</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, is confounding in many ways, perfectly understandable in other ways.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Self-released </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rich Men</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> debuted at number one on three Billboard charts and received 17.5 million downloads the week of August 26.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The viral video qualifies as a phenomenon, perhaps more reflective of our country’s many social and political contradictions than of our musical tastes.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because the video attacks the “rich men to the north of Richmond ''-- a reference remotely reminiscent of Trump’s “swamp” -- the faux-populists of the right were quick to embrace the video and call Anthony one of their own. Despite the fact that Anthony came from coastal Virginia, right-wing ideologues caricatured Anthony as a representative of white, backward Appalachia, resentful of a world changing at the region’s expense. More in the imagination of these crude political opportunists than any connection to reality, they saw a replay of J.D. Vance’s execrable</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hillbilly Elegy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and its equally exploitative subsequent film that launched the career of a Republican political wannabe with his hoary boot-strap story.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But Anthony will have none of that. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He has politely, but clearly</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv9uMXiY29s" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> dissociated</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> himself from right-wing political exploitation: “I’m disappointed to see… it's aggravating to see people on conservative news try to identify with me like I’m one of them… it was funny seeing my song… it was funny seeing it at the presidential debate because it was like I wrote that song about those people you know so for them to have to sit there and listen to that… that cracks me up.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, exploiting popular music for political gain is nothing new. The embracing of Bruce Springsteen’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Born in the USA</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">both</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> parties easily comes to mind. And the corporate world brazenly exploits the work of radical performers from Woody Guthrie to Nina Simone to The Clash.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Most of the political left was just as quick to denounce Anthony’s song as an anthem of the wild-eyed right. Still suffering from “deplorables” syndrome made famous by Hillary Clinton’s kiss-off of Middle America, liberals and those shilling for the Democrats ignored Anthony’s anger and desperation, suspicious of its country genre and his cultural mien.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The left identitarians, the word police, and the guardians of progressive etiquette recoiled from a couple of references in his lyrics to abusing children, welfare cheating, and high taxes, themes high on right-wing lists of grievances. The “gotcha” left was quick to announce that “we know what you </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">really</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> mean.” </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In an era where most Democrats and those in their orbit only have “Denounce Trump!” in their bag of tricks, it is understandable that they cannot find an ally in Oliver Anthony.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This left is deaf to the class markers dominating the song-- the ‘them’ versus ‘us’-- that runs through all left popular art from Berthold Brecht through Boots Riley. This left misses the bitterness toward a ruling class that one also hears in Nina Simone’s version of Brecht’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pirate Jenny</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or the sense of growing crisis and decline with Gil Scott-Heron’s lyrics to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Winter in America</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s there in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Rich Men</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It may be raw, superficially informed, even uninformed, but it’s there.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Billy Bragg, the old Red Wedge troubadour, has chosen to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/21/billy-bragg-releases-response-song-to-oliver-anthony-rich-men-north-of-richmond">speak out</a> on the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rich Men </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">phenomenon in the UK’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Guardian</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I had the great pleasure of interviewing him twice for the Communist Party’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Daily World</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> many years ago. Bragg’s class chip-on-the-shoulder, friendliness toward the socialist countries, and enthusiasm for a somewhat robust socialism fed my own illusions that music is or, at least, could be revolutionary. As a veteran of Woodstock, I wanted to believe that radical music could be a spur or energizer of social change. Call me a Dave Marsh-like Pollyanna in my callow youth. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I’ve since been dispelled of that illusion. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Since those happy times, Bragg has become something of an aging Labourite, still showing good instincts to resist when Labour takes another step rightward. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But his instincts betray him when he discusses US politics. He interprets the rich-man theme of Anthony’s lyrics, thusly: “I had in my mind corporate America, the tech bro billionaires whose companies monitor their workers</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> all the way to the bathroom and back.”</span> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anthony had in mind, in fact, the politicians in Washington, DC. For better or worse, most of our citizens may harbor class resentments, but direct their anger at the political strata occupied by representatives of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">both</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> parties.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Bragg justifiably regrets the references to welfare and taxes-- concepts most commonly raised by the con artists of the right. Regrettable they may be, but anyone attuned to the level of political discourse in the US might see these sins as forgivable when committed by an apolitical neophyte.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bragg seems to forget the sins of his own-- and my own-- political hero, Woody Guthrie. The great Communist songster was hardly born a saint. As </span><a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p077982" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">recounted</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by a biographer, Will Kaufman, Woody’s early songbook of performances on radio station KFVD were filled with vulgar, racist depictions, language, and stereotypes. A listener wrote him: “I am a Negro, a young Negro in college, and I certainly resented your remark. No person or persons of any intelligence uses that word over the radio today.” </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">According to Kaufman, “Guthrie apologized profusely, dramatically ripped the offending song sheet to shreds before the microphone, and swore that he would never use the word again.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">An “Okie,” like today’s Middle American “deplorables,” Guthrie brought lots of ignorance with him. As a musical spokesperson for the US’s working people, it must have been a painful memory that his father became district court clerk in rural Oklahoma because of a Democratic Party racist maneuver; that his father hated socialists; that his father allegedly belonged to the KKK. Yes, Guthrie had a lot of baggage.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">This same ignorant Okie, years later, outraged at indignities imposed on Black fellow musicians screamed at the perpetrators and tore up a public dining room, according to Pete Seeger.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Unfortunately, Bragg can’t bring Woody Guthrie’s evolution from a “backward Okie” to bear on his judgment of Oliver Anthony. While Anthony’s first efforts are certainly no match for Guthrie’s mature body of work, surely it is unfair to dismiss Anthony before he has a chance to develop and grow.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The thirties were certainly different from our times. The left accepted a rough, clumsy, plain-speaking, protesting voice of the plight of working people and embraced, nourished, and encouraged him until he grew into a great popular spokesperson for radical causes.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Today, a similar unpolished, plaintive voice, speaking emotionally of the disdain of elites, is questioned by the sectarian guardians of left purity and dismissed as a shill for the political right. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In one of his more sardonic </span><a href="https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Jesus_Christ.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">songs</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Guthrie imagined that if Jesus Christ lived in his time, preaching social justice “like he preached in Galilee, they would lay Jesus Christ in his grave.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">If the Woody Guthrie of the 1930s were alive today, would our Puritan self-righteous left disown him?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">We’ve come a long way, but in the wrong direction.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-26586241751082830822023-08-14T15:45:00.003-07:002023-08-16T15:47:19.510-07:00Breaking News! Some on the Left Have Benefactors…<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In June, I </span><a href="http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2023/06/mired-in-opportunism.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">commented</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on a scurrilous article originally appearing in </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Daily Beast</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and inexplicably reposted on the </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Portside</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> website. Entitled, </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">U.S Tech Mogul Bankrolls Pro-Russia, Pro-China News Network</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the article accused several left groups of having not only received money from a benefactor sympathetic to the People’s Republic of China, but, by implication, directly from The People's Republic of China or the Russian Federation. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Daily Beast</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hitman, William Bredderman, sought to stain individuals and organizations by suggesting that their platforms and ideas were both dictated by their benefactor and traitorous because of his association with countries that many perceive or hope others perceive as enemies. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But as I argued in my original article, Bredderman’s (and the </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Portside</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> editors’) “gotcha” was a big, fat “so what!” </span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">At that, the article was an exercise in slanderous innuendo.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">When the mainstream media turns a blind eye to profoundly obvious corruption of the Bidens by foreign influencers, it is difficult to make much of an obscenely rich former tech mogul merely spreading his money around among a number of his favorite left-wing causes. </span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">At a time when the State Department’s tawdry Victoria Nuland brazenly slips off to Niger to demand restoration of the US’s puppet president, it is cynical for a blinded media to cry foul and imply foreign meddling on the part of a foreign power’s enthusiastic admirer. </span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">While a Supreme Court Justice disdainfully continues to accept numerous gifts from a prominent, widely connected “friend,” yet incurring no reprimand, it is unseemly for struggling left groups forced to the margins of US politics to have their source of funds cavalierly impugned.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But the ugliness of the article goes far beyond cynicism and hypocrisy.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Quite simply, the conclusion that Bredderman seeks is grounded on nothing. No financial link is established between the headline’s enemies-- Russia and China-- and the independently rich funder of left causes. In fact, it is bizarre to think that he needs to depend on foreign funds given his already deep pockets. Moreover, it is equally bizarre that influencers in the PRC or the RF would choose a high profile, left-identifying admirer to serve as a secret conduit to organizations or individuals within the US left.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Of course, that doesn’t stop Breddeman and those who disseminate his scandal-mongering from pressing onwards any more than an absence of evidence has stopped bogus charges of Northern carpetbagging, Moscow gold, or Communist subversion in past episodes of baseless hysteria. It’s enough to point a suspicious finger at someone breaking expected conformity and throwing his lot in with those otherwise politically marginalized.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Daily Beast</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s superficial, slimy “reportage” has now moved</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The New York Times </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">editors to elevate the politically-charged claims to national attention. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Assigning four young journalists-- none with more than two years with the paper and one with some schooling from the notorious </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bellingcat</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, an echo chamber for Western intelligence-- the </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NYT</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> faithfully</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-singham-china-propaganda.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reproduced</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the original charges with only a few new wrinkles. Media scandalizing the reputation of US left groups and individuals will prove to be good career moves, as it always has been in the past.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Again, there is no direct or even indirect evidence linking foreign-originated monies to the left organizations, but the article does offer the news organization’s own touches to the political innuendo: cash recipients “...mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points…” leaving the reader with the thought that the convergence of the two points of view could NOT be coincidental or independently derived.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">This should come as some bother to those of us on the “extreme” left who often find our progressive ideas converging with ideas shared with the Chinese Communist Party, the Cuban Communist Party, or many other left organizations, though we’ve never gotten one dime from the parsimonious Chinese or anyone else!</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The young investigative reporters uncover public events where Mr. Singham-- the former tech mogul benefactor-- has appeared in public with Chinese officials, university professors, administrators, etc. Should they not also investigate Henry Kissinger, who was meeting recently in Beijing with officials?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let's call this journalistic sin what it is: guilt by association. And it's a grievous sin regardless of whether it’s advanced by J. Edgar Hoover, HUAC, Joseph McCarthy, </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Daily Beast</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Portside</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, or </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The New York Times</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the case of </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NYT</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, it is especially despicable because the article targets the US left group that has, over time, perhaps shown the most integrity in defense of peace. While other left groups were entangled in debate over </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> they would support when the war in Ukraine broke out, CODE PINK was firmly fixed on </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it opposed: war, its spread, and its human cost.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">While nearly everyone-- left and right-- obsessed over fixing blame and supporting either NATO/Ukraine or Russia, CODE PINK activism was directed toward ending the war, thwarting its escalation, and finding a durable peace.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Accordingly, it is no accident that it is CODE PINK that the</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> NYT</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> editors-- reliable servants of US foreign policy-- chose to focus its attack upon.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you object to this </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New York Times</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> smear, please consider signing this </span><a href="https://www.codepink.org/mccarthyism2023" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">petition</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-52942414959048656162023-07-30T10:42:00.006-07:002023-07-30T16:07:57.122-07:00Election Fever: A Fever Dream?<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">With nearly sixteen months to go, we are well into the silly season. The campaigning, fund raising, maneuvering, plotting, and mud-slinging have already reached a fever-pitch. We are told that the 2024 Presidential election-- like every Presidential election in my lifetime-- holds the fate of the country in its grip.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Maybe it does.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But it is almost impossible to see how the existing political machinery-- the two-party system, fueled by vast sums of money, and lubricated with the influence of a toadying, sensationalist media-- can generate any real answers to these challenges. </span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The system’s apologists like to write and speak of “our democracy” -- in supposed contrast to the shifty authoritarians. But what kind of democracy requires a billion-dollar-or-more war chest to gain access to the state’s highest executive position? Under those terms, only a handful of rich and powerful people could realistically become President of the US by convincing other rich and powerful people to support and sustain their effort. Isn’t this akin to the “democracy” of the Roman Senate?</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Of course, on the lower rungs of the political hierarchy, there are elected officials who are able to fund their campaigns for far less-- entry level costs are much lower. It is possible to parlay social activism, media exposure, and a popular base into a modest fund-raising apparatus that propels some representative faces into government. But they are quickly seduced and obsessed into building an even greater fund-raising machine and locating themselves in the narrowly defined political space occupied by the two parties. The weight of the system and its conventions soon drains their independence. </span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It is hard to find optimism under these circumstances.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Faced with a Democratic Party that has inexorably moved to the right from its New Deal roots, many argue for nonetheless uniting behind the Democratic Party to halt the Republican Party’s inexorable movement to the right. It is a strange strategy.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Odd as it may be, it is sold to the left as building a buttress-- a united front-- against fascism. </span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It is the word “fascism” that conjures up the notion of a united front across class, across identity, and across political loyalty. For those with some minimal knowledge of twentieth-century history, fascism triggers memories of powerful nationalist movements that arose in response to a potent anti-capitalist workers’ movement and a crisis of capitalist rule, even a challenge to the very existence of capitalism. These were alone or together sufficient conditions for the rise, the threat, or the political success of historical fascism.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The post-World War One economic crisis and the rise of a militant industrial class in Italy and intense class struggle in the Italian countryside gave birth to the first self-described fascist movement in Europe. The Italian ruling class awarded it power when it accepted Mussolini as the decisive barricade against intensifying class struggle.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Similarly, of the many nationalist movements that sprung up in Germany, the Nazi Party was the one best equipped to address the rise of a growing, powerful Communist Party during the economic collapse of the Great Depression. German industrialists showered the Nazis with money, and their representatives expeditiously turned over power to Adolf Hitler.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">We may extend the term “fascism” to other 1930s regimes in Europe-- Mannerheim, Pilsudski, Antonescu, Admiral Horthy, Franco, Salazar, Petain, etc.-- because they were puppets of Naziism or shared the same anti-Communist zeal which was sparked by intense class conflict within their respective countries. </span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Whether one prefers to confer the terms “quasi-fascist” or “semi-fascist” instead of “fascist” on the military coups-- Greece, Chile, Indonesia, etc.-- arising from political instability and left insurgency since World War II is a matter of little import. Nonetheless, they all share-- perhaps with some nationally specific differences-- the conditions that gave rise to fascism in the 1930s. Significantly, they also all established an “open, terroristic dictatorship” as defined by the Seventh Congress of the Communist International in 1935-- a political edifice built on the ashes of the previous structure.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It would take an enormous stretch of the imagination to suggest that the US ruling class is under siege from a revolutionary workers’ movement, that US politics has reached a stage of lethal instability, that the US economy is on the verge of collapse, or that there is a force empowered and dedicated to the elimination of bourgeois democracy. </span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Confronted with these historical anomalies, it is hard to see the danger of fascism as anything imminent in the US. Certainly, there are fascists in the US, even fascist organizations. Moreover, there are many fascist-minded people and people with fascistic ideas, even in positions of power. But fascism is neither around the corner nor on the near horizon.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Yet the unjustified threat of fascism is a useful tool in uniting the left behind a soulless, gutless Democratic Party-- a shell organization built around fundraising and fright-mongering. If there were no fascist bogeyman, or Communist bogeyman, or Russian bogeyman, today’s Democratic Party would have little on which to base a campaign. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is not to deny that the people in the US are in crisis. It is certainly true that there is growing dissatisfaction in the US, as in Europe and other advanced capitalist countries. Opinion polls show a broad, deep distrust in long-established institutions. From the courts to the political parties, citizens have lost confidence in the old ways of doing things (for example, in a </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quinnipiac University</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/QuinnipiacPoll/status/1681727016943628288?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">poll</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 47% of respondents indicated that they would vote for a third party in the US, should there be one).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nor should this argument be taken to mean that there is no threat from the right. In response to the mass dissatisfaction, movements and parties have sprung up, exploiting the thirst for the new, speaking to the neglect of various economic, class, and regional interests, and promising to voice the concerns of the majority against the arrogance of elites. </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/far-right-looks-to-seize-on-spanish-election-919439b4" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quoted</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Wall Street Journal</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Professor Thomas Greven of the Free University of Berlin noted that “A right-wing populist backlash… was inevitable.” A scholar of right-wing populism in the US and Europe, the professor then points to the key reason: “For me, it goes back to the failure of center-left, social democratic parties to manage, in a socially acceptable way, increased global competition.”</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The breadth of dissatisfaction is shown by the rise of right-populism in many countries. And, as Professor Greven argues, it is the failure of the center, especially the left center, that allows right-populism to grow. Today, as in the 1930s, the cravenness of social democracy creates a political vacuum. The opportunist right has only to fill it. In the case of the 1930s, the ruling classes saw stark choices between revolutionary socialism and fascism. They too often picked fascism and nursed it into power.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, there are no stark choices. In Europe, faddish, rebranded social democratic parties like Podemos, Syriza, The Five Star Movement, or The Greens fall as quickly as they arise. In the US and the UK, Labour and the Democrats don’t bother to rebrand, they simply put “New” in front of “Labour” and “Democrats,” offering their services as the </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">acquaintance</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that you know as opposed to the</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> other </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that you should fear.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">So, if we are to understand Professor Greven, then it would make no sense to embrace social democracy-- including the Democratic Party in the US and Labour in the UK-- when the rise of right-wing populism is itself a response to social democracy’s failings! How can clinging to the Democratic Party-- the party that betrayed the cause of working people-- be the answer to the rise in popularity of its right-wing movement posing as an alternative? Surely, this is like pouring gasoline on a fire.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But once again, as in so many election cycles, leaders of labor, civil rights organizations, environmental groups, and other worthy causes are lining up to support the Democratic Party-- regardless of its betrayal of working people.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Those wise enough to recognize the Democratic Party’s many decades of spinelessness propose that the left conspire to infiltrate or take over the party, to operate both outside and inside the Democrat apparatus. </span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But to what effect? </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In its long history, the Democratic Party only embraced working-class interests when pressed by</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> independent</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> forces </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">outside</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the Democratic Party who directly threatened the party’s most urgent agenda-- to retain or gain power. That is the story of the Democrats’ moments of glory: the New Deal and the Great Society. In both cases, the social movements led and the Democrats followed. Today’s urgency to rally behind the Democrats is foolish-- counterproductive foolishness.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Plenty of charlatans and hucksters join with the misinformed and delusional to pressure the left to steer clear of third-party movements and back the Democrats for one more round. Like the serial abuser, they ask the victims to give them one more chance.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another apologist grants the need for separation, but suggests something called a “dirty break” instead of a divorce.</span><a href="https://portside.org/2023-07-16/want-labor-party-learn-uk?utm_medium=email&utm_source=portside-snapshot" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Citing</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the long, tortured break with the UK Liberal Party that spawned the Labour Party in 1906, he recommends supporting the Democrats until the pain is so great that working people will flee the Democrats and form their own party, a process that may need several decades to ferment. Of course, that is the same Labour Party that recently ambushed its progressive wing and banished its left agenda back to the margin of UK politics.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The same author </span><a href="https://jacobin.com/2017/12/democratic-party-minnesota-farmer-labor-floyd-olson" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">urged</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the same patience with the Democrats in 2017, then based on the long transitional “dirty break” that the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party made with the Democrats. The Farmer-Labor Party is long gone, but we will probably hear of the “dirty break” again in 2027.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It is a striking fact that most of our self-described left does not want to have a discussion of a third-party campaign. The mere thought of an alternative to the Democrats is seen as an assault on Enlightenment values, endangering the chances of defeating whatever candidate the Republicans turn up! It is inconceivable to them that pressure from the left might even strengthen their candidates in the distant election. It’s too risky…</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">For the rest of us, there is no way to begin to break the fatal chokehold that the Democrats have on the left other than supporting an outsider, an independent voice. It must be understood that the process will be long, tortured, and with many setbacks. Yet there will never be a better time when it will not be long, tortured, and with many setbacks.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It is not so important that we have the best standard-bearer or that we agree with every position he or she holds. But a good candidate does exist with good positions on the most important questions: Cornel West!</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a strong case for a third party and Cornel West’s candidacy, I recommend Chris Hedges' article: </span><a href="https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/16/chris-hedges-cornel-west-and-the-campaign-to-end-political-apartheid/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cornel West and the Campaign to End Political Apartheid</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-8487357180543529152023-07-23T16:32:00.001-07:002023-07-23T16:32:23.483-07:00The Cold War, Desegregation, and Affirmative Action<div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">As the US Supreme Court aspires to drive a nail into the coffin of affirmative action, it is important to recognize how the Cold War helped to shape the mid-twentieth-century civil-rights people’s victories and the consequent policy of Affirmative Action in education.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Some may find that connecting the conflict between the US and the USSR to the formal establishment of African American citizen rights is far-fetched. <br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">But the facts speak otherwise. <br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The US ruling class crudely portrayed the Cold War as a contest between those defending freedom and equality versus those imposing tyranny and enslavement. The US launched multiple cultural offensives to reinforce these views, sending books, movies, and diverse artistic figures and athletes throughout the world to signal its commitment to those lofty values.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">But as the great postwar wave of decolonization swept the world and the US appeared too often on the side of the colonists, the moral high ground seemed impossible to maintain in the eyes of the critical non-aligned nations.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even more devastating was the ugly face of racial segregation that existed</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> de jure</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the Southern, formerly Confederate states, and </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">de facto</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the rest of the US, with its accompanying violent enforcement. To the non-white majority of the world, this inhuman practice negated any proclaimed commitment to freedom or equality.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To meet this Cold War crisis, the US ruling class chose an approach that was both least costly to capital and its minions and most burdensome on the working people. Rather than returning to the unfinished business of post-Civil War Reconstruction, rather than attacking segregated housing patterns (disrupting profits in the finance, insurance, and real estate sector), rather than pressing fair employment (impacting corporate and business profits), rather than guaranteeing voting rights and fair representation (disrupting the political</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> status quo</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), the US ruling class placed the burden of desegregation on those who were among the most vulnerable in US society: children. It was public schools and not neighborhoods, housing, public accommodations, businesses, government agencies, or corporations that would bear the brunt of desegregation.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the Supreme Court decision-- </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brown versus Board of Education</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-- US elites offered a “victory” against segregation to place before world public opinion. Because it was a court decision made by lifetime appointees, it had little negative impact on elected officials or the fate of their political parties. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, the court decision was only symbolic unless backed up with enforcement. It is likely that </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brown versus Board of Education</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> would have remained symbolic and another gesture of self-righteousness in the cultural Cold War since officials took little interest in forcing it on the bastions of racial segregation.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brown versus Board of Education</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> did elevate racism to a place in the public debate. Also, it energized a growing resistance to segregation, adding a new generation of fighters to the struggle and legitimizing the fight. Without the growth and militancy of the peoples’ struggle, any promise offered by the Supreme Court decision would have faded, however.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">For the most part, officialdom and the Civil Rights movement operated on parallel tracks, with Federal policies focused on school desegregation in the South and the movement tackling voting rights and desegregating public spaces. Elites largely sought to confine and retard the struggle for racial justice. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Nonetheless, the movement for racial justice forced a series of civil rights acts in the mid-1960s that addressed the harshest aspects of Southern segregation, supporting voting rights and the use of public accommodations, as well as denying workplace and housing discrimination in the US. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the murder of the most influential anti-racist leaders, the suppression of urban risings, and the political backlash of Southern reactionaries, the US ruling class called a halt to the school desegregation project. The landmark </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Millikin versus Bradley</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Supreme Court decision of 1974 settled the limits of public education desegregation at the border of wealthier suburbs. Desegregation was meant only for poor and working-class schools, and not for the schools of the elite. For US elites-- Cold War optics be damned-- the costs of racial justice would not be borne by wealth and power. No bus would transport urban Blacks to the rolling hills of suburbia; nor would any children of the petty-bourgeois find seats awaiting in city public schools.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Class critically intersected race at that juncture, a reality that continues to shape the contours of anti-racism going forward.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, despite this setback, the struggle against racism continued, but as affirmative action-- a project to go beyond formal, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">level-playing field equality</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and place material support behind the economic mobility necessary for</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> substantial equality</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Behind affirmative action was the understanding that racial justice was an active process and not a static state of affairs, i.e. nominal equality. In other words, those disadvantaged by racism needed substantial advantages to continue their journey to equality.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Ideally, the impact of affirmative action would be race-neutral. African Americans could gain “advantages” without disadvantaging anyone else: jobs could be created in workplaces where they were underrepresented without denying jobs to any non-Black worker; mentorships and job-training could be made available to all; subsidized new or existing housing could be established; health care could be universal, etc. To use the term popular with pundits, affirmative action could be “win-win.”<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">When the win-win logic is true of society at large, it is the basis for socialism. <br /></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">But that is not the logic of capitalism. Capitalism is relentless competition: what the same pundits call “zero-sum.” Someone must win, someone must lose. When someone applies to the best public school, there is room for one more. When someone applies to a private school, some win, some lose.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Consequently, the logic of capitalist society produces smug winners and disgruntled losers. And affirmative action that advantaged African Americans produced many who were or felt they were disadvantaged. Under capitalism, social progress is always the class struggle over who will sacrifice, who will pay.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nevertheless, well-intentioned, anti-racist liberals pressed affirmative action on US capitalism with some success. Gertrude Ezorsky, a leading theorist of affirmative action, notes that “A dramatic increase in black employment and promotion occurred at specific companies that adopted affirmative action plans. These companies include AT&T, IBM, Levi-Strauss, and Sears Roebuck,” (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Racism And Justice, the Case for Affirmative Action</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) She also noted that by ”...1982, 20,000 black officers had been added to police forces around the nation.” This squares with the ruling class’s determination to make police and military action against the colored peoples </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> look like white on Black or white on non-white violence.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Ironically, one of the greatest successes of the affirmative action era was Richard Nixon’s Justice Department-initiated Philadelphia plan to integrate the building trades. Blacks in the Philadelphia building trades went from one per cent of all workers to twelve per cent by 1982.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">But as Ezorsky concedes, affirmative action declined drastically in the 1980s: “After 1980 there was a dramatic decline in the enforcement of AA [affirmative action] through the federal compliance program. The effectiveness of AA also declined as a result of Supreme Court decisions during the 1980s.”<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">With the courts, politicians, and the media fleeing affirmative action remedies that would address material class inequality, liberals and social democrats shaped anti-racism into “glass-ceiling” anti-racism. That is, the battle for racial justice became merely an effort to absorb more African Americans into the petty-bourgeoisie and into elite circles. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Token or role-model representation is sold as an</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> incentive</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for working class and poor Blacks. This pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstrap version of anti-racism reached its zenith with the elevation of Barack Obama into the highest seat of political power. The celebration of Obama, and the relatively robust growth of a Black petty-bourgeoisie, left the inner-city impoverished, powerless, and nourished only by symbolic victories.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The gap between white and Black income and wealth remains relatively the same as half-century ago-- worse for most, better for some. Educational inequities, segregated housing, poor infrastructure, and marginal employment remain the fate of many, if not most African Americans. Urban ghettoization-- once a basis for a measure of racial solidarity-- has been shattered, not by emancipation, but by colonization: the brute force of gentrification.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">For the “new” anti-racism-- with its rejection of the class dimension-- language, gestures, symbols, and manners are the target of self-satisfied justice warriors and not material deprivation or class exploitation. Where a leader like Martin Luther King found the continuation of the Black struggle in the fight of Memphis garbage workers seeking better pay, today’s NGO-sponsored “organizers” look to call out verbal clumsiness, historical anachronisms, and “microaggressions.” They look to create “safe spaces” where diversity can be smugly celebrated. They can locate the roots of racism in the twisted minds of white racists, but not in a socio-economic system that benefited, and continues to benefit, from the competition that racism generated and from the super-profits that flowed from a racial division of labor.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Accordingly, the “new” anti-racists are less attentive to the</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> macroaggressions</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of inferior health care, low-paying jobs, substandard housing, and still segregated, poor education. Since exploitation, poverty, and despair have come into existence, privileged reformers have blamed the victims for the evils that exploitation, poverty, and despair spawn. It is no different with today’s liberals who organize marches, seminars, and rallies decrying the violence and drug use plaguing our poorest communities, while overlooking the meager material conditions that are the fertile soil of social self-destruction.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When commentators announce the death of affirmative action, citing the recent decision, </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Students for Fair Admissions versus Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, they are profoundly mistaken. Affirmative action has been dead for a long time, eviscerated, ignored, evaded, and demonized since the 1980s.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Racial preference is deemed necessary at elite, ruling-class training academies like the Ivies because their admissions policies are so riddled with legacy, athletic, donor, and faculty admissions. As guardians of ruling-class liberalism and custodians of ruling-class mythology, these largely private </span><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/14/private-selective-colleges-are-most-likely-to-use-race-ethnicity-as-a-factor-in-admissions-decisions/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=ab5023ab52-Weekly_7-15-23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-ab5023ab52-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">institutions</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hide the unjustifiable privilege shown to those without merit behind a cynical veneer of racial and ethnic sensitivity, hoping that it will mask class privilege. The Supreme Court decision was not a blow to long-abused affirmative action, but to a cynical system of elite privilege; it was a reminder of its hypocrisy. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Affirmative action in higher education-- offering, affirming, and sustaining opportunities for Black students-- is easily achievable today in community colleges, colleges, and public universities by simply eliminating the huge student-loan debt that burdens those without means now and going forward. The thousands of public institutions of higher learning are</span><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> eager</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to accept students. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Free admissions-- a realistic demand for a peoples’ movement-- would be a long step toward restoring the promise of authentic affirmative action. <br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Rather than indulging the current class-blind anti-racist fashion of policing speech, humor, body language, books, and statues, an authentic anti-racism can seek to remove the material roadblocks to equality, as King and his predecessors sought. Of course, there is a cost to equality, a cost to real, and not fanciful, formal opportunity. And that burden should be borne by those who have benefited from racism: the rich and powerful.<br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels<br /></span></span><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><p><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-12984248483710654192023-07-03T15:09:00.005-07:002023-07-10T15:34:41.214-07:00Norman Finkelstein: A National Treasure?<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Among the most dangerous people in the US are those who actually once fervently believed the foundational myths of the country’s social and political order. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s the true believers-- we who are schooled on republican virtues, democratic procedures, univer</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">sal equality, and fair play that are said to be deeply embedded in the US experience-- who become radical crusaders when their beliefs are shattered by the truth.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The true believers are cast as traitors to humanity, nation, race, or creed when they turn on those who foster a false loyalty or cheap patriotism based on lies or deception.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The late Daniel Ellsberg was one of these soldiers of truth. Once a handmaiden for US foreign policy, experience brought home the murderous, cynical, and false execution of that policy. At great risk-- even physical risk-- Ellsberg bravely cast aside his privileged, highly respected position and exposed the ugly, hypocritical US intervention in Southeast Asia, an engagement that led to and fueled the savage destruction wrought by the Indochinese war. Ellsberg devoted the rest of his life to opposing the abuse of his once deeply felt ideals.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thinking of Ellsberg before his death while reading Norman Finkelstein’s new book,</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I’LL BURN THAT BRIDGE WHEN I GET TO IT!</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I could not help but see Finkelstein cast in a similar light. Certainly, they are different people, with different burdens, and different circumstances. But they are alike in important ways: both have shown uncommon courage and uncompromising idealism. Both have known the lash of ostracization. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Where Ellsberg’s idealism was violated by the US empire’s betrayal of his ideals, Finkelstein’s idealism forces him to stand almost alone against cherished beliefs that none dare challenge. Ellsberg confronted US power, Finkelstein attacks the sanctity of conventional, officially-protected thought.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Finkelstein’s new book is not easy to discuss. It is many things-- not in a bad way, but in a personal, boldly eccentric way. He is a remarkably good writer: a careful grammarian, a skilled wordsmith, with a keen, logical mind. No doubt the logical construction of his arguments inflames his foes even further.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The book is divided into two sections: 1.) an extensive argument against the latest fashions of the academic left, capped with an effective critique of their embodiment, Barack Obama, and 2.) an ambitious attempt to defend a John Stuart Mill-inspired account of academic freedom and academic responsibility. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Part I (</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Identity Politics and Cancel Culture</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), Finkelstein effectively foregoes theoretical foreplay and leaps right into discussions of some of today’s more prominent, celebrated figures, locating them and their ideas within the framework of a purported remolding of anti-racism. With the writings and initiatives of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robin DiAngelo, and Ibram X. Kendi, Finkelstein finds a bogus path to curing racism as a societal cancer, a path strikingly deviated from the tradition of his (and my) past heroes and heroines in the struggle against racism and racial inequality. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Finkelstein carefully, and in great detail, challenges the scholarship of the writers and the political weight of their ideas. His own scholarship is impeccable, though he favors the time-honored effectiveness of hitting the nail on its head until the head breaks off! He is relentless.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">To many of the young, college-educated activists who have come to understand the scourge of racism through Crenshaw, Coates, DiAngelo, Kendi, and their colleagues, the Finkelstein critique will itself appear as racially insensitive, an attack on identity that is truly worthy of cancellation. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Finkelstein counters this “Little Red Book” mob reaction by extensively and passionately quoting from his own anti-racist icons: Frederick Douglass, WEB DuBois, Paul Robeson, and Martin Luther King. His brilliant contraposing of DuBois against Kendi is a veritable seminar in deep and productive anti-racist thinking. The contrast alone diminishes Kendi’s thought. Shrewdly, Finkelstein lets the history of sacrifice, defiance, activism, and razor-sharp analysis by these giants of human advancement address the shallow bromides of smug, secure, petty-bourgeois academics. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">From the perch of an insular, arid academic office, the question of racism is a question of manners and self-styled group recognition; from the path that Douglass, DuBois, Robeson, and King trod, the question of racism was a question of emancipation, ending exploitation, and achieving economic security.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">If I had my preferences, the author would have broadened his attack beyond these mostly African-American intellectuals to include the vast body of US academics engaged in navel-gazing and supplicating before the ruling class. When leading philosophers are reduced to pondering the depth of “sentiments” and public intellectuals are selling the empty, emotive catch-all-that-we-hate concept of “authoritarianism,” the commodification of anti-racism earns no special place. Intellectual life as contained in academia in general is numbing. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Finkelstein expresses a well-earned contempt for Barack Obama, his hypocrisy, and his self-regard. In many ways, Obama gave agency to appearance over substance in a way similar to the scribblings of Crenshaw, Coates, DiAngelo, et al. Obama sold the appearance of change and delivered none.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">By contrast, Finkelstein casts Bernie Sanders as an authentic agent of change shackled by the Democratic Party leadership. But surely Sanders knew about those shackles and did little to break them. In the end, he, too, sold the appearance of change and delivered none, though perhaps not as cynically as did Obama.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Finkelstein’s politics are influenced by his earlier immersion in Gang of Four Maoism. Forgoing his parents’ Popular Front leftism for REAL revolution, the author’s fingers were burnt. Like so many recovering Little Red Bookers, he now struggles to imagine any politics not going through the Democratic Party, despite his contempt for that party. Apparently, Marxist “orthodoxy” was never considered an option.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which brings us quite naturally to the other part of Finkelstein’s book, Part II (</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Academic Freedom</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). Like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and a handful of other US commentators, Finkelstein is part of a dying breed-- the true, classic liberal who believes passionately and deeply in freedom of speech, a free press, free academic inquiry, and many other freedoms associated with enlightenment values. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the third decade of the twentieth century, history has shown these rights to be rights of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">convenience</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The bourgeois state recognizes these rights when it is useful for propaganda purposes or when the state detects no threat, should they be exercised. Otherwise, when the state is made insecure by freedom of speech, assembly, movement, etc., these rights are squelched. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In political theory, rights of convenience are actually </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">privileges</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, where privileges are the warrants granted capriciously by those in power. With the end of the Cold War and its propaganda function, the pretense of universal rights, of absolute freedoms, is just that-- a pretense. The current tribalism around both red and blue allegiances demonstrates how shallow goes the popular commitment to the Bill of Rights.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Yet Finkelstein, like other true-believers—nineteenth-century liberals, their admirers, and a smattering of libertarians-- still clings to these beliefs and attempts to support them in a world grown cynical. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">He wrestles with the idea that a university or its educational counterparts should have freedom of inquiry and its necessary condition, freedom of speech. He relies almost exclusively on John Stuart Mill’s rule-utilitarian justification, citing the potential and actual good that comes from accepting these principles (rules). </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">At the same time, Finkelstein concedes the obvious counterexamples (e.g., advocating paedophilia) that nullify the universality of Stuart Mill’s rule-utilitarianism. He and we are left with a principle neither absolute nor real-world operant. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">For Finkelstein and other enlightenment liberals, academia should be a marketplace of ideas, when, in fact, it is a class war. More broadly, the battle for ideas is waged between classes.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Nonetheless, we should embrace the idealism of Finkelstein and the other doctrinaire liberals, but without illusions. Absent a measure of free speech, the little chance we have of getting radical ideas past the gatekeepers drops sharply.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">My reservations aside, Finkelstein and his book are treasures. At a time of mind-numbing conformity and groveling before power, a figure who defies conventions and takes us where the thought police do not want us to go should be cherished.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m reminded of my teenage epiphany when I found and read Norman Mailer’s </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Advertisements for Mysel</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">f. Today, I would disagree with nearly everything in the book, but at a time of stifling Cold War conformity, it broke those chains for me. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finkelstein, too, is a chain-breaker.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-665738516299657692023-06-16T12:57:00.002-07:002023-06-16T12:57:22.204-07:00Mired in Opportunism<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">It should be obvious to everyone that the US left is in difficult straits. It is not even remotely clear who or what counts as left in this country.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To most-- encouraged by the capitalist media-- the left is the Democratic Party. But that must undoubtedly be mistaken. To be left, one surely has to be </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">outside</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the centers of power, looking in; and that certainly is not true of the Democrats and their leaders. Since the beginning of the modern two-party system, the Democrats have been the Pepsi to the Republican Coke, taking its turn in ruling. There may be an estranged </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">left wing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party itself is not a left organization. Only deranged columnists for the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> New York Times</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Washington Post</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wall Street Journal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> could believe that fantasy.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Aside from dismissing the Democratic Party as an example of the left, it remains difficult to capture what is left in today’s political life. Historically, the thread that united the “left” politics of the last millennium was its rejection of existing political and/or socio-economic formations. Looking back or forward from the eighteenth or nineteenth century, opposition to the existing order generally defined the left, whether that opposition was broadly democratic, liberal democratic, anarchist, or socialist. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Today, that is no longer true in the US.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, self-proclaimed US leftists had lowered their designs from advocacy of a new order to a defense of the more “progressive” old order: The New Deal, the Great Society, and a human rights-based foreign policy. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">James Carter’s presidential administration was perhaps the high point of and the point of departure from expanding the social democratic vision of a better world. Carter’s electoral platform captured the highest aspirations of the non-revolutionary left to date, with job guarantees, national healthcare, and reduced militarism. Within two years of his presidency, Carter had jettisoned his platform and Ted Kennedy picked up the tattered banner.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Since the election of Ronald Reagan, the broad left has been in retreat, engaged in a defensive posture, lowering its expectations with every electoral cycle.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Marginalized by the Red Scare, ostracization, official repression, and petty-bourgeois self-indulgence, the radical, revolutionary left clung at the margins of political life, advocating a new world against the cynicism and despair fostered by the rout of the “progressive” hordes.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Of course, the fall of the Soviet Union only added to the difficulties of the radical left with the flight of careerists, opportunists, and fair-weather friends from the Marxist-Leninist left.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">“Lesser-of-two-evils-ism” became the guiding light of most of the left from the Reagan era onward. With an emboldened, more radical Right emerging, this posture had some merit. The idea of thwarting the rightward march above all other considerations appealed to many. But far too many equated a new Republican-initiated aggression against the gains of working people with Mussolini’s march on Rome.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But nearly half a century later, it has only hardened into a policy of settling for any concession-- no matter how small or of little consequence-- that the ruling elites will grant. “Lesser-of-two-evils” has inexorably moved the US left to begging for a place within the respectable tent, into a role as the loyal opposition. Too much of our left substituted “please” for “we demand.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We see this in recent lows in left journalism and commentary. The website </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Portside</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-- a creation of 1991 dissidents from the Communist Party USA, recovering members of the New Communist Movement, and assorted other activists-- illustrates this decline. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Portside</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> proves the futility of combining loyal opposition to the Democratic Party mainstream with nostalgia for the New Deal and the Great Society.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">While the war in Ukraine has exacerbated and exposed the weaknesses of the US left, there has been slow, but encouraging move toward opposition to the war and the demand to negotiate an end (nearly the entire organized US left picked a side early on and hesitated in calling for the war’s end, with the notable exception of Code Pink).</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So it was disappointing, but not surprising to see that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Portside</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> recently reposted a provocative article, </span><a href="https://portside.org/2023-06-02/surprising-pervasiveness-american-arrogance" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Surprising Pervasiveness of American Arrogance</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, from </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Foreign Policy in Focus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Author John Feffer attacks those within the generic left who dare to challenge the rigid narrative on the Ukraine war established by the US State Department and slavishly followed by the mainstream media. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feffer finds arrogance because the US left-- undoubtedly justified in believing that the US manufactures consensus-- does not embrace the views of the Ukrainian “left” (part of an equally manufactured consensus). Feffer suggests that first hand,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> authentic</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> opinions of those who are living in Ukraine trumps the opinion of outsiders, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">while concealing the well-known fact that the Ukrainian government suppresses those who oppose the war</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. With eleven parties banned in Ukraine, it is surely likely that public opinion in Ukraine is stifled by this reality.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would be equally silly to value the opinion of the Russian left on the war over what we can independently establish, given similar official pressure. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feffer’s argument is pure sophistry-- a variation on the fallacious argument from authority (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ad Verecundiam</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) as taught in beginning logic textbooks.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Further, Feffer denies that there is a place for US pressure in ending the war. He mocks those who may well exaggerate the possibility of a quick, decisive end to the war, but asks us to believe that it could continue indefinitely without US material aid and encouragement. To promote this view, Feffer pictures the US as a mere ineffective leaf blowing in the global political winds-- a vulgar reversal of the real US situation. He conveniently forgets the consequential effects of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">international</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> anti-war movement in the 1960s.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If Feffer mounts the best case for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Portside</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s siding with the US State Department, the editors have no case at all.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But a week later, Portside stoops even lower. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reposting an incendiary article worthy of Hedda Hopper, Walter Winchell, or </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Red Channels</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the editors returned to the era of guilt by association and Moscow Gold. </span><a href="https://portside.org/2023-06-09/peoples-media-network-pro-russia-and-pro-china" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“People’s Media” Network, but Pro-Russia and Pro-China</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-- taken from </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Daily Beast</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the self-described “high-end tabloid”-- purports to connect a media outlet and a number of left groups and personalities to a wealthy funding source, Neville “Roy” Singham. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Author William Bredderman desperately wants to foster the impression that these entities take the positions that they take because they are directly or indirectly on the payroll of the Russian Federation and/or the People's Republic of China, that they are Putin’s or Xi’s puppets. His sole evidence is a two-year old raid and accompanying allegations by the Indian authorities that Singham served as a conduit for foreign money to an Indian opposition media outlet. Even the two-year-old </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Times of India</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> article cited by Bredderman puts the “link” between Singham and the PRC in quotation marks.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But of course, a link between foreign monies and the Indian medium, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NewsClick</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-- should it be established with Singham as an intermediary-- would have little evidentiary bearing, other than innuendo, upon the relationship between US leftists and the RF or the PRC. No further evidence is introduced.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bredderman goes to great lengths to show that the organizations and individuals cited all oppose US foreign policy toward the RF and the PRC. He wants the reader to conclude that this opposition is due to influence, rather than principle, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">despite the well-established fact that these groups and individuals have long been consistently critical of US foreign policy! </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The experts that Bredderman surfaces are all deeply hostile to the left, including the discredited Alexander Reid Ross, the popularizer of the laughably imaginary Red/Brown alliance-- a particularly nasty notion that served to divide the left since the 1930s. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Many of us have seen this before: the charge that the civil rights movement was directed and funded by Communists, that the anti-war movement was guided by Moscow, that opposition to US foreign and domestic practices must have insidious origins kept from the general public.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The temptation to point to the source of support is especially tempting when power and wealth bear such overwhelming influence through think tanks, institutes, foundations, grants, non-profits, and a host of other ruling-class fronts posing as “independent” voices. Exposing their hypocrisy is a useful service to those who naïvely take their products at face value.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">However, “Gotcha” journalism can be an impediment to critical thinking, a diversion from the substance of unconventional views. Since we cannot know if donors support the left because they agree with them, because they insist on compliance for their donations, or if they are solicited by those they fund, we cannot judge the effect upon the recipient’s independence, nor should we be obsessed with it. To be sure, the money won’t come from the US ruling class to seriously subvert itself!</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that should have crossed the minds of the editors of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Portside</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> who posted this scabrous assault on the left. And it should be understood as an attack on the left, since it serves no purpose beyond casting a shadow on a section of the left and raising distracting questions about the rest of the left.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Are the editors still mired in the nonsense of RussiaGate? Do they still see foreigners under our political bed?</span><span style="font-size: medium;">1</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">History will decide many of our differences, without help from ruling-class apologists and hucksters.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p>1<span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While this was being written,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Portside</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reposted an hysterical, crude</span><a href="https://portside.org/2023-06-14/how-much-damage-has-trump-putin-collusion-inflicted-america?utm_medium=email&utm_source=portside-snapshot" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> revival</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the RussiaGate nonsense and related conspiratorial gibberish by radio host and spiritualist, Thom Hartmann. By revisiting every discredited, distorted, and misleading claim,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Portside</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> demonstrated that it will stop at nothing to get a Democrat elected President in sixteen months. </span></i></span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-76950817701141601462023-05-21T16:55:00.001-07:002023-05-21T16:55:14.318-07:00 Western Marxism: The Unwholesome Temptation<p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The history of Marxism has a parallel history of counter-Marxism-- intellectual currents that posture as the <i>true</i> Marxism. </span></span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-59da43a9-7fff-3d46-49ba-b2f7ede66be4"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even before Marxism came into being as a coherent ideology, Marx and Engels devoted an often-neglected section of their 1848 </span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Communist Manifesto</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to debunking the existing contenders for </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">true</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> socialism.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">As the workers’ movement painfully sought a system of beliefs to animate its response to capitalism, the ideas of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels gradually won over workers, peasants, and the oppressed. It was not an easy victory. Liberalism-- the dominant ideology of the capitalist class-- served workers and peasants in their fight against absolutist tyranny.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">With capitalism and liberal institutions firmly established, anarchism-- the ideology of the disgruntled petty-bourgeois-- rivalled Marxism for the leadership of the workers’ movement. Contradictorily, embracing extreme individualism and utopian democracy distilled from capitalism, yet voicing a bitter hatred of capitalist institutions and economic arrangements, the anarchists failed to offer a viable escape from the crushing weight of capitalism. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Once Bolshevism seized power in 1917, the workers’ movement found an example of real-existing-socialism led by real-avowed-Marxists, a powerful beacon for the way forward in the struggle against capitalism. The victory of the Russian Revolution established Marxism as the most promising road for an exploited majority, with Leninism the only successful ideology for revolutionary change and socialism. To this day, Leninism has remained the only proven guide to socialism.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Immediately after the revolution, rival “Marxisms” sprang up.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The failure of subsequent European revolutions outside of Russia, especially Germany, sheared away numerous intellectuals, like Karl Korsch and György Lukács,who imagined a different, supposedly better, path to proletarian revolution. Buoyed by material support from benefactors, university appointments, and the many eager sponsors of class betrayal, critics and detractors of Leninism abounded.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Especially in the West-- North America and Europe-- where the working class was significant and growing dramatically, dissidence, class betrayal, and opportunism proved disruptive forces in the world Communist movement, forces that capitalist rulers were eager to support. Young people, inexperienced workers, aspiring intellectuals, and the déclassé, were especially vulnerable to the appeal of independence, purity, idealism, and liberal values. Money, career opportunities, and celebrity were readily available to those who were willing to sell these ideas.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Indeed, not every critic of Marxism-Leninism-- revolutionary Communism-- was or is insincere or without merit, but honesty demands recognition that no real advocate for overthrowing capitalism could achieve prominence, celebrity, or a mainstream soap box in the capitalist West. He or she could be a curiosity or a token for the sake of appearances-- a stooge. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Conversely, any intellectual or political figure who does achieve wide-spread prominence or influence cannot represent a serious, existential challenge to capitalism when the road to prominence and influence is patrolled by the guardians of capitalism.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Nonetheless, the workers’ movement has been plagued by divisive ideological trends or fads spawned by independent voices who, wittingly or not, are exploited by and render service to the capitalist class. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">In the West, it is almost impossible to be a young radical and not be tempted by a veritable ideological marketplace of putative anti-capitalist or socialist theories, vying with one another for allegiance. Since the demise of unvarnished, real-existing socialism in the Soviet Union and the disorientation of many Communist and Workers’ parties, the competition of ideas has created even more confusion. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Clearly, the working-class movement, the revolutionary socialist movement, needs guidance to avoid distractions, bogus theories, and corrupted ideas. The march of political neophytes through the arcade of specious, fantastic ideas is a great tragedy, especially regarding those ideas posing as Marxist.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">*****</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Happily, a new generation of Marxist thinkers are challenging the allure of Marxist pretenders, more specifically, those associated with what has come to be called “Western Marxism.” A sympathetic </span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wikipedia</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">article</span></a><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> offers about as accurate a definition of the words as one might want: “The term denotes a loose collection of theorists who advanced an interpretation of Marxism distinct from both classical and Orthodox Marxism and the Marxism-Leninism of the Soviet Union.” It couldn’t be made clearer: Western Marxism is anything </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the Marxism-Leninism that has buttressed worker-engaged revolutionary parties since the time of the Bolshevik revolution! </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Marxist historian and journalist, Vijay Prashad, gave a seminar at the Marx Memorial Library on November 21, 2022, in which he excoriated the Western Marxism of the 1980s:</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was a sustained attack on Marxism in this period, led by New Left Books, now Verso Books, in London, which published </span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hegemony and Socialist Strategy</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in 1985. The book mischievously utilised the work of Antonio Gramsci to make an attack at Marxism, to in fact champion something they called “post-Marxism.” Post-structuralism, post-Marxism, post-colonialism: this became the flavour of academic literature coming out of Western countries from the 1980s… Particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a great weakness in our ability to fight back against this denigration of Marxism in the name of post-Marxism… When they [Laclau and Mouffe] talk about “agency” and “the subject” and so on, they have basically walked away from the structuring impact of political economy and returned to a pre-Marxist time; they have in fact not gone beyond Marxism but back to a time before Marxism. (</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Viewing Decolonization through a Marxist Lens</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, published in </span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Communist Review</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Winter 2022/2023)</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Prashad places the influential works of Hardt and Negri and Deleuze and Guattari in the same post-Marxist mix. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">He regrets the multiculturalism turn because it ”basically took the guts out of the anticolonial, anti-racist critique, at the global level you had the arrival of ‘postcolonial’ thought, and also ‘decoloniality’-- in other words, let's look at power, let’s look at culture, but let’s not look at the political economy that structures everyday life and behavior and reproduces the colonial mentality; that has to be off the table… So, we entered into a kind of academic morass, where Marxism was not, in a sense, permitted to enter.”</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Prashad might well have added the intrusion of rational-choice theory into Marxism in the 1980s, an uninvited analysis of Marxist theory through the lens of methodological individualism and liberal egalitarianism. One leading exponent of what came to be called “analytical Marxism” eviscerated the robust Marxist concept of exploitation by proving that if we have inequality as an initial condition, we will quite logically reproduce inequality-- a trivial derivation with little relevance to understanding the historically evolved concept of labor exploitation..</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Prashad might have noted the continuing influence of postmodern relativism upon Marxist theory in the 1980s and beyond, a denigration of any claim that Marxism is the science of society. For the postmodernist, Marxism can only be, at best, one of several competing interpretations of society, coherent within Marxist circles, but forbidden from making any greater claim for universality. Moreover, the postmodernist denies that there can ever be any valid overarching theory of capitalism, any “metanarrative” that plots a socio-economic system’s trajectory. While its flaws can not be addressed here, the late Marxist historian Ellen Meiksins Wood exposed the academic trend with great clarity.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another excellent, contemporary critique of Western Marxism can be found in the writings of Marxist author Gabriel Rockhill. Rockhill skillfully and thoroughly</span><a href="https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-the-frankfurt-schools-anti-communism/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> discredits</span></a><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the Frankfurt School of neo-Marxism, especially its most celebrated thinkers, Hockheimer, Habermas, Adorno, and Marcuse, exposing their fealty to various sponsors. Those who paid the bills enjoyed sympathetic ideas, an outcome often found with the practitioners of Western Marxism.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Rockhill also does a scathing </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exposé</span></a><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of today’s most prominent Marxist poseur, Slavoj Žižek. I was happy to heap praise on Rockhill’s deflation of Žižek’s unmatched ego in an earlier</span><a href="https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/search?q=rockhill" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> post</span></a><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Both Rockhill’s unmasking of the Frankfurt School and his destruction of the Žižek cult are essential reading in contesting Western Marxism.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most recently, philosopher Carlos L. Garrido ambitiously tackles Western Marxism in his book </span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Midwestern Marx Publishing Press, 2023). Central to Garrido’s argument is the notion of a “purity fetish” that is at the core of the Western Marxists’ attack on Marxism-Leninism. This insightful and original thesis indeed captures a feature common to the leading lights of left-wing Western anti-Communism; from Frederich Ebert to Slavoj Žižek, “Marxists” have hypocritically insisted that revolutionaries be held to a higher standard of democratic governance, judicial perfection, non-violence, and policy perfection beyond anything experienced in bourgeois society or to be reasonably expected of a revolutionary society outside of sheer fantasy.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Western Marxists can conveniently overlook capitalism’s history of genocidal, undemocratic, and exploitative sins while excoriating the Fidelistas for settling accounts with a few hundred Batista torturers. They deplore the sweeping changes that Soviet and Chinese Communists implemented in agriculture to overcome the frequent famines that devastated their countries when the changes unfortunately coincided with severe famines, as though great change for the better could evade natural events and tragedy anywhere but in their imagination.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">They turn a blind eye to the human costs imposed on humanity by ruling elites' resistance to great change, while denouncing revolutionaries for seeking that change and risking a better future. Western Marxism diminishes the great accomplishments of real existing socialism, while relentlessly denouncing the errors incurred in socialist construction. Garrido effectively underscores the necessary pains and errors in realizing a new world, in escaping the clutches of ruthless capitalism. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">As Garrido notes: </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">This is the sort of ‘Marxism’ that imperialism appreciates, the type which CIA agent Thomas Braden called “the compatible left.” This is the ‘Marxism’ which functions as the vanguard of controlled counter-hegemony.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">He eloquently summarizes:</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Socialism for the Western Marxists is, in the words of Marx, a purely scholastic question. They are not interested in real struggle, in changing the world, but in continuously purifying an idea, one that is debated amongst other ivory-tower Marxists and which is used to measure against the real world. The label of ‘socialist’ or ‘Marxist’ is sustained merely as a counter-cultural and edgy identity which exists in the fringes of quotidian society. That is what Marxism is reduced to in the West-- a personal identity.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">I might add that it is also a commonplace for Western Marxists to invest heavily in other-people’s-socialism. Rather than engaging their own working classes, Western Marxists fight surrogate struggles for socialism through the solidarity movement, picking and choosing the “purest” struggles and debating the merits of various socialisms vicariously.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Garrido elaborates on socialism-as-an-investment-in-identity:</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">In the context of the hyper-individualist West’s treatment of socialism as a personal identity, the worst thing that may happen for these ‘socialists’ is for socialism to be achieved. That would mean the total destruction of their counter-cultural fringe identity. Their utter estrangement from the working masses of the country may in part be read as an attempt to make socialist ideas fringe enough to never convince working people, and hence, never conquer political power.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The success of socialism would entail a loss of selfhood, a destruction of the socialist-within-capitalism identity. The socialism of the West is grounded on an identity which hates the existing order but hates even more the loss of identity which transcending it would entail.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Garrido’s objectives are not completed with his masterful dissection of Western Marxism. In addition, he devotes great attention to Western Marxism’s critique of the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) in a section entitled</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> China and the Purity Fetish of Western Marxism</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Of course, he is correct to deplore Western Marxism’s unprincipled collaboration with bourgeois ideologues in attacking every policy or act of Peoples’ China since its revolution in 1949. As with the USSR, any honest, deeply considered estimation of the trajectory of the PRC must-- warts and all-- see it as a positive in humanity’s necessary transcendence of capitalism.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">As anti-imperialists, we must defend the PRC’s right (and other countries’ rights) to choose its own course.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">As Marxists, we must defend the Chinese Communist Party’s right to find its own road to socialism.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Garrido goes further, by mounting an impassioned, but one-sided defense of Chinese socialism. As a militant advocate of the dialectical method, this is an odd departure. As esteemed Marxist R. Palme Dutt argued in the 1960s, the pregnant question for a dialectical materialist is </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whither China?</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> not:</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Does the PRC measure up to some pure Platonic form of socialism? </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">A more balanced view of the PRC road would reference the significance of the Communist Party’s overwhelmingly peasant class base in its foundation, its engagement with Chinese nationalism, and the strong voluntarist tendency in Mao Zedong Thought. It would consider the 1960s’ break with the World Communist movement and the rapprochement with the most reactionary elements in US ruling circles in the 1970s, capped by the shameful material support for US and South African surrogates in the liberation wars of Southern Africa. PRC was funding Jonas Savimbi and UNITA while Cuban internationalists were dying fighting them and their apartheid allies. Which suggests the question: Could Peoples’ China do more to help Cuba overcome the US blockade, as did the Soviet Union?</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">A fair account would address the PRC invasion of Vietnam in 1979 and Peoples’ China’s unwavering defense of the Khmer Rouge. Surely, all these factors play a role in assessing the PRC’s road to socialism.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">These uncomfortable facts make it hard to agree with Garrido that the PRC has been “a beacon in the anti-imperialist struggle.”</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Of course, today is another matter. My own view is that the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party is “riding the tiger” of a substantial capitalist sector, to use imagery reminiscent of high Maoism. How well they are riding it is in question, but they are indeed riding it. There are many promising developments, but also some that are worrisome. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">In any case, the comrades who are critical or skeptical of the Chinese road should not be summarily swept into the dustbin with Western Marxism. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Garrido brings his purity fetish home when he discusses US socialist organizing. He casts a critical eye on the class character of most of the US left, rooting it in the petty-bourgeoisie and the influence of petty-bourgeois ideas. He locates the conveyor for these ideas in academia, the media, and NGOs. Additional material support for petty-bourgeois ideology comes from non-profit corporations and, of course, the Democratic Party. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The petty-bourgeois bias of the US left reinforces its hyper-critical attitude toward movements attempting to actually secure a socialist future. Wherever socialists or socialist-oriented militants tackle the enormous obstacles before them, many on the left will insist that they adhere to courteous liberal standards, an unrealistic demand guaranteeing failure. Garrido mocks the insistence on revolutionary purity: “...the problem is that those things in the real world called socialism were never actually socialism; socialism is really this beautiful idea that exists in a pure form in my head….”</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The purity fetish of the middle strata extends to radicals who scorn workers as “backward” or “deplorable.” Garrido counters this purity obsession with a wonderful quote from Lenin: one “can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material especially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism.” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Regarding the Trump vote and the working class, Garrido scolds the US left: </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">…they don’t see that what is implicit in that vote is a desire for something new, something which only the socialist movement, not Trump or any bourgeois party, could provide. Instead, they see in this chunk of the working class a bunch of racists bringing forth a ‘fascist’ threat which can only be defeated by giving up on the class struggle and tailing the Democrats. Silly as it may sound, this policy dominates the contemporary communist movement in the U.S.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">While not all of the left is guilty of this failure, the charge is not far off the mark.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Finally, Garrido faults much of the US left for its blanket dismissal of progressive trends and achievements in US history. Many leftists debase heroic struggles in US history by painting a portrait of a relentless trajectory of reaction, racism, and imperialism. Garrido correctly sees this as an instantiation of a negative purity fetish-- denouncing every page of US history as fatally wanting and inauthentic: “...purity fetish Marxists add on to their futility in developing subjective conditions for revolution by completely disconnecting themselves from the traditions the American masses have come to accept.”</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">While this is true, it must be remembered that there is always the danger that US history would be celebrated so vigorously that the country’s legacy of cruelty and bloody massacre might be muted by patriotic zeal. During the Popular Front era, for example, Communist leader Earl Browder’s slogan that “Communism is twentieth century Americanism” invested too much social justice in Americanism and too little in Communism. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">US history and tradition is contradictory and Marxists should always expose that contradiction-- a legacy of both great, historic social change and ugly inhumanity. The country’s origin shares a tragic settler-colonial past with countries like Australia and South Africa in its genocidal treatment of indigenous people. Those same settlers established or tolerated the brutal exploitation of Africans forced into chattel slavery. While we could lay the blame at the doorstep of the US ruling class, it is US history as well.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">At the same time, the US revolution was the most radical for its time and every generation produced a consequential movement to correct the failings of the legacy or advance the horizon of social progress. An emancipating civil war, the expansion of suffrage, workers’ gains against corporations, social welfare and insurance, and a host of other milestones mark the peoples’ history.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While writing and reflecting on the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution (</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Echoes of the Marsellaise</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm couldn’t help but be struck by the lesser global influence of the earlier US revolution upon nineteenth-century social change. He thought that reformers and revolutionaries of the time could recognize their point of departure “more readily in the <i>Ancien Régime</i> of France than in the free colonists and slave-holders of North America.” Undoubtedly, the stain of the genocide of indigenous peoples and brutal slavery influenced that disposition.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Indeed, Hobsbawn’s observation underscores the contradictory character of the US past. It is not a “purity fetish” that explains this judgment, but the cold, harsh facts of US history.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nonetheless, it is appropriate for Garrido to remind us of the many revolutionaries-- Marx, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, William Z Foster, Herbert Aptheker, Fidel, and more-- who have both drawn inspiration and offered inspiration from the victories of the people as well as the fierce resistance to ruling-class oppression contained in US history. He effectively cites Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov who rejects the practice of</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> national nihilism</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-- the denigration of all expressions of national pride and accomplishment. Within every national identity is an identity to be celebrated in its resistance to oppression and its dedication to a better way of life. Workers must draw national humility from the failures of the past, while drawing national pride from the victories over injustice. A left that attends to only one and not both will fail the working class.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">*****</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Western Marxism--Marxist scholasticism, disconnected from revolutionary practice-- distracts far-too-many well-meaning, hungry-for-change potential allies on the arduous road to socialism. It is heartening to find voices rising to challenge the sterile, obscurantism of this distraction, while defending and promoting the tradition of Marxism-Leninism and Communism. We should encourage and support Marxists like Prashad, Rockhill, and Garrido in conducting this struggle. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></span>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-19448767988564001492023-04-30T15:58:00.003-07:002023-04-30T15:58:41.334-07:00The End of an Era<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Why do the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank-- three of the most highly regarded international economic organizations-- project a bleak road ahead for the global economy? </span></span></p><p><b id="docs-internal-guid-475a3f16-7fff-5f61-dd45-a49baeeb1d11" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ominously, the World Bank </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">warns of the possibility of a coming “lost decade” for economic growth</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In January of this year, the World Bank dropped its global growth projection for 2023 to 1.7% from its June of 2022 projection of 3%. To put some perspective on the number, during the era of high globalization before the 2007-9 crash, global growth averaged 3.5%. Since the crisis, growth has averaged 2.8%. And just three months after the January projection, the World Bank warns of an entire decade of lowered growth expectations. As </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/world-bank-warns-of-lost-decade-for-global-economy-aba506a4" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">quoted</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Wall Street Journal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: “it will take a herculean collective policy effort to restore growth in the next decade to the average of the previous one.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Likewise, the WTO </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-war-and-inflation-to-limit-global-trade-growth-in-2023-wto-says-c3d7adee" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">projects</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the volume of world merchandise trade to expand at only 1.7% this year from the 2.8% average growth experienced since 2008.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the heels of the April World Bank alarm, the IMF has </span><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/11/imf-world-economic-outlook-april-2023-weak-growth-forecasts-inflation-high-until-2025.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">announced</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> its worst medium-term growth forecast since 1990. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Accordingly, all three major international organizations have offered challenging, if not dire predictions for the global economy.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Clearly, the capitalist ship that has been buffeted by a global pandemic, raging inflation, a European war, and bank failures is taking on water. While there is no reason to expect the ship to sink, serious alarm bells are going off.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The pundits, policy-makers, and economics professors assured us that the orgy of price increases battering household budgets was only temporary, due to disruptions in global supply chains caused first by the pandemic, then by the war in Ukraine. Those promises were made over two years ago. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Since then, explanations have given way to prayer. The policy tools-- a bitter potion of Central Bank interest rate hikes-- have proven less effective against inflation than promised. The previous long decade of unusually low interest rates encourages consumers to freely use credit when income is under stress, as it is with rampant inflation. As interest rates soar, those same consumers are slow to recognize their exploding debt load from high interest payments, adding to an already deteriorating standard of living. Reliance on credit thwarts the dampening effects of interest-rate increases upon consumer demand. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Media Pollyannas rejoiced over the March Consumer Price Index numbers, with growth down to 5% over the level of the year earlier (the Fed target is 2%). While the drop is significant, the media neglected to mention that they had been persistently reminding us that the Federal Reserve relies on the core rate over the overall rate in its policy decisions. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That rate</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-- the core CPI-- actually rose in March (its components-- core services and core goods-- were both up from February). So much for the power of faith. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Thus, the Federal Reserve will likely raise interest rates again in May, further increasing the cost of newly incurred debt.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And why would inflation ease when consumers are still rushing towards Armageddon by continuing to tolerate price increases? Proctor and Gamble, one of global economy’s biggest consumer-product monopolies (Tide, Charmin, Gillette, Crest, etc.) has</span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/procter-gamble-pg-q3-earnings-report-2023-a0239d58" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> raised prices </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by 10% with little loss in sales volume and with growing dollar revenue. P&G has no incentive to stop or slow price increases as long as revenue (and profits) continue to grow. In fact, why would they? They are in business to make money.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Simple as it may seem, that’s the answer behind the “puzzle” of inflation: “‘The only way to explain this in relation to what we’ve seen in some of the commodity price indices for food is that margins are being expanded,’ said Claus Vistesen, an economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics” as </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/food-prices-are-new-inflation-threat-for-governments-and-central-banks-969e7483" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">quoted</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Wall Street Journal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Yes, that’s price gouging.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not a “wage-price spiral” as corporate flacks like to opine. Instead, as Fabio Panetta, European Central Bank board member, </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/food-prices-are-new-inflation-threat-for-governments-and-central-banks-969e7483" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">confesses</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, it’s “opportunistic behavior” capped by “a profit-price spiral.” </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Liberal and social democratic economists decry the Federal Reserve’s strategy of putting a wet blanket on consumption to discourage price rises, but they have no alternatives to offer. They are content to leave the management of the capitalist economy to the capitalists, while denouncing their remedies.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Similarly, the once loud advocates of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) are strangely quiet. During the pandemic, the idea of running large, stimulative deficits without fear of igniting inflation became popular. Left-wing pundits thought that they had found a pain-free method of funding social reforms without tapping the accumulated wealth of the obscenely rich-- a magical political elixir. The arrival of spiraling inflation has stifled that talk.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If three major capitalist institutions are foretelling economic uncertainty and instability, it is because we are exiting a distinctive era of capitalist restructuring. Associated with the popular term of “globalization,”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the accelerating mobility of capital, the opening up of new areas of capital penetration; a revolution in financial instruments; the release of huge new low-wage, skilled-labor reservoirs; modern, efficient shipping techniques; the removal of trade barriers and the streamlining of regulation; new formerly public areas opened to private development; and the adoption of trade agreements embodying these changes </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are among the more important and novel features of the era that we are leaving. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">That era gave capitalism a new lease on life, with growing profits, hyper-accumulation, and vastly expanded speculative investments. Little of that enrichment was shared with the masses, resulting in unprecedented inequalities of income and wealth. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The great economic collapse of 2007-2009 exhausted the vitality of the epoch of globalism-- capitalist internationalism-- that lasted over two decades. Vast sums of hyper-accumulated capital channeled into riskier and riskier speculation, a process that eventually collapsed from its own arrogance.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Rather than surrender to the inevitability of the “creative destruction” that always naturally follows a crash-- the natural process of sweeping away the toxic “assets” left in the wake of a crash-- the great financial wizards in the financial centers of New York, London, Paris, Zurich, etc. sought to isolate, protect, and sustain the garbage of the disaster and “inflate” a deflated economy through “creative restoration.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Popularized by economist Joseph Schumpeter, the term “creative destruction” refers to the wreckage left after an economic crash-- the deflated and fictitious “values” associated with bank and enterprise failures, overpriced, unrealized goods and services, lost jobs, bad investments, ruined securities, etc. For Schumpeter and his followers, this destruction was essential for a reset of the economy, a new, fresh beginning, sweeping away the waste products of the crash.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Historically, the pain of a crisis is borne excessively by poor and working people, but the rich and powerful and the corporations are set back as well. The more severe the downturn, the less able the elites are to push all of the consequences onto those less powerful and more vulnerable. And the worse the downturn, the greater the political resistance to business-as-usual.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But after 2007-2009, working people’s institutions were extraordinarily weak, the mainstream party systems offered little advocacy for the victims of the crash, and the policy makers were determined and confident that they could avoid or buffer the period of creative destruction. They believed that they possessed the financial tools that would stabilize and resuscitate the global economy without a period of retrenchment and the accompanying economic setbacks. Central banks spent trillions to buy the worthless "assets" and place them in a lockbox until values could be restored and sold back into markets. And they embarked on an unprecedented decade of free money (ultra-low interest rates) to allow sickly, unprofitable, and marginal enterprises to live on life support and to compete another day. The discipline of the market-- of winners and losers-- gave way to state intervention to keep everyone in the game.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">They only succeeded in postponing the inevitable. Today, the effort to forego creative destruction is failing and global institutions know and recognize that failure with their dire projections.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">What will follow the collapse of globalism remains a matter of conjecture. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">However, we can see that we are entering a period of growing uncertainty and conflict. The rise of rightwing populism has spawned a strong dissatisfaction with conventional answers and a rise in nationalism and protectionism. Governments in Europe (Hungary, Poland, Italy, the Baltics, etc.) in Asia (India, Turkey, Taiwan, Japan, etc.) have taken a decidedly rightward turn, embracing militarization, sectarianism, anti-liberalism, and nationalism. The US and its allies are no longer the champions of free markets, employing tariffs, sanctions, and other aggressive, winner-take-all measures. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The alliances and the rules of the game that were established in the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century are now crumbling. Global leadership is now contested, with the war dangers that ensue. The win-win illusions of globalization are mutating into the voracity of grab-whatever-you-can. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">We have not seen in memory a period where the US and its allies simply steal the financial assets of a country like Venezuela or Russia with impunity. All signs point to not a world order, but a world disorder, with alliances coming and going between old allies and old enemies. Turkey can attack Russian planes over Syria and sell drones to Russia to use against Ukraine. Saudi Arabia can assist fundamentalists in killing Russians in Syria and then broker a global oil deal with Russia. Russia can sell weapons to both Peoples’ China and India, as tensions rise between the two. The US can destroy pipelines that offer cheap Russian energy to Germany with impunity, while the UAE sells sanctioned Russian oil back to Germany. And so it goes. Increasingly, the only principle behind international relations is absence of principle. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Understandably, the highly-educated-- normally Pollyannaish-- minds diligently working for The World Bank, the IMF, and WTO foresee a rough road ahead for global capitalism. The rest of us should take notice. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-21819700141389427262023-04-07T18:47:00.004-07:002023-04-18T16:15:57.439-07:00Karl Kautsky, “Ultra-imperialism,” and Multipolarity<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fashionable term “multipolarity” -- popular with a significant section of the international left-- has an historical antecedent. In 1914, Karl Kautsky-- then possibly the most prominent Marxist theoretician in the world-- wrote an </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1914/09/ultra-imp.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">essay</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on the phases of capitalism-- past, current, and future. Like many modern-day multipolaristas who imagine a stable, peaceful imperialism after the taming of the US, Kautsky foresaw a benign phase of capitalist cooperation and peace after the war, after the belligerents were exhausted. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The capitalist countries would find peace on the international level through a process similar to cartelization-- the formation of monopolies. Kautsky believed that the growth of monopoly concentration on the corporate level-- a process ongoing in the late nineteenth century and acknowledged by nearly everyone-- was parallel with the concentration of countries, their colonies, and spheres of interest on the international level. As monopolies reduce competition among corporations, Kautsky reasoned, ultra-imperialism would reduce competition and rivalry among state powers.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Written a few months before the First World War and published a few months after the war began (with revisions),</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Ultra-imperialism</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (September, 1914) sought-- first and foremost-- to explain qualitative changes in capitalism: from its nineteenth-century phase as “free market” capitalism led and dominated by Great Britain, to its imperialist phase or form, existing at the time of Kautsky’s essay, to its ultra-imperialist phase, anticipated by Kautsky after the war would end. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To today’s reader, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ultra-imperialism</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> may express some unusual, even eccentric ideas, though they reflect the rapidly changing circumstances that engaged Marxists at the turn of the last century. Capitalism was changing; the working-class movement was changing; the socialist parties were changing; and the movement’s leaders were changing. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Capitalist enterprises were growing larger and larger, absorbing smaller competitors and concentrating significant industries into fewer units. Capital accumulation had grown as well, with the result that financiers were looking farther afield for investment opportunities. And states were encouraging the export of capital, while committing to protection of those investments through acquiring colonies and developing spheres of interest. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These profound qualitative changes did not go unnoticed; within Marxist circles, not only Kautsky, but others-- Bukharin, Luxemburg, and, of course, Lenin-- were exploring the meaning of these changes. Without question, Lenin’s contribution-- the book,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Imperialism</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-- placed the most indelible stamp on the left’s understanding of imperialism over the next one hundred years.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">For Kautsky, changes in the form or phase of capitalism sprang from disproportionalities between industrial and agricultural production. Granting that capitalist industrial production knew no bounds, exchange with the agricultural sector was always limited by the slower growth in the production of foodstuffs and the availability of raw materials, as well as the number of customers for industrial goods. While drawing a distinction between industrial and agricultural sectors may seem artificial to today’s readers, it reflects a difference better expressed as the difference between advanced capitalist countries and pre-industrial regions, countries, and even continents in the early twentieth century.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Kautsky sketches a plausible natural history of the advanced capitalist countries seeking answers to the problem of the “agricultural sector” through exporting capital to other countries for trade and markets. Colonization arises because these new markets lack infrastructure and--frequently-- state structures. The capital exporter finds it easier to impose its state than to create a new state: “Naturally, this is best supplied by the State power of these capitalists themselves… Hence as the drive for increasing capital export from the industrial States to the agrarian zones of the world grows, so too does the tendency to subjugate these zones under their State power.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is Kautsky’s theory of the rise of imperialism. Interestingly, Kautsky, unlike Lenin, characterizes this relationship between colonizer and colonized as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oppressive</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, rather than </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exploitative</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Not all countries that develop by the importation of capital are locked into a subordinate role by the industrialized countries; Kautsky cites the US and Russia as enjoying exported capital from other countries, but possessing “the strength to protect [their] autonomy… The desire to hinder this [autonomy] is another motive for the capitalist states to subject the agrarian zones, directly-- as colonies-- or indirectly-- as spheres of influence…”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Where Lenin sees imperialism as an imperative of mature monopoly capitalism-- a stage dictated by the very mechanism powering capitalism-- Kautsky understands imperialism as a policy, a choice made somehow by the collective capitalist: “Does [imperialism] represent the last possible phenomenal form of capitalist world policy, or is another still possible?” </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Significantly, Lenin’s Marxism engages laws of motion to explain the imperialist stage, while Kautsky’s Marxism counts imperialism as a path taken, among others available. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Further, Kautsky separates the arms race, militarism, and war from the logic of capitalism:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But imperialism has another side. The tendency towards the occupation and subjugation of the agrarian zones has produced sharp contradictions between the industrialized capitalist States, with the result that the arms race… and… the long-prophesied World War has now become a fact. Is this side of imperialism, too, a necessity for the continued existence of capitalism, one that can only be overcome with capitalism itself?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no economic necessity for continuing the arms race</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> after the World War, even from the standpoint of the capitalist class itself, with the exception of at most certain armaments [sic] interests. On the contrary, the capitalist economy is seriously threatened precisely by the contradictions between its States. Every far-sighted capitalist today must call on his fellows: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">capitalists of all countries, unite!</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> [my emphasis]</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thus, for Kautsky-- as opposed to Lenin-- war is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a constant, expected outcome of imperialism. Certainly, the call for capitalists to unite behind peace underscores the difference!</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Because the economics of imperialism are turning against the capitalist-- returns on capital exports evidenced a decline, according to Kautsky-- “Imperialism is thus digging its own grave… the policy of imperialism therefore cannot be continued much longer.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">So, what comes next, in light of the pitfalls of continuing imperialism?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Kautsky answers:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">What Marx said of capitalism can also be applied to imperialism: monopoly creates competition and competition monopoly. The frantic competition of giant firms, giant banks and multi-millionaires obliged the great financial groups, who were absorbing the small ones, to think up the notion of the cartel. In the same way, the result of the World War between the great imperialist powers may be a federation of the strongest, who renounce their arms race.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Hence from the purely economic standpoint it is not impossible that capitalism may still Jive [sic] through another phase, the translation of cartelization into foreign policy: a phase of ultra-imperialism, which of course we must struggle against as energetically as we do against imperialism, but whose perils lie in another direction, not in that of the arms race and the threat to world peace.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">So Kautsky effectively bails out capitalism as the source of war and aggression.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the finished manuscript about to be published in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Die Neue Zeit </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">only a few months after the beginning of what was shaping up to be a world war, Kautsky recognized that readers might find the promise of a post-imperialist lasting peace somewhat questionable. Nonetheless, he foresaw “this last solution, however unlikely it may seem at the moment.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">How do we judge this remarkable projection? Is there merit to the theory of ultra-imperialism?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clearly, Lenin scathingly rejected it. He wrote in a December, 1915</span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/intro.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Introduction</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to N. Bukharin’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Imperialism and World Economy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in his characteristically caustic fashion:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Reasoning theoretically and in the abstract, one may arrive at the conclusion reached by Kautsky… that the time is not far off when those magnates of capital will unite into one world trust which would replace the rivalries and the struggle of nationally limited finance capital by an internationally united finance capital…</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Particularly as regards Kautsky, his open break with Marxism has led him, not to reject or forget politics, nor to skim over the numerous and varied political conflicts, convulsions and transformations that particularly characterise the imperialist epoch; nor to become an apologist of imperialism; but to dream about a "peaceful capitalism." "Peaceful" capitalism has been replaced by unpeaceful, militant, catastrophic imperialism… If it is thus impossible simply, directly, and bluntly to dream of going from imperialism back to "peaceful" capitalism, is it not possible to give those essentially petty-bourgeois dreams the appearance of innocent contemplations regarding "peaceful" ultra-imperialism? If the name of ultra-imperialism is given to an international unification of national (or, more correctly, statebound) imperialisms which "would be able" to eliminate the most unpleasant, the most disturbing and distasteful conflicts such as wars, political convulsions, etc., which the petty bourgeois is so much afraid of, then why not turn away from the present epoch of imperialism that has already arrived -- the epoch that stares one in the face, that is full of all sorts of conflicts and catastrophes? Why not turn to innocent dreams of a comparatively peaceful, comparatively conflictless, comparatively non-catastrophic ultra-imperialism? And why not wave aside the "exacting" tasks that have been posed by the epoch of imperialism now ruling in Europe? Why not turn instead of dreaming that this epoch will perhaps soon be over, that perhaps it will be followed by a comparatively "peaceful" epoch of ultra-imperialism which demands no such "sharp tactics"[?]</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In this tendency to evade the imperialism that is here and to pass in dreams to an epoch of "ultra-imperialism," of which we do not even know whether it is realisable, there is not a grain of Marxism… [H]e offers us not Marxism, but a petty-bourgeois and deeply reactionary tendency to soften contradictions… Kautsky again only promises to be a Marxist in the coming epoch of ultra-imperialism, of which he does not know whether it will arrive! …For to-morrow we have Marxism on credit, Marxism as a promise, Marxism deferred. For to-day we have a petty-bourgeois opportunist theory -- and not only a theory -- of softening contradictions.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Lenin was, first and foremost, a political polemicist. While he was a profoundly deep thinker, he worked most often in the heat of political battles, where sarcasm and ridicule struck with the greatest force.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">He explains Kautsky’s theory in the context of opportunism. Because Kautsky’s intellectual ship-- and that of other Social Democratic leaders- - had left their Marxist moorings, they were susceptible to the allure of idealized, dream-like illusions of peaceful capitalism and, subsequently, peaceful imperialism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Against these illusions, Lenin pressed the realities of a growing human catastrophe-- World War I-- which was only beginning to reveal the human misery that lay ahead. It was this imperialist war-- a war with no meaning besides imperialist rivalry-- that shatters Kausky’s dream.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">With over a hundred years and the benefit of hindsight, we can better judge whether Kautsky’s “Marxism on credit, Marxism as a promise” can be cashed or redeemed. History is always the laboratory for the science of Marxism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Clearly, Lenin was correct and Kautsky wildly mistaken-- no period of peaceful capitalism or peaceful imperialism followed the first great war of the twentieth century. To the contrary, the last century was one of constant wars, imperialist aggression, and unprecedented human devastation. Nor could it be otherwise, as Lenin would argue, as long as capitalism continued to generate competition and rivalry.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Movements could and should rise to oppose this tendency. Revolutionaries should stand firmly against these wars and they should attempt to marshal as much broad support to delay, thwart, and stop these wars, but they should not be under the illusion that capitalism and its instrument, imperialism, would not continually express this tendency.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Kautsky’s theoretical argument for ultra-imperialism rests on a common mistake in understanding both Marx and monopoly. On the level of enterprises, Kautsky sees discrete stages where a competitive industrial sector moves inexorably towards a monopolized industry (he concedes that Marx always notes that monopoly always goes to competition, as well-- an inconvenient formulation that he conveniently ignores). His theory of imperialism builds on this model: on the level of countries, he argues that imperialist competition (rivalry) always moves towards a global monopoly, an imperialist combine or cartel.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Hence, the global economy will usher in an era of stability and peace-- ultra-imperialism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this is neither true to Marx’s thinking nor consistent with the dialectics of competition. The foundation of the Marxist theory of competition is found in the earliest published Marxist tract on political economy, Frederich Engels’ neglected</span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Outlines of A Critique of Political Economy</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (1844), which gives considerable attention to competition and monopoly and birthed the proposition: “Monopoly produces free competition, and the latter, in turn, produces monopoly.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">While Engels understands the dialectical relation of competition to monopoly, he insists on the constancy of competition: “We have seen that in the end everything comes down to competition, so long as private property exists.” </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In this, one of the clearest statements of the dialectics of competition, Engels explains this as, not necessarily discrete stages, but as a fundamental interplay:</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The opposite of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">competition</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">monopoly</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… It is easy to see that this antithesis is again quite hollow…Competition is based on self-interest, and self interest in turn breeds monopoly. In short, competition passes over into monopoly. On the other hand, monopoly cannot stem the tide of competition-- indeed, it itself breeds competition.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Engels emphasizes that competition is fundamental to what Marxists would call the capitalist mode of production-- it permeates every aspect of capitalist social and economic life. While concentration (monopoly) is an ever-present process, it never supersedes competition, nor does it erase competition. Kautsky’s mechanical Marxism-- like later day theorists of monopoly such as Sweezy and Baran-- misunderstands both the constancy of competition and the process of monopoly or cartelization. Competition (rivalry) is the mainspring of capitalism in all of its forms and remains so as capitalism evolves. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Is Today’s Multipolarity the same as Kautsky’s Ultra-imperialism?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It has become popular, especially with the left, to hail the weakening of US and NATO imperialism as the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">singular</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> goal of the anti-imperialist project. Certainly, a weaker, defanged US foreign policy, corporate reach, and military posture is both an urgent task and a fully justified goal for anti-imperialists. But should it be the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">singular</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> goal? </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">After the fall of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, the world might have appeared to be unipolar. The US, the remaining superpower that survived the Cold War, exercised near-absolute control over global institutions, maintained military bases in every region, and met little early resistance to its plans. As the US intervened in more and more countries' internal affairs, the description of a “unipolar world” seemed more and more apt.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Predictably, resistance emerged. Several countries rebelled, especially in the Middle East and Central and South America. Popular movements, in defiance of the US, chose independent policies, insisted on national sovereignty, even waged what Lenin called “national wars” -- direct or proxy national liberation wars (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria) -- against the US.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The twenty-first century saw further erosion of the US’s unipolar status and increasing resistance to the US government’s diktats. The growing economic might of People's China, largely untouched by global economic turmoil, challenged the US on that front, as did Russia’s growing military might and energy competitiveness. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Clearly, only decades after declaring itself the global leader, US hegemony was under stress. Influence, power, and leadership were diversifying. In significant ways, the world was becoming multipolar. And, insofar as this new order restricts the US arena of action, it is a good thing.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But multipolarity as reality is different from multipolarity as a doctrine. To welcome multipolarity because it restrains the US is one thing; to welcome multipolarity because it heralds a new age of peaceful coexistence and world harmony is another-- something far more misleading and dangerous. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Like Kautsky, some on the left leap to the conclusion that capitalism can be delinked from competition or rivalry, if only the US were contained. As Lenin observed, there is more wishful thinking in this position than a reflection of reality. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">For doctrinaire multipolaristas, a century-old history of imperialist rivalry among the great powers, disrupted only partially by a united anti-Soviet, anti-Communist crusade, counts as little evidence that capitalism invariably stokes imperialist rivalries. They choose to overlook this pattern.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Less than two decades after the end of the great imperialist war, Japan, Italy, and Germany had begun quests of imperialist expansion, often at the expense of the empires of other great powers like the UK and France.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">At mid-century, the Cold War confrontation and the threat of nuclear annihilation tempered the danger of global war, yet wars of both national liberation and anti-insurgency raged-- imperialist wars. In many cases, economic aggression replaced military aggression, as former colonial masters sought to establish neo-colonial relations.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Despite this backdrop of persistent, unending imperialist competition and conflict, multipolaristas imagine a coming era of multilateral cooperation and mutual respect. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">They imagine that India and Pakistan will establish an unprecedented harmony; that Japanese claims to the Kuril Islands will dissolve; that Balkan rivalries and Armenian and Azerbaijan conflicts will magically resolve; that the long-standing and always simmering rivalries in the Middle East will disappear; and that the struggle to control the vast wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo will wither away and be settled peacefully, once US imperialism is contained.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">They see no ominous signs in the growing belligerence and greatly expanded military budgets of Germany and Japan. They hail global realignments and new alliances as steps toward peace, rather than potential sources of conflict.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The war in Ukraine unleashed a far greater threat to local, regional, and even global war than we have seen in fifty years. As Ian Buruma has </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-and-germany-are-again-preparing-for-war-8dc75cc1" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">noted</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the war has licensed Germany to expand its war budget by 100 billion euros, while loosening the post-war shackles on this former instigator of the last global war, a moment that Chancellor Scholz calls a “historic turning point.”</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Buruma cites a commitment that Japanese prime minister Kishida makes to increase military spending by 50% in 5 years, a dangerous break with Japan’s constitutional fetters. This is an omen of the utopian multipolarity to come? </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Like Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialism, this theory of a peaceful and harmonious world of capitalist powers is a radical departure from what history teaches and from today’s realities. And like Kautsky, its proponents have lost touch with the dynamics of capitalism in the era of imperialism. Kautsky saw the basic contradiction of his time between competitive capitalism and monopoly capitalism, with the “cartelization” of empires eliminating global rivalries.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Today’s multipolaristas see the struggle between unipolarity and multipolarity as the principal contradiction facing the world. As with ultra-imperialism, this is an illusion that allows them to evade the great contradiction of our time: the struggle between an overripe, failed system-- capitalism-- and socialism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Since the demise of Soviet socialism, advocacy of socialism has fallen out of fashion. To most on the left, socialism is, at best, a far-off dream, well beyond our reach. No doubt this despair-- unmatched even by the most desperate times of the past-- informs the attraction of multipolarity, something that appears within reach.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But intellectual integrity requires that we go where the truth takes us. And the truth in our day-- like the truth in Kautsky’s day-- demands that we recognize that capitalism generates war. And the final solution to war is socialism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-82312605288816647732023-03-16T11:11:00.005-07:002023-03-20T15:26:15.521-07:00Red Rosa, “Junius,” and Leninism<span style="font-size: x-large;">During the early years of the First World War, revolutionary Marxists-- those who opposed the war in its entirety-- were bitterly disappointed in the leaders of the socialist parties and the workers’ organizations who chose to take the side of their governments in prosecuting the great war. They used their isolation and alienation from these parties to examine some of the burning questions opened by the ongoing slaughter of millions.<br /><br />Vladimir Lenin, in exile in Bern and Zurich, Switzerland used this time to write extensively on the relation between late capitalism, monopoly capitalism-- an era given the name “imperialism” -- and war. His thinking on national self-determination, revisionism, and opportunism were also taking shape in his writings. <br /><br />At the same time, another revolutionary Marxist, Rosa Luxemburg, was jailed for her opposition to the war. She used her time, like Lenin, to develop fresh ideas on the trajectory of the socialist project-- its missteps and prospects. From this effort came <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/"><b>The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy (The Junius Pamphlet)</b></a>, a pseudonymous [Junius] contribution smuggled from her jail cell and published in 1916.<br /><br />Lenin read <b>The Junius Pamphlet</b>. He made the egregious error of assuming that the author was a man, an error all too common in the time. However, he is uncharacteristically fulsome with his<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/junius-pamphlet.htm"> praise</a>: “Written in a very lively style, Junius’ pamphlet has undoubtedly played and will play an important role in the struggle against the ex-Social-Democratic Party of Germany, which has deserted to the side of the bourgeoisie and the Junkers, and we heartily greet the author.”<br /><br />Lenin added: “On the whole, Junius’ pamphlet is a splendid Marxian work, and in all probability its defects are, to a certain extent, accidental.” Lenin, typically, was a critical reader who let nothing pass without exposing defects. <br /><br />In the case of Luxemburg’s pamphlet, Lenin objects to her lack of dialectical rigor. In the heat of her condemnation of the betrayal of the working class by the socialist leadership, she too-often generalizes features of <i>this specific imperialist war at this specific time and place</i> as though they were universal truths. For example, Luxemburg’s universal claim that “In the epoch (era) of this unbridled imperialism, there can be no more national wars” violates Lenin’s oft-repeated practical understanding of dialectics: “But it would be a mistake to exaggerate this truth; to depart from the Marxian rule to be concrete; to apply the appraisal of the present war to all wars that are possible under imperialism; to lose sight of the national movements <i>against</i> imperialism.” <br /><br />He elaborates: <br /><br /><blockquote>The fallacy of this argument is obvious. Of course, the fundamental proposition of Marxian dialectics is that all boundaries in nature and society are conventional and mobile, that there is not a single phenomenon which cannot under certain conditions be transformed into its opposite. A national war can be transformed into an imperialist war, and vice versa. For example, the wars of the Great French Revolution started as national wars and were such. They were revolutionary wars because they were waged in defence of the Great Revolution against a coalition of counter-revolutionary monarchies. But after Napoleon had created the French Empire by subjugating a number of large, virile, long established national states of Europe, the French national wars became imperialist wars, which in their turn engendered wars for national liberation against Napoleon’s imperialism.</blockquote></span><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Not sharing Lenin’s dialectical rigor, Luxemburg’s claim becomes a denial of the possibility of wars of national liberation.<br /><br />Lenin seldom missed an opportunity to explain dialectics as a concrete analysis of a concrete situation-- an insistence on avoiding broad generalities that failed to respect changing circumstances and changing relations of social forces. His dialectical method separated his views from some of his comrades on the national question, strategy, and tactics.<br /><br />But “[t]he chief defect in Junius’ pamphlet… is its silence regarding the connection between social-chauvinism (the author uses neither this nor the less precise term social-patriotism) and opportunism.”<br /><br />Left social-chauvinism-- the unquestioned support for the “fatherland,” the homeland, my country, right or wrong, and its policies by leftists-- does not spring from nothing. As Lenin argued often, but most straightforwardly in <b><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x02.htm">Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International</a> </b>(January, 1916):<br /><br /><blockquote>The relatively “peaceful” character of the period between 1871 and 1914 served to foster opportunism first as a mood, then as a trend, until finally it formed a group or stratum among the labour bureaucracy and petty-bourgeois fellow-travellers. These elements were able to gain control of the labour movement only by paying lip-service to revolutionary aims and revolutionary tactics. They were able to win the confidence of the masses only by their protestations that all this “peaceful” work served to prepare the proletarian revolution. This contradiction was a boil which just had to burst, and burst it has.</blockquote><br />Where Luxemburg leaves the betrayal of the socialist antiwar policy dangling, as though it fell from the sky or happened through incompetence, Lenin insists that it was a process, an ideological deterioration based upon “the alliance of a small section of privileged workers with ‘their’ national bourgeoisie against the working-class masses; the alliance between the lackeys of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie against the class the latter is exploiting.” His condemnation of this development is emphatic:<br /><br /><blockquote>Social-chauvinism is opportunism in its finished form. It is quite ripe for an open, frequently vulgar, alliance with the bourgeoisie and the general staffs. It is this alliance that gives it great power and a monopoly of the legal press and of deceiving the masses. It is absurd to go on regarding opportunism as an inner-party phenomenon… Unity with the social-chauvinists means unity with one’s “own” national bourgeoisie, which exploits other nations; it means splitting the international proletariat. This does not mean that an immediate break with the opportunists is possible everywhere... It means only… that history, which has led us from “peaceful” capitalism to imperialist capitalism, has paved the way for this break. </blockquote><br />We can summarize Lenin’s objections to <b>The Junius Pamphlet</b>-- reluctant though they be-- with the following points:<br /><br />1. Luxemburg fails to fully explain the link between the ideological drift of the left in the decades before the First World War which led to the ensuing corrupted politics and the capitulation of the left to war fever.<br /><br /><br />2. Luxemburg does not acknowledge that there can be justifiable “national” wars (wars of national liberation) in the era of imperialism.<br /><br />But where Lenin’s writing on imperialism is an argument-- a polished, profound argument, Luxemburg’s pamphlet is a rich, vivid essay, exposing the direct, unbroken line from capitalism to imperialism to war and its barbaric consequences.<br /><br />Is there a more eloquent description of imperialist war?<br /><br /><blockquote>Business thrives in the ruins. Cities become piles of ruins; villages become cemeteries; countries deserts; populations are beggared; churches, horse stalls… Every government sees every other as dooming its own people and worthy of universal contempt… Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth-- there stands bourgeois society… the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity.</blockquote><br />And what does imperialist war in the twentieth century bring?<br /><br /><blockquote>Frederich Engels once said: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism” ... A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses towards its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Frederich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration-- a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism… The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves… to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales. </blockquote><br />I can’t imagine a more apt description of life in the era of imperialism: unthinkable global wars, countless, interminable regional and local wars, economic instability, vast inequalities, cultural vulgarity, and crude individualism-- a wounded, bleeding civilization. Luxemburg exhibits an uncanny foresight: “[an Anglo-French victory in World War I] would lead to a new feverish armaments race among all the states-- with defeated Germany obviously in the forefront. An unalloyed militarism and reaction would dominate all Europe with a new world war as its ultimate goal.”<br /><br />How right she was. Two decades later, Germany was rearming at a furious pace, with war in Spain-- a precursor to the coming European war-- raging, Italy invading Ethiopia, and Japanese expansion fully moving ahead. Luxemburg fully grasped the intimate relationship of imperialism and war.<br /><br />And she unequivocally and explicitly identified that relationship:<br /><br /><blockquote>All demands for complete or partial “disarmament,” for the dismantling of secret diplomacy, for the partition of all multinational great states into small national ones, and so forth are part and parcel utopian as long as capitalist class domination holds the reins. [Capitalism] cannot, under its current imperialist course, dispense with present-day militarism, secret diplomacy, or the centralized multinational state.</blockquote><br /><br />Of course, anyone familiar with the works of Lenin and Luxemburg recognizes that revolutionaries should, nonetheless, encourage the masses to press for these reforms as essential for their deeper appreciation of the need for socialism and the final settlement with capitalism.<br /><br />The thinking of Lenin and of Luxemburg congeal completely and satisfactorily in one long passage that should be read by every activist and applied to our struggles today:<br /><br /><blockquote>The events that bore the present war did not begin in July 1914 but reach back for decades. Thread by thread they have been woven together on the loom of an inexorable natural development until the firm net of imperialist world politics has encircled five continents. It is a huge historical complex of events; whose roots reach deep down into the Plutonic deeps of economic creation…<br /><b><br />Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognizable only in its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will.</b> From this point of view only is it possible to understand correctly the question of “national defense!” in the present war.<br /><br />The national phase, to be sure, has been preserved, but its real content, its function, has been perverted into its very opposite. <b>Today the nation is but a cloak that covers imperialistic desires, a battle cry for imperialist rivalries, the last ideological measure with which the masses can be persuaded to play the role of cannon fodder in imperialistic war.</b> [my emphasis]</blockquote><br />In this passage, Luxemburg could as well be offering a popular paraphrase, a distilled summary of Lenin’s thesis in his essential work, <b>Imperialism</b>. Like Lenin, she characterizes imperialism as a stage and not a constellation of great powers, a stage that no capitalist state can avoid or from which it can withdraw. Imperialism is a nexus of relations-- a system-- associated with capitalism in its most rapacious and unstable form, a form that systematically generates war, ever more devastating war.<br /><br />It is for these reasons that “In a discussion of the general causes of the war, and its significance, the question of the ‘guilty party’ is completely beside the issue.” The roots of imperialist war-- to be found in the capitalist predatory mechanism of competition-- make the ‘guilty party’ strictly contingent. As Luxemburg recounts, there were at least five distinct occasions in which World War I could have easily begun. What does it matter which occasion sparked the war?<br /><br /><b>What does the thinking of Luxemburg and Lenin, shaped in the midst of imperialism’s first great, global war, have to offer us today, over a century later?</b><br /><br />Ideas born from Luxemburg’s imprisonment and Lenin’s exile surely deserve more than scholarly interest. Both stood firmly, and with demonstrated integrity, against policies that served up working people to a fate of death and destruction. If working people were to sacrifice, let it be for liberation from the tyranny of capital. Or, for Lenin, let it be to drive out the rule of a colonial oppressor.<br /><br />Both were appalled that the left of the time abandoned its partisanship for working people, its working-class internationalism, to endorse-- even participate in-- imperialist war, war to advance interests of national bourgeoisies.<br /><br />Neither bothered to distinguish between the antagonists in imperialist war. It did not matter to Luxemburg that Czarist Russia fought for “the political interests of the nation” and “not for the economic expansion of capital.” Russia participated in the imperialist system and did not deserve the support of workers. <br /><br />Nor did it matter to Luxemburg that many in Germany believed that “German guns” would liberate Russia from Czardom. Instead, she reminds us, “never in the history of the world has an oppressed class received political rights as a reward for service rendered to the ruling classes.”<br /><br />Imperialist war is not one in which workers weigh the issues (as expressed by their respective bourgeoisies), pick a side, and go off to die. <br /><br />The last three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union-- similar to the forty years prior to World War I mentioned by Lenin above-- have been witness to the rise of left opportunism-- the abandonment of the socialist project and the elevation of a muddled, meta-class, identity-driven liberalism. <br /><br />Like its twentieth century antecedent, twenty-first century opportunism has spawned its own version of “social-chauvinism” -- let’s call it “imperial exceptionalism.”<br /><br />These are the practitioners of so-called “American exceptionalism” or its European equivalent. They are “leftists” who have dutifully endorsed and apologized for US and NATO intervention and aggression in the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, and, most recently, Ukraine. With differing degrees of understanding, they have supported the so-called Orange Revolution, the 2014 coup, and resistance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, all in the supposed interest of human rights. This group defends imperialism as humanitarian intervention. <br /><br />These modern-day “social-chauvinists” have long abandoned the idea of class and are, thus, totally invested in forcing bourgeois values on the rest of the world. They find no contradiction in forcefully imposing Western-style “democracy” on others, while denying those same people their right of self-determination. They justify imperialist intervention as the duty of the guardians of civilization. Their arrogance knows no bounds.<br /><br />As Lenin maintains, a “break” must eventually come with these class traitors.<br /><br />Still others resolutely resist US and European meddling and aggression, but cling to the model that imperialism is strictly US imperialism and every other country is either a loyal satrapy, a client, or a neo-colony of US imperialism. This idea has more in common with the imperialism of ancient Rome than with the imperialism understood by Lenin and Luxemburg. Such a perspective poses the US as the system’s architect, ruler, and enforcer, with Europe, and other advanced capitalist states loyal enablers, legitimized and protected by US economic and military might. All other countries either tolerate, comply, or resist this arrangement. <br /><br />This is an “empire” theory of imperialism that sees the structure of imperialism held together-- not with monopoly capital, spheres of influence, and class interests-- but with the brute power of the US. It is a state version of the great-man theory of history.<br /><br />On this view, imperialism is not a system evolved from nineteenth-century capitalism to protect and capture markets, put accumulated capital to work, and exploit every nook and cranny in the world; it is not a system of rivalries; it is, instead, a hierarchical system with the benefits flowing up to a monolith and subjugation flowing down to those countries that are dominated to one degree or another. It simply exists. And from this myopic perspective, imperialism, as we have known it, will end when US imperialism is throttled.<br /><br />While this may be a snapshot of how things look at a quick and superficial glance, there are two elements that separate it from a Marxist deeper dive.<br /><br />On the one hand, it leaves out the basic contradiction between capital and labor. The countries within the imperialist system-- participating by virtue of their capitalist economic system-- are all class societies. Their position in the imperial hierarchy does not change the class alignment of capital and labor. Improving their relative position or dissolving the hierarchy does not necessarily or fundamentally change that relationship. From the perspective of Lenin and Luxemburg’s theory, changing the hierarchical position is not worth the life-and-death sacrifices of the working class (with the exception of colonial subjection, in Lenin’s view, where struggle may change a country’s <i>status</i> and end class super-exploitation).<br /><br />Secondly, and as a corollary to the first element, it is capitalism that is at the root of the modern imperialist system. Hierarchies have existed throughout history and at every level-- from the family to the nation-state to the global economy. In every hierarchy, there are fundamental social relations that dictate, that determine the hierarchy. In Roman times, Rome was at the top of the hierarchy, but it was not necessary that Rome was at the top of the hierarchy; under those same social conditions, other states could have and did strive to be in that position. <br /><br />In feudal times, hierarchies were structured by a different, unique set of social conditions. Similarly, the lords enjoying the most dominant positions were challenged by others. Hierarchies are contested; they must be maintained; <b>but they remain unless the conditions-- the social relations-- allowing and maintaining the hierarchy are eliminated</b>.<br /><br />In Lenin and Luxemburg’s time, Great Britain stood at the top of the imperialist hierarchy, yet World War I proved that the existing pyramid of global dominance was neither stable, nor capable of being reformed. Its instability results in war, as it did when other great powers challenged Great Britain. As Luxemburg stated, the war could have begun on many occasions from different sparks and different challenges. It was the competition of capital that drove great-power rivalries; it will be the elimination of capitalism that will ultimately end imperialism and stifle the lust for war.<br /><br />Karl Kautsky-- a leading social democratic theorist in Lenin and Luxemburg’s era-- gave life to the idea that the imperialist hierarchy could be replaced with a balance of great powers, an equilibrium that would maintain a peaceful, stable imperialism without violent conflict. In our time, proponents of globalization anticipated the same capitalist harmony in inter-state relations. These ideas infect today’s left through the concept of multipolarity, the notion that eliminating the US’s overwhelming dominance of the imperialist playing field will somehow result in a fair, civil, and polite era of capitalist harmony, with established rules and collegial sportsmanship. This is the same pipedream that petty-bourgeois reformers have that eliminating the giant monopolies or cartels will establish a kind and gentle capitalism composed of earnest small-scale entrepreneurs. Both notions ignore conflicting class interests and sanitize capitalism. Capitalist countries, like capitalist corporations, are in brutal competition with each other. On the scale of countries that leads not to harmony and prosperity, but to war.<br /><br />Of course, the left in the US and Europe should spare no effort in attempting to stop US and NATO military spending, interference, intervention, and war-making; but the left should have no illusion that-- should that goal be achieved-- it exhausts the anti-imperialist project. That will come only when we eliminate capitalism. Whether it is unipolar or multipolar monopoly capitalism, it is still imperialism.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Greg Godels<br /><br /><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com">zzsblogml@gmail.com</a><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></div>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-38055672761955252212023-03-05T13:14:00.004-08:002023-03-05T13:31:05.386-08:00The War in Ukraine: A Year On<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">February 24th marked one year since Russian troops crossed the border with Ukraine and began its overt military intervention in what was a </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">de facto</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> civil war. From 2014 and the Western intervention resulting in that year’s coup against President Yanukovych, Ukraine has been a divided country engaged in a bitter, violent struggle over its future alignment. Indeed, that struggle had been simmering since Ukraine left the Soviet Union, with roots going back even further. Ukrainian nationalism has almost always sought to link independence with the protection of one powerful sponsor or another.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Like other civil wars, this war is the continuation of simmering, expanding political, economic, and social issues-- politics by other, more violent, brutal, and dangerous means. Except for the Soviet period, there has never been a stable, viable, enduring Ukrainian state. Nor has there been a Western-style “democracy” with sufficient popular support and legitimacy.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">But the war is something more than a civil war. It is also an imperialist war contested between great powers claiming to defend the interests of factions engaged in the civil war. As with other imperialist wars, the great powers are contesting over direct and indirect economic interests while seeking to maintain or establish spheres of interest.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Russia, for its part, as a relatively new, emergent capitalist power, has an unbalanced economy, relying heavily on the export of its abundant natural resources, principally gas and oil. As a result of Cold War aggression, Russia also has a highly developed military-weapons industry as a legacy of the Soviet Union. Its role in the imperialist conflict revolves around defending its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and the economic links established during the Soviet era, maintaining and expanding its share of the Western European energy market, and burnishing its position in supplying weaponry in the ever-expanding global armament frenzy. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The US, on the other hand, as the self-styled leader and police of the capitalist world order, opposes Russia’s independent foreign policy and economic and political influence in Eastern Europe. Support for Syria, a country at odds with US and Israeli interests in the Middle East, undoubtedly brought Russia into even sharper conflict with the US. The dream of unchallenged US global hegemony was, no doubt, interrupted by Russia’s failure to pay obeisance. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">But the battle over natural gas markets-- seen as the transitional “clean” carbon-based energy source-- played an oversized role in motivating the conflict. With US potential natural gas production nearly limitless thanks to new technologies, the US urgently needed new markets. Most recently, investors were backing away from the industry because of low prices and shrinking profits.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">As I wrote on February 2, 2022, more than three weeks before the Russian military invasion started:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">…Biden’s administration harps on Trump-like sanctions aimed at the Russian economy and, not least of all, its energy sector.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">If oil was a motivating factor in US foreign policy activism in the 1980s and 1990s, then natural gas is a decisive motivating factor today. Where the US was determined to secure oil resources in the past, energy independence and the fracking revolution motivate US policy makers to secure natural gas markets today.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">In essence, the US is baiting the Russians into actions that will encourage the Europeans to reject their dependence upon cheap Russian natural gas. Instead, they want Europe to rely on expensive US liquified natural gas, a change that Europeans have, so far, resisted. War hysteria is meant to frighten the Europeans into rejecting the nearly completed Nord Stream pipeline and, instead, build costly liquified natural gas terminals to accept US gas. Thus, the underlying strategy is economic-- a not-so-subtle bullying of Europe into aligning with US economic interests.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The goal is to restart the botched, overinvested, badly managed fracking revolution that would now ride the tide of high energy prices.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The criminal destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines by the US and its allies only underscores the above analysis.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, the US is the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG). Also, oil purchases from the US by the UK, Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany have increased by 344,000 barrels </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>a day</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> since last February, according to </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-regains-its-energy-clout-as-ukraine-war-enters-second-year-2b910ff" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Wall Street Journal</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The WSJ</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> article quotes Daniel Yergin, an oil energy historian and vice chairman of S&P Global: “America is back in the most predominant position it has been in world energy since the 1950s… U.S. energy now is becoming one of the foundations of European energy security.” Those who see US imperialism as in a stage of irreversible decline might find this statement sobering.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The stakes of inter-imperialist conflict were established well before the intervention of February 24. To anyone paying attention, the worsening conflict was about much more than Ukrainian self-determination, democracy, or sovereignty. The encroachment of NATO was motivated by far more than protecting Eastern Europe from Russian aggression. And the Russian interests were less idealistic than simply liberating Ukrainians from themselves or neo-Nazis.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">In response to the many who found noble motives on one side or the other, I wrote on February 14, ten days before the operation:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Those who remain skeptical of the economic motives behind the US warmongering must explain why Biden placed natural gas politics ahead of any other matter before him and his German ally [Scholtz] in this first significant policy exchange. Biden’s glee-- not shared by his German counterpart-- reveals the importance the US government places on seizing the natural gas market from the Russians, their rival in the energy business.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The Ukraine crisis presents other economic advantages as well. In less than two weeks, the US has sent eight cargo planes to the Ukraine with military supplies, part of the $200 million Biden authorized in new military aid. The xenophobic, ultra-nationalist Baltic states and Poland have sent massive amounts of military equipment to Ukraine as well, much of which is sourced from US corporations and will be replaced by aid or purchases from the US.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Whether Ukraine joins NATO or not, Ukraine is being militarized and will continue to be a destination for US arms. On this front, the US military-industrial establishment will win, regardless of the crisis outcome.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Adversaries on both sides of the Cold War-like divide will be armed to the teeth and the possibility of war raised accordingly.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">US “aid” to Ukraine since last February is rapidly approaching 100 billion dollars-- far more than US aid to any other country or any other country’s contribution to Ukraine’s war effort.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">With the Russian military invading on several fronts on February 24 of last year, the civil war reached a qualitatively greater intensity, with NATO sharply increasing its participation. Weapons poured into Ukraine, guaranteeing a conflict of a dimension unseen in Europe since World War II. Predictably, the Western propaganda machine spoke with one voice, portraying Ukraine as a hapless victim of unprovoked Russian invasion. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Sadly, the social democratic and liberal left in Europe and the US-- blinded by the missionary zeal of the twisted doctrine of “humanitarian interventionism” and intoxicated by a media smear of everything Russian-- quickly fell in line with NATO’s militarization of Ukraine, going so far as calling for a military victory over Russia and regime change in Moscow. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Western ruling classes proved adept at winning the broad center-left to the bizarre notion that a moral defense of Ukraine constructed around the principle of self-determination could be applicable to a regime that itself violated the democratic principle of self-determination by staging a violent coup d’état eight years earlier. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">As in 1914 in the early stages of World War I, the liberals and social democrats betrayed any anti-war principles to the fever of war. No anti-war movement was forthcoming from this camp.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">In the US, this left-center opportunism is firmly held in place by fealty to the Democratic Party, whose imperial adventures are only softly challenged by liberals or social democrats.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Others on the left-- whether from a nostalgic conflation of Russia with the Soviet Union or a failure to understand Russia’s role in the imperialist system-- portrayed the Russian government as a liberator or as a paragon of anti-imperialism. This naive view turned reality on its head and imagined a corralling of imperialism-- a step towards a multipolar utopia-- as an anticipated result of Russia’s defeat of NATO’s surrogates on the battlefield of Ukraine. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">How Russia prevailing or any other alternative military outcome could benefit the working classes of Ukraine, Russia, or the West is beyond credulity. Illusions of a Russian version of humanitarian intervention unfortunately infect some elements of the left. Meanwhile, the bodies are piling up, homes are destroyed, and families are forced to flee.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Too few of us on the left rejected the two misguided choices, recognizing the essence of the war as imperialist conflict.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the war ground on, I </span><a href="https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2022/05/no-to-imperialist-war.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wrote</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on May 9, 2022:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The great tragedy is that the broad left-- the historical foil to war and imperialism-- remains divided, confused, and inactive while a bloody, destructive war rages, threatening to expand and escalate. As the war continues with no resolution, the only winner is US imperialism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Trade union militants in Italy and Greece took to the streets to oppose the war, along with Greek Communists. Thousands marched in Prague in September against rising energy and other costs as a result of the war in Ukraine. Yet no national action against the war occurred in the US, and little in the rest of Europe. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fact that the Zelensky regime outlawed political parties, stripped labor regulations, and criminalized the opposition found most of the liberal and social democratic left unmoved (The AFL-CIO-- a strong supporter of Zelensky-- was eventually forced to </span><a href="https://aflcio.org/2022/12/22/supporting-workers-rights-critical-ukraines-future?utm_source=pocket_saves" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">object</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on behalf of its favored anti-Communist unions). </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Efforts for a peaceful settlement were persistently undermined by the Western powers-- the US, UK, and their NATO partners. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the face of intransigent Western governments and a lame, disputatious left guilty of misguided partisanship, the cause of peace was left to others. The populist right has attempted to take on the role of peacekeeper, at least to the extent of questioning the unconditional support for the further escalation of the war. As the war stalemated, right-wing politicians in opposition found mismanagement of the war to be a fertile field for political advantages. For a vivid example of right-populist war skepticism, see Representative Matt Gaetz’s scathing </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=369Qcid0vcE" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">rebuke</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of US Defense Department officials, concluding that US money spent on guaranteeing Ukrainian pensions would be better spent in the US on bolstering pension reserves here.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Democratic Party elected officials, on the other hand, have been unmoved, staying solidly behind Biden’s instigation and expansion of the war.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The notorious corruption of successive Ukrainian regimes, the mobilizing of more troops and the introduction of more lethal and longer-range weapons, and weariness over the dwindling prospect of early victories are spawning questions and doubts. As the conflict is prolonged, support in the opinion polls is now sagging. This is reflected in less cheerleading and more nuance in coverage by leading newspapers like</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The New York Times</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Washington Post</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A recent feature </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/zelensky-ukraine-president-corruption-allegations-a874bff0" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">article</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Wall Street Journal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Domestic Political Troubles Return for Ukraine’s Zelensky</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, recounts both the checkered trajectory of Zelensky’s career and his immersion in a sea of corruption. Recently, a large number of his colleagues were ousted or forced to resign for serious corruption.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The article cites opposition politicians who portray the leader as “authoritarian” over his total dominance of the Ukrainian media. In addition, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The WSJ</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reminds us that Ukrainian trust in Zelensky was down to 28% before the war. In short, the lengthy article tarnishes the image of the celebrity figure formerly viewed by the media as whistle-clean and selfless, perhaps a telling sign of some cracks in ruling class consensus.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also, the sunny prospects of Ukrainian victory with advanced Western technologies are beginning to turn a little gloomy; in late February Zelensky </span><a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-02-26/zelenskiy-fires-a-top-ukrainian-military-commander-no-reason-given" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fired</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a top general serving as the commander of the joint forces of Ukraine. Apparently, Russia has seized the military initiative in Eastern Ukraine to rhe chagrin of Ukraine's leaders.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Most countries are refusing to be bullied by US efforts to steer them into condemning or sanctioning Russia. Both Peoples’ China and Lula’s Brazil have proposed plans for all parties to cease fighting and negotiate.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">These and other changes and initiatives offer hope that resistance to the war will grow. This year, two encouraging national actions in opposition to the war were planned to rally in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, the organizers of the events engaged in bitter Internet battles where some questions of substance were poisoned by egos, turf wars, and pettiness. Historically, rival peace organizations settle their differences and validate their approach in practice. We have seen factional and sectarian conflict in the peace movement before. At least, there is now motion to halt the war and negotiate, with another rally scheduled for March 18.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Recent actions in Europe are encouraging, as well. Thousands have marched in Berlin, London, and other cities.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Maybe we are seeing the first shoots of a soon-to-blossom movement to end the war and reject militarism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I </span><a href="https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2022/09/end-war-in-ukraine.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wrote</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> last September 7:</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The war in Ukraine is the logical outcome of the unwinding of globalization, a process that began with the 2007-2009 world economic crisis… </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Competition intensified and rivalries became more virulent. Inevitably, economic competition leads to confrontation and confrontation leads to war.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The circumstances of war become less important and the deadly outcomes and possible escalations take center stage. Today, the likelihood of a long, bloody war and its potential expansion beyond borders demand action.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">As this tragedy unfolds, the only answer-- the working-class answer-- is to pull out all stops to end it. We desperately need a militant movement to stop this war.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The need is even more urgent today.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-52559870186829908922023-02-11T09:57:00.000-08:002023-02-11T09:57:02.212-08:00Derangement Unbound<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Karl Marx famously said in the <b>Eighteenth Brumaire </b>that history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” While there are many examples of this insight from history, Marx could not foresee how farce would become the staple of the US ruling class, how elites would defend what they see as their interests with a web of calculated deception extending beyond the limits of the absurd.<br /><br />Like the mad General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s great film, <b>Dr. Strangelove</b>, an Air Force four-star General, Mike Minihan, “sent a memo on Friday [January 27] to the officers he commands that predicts the U.S. will be at war with China in two years and tells them to get ready to prep by firing ‘a clip’ at a target, and ‘aim for the head,’” as <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-air-force-general-predicts-war-china-2025-memo-rcna67967">reported</a> by <b>NBC News</b>. Further, the deranged General “directs all AMC [Air Mobility Command] personnel to ‘consider their personal affairs and whether a visit should be scheduled with their servicing base legal office to ensure they are legally ready and prepared.’” <br /><br />Further evidence of the 1950s Cold War-like craze possessing the military and infecting a gullible public came on February 1 when the US Air Force designated a proposed Chinese-owned corn mill as a “significant threat to national security.” With 370 acres of farmland, Shandong-based Fufeng group saw an opportunity to mill corn to supplement the company’s food additive business. According to <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/chinese-corn-mill-north-dakota-224406327.html?guccounter=1"><b>Yahoo!news</b></a>, the locals saw the corn mill as an “economic development success” until the military warning turned them against the plans. North Dakota’s two Senators loudly led the chorus shutting down the project.<br /><br /><b>The Great Balloon Fiasco</b><br /><br />The world woke up during the first week of February with a new and ominous threat-- a great balloon was floating slowly through the Stratosphere across some Western US states. Unnamed “officials” declared that the balloon was a Chinese spy balloon, sent to discover some profound military secrets. The declaration was followed by incriminations from politicians of both major parties, denouncing the treacherous Chinese Communists for their perfidy. <br /><br />As hysteria mounted and civilians began to report new sightings of imaginary new balloons, a few dissident voices noted that balloon spying was a dated, obsolete technology superseded by advanced high-altitude, manned airplane overflights, which have been themselves replaced by satellites and high-tech cameras. Why would the Chinese use a balloon for espionage?<br /><br />But “experts” emerged who claimed that there may well be an ever-so-slight advantage to be gained by proximity and slow speed. None of the overpaid newsreaders who occupy network anchor chairs noted that since the balloon had first been detected over Alaska, the military authorities had plenty of time to rush out to Walmart to buy tarpaulins to cover the sensitive military installations from the prying eyes of the balloon’s master.<br /><br />Officials in Peoples’ China admitted that it was their balloon-- a meteorological balloon-- but denied that it was a spy balloon. They might well have pointed out that it was odd that the US government would make such a fuss when it publicly claimed nearly a year ago that it was planning to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/05/u-s-militarys-newest-weapon-against-china-and-russia-hot-air-00043860">engage</a> in balloon-spying and to direct it at the Russian Federation and the Peoples’ Republic of China!<br /><br />But it gets better…<br /><br />As the balloon precedes slowly across the US on a course bound for the mid-Atlantic states, politicians, retired military experts, and pundits denounce the inaction on the part of the Biden Administration and the military. Goaded into a response, the military launched its most sophisticated stealth jets to intercept it-- apparently to ensure that the enormous balloon could not take evasive action. A $400,000 Sidewinder missile brought the balloon down off the coast of South Carolina before the intruder could escape our valiant air-defense command. <br /><br />Not only was the South Carolina engagement the most expensive combat victory over a balloon in history, but it was the first kill for the US’s most expensive fighter, except in war games, movies, and novels. No doubt the pilot will stencil a balloon on the fuselage of his F-22. <br /><br />But this last-minute response to the cackling of the chicken hawks would not suffice. The naysayers continued to attack the Administration’s response-- not enough, too late. At the same time, comedians could not resist poking fun at the alleged national-security threat from a mere balloon.<br /><br />To respond to both and underscore the seriousness of the balloon threat to our security, unnamed officials announced that spy balloons had penetrated our stout defenses earlier, including at least three times during the Trump administration. Rather than quieting the warmongers and snuffing out the levity, the defense officials opened a new can of worms.<br /><br />Trump’s defense officials, including career bureaucrats and Trump haters like China-phobic John Bolton, claimed no knowledge of earlier incursions. <br /><br />Even the unimaginative, power-ingratiating media could not reconcile the two claims: documented balloon incursions and an unknowing Administration. Did the military shield the information from civilian authorities? Was this proper? What does this mean?<br /><br />To resolve this dilemma and close the can of worms, unnamed senior Biden Administration officials came forward with a new narrative: The earlier incursions were unknown <i>at the time</i> and only discovered later, after the change in administration.<br /><br />This led to the undoubtedly unintended parody embedded in <b>The Wall Street Journal</b> headline: <i>U.S. Says Balloons Weren’t Detected</i>. If they weren’t detected, how do we know they were there?<br /><br />Of course, the military has an answer: they found out later, but how they found out must remain a secret. “Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of U.S. Northern Command, said Monday that the Defense Department ‘did not detect’ the previous balloons, adding that the intelligence community was made aware of them through other means of information collection,” <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3846363-pentagon-did-not-detect-previous-chinese-spy-balloons-us-general/">according</a> to <b>Politico</b>.<br /><br /><b>CNN</b> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/06/politics/military-intelligence-report-china-balloon-trump/index.html">reports</a> that General VanHerck, the commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, attributes the failure to a “domain awareness gap”. Thus, the failure to detect three balloons, but to discover their presence later, is explained through a mystifying, arcane piece of military jargon: a “domain awareness gap.” Shades of “Advance to the rear!”<br /><br />Predictably, the stalwart defenders of our interests in the House of Representatives voted 419-0 denouncing China’s “brazen violation of United States sovereignty,” with a balloon.<br /><br />Like its precedent in the 1950s, today’s war mongers advance Cold War hysteria, regardless of how we view The Great Balloon Fiasco.<br /><br />If the balloon were merely an errant private meteorological balloon, then the fact that its predecessors advanced across the US undetected would demonstrate the need for more vigilance, more advanced detection capacity, better interception possibilities, and more personnel-- a gift to the Pentagon’s budget.<br /><br />But if the balloon is authentically a surveillance device, then we presumably have more reason not to trust the Communist leaders and must prepare for further aggression-- with a bigger military budget.<br /><br />Both are ridiculous conclusions that follow from ridiculous, outlandish, and malignant premises. Balloons constitute no more security risk than the spy satellites that are commonplace today and ensure a relatively fair playing field in international affairs.<br /><br />Yet the US State Department used the ill-fated balloon as an excuse to cancel Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s trip to Beijing-- a trip scheduled to reach understanding and lessen the tensions between the two countries, a peace that the US government doesn’t want.<br /><br />While it is impossible not to see the absurdity-- the farce-- in these developments, they have deadly serious consequences. As their historical precedents did in stirring the Cold War pot, China-bashing prepares the US for war. The reckless provocations, the groundless charges, and the constant baiting of Peoples’ China all raise the risk of war.<br /><br />We have seen this before, most recently in the US behavior leading up to the war in Ukraine.<br /><br />It must be resisted.<br /><br />Greg Godels<br />zzsblogml@gmail.com</span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">postscript: Yesterday, February 10, the US government announced that they had shot down "a high altitude object" over Alaskan air space. According to <b><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-shoots-down-second-high-altitude-object-over-alaska-f3c5def0">The Wall Street Journal</a></b>, an unnamed Defense Department official said that "[t]he object didn't initially appear to belong to a government." Aliens, perhaps? The insanity continues...<br /><br /></span><br /></div>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-38162162919727266472023-01-28T15:37:00.000-08:002023-01-28T15:37:01.873-08:00France and the Dilemma of Electoral Politics in the Twenty-first Century <p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">French workers currently live nearly two years longer than their counterparts in member states in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), composed of roughly the world’s most advanced capitalist countries. Further, they retire with full benefits, on average, nearly three years earlier than their counterparts in the OECD. Thanks to a rich history of militant struggle for a shorter workweek, a greater share of national wealth, and social benefits for retirees, workers in France enjoy a higher standard of living and a much longer secure retirement than most workers in other countries.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Of course, a better, longer, more secure life comes at a cost; France devotes much more of its GDP to support retirees than other OECD countries. It should be an obvious truth that it costs more to live longer.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">And the people of France want to keep this system and improve it. They believe that spending more national wealth on the people is sensible and just.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">With the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and his corporate backers threatening to raise the retirement age by two years, the opinion polls consistently show that the vast majority of those polled oppose the change. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">To bring this opinion to the attention of France’s elites, two million people rallied and marched throughout France on Thursday, January 19; in Paris alone, the march extended for two and a half miles. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Rather than bow down to the demands for austerity and competitiveness made by capital, working people in France are fighting to retain what earlier generations have won. They do not see the fate of the elderly as negotiable. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Instead, the people defend senior benefits as an act of solidarity and not charity.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">By delaying retirement benefits for two years and shortening the retirements of French workers, politicians believe that they could save as much as 150 billion dollars per year. Of course, this “savings” will never benefit working people.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">However, it is thievery with the stolen national wealth redirected toward shoring up the fortunes of the ruling class.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The day after the massive demonstrations, President Macron announced that his administration planned to increase French spending on the military by 115-120 billion dollars per year over the next six years! So the proposed savings will go into the pockets of the armament industry and further increase the tensions in Europe unleashed by the war in Ukraine.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Since the consolidation of nation-states, rulers have used war and the threat of war to rally support. Not only is the war in Ukraine a reckless step toward regional, if not global, war, but the governing cliques are using it to justify their hold on power. Military spending is exploding across the region. Fear of a mythical Russian march to the sea serves the interest of all of the capitalist powers in the Euro-Atlantic area.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">As it was in the twentieth century, war is the answer to the collapse of the traditional parties; war is the distraction from the inability of the center forces to rule effectively; war is the answer given to the masses searching for political alternatives to the misrule of the few. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But if the majority of French voters oppose Macron’s initiative, how did he get reelected?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> He never hid his agenda from the people. If sixty to eighty percent of the voters oppose his policies, what is the secret of his electoral victory?</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Macron’s election was the result of the dilemma presented to voters in nearly all of the so-called “advanced democracies” -- those countries organized around mature capitalist economic relations, but governed by a parliamentary system with nominally universal suffrage. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Where these countries exist-- especially the US and Europe, but others as well-- voters must choose between two ugly options. They can support political parties that have abdicated social welfare for the individualistic, winner-take-all “justice” of the market. Or, on other hand, they can opt for the bogus anti-elitist populism of the refashioned right.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Understandably, many voters have turned against traditional parties that have been won over to “serving” social justice through the mechanism of private firms, NGOs, foundations, and charitable institutions. The US Democratic Party, UK Labour, the German SPD, Italy’s Democrats, etc. have abandoned their traditional posture of partisanship for the working class and surrendered to the philosophy of “a rising tide lifts all boats” -- the politics that is dismantling the welfare state safety net.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">With the traditional center-left disregarding the working class and with working people slammed by a global shift in wealth distribution, a privatization and dismantling of public infrastructure, and a radical restructuring of employment away from high-paying jobs, voters are looking for alternatives.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Sections of the traditional right-- refashioned to attack indifferent elites, construct handy scapegoats, and offer easy, but misdirected solutions-- have rushed to fill the political void. Politicians like Trump, Boris Johnson, Orbán, Le Pen, Meloni have opportunistically capitalized upon the vacuum left by the mutation of the center-left parties. Their faux-populism captured much of the forgotten working class, desperate for an alternative, any alternative.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">As the traditional center-left lost ground, it raised the alarm of extremism, even fascism. Like the bourgeois parties of the past, the mainstream parties resort to fear-mongering, rather than a critical examination of their trajectory, their departure from their purported advocacy for the masses. Whether it was touting the danger of the ultra-right or trumpeting the emergence of fascism, the center-left sought to rally voters around a united front against Trump, Le Pen, Meloni, et al., a solely defensive strategy that, at best, only forestalled the continuing influence of right-wing populism.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is in this context, following this cautious, defensive strategy, that Macron won re-election.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Against the rise of the right-populist National Rally party and its presidential candidate, Marine le Pen, the traditional French parties-- including the center-left and the new left-- unconditionally threw their support behind the “safe” alternative. The left neither sought nor received any major concessions from Macron for their votes. While they drew some satisfaction from stopping Le Pen, the left now faces a Macron determined to strip the working class of hard-won gains, ironically, a move that Le Pen does not support.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those on the left who embrace the tactic of unconditional unity against the right as an electoral strategy should take a hard, sober look at how it played out in France.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Happily, millions of French citizens are rising to the challenge now posed by rallying behind a “lesser of two evils,” a “lesser” that may prove far more destructive of living standards than the “other evil.” </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As history all too often proves, giving voters something to vote</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> against</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> can, at best, temporarily retard the advance of the false friends of the people. Decades of fealty to the “lesser evil” myth has only spawned an ever more skeptical, cynical, frustrated electorate, desperate for an alternative. Absent a left that stands </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> something, voters will continue to consider faux-populism as a legitimate alternative.</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="mailto:zzsblogml@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-45983108023151658812023-01-14T16:21:00.005-08:002023-01-14T16:21:51.846-08:00Good Bye, Slavoj <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">With a dismal start to the new year, it was hard to find a ray of hope among war news and parliamentary foolishness. </span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But gifts often come from unexpected places. My daily dose of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CounterPunch</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-- the website co-founded by one of my journalistic heroes, the late Alexander Cockburn-- served up a gift: an </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">article</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Gabriel Rockhill burying the infamous</span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> pseudo-Marxist, Slavoj Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, in the dung heap that he merits.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is an intellectual pederast. By that, I mean that he is one of the latest in a long line of frauds, peddlers, and opportunists who seduce young people hungry for new ideas, for radical thinking, for a vision beyond the staid, ivy-covered walls of academia. He seduces them in the cheapest, most disreputable way, by weaving long, convoluted, purposefully obscure tapestries from manufactured, tortured words and clever, but paradoxical phrases. For the inexperienced, those hungry for a perspective only available to those who with the patience to decrypt, </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and his ilk are irresistibly attractive. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Many of us-- I suspect Rockhill as well-- have fallen under the spell of one or more of these intellectual conjurers in our studies. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">As long as there has been a left, there have been the distractors, the obscurantists, the charlatans who derail movements by diverting the energies of promising young people into the weeds of opaque theory.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">In my student era, it was thinkers like Herbert Marcuse and others in the so-called Frankfurt School, who painted a dark picture of left prospects, directing radicals towards cultural critiques and the political efficacy of the lumpen proletariat and third world movements and away from working class agency and the then-influential Communist movements. It was not uncommon for young activists to carry unread copies of Marcuse’s books in their book bags to impress their friends. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Later generations of radicals were subjected to “post-Marxist” French and German thinkers, who wrote nearly unreadable texts filled with neologisms and sentences constructed (or encoded) to be deliberately provocative and ambiguous. Much of this was scattered around the vague, but radical-sounding philosophical pole of postmodernism (and post structuralism). Intellectual hipsters collected the profound-sounding works of Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, and others.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">The fall of the Soviet Union only encouraged the growth and spread of confusion from thinkers who were intent upon “rethinking,” “reimagining,” or replacing Marxism. Before that devastating event, the existence of a real, existing socialist community was a splash of cold water to the faces of the academic dreamers.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sadly, the handful of serious Marxists holding university positions are blocked from notoriety, while the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">poseurs</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> like </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> achieve celebrity status. And the best practitioners who combine theory and practice, like Michael Parenti, can’t get a teaching job or academic support at any level.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Common sense and experience should show everyone that prestige and recognition in an advanced capitalist country like the US will not find its way to authentic revolutionaries. Marxists like Herbert Aptheker, Phillip Foner, James Jackson, Victor Perlo, Henry Winston etc. never found their books reviewed in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New York Times</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, or their letters published. Conversely, manuscripts published by elite publishers and billed as dangerously fresh and original, like Hardt and Negri’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Empire</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Harvard University Press), are invariably a trip towards an ideological dead end. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">One can almost measure a thinker or his or her work’s value by its distance from acceptability or celebrity-- the more independent and challenging to the status quo, the more distant.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> enjoys wide acceptance by the capitalist establishment as the iconic left thinker, a figure posed as the embodiment of rebellion and resistance to power. Far too many fail to see the contradiction in the ruling class promoting the agent of its demise. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now comes Gabriel Rockhill, exposing </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for the scoundrel that he is. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Capitalism’s Court Jester: Slavoj Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is a very long, demanding article. To smother the popularity of this intellectual fraud, one must delve into his entire career, his chameleon-like disguises, his shifts and maneuvers, his reliance upon obscure phrases and freshly minted words, his looseness with the truth disguised as “playfulness,” and his limitless opportunism. Rockhill tracks all of this, but at the cost of enormous research and documentation.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sadly, this scholarship doesn’t fit well into the Twitter world, but no one should give an ounce of legitimacy to </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> without reading this critique.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rockhill recounts his own infatuation with </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> during his formal education, his own encounter with the man, and his disillusion with his virulent anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amusingly, Rockhill dubs </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “the Elvis of cultural theory,” an apt description for someone who appropriated Marxism the same way that Elvis borrowed and diluted rhythm and blues for the amusement of a white, middle-strata audience at a time when the authentic practitioners were denied media access because of segregation and racism.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s role in the anti-Communist opposition to the Yugoslavian leadership in his homeland is exposed and elaborated by Rockhill, noting the celebrity philosopher’s deep involvement with the post-Soviet regime and its move toward capitalism.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Further, Rockhill documents the convergence of </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s thinking with US (and imperialist) foreign policy, as well as his near xenophobic Eurocentrism.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Discreet Charm of the Petty-Bourgeoisie</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Rockhill’s penultimate section, takes the reader into the Lacan-Badiou-Nietzsche weeds that are the nourishment of the herbivorous </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Žižek</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Rockhill does his best to render the discussion perspicacious, but I suspect that it is still two removes from clarity. Nonetheless, there are gems of Rockhill’s insights in the section.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 5pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I fear that Rockhill’s brilliant takedown may be lost to the tastes for brevity, shallowness, or anti-theory that plague so many on the US left. The fact that the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CounterPunch</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> link on its email blast to me took me to the wrong article only underscores my fear. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Read this wholesome, nourishing </span><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">article</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">!</span></span></p><p><b id="docs-internal-guid-b0648168-7fff-49f5-8a22-e1f9d43bb957" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Greg Godels</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">zzsblogml@gmail.com</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></p>zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.com1