The Socialist Response

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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby Luther Blissett » Thu Jan 12, 2017 3:55 pm

JackRiddler » Thu Jan 12, 2017 12:36 pm wrote:Bumping to make up for my sins.

Some good articles.

I have to question that Scalia's death was mysterious!


That jumped out at me too and gave me pause. Jacobin is not normally like that, and while it tackles issues of the deep state, it does so in a highly analytical way. Bhaskar is not a conspiracy theorist at all.

But then I thought, technically, okay, it was a weird death. The text in the original links to this story at CNN written by a forensic pathologist, which contains the passage:
…there should have been an autopsy by a board-certified forensic pathologist.
Instead, we have a marshal and the property owner calling up a justice of the peace, and everyone agreeing that there must have been "no foul play."
Even if there was no foul play, the lack of an autopsy still leaves too many open questions.

In addition to some other key points. The main thrust is this:
Any speculation would have easily been put to rest by an autopsy. We need to change our laws so that all jurisdictions have the same guidelines for staffing, funding, accreditation and certification of personnel trained in death investigation. This is a matter of public health and justice.

Which I guess is maybe Jacobin's point.
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby Luther Blissett » Tue Apr 18, 2017 11:32 am

Two birds, one stone my guy.

All the "Millennials and Zs prefer socialism" discussion is lost in the middle of that General Strike thread so I'm bumping this. I am constantly amazed by what these right-wing snowflakes will find to be scared of next.

Dear Millennials: Your Love of Socialism Could be America’s Downfall…
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue Apr 18, 2017 3:49 pm

Image
Cartoon by Stephanie McMillan @steph_mcmillan

No joke. It's the shape of things to come. In many places water is already commodified and privatized. And replace the word "oxygen" with "housing" other basic human needs and you have the status quo in The West. Normality under capitalism. (The number of homeless people in this city is incredible, and it's rising all the time.)

Socialism or barbarism species-extinction.
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby MacCruiskeen » Thu Apr 20, 2017 2:53 pm

"In the US, cancer bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy"-- Sarah Boseley in The Guardian, Feb. 2017.

An alternative to this capitalist barbarism is not just theoretically possible but actually existent and highly effective:

Louis Allday‏ @Louis_Allday 14 mins. ago

Compare and contrast the US' barbarism of bankrupting its own citizens through medical costs with Communist Cuba's approach.

Image

https://twitter.com/Louis_Allday/status ... 0412103680
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 10, 2017 11:02 am

Fascism and Anti-Fascism: reflections on recent debates on the US Left

Charlie Post

The election of Donald Trump and the resulting uptick of racist violence since November 2016 has placed the issue of fascism back on the agenda of the US left. In the past few months, socialists, anarchists and other radicals in the US are debating what fascism is (and is not) and how (or how not) to fight it. Among the issues this essay addresses are whether our defense of ‘free speech’ extend to fascists or do we attempt to ‘no platform’ fascists? Do we merely attempt to outnumber fascists or physically confront them as well? Do we rely on the state and university administrations or mass mobilizations from below to oppose fascism? Whether anti-fascist organizing is a diversion or necessary element of rebuilding militant labor and social movements?

The global economic slump that began in 2008 has produced a profound political polarization across the capitalist world. As the living and working conditions for broad segments of workers and the middle classes (small business people, professionals, managers, supervisors) have deteriorated, and the neo-liberal capitalist political establishment—conservative and social-democratic alike—have been discredited, significant segments of the population have sought more radical political alternatives.

On the left, we have seen explosive movements of young people like Occupy Wall Street in the US, the movement of the squares in Spain and recently ‘Up at Night’ in France demanding secure employment, education, health care and social services. Electorally, left populist formations have arisen—some outside of traditional reformist parties (Podemos in Spain, the Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal); others inside social-democratic or even capitalist parties (Corbynism in Britain, the Sanders campaign in the US)—giving political expression to an emerging left-wing radicalization.

However, the main political beneficiaries of the growing disenchantment with the neo-liberal status quo has been a new populist right. Railing against both ‘globalists’ and racialized immigrants, this populist-nationalist right has scored important electoral breakthroughs in Britain with the ‘Brexit’ vote, France with the growth of the National Front and the recent electoral gains of the Alternative for Germany. As we will see, the same social and political factors that have fueled the growth of the national-populist right have also created the space for the re-emergence of fascist gangs in a number of industrialized capitalist societies.


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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:10 am

Financialization, precarity and reactionary authoritarianism

Max Haiven


THE COLORS OF RISK

As a result, we should not expect that the almost universal adoption of the free market will lead to any sort of peace or cosmopolitanism in the world, as neoliberal thinkers like Fredrich Hayek or Francis Fukayama believed. Nor should we assume that the financialized age of austerity will prompt such a wave of popular discontent that radical social transformation is inevitable. To the extent that we are made more and more precarious, we brew an existential anger, a self-loathing that can easily be displaced onto convenient others.

Ironically, it is not easily displaced onto the architects and beneficiaries of financialized capitalism, but instead gravitates towards the more precarious, the more abject: they who call us back into the shared precarious what Marx called our “species being,” our shared precarious condition as imaginative cooperative animals dependent on one another for joy and survival. While this may or may not manifest itself in the form of new nationalisms, it will manifest itself in the form of hatred towards the homeless, towards refugees, towards welfare recipients and towards others.

It is vital to note that, in North America and Europe, and in different ways elsewhere, this precarious vitriol cannot be separated from the history of race and racism. Older modes of racial enslavement, apartheid and segregation served the same function, similarly allowing those read as “white” to posit a superior form of humanity which both occluded a shared precariousness and elevated the material wealth and security of whites at the expense of immiserated, exploited and impoverished non-whites (in different ways, in different times and places).

Indeed, earlier moments of capitalism explicitly mobilized whiteness and its real and perceived benefits vis-a-vis precariousness to divide workers along color lines, a condition that fed, and was fed by, the existential precariousness of non-whites who, as second-class citizens, slaves, migrant laborers or perpetual “outsiders,” were not afforded the same personal safety or security (neither de jure nor de facto).

The current reigning assumption is that we have entered a “post-racial” moment, that racism is merely a marginal anachronism, and that racialized people face no systemic barriers to achieving a non-precarious life like “everyone else” — in other words, they are as free to enter the market as anyone else, and the market does not “see” race. The opposite is, in fact, the case: racism and racial inequality towards non-white people persist and, in some ways, are even worse thanks to the mechanisms of financialized market which also works to make those inequalities functionally invisible.

BANKING ON RESENTMENT

On another level, we might speculate that precariousness, in both image and concept, is already racialized, that our understandings of what it means to be precarious, and the negative associations with which this term resonates, are already coded as non-white and call up a legacy and a present of racialized images of abjection, destitution, subservience and shiftlessness. Indeed, we might ask to what extent political systems in the West base their legitimacy on the invisiblized darkness of precariousness. The politically expedient citation of the disappearance of “hard-working Americans” and “the middle class” (both of which are imagined as white) into a dark miasma of economic depression is indelibly associated with popular depictions of ghettos and menial racialized workers.

Suffice it for now to say that we can certainly see these trends as played out in largely white backlash movements which have arisen to confront non-white peoples’ or groups’ claims to social and economic justice. From anti-Muslim organizing in Western Europe (framed in terms of defending a white national heritage and white workers), to anti-Black “whitelash” in the United States (from the Detroit Riots to Rodney King to Trevon Martin), to the anti-Indigenous vitriol in my home country of Canada, these seemingly spontaneous “social movements” speak not only to the politics of ignorance and fear, but also to the socio-economic conditions of precariousness, as well as the perceived failure of the state to live up to its promises to prevent precariousness for white people, all coupled with a history that locates precariousness along the axes of race and racialization.

This deeper existential and ontological crisis and anger is joined by another: the crisis of the middle class. Those professional or semi-professional workers who have been taught to expect middle-class incomes and job security are quickly finding themselves disposable in a vast pool of precarious workers, leading highly indebted, precarious lives with little hope for reprieve. In the coming years, increasingly fascistic political powers will gain ground by offering hollow promises to rebuild the middle class and to end precarity, through neocolonial geopolitical adventure or by creating or maintaining localized under-classes of hyper-precarious migrant or abject workers.


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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Thu Nov 23, 2017 9:16 am

Why the CIA Care About Marxism: May 1968 and the Cultural Cold War in France
Posted on June 14, 2017 by mbarker2012

Philanthropic projects seeking to guide European academic enquiries away from Marxism were of course not limited to the social sciences — a matter of influence that is expanded upon in John Krige’s book American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (2008). In reference to the development of French science most particularly, Krige points out how Warren Weaver, who was the director the Division of the Natural Sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation (1932–55)…

“and the foundation were not simply interested in supporting good science and new directions in France. They wanted to use their financial leverage to steer French scientists along quite definite lines. Weaver in particular believed that the French were parochial and inward-looking. He wanted to transform them into outward-looking, “international” researchers, using techniques and tackling questions that were current above all in the United States. It was a vision inspired by the conviction that, without a radical remodeling of the French scientific community on American lines and the determined marginalization of Communist scientists in the field of biology, the country could never hope to play again a major role in the advancement of science.” (p.81)


Another integral part of the ongoing post World War II battle for French minds was more fundamentally concerned with defanging the mass organisations of the working-class themselves — trade unions. This battle was eagerly taken up by the AFL’s Free Trade Union Committee, with many American trade union officials proving themselves more than ready to take up the war against Communism (and union democracy) by covertly intervening in the day-to-day affairs of foreign trade unions. In their developing connections with the Free Trade Union Committee the CIA was in luck and “found a dedicated and experienced ally, with extensive networks and years of experience in the covert manipulation of international labor movements.”[7] The underhand nature of this long and undemocratic relationship is well summed up by “a government memo, unsigned but attached to a November 1948 letter from David Bruce, the Chief of the Special Mission to France addressed to Paul Hoffman, the Administrator of the Economic Cooperation Administration”:

“[…] it will not be enough to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into food, machinery, coal, and raw materials. We must find a means of not only aiding industry, of directly aiding the direct representatives of the workers. This is very difficult. The unions will not accept any aid from a foreign government. (If such aid does become available, it must be disguised and under no circumstances can the people here know anything about it. The whole matter therefore requires the utmost of discretion.) They will accept only trade union aid.”[8]


After administering the Marshall Plan for imperial interests, Paul Hoffman then moved on from his role as head of the Economic Cooperation Administration to become the president of the Ford Foundation (1950-3) in America. The interrelated and sophisticated nature of such sophisticated interventions into France’s political affairs are usefully laid bare in Giles Scott-Smith’s incisive study Networks of Empire: The US State Department’s Foreign Leader Program in the Netherlands, France, and Britain, 1950-70 (2011). Scott-Smith surmises:

“The ability of the US to interfere in French affairs was unparalleled during that first decade [after the end of World War II], yet the governments in Paris were still able maintain an independent outlook and steer their own course, benefitting from their special place within US strategy towards Western Europe. The European Cooperation Administration, with its headquarters in Paris, exerted a tremendous influence on the French socioeconomic scene, yet it implemented it via its own version, the Monnet Plan. US financial and military aid was recycled to enable long-running colonial wars to be fought in Indochina and North Africa. French reluctance to support an economic revival of Germany soon became sublimated into structural plans for European integration, with Paris leading the way. While the CIA supported the Force Ouvrière trade union and a host of other anti-communist outlets like the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Paris, French political elites willingly adopted their own strategies to undermine communist influence. US influence was therefore constrained by French political and social imperatives.” (p.327)


Returning to the analysis presented in the CIA’s now declassified report, it is noteworthy that the report’s authors downplay the fascist/traditionalist orientation of the New Right forces that rose to prominence in the wake of 1968. In fact, the CIA initially simply refer to these forces in their report as the “new liberals.” Later on the CIA analyst states:

“Encouraged by writers and publishers who are associated in some way with right-wing press baron Robert Hersant, the New Right in France has taken up the ideas of reviving classic European liberalism as the elixir that France needs to recover from Socialist ‘mismanagement’.”


In a more revealing appendix to their report, entitled “Cultural aspects of New Right thought,” the CIA however go on to point out how:

“Conservative writers, many of them associated with the group for Research and Study of European Civilization (GRECE) and the Clock Club (Club de l’Horloge)… have found an outlet for their arguments in Hersant publications, notably Figaro Magazine, which is edited by GRECE kindred spirit Louis Pauwels.”[9]


Here the CIA also draw attention to “the anti-egalitarian and even anti-Christian elements of GRECE/Horloge thinking”, but only to observe, how in recent years, this element of their thinking had apparently been toned down to better spread their toxic ideas. That said, the CIA report at least admits that GRECE were not really “new liberals,” as they point out that even: “Raymond Aron, the revered dean of contemporary conservative thought in France, detested the New Right intellectuals, often equating their elitist anti-egalitarianism with the worse antidemocratic strains in French conservativism.”

Nevertheless in the wake of 1968 it is clear that the capitalist establishment in both America and France sought to do everything in their power to undermine the national and international unity of working-class struggle. Expressed in a blunt form this led a renewed focus on excluding certain left-wing voices from the mainstream media. Here a good example of such practices is provided by the activism of right-wing financier Sir James Goldsmith who in 1977 purchased the left-wing L’Express, a popular newspaper which the new owner had previously identified as “the source of intellectual sickness of France”. Sir James’ first move upon acquiring this newspaper was to impose Raymond Aron upon the papers staff.[10] On a more mundane academic level, elite funding agencies also continued to support scholarly efforts to learn more about the threat posed by an increasingly militant trade union movement across Western Europe.[11]

Ultimately, however, despite many notable gains and inspiring victories, left-wing forces were tragically beaten back by a resurgent and coordinated neoliberal assault upon democracy worldwide. As in France, this process of neoliberal transformation was made easier by the willing collaboration of the Communist Party with members of the ruling-class, and by the stark betrayals of the working-class by left reformists like Mitterrand. It was in these unfavourable conditions that the intellectually debilitating but well-funded postmodern theories of French post-structuralists subsequently gained an unwelcome foothold within both academia and to some extent the mainstream media. As the Marxist literary theorist Terry Eagleton argues:

“Post-structuralism was a product of that blend of euphoria and disillusionment, liberation and dissipation, carnival and catastrophe, which was 1968. Unable to break the structures of state power, post-structuralism found it possible instead to subvert the structures of language. Nobody, at least, was likely to beat you over the head for doing so. The student movement was flushed off the streets and driven underground into discourse. Its enemies… became coherent belief-systems of any kind – in particular all forms of political theory and organization which sought to analyse, and act upon, the structures of society as a whole.”[12]


Of course these dead-end and intellectually incoherent currents of ‘leftist’ retreat did not remain confined to France — as exemplified by the Ford Foundation’s support of a two-year program of seminars in the mid-1960s which gave a boost to French structuralism on American shores.[13] Yet in spite of such academic set-backs for those on the Left, the possibility of emancipatory working-class struggles developing are once again visible on capitalism’s inhumane horizon. Early signs of this revival can be seen by the resurgent popularity garnered for socialist political candidates like Bernie Sanders (in America), Jean-Luc Mélenchon (in France), and Jeremy Corbyn (in Britain).

No doubt, the ruling-class and their intelligence agencies will, at this very moment, be frantically drafting up new “research reports” so that they may orientate their political activities in a vain attempt to neutralise this growing mood of resistance. So this time around we have to ensure that we have learned the appropriate lessons from history. First and foremost we must refuse to allow any new socialist leaders to mislead us in our bid for freedom. And so we must be clear that if our leaders are not up to the task of helping us build a democratic and socialist alternative to the bankrupt status quo then we must be ready to replace them, and ultimately be willing to seize power for ourselves.


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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Thu Dec 07, 2017 7:57 am

Identity Crisis of a Declining, Violent America

Posted on 07/12/2017 by Ed Sutton


A lot of our self-confidence and our self-esteem and our belief in ourselves comes from this idea that we are the most powerful country, the most prosperous country, the most successful—and “the best,” and “good.” When we start to lose that, it’s going to do strange and painful things to our insides.


CM: You write, “Greeks and Turks were fully aware of the history of relations with the United States. Americans, meanwhile, did not realize that who we were as a nation and a people had also been shaped by these abuses of power over the course of a century.”

What do you think it does to a citizenry when they do not know, as you put it, “who they are”?

SH: From writing this book I’ve had an identity crisis of my own. I thought of myself as a lefty when I embarked on this whole process. But I think that these things go so deep that it’s an unending quest to figure out.

I would go to Greece and I would interview Greek citizens—I was there to write about the financial crisis—and I would ask them, “What happened here? What happened in your country? How did you guys end up in this mess?” This was in 2010. Greeks would say to me, “Well, if we really want to talk about how we ended up in this mess, we need to back to 1946, 1949, we need to talk about the Greek civil war, and we need to talk about the American intervention. You know.” They would say to me, “You know. You know what I’m talking about.” And I didn’t know what they were talking about.

I’ve asked many other Americans, and many of those I’ve spoken to have not known what the Greeks are talking about either. So there I am. I realized, as a journalist asking my arrogant questions about what happened here and “what you guys did,” that I don’t know the history of this place. I don’t know America’s history with this country. And that means that I am writing about a country with which I have a relationship that I’m not conscious of. My country is the powerful one in that relationship; it’s a relationship of power. And now I am going to write about them for a magazine that’s going to be read by thousands of people, without being conscious of this relationship of power. I realized that meant that I was looking at them in a way I was not conscious of: I was looking down on them, essentially, because I was coming from that place in our power relationship.


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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 24, 2017 10:15 am

Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists – Founding Statement of Principles

November 24, 2017

We are an alliance of Middle Eastern socialists opposed to all the international and Middle Eastern regional imperialist powers and their wars, whether the U.S., Russia and China or Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. We also oppose other authoritarian regimes such as Assad’s in Syria and El Sisi’s in Egypt as well as religious fundamentalism whether of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood. Although the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah consider themselves gradualists and oppose the Jihadism of Al Qaeda and ISIS, all of these organizations share the goal of establishing a state based on Shari’a Law and preserving the current capitalist order.

We oppose capitalism, class divisions, patriarchy/sexism, racism, ethnic and religious prejudice and speak to the struggles of women, workers, oppressed nationalities such as Kurds and Palestinians, oppressed ethnic and religious minorities, and sexual minorities. We also oppose Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

We stand for socialism as a concept of human emancipation and an affirmative vision distinguished from the authoritarian regimes that called themselves “Communist.”

The effort to create an Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists, originally started in March 2016 as an Alliance of Syrian and Iranian Socialists with a trilingual website (English/Arabic/Persian) to help express the aspirations of “the Other Middle East” and to offer analyses of critical issues and new dialogues and bonds of solidarity between Syrians and Iranians opposed to their authoritarian regimes.

Since the destinies of people are linked across borders, important developments in the region –some terrifying and some hopeful—have compelled the formation of a broader Alliance.

*What was left of the Syrian revolution has been completely destroyed. The Assad regime, with the help of Iran and Russia has declared victory and is being recognized as a “legitimate” government despite the fact that it is responsible for the death of over 500,000 innocent people and the internal and external displacement of over 12 million or half of Syria’s population. One million people remain under siege by this regime and at least 100,000 political prisoners are facing daily torture and dying mostly in the Assad regime’s prisons.

*The claim by many on the left that the Rojava project of Kurdish democratic confederalism in Northern Syria could continue in co-existence with the Assad regime, seems increasingly unsustainable as the Assad regime has stepped up its pressure on Kurdish areas ever since it was reassured of having crushed the Syrian revolution. At the same time, all regional and international states have refused to support the self-determination of the Kurdish people, in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Turkey has increased its threats and interventions against Kurdish areas in Syria and continues to assault Kurdish areas in Turkey itself. The Israeli government supports the idea of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan for opportunistic reasons to find a new ally in the region against Iran.

*Regionally, authoritarian regimes are engaging in more repressive campaigns and consolidating their forces against the interests of the popular classes. This drive can be seen in Saudi Arabia’s bloody war in Yemen; the Turkish government’s campaign of mass arrests and imprisonment of all opposition forces; and the Egyptian military government’s imposition of a level of repression that even exceeds that of the Mubarak regime before 2011. In the case of Egypt, some leftists supported the 2013 military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government at the time. Instead of presenting a democratic and principled opposition to all forms of state and non-state repression, they sided with the new military government’s repression of the Muslim Brotherhood.

*Two new coalitions, one consisting of Saudi Arabia and its allies, now including Israel, and the other consisting of Iran, Turkey, Qatar and their allies are vying for control of the region and its capital. Saudi Arabia and its allies count on the support which Donald Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East and a $110 billion U.S. arms contract with Saudi Arabia has offered them. Iran and its allies are counting on support from Russia. Russia and China have also found ways to benefit from helping both sides.

*The new U.S. president Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are intensifying their war threats against Iran. While the Trump administration claims to be against the Assad regime, its imperialist intervention is in fact helping the Assad regime and further intensifying the bombing of innocent civilians in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, which began with the Bush and Obama administrations. Trump’s and Netanyahu’s call for “regime change” in Iran are for their own imperialist gains. Their campaign will only lead to war and the destruction of genuine progressive struggles inside Iran.

* Israel’s colonialism, militarism, apartheid and racism is repressing and killing Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and what was Historic Palestine or “Palestinian territories of 1948.” The Occupation and militarization are also normalizing increasing class inequality, sexism and racism within Israel. Neither the two-state solution nor the secular one-state solution seems realizable given the Israeli occupation, Israel’s extreme right-wing leadership, and the alliance between Israel, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. which aims to destroy the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

Some hopeful developments however show that the desire for human emancipation has not been quelled in the region:

*New and persistent labor protests in Iran are opposing the increasing poverty and horrible working conditions that the Iranian regime wants to hide in its effort to expand its imperialist intervention in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Although the existing labor struggles are not directly connecting the impoverishment of the bulk of the population to Iran’s militarism and regional imperialism, they do offer a potential for a progressive mass movement for social justice.

* Labor struggles and struggles for democratic rights continue in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain, despite increasing repression.

*Feminist and LGBT struggles have expressed themselves in Turkey as part of the mass protests against the authoritarian and reactionary Erdogan regime which has aimed to create a virtual police state after the July 2016 coup attempt. In Egypt, feminist/human rights activists such as Mahienour El-Massry and LGBT activists fight for social justice despite imprisonment by the state. In Lebanon, women’s rights activists organized a campaign to repeal the “marry your rapist” law. In Iraq, women are fighting against a parliamentary amendment that aims to abolish women’s rights in family law. In Iran, imprisoned feminists such as Narges Mohammadi, Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee and Kurdish women’s rights activist, Zeynab Jalalian continue to speak out for human rights.

* Popular mobilization in the Moroccan Rif continued throughout 2017, has spread to several of the country’s towns, despite repression by security forces and the regime’s attempts to discredit the movement.

* The Kurdish struggle for self-determination continues and needs to be defended. This struggle has taken diverse forms such as the call for independence, federalism, confederalism or the demand for the recognition of the Kurdish people as an entity with equal rights within a state. All socialists do not agree with the idea of an independent Kurdistan, and some have valid criticisms about various Kurdish parties for their authoritarian policies/practices and collaboration with various imperialist countries. However, critical solidarity with Kurdish parties and organizations that oppose capitalism/imperialism and defend women’s rights, secularism and the rights of other oppressed minorities is urgently needed.

In the face of these developments, we have come together in an Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists on the basis of the following goals.

1.Opposition to capitalism, militarism, authoritarianism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, patriarchy/sexism/heterosexism, racism, ethnic and religious prejudice.

2. Developing connections and active forms of solidarity between labor, feminist, anti-racist, LGBT, student and environmental struggles in the Middle East region and internationally.

3. Tackling the deep and historical problems of Middle Eastern socialism. The region has been so plagued by the politics of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” that any effort to develop an affirmative vision of a humanist alternative to capitalism around universal concepts and goals has been missing. As a result, revolutionary or progressive movements that do emerge, most recently those that arose in 2011, have been destroyed by authoritarian capitalist systems, religious extremism and sectarianism, with the assistance of various regional and global imperialist forces.


Continues at: https://www.allianceofmesocialists.org/ ... rinciples/
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Thu Dec 28, 2017 10:11 am

https://thebaffler.com/your-sorry-ass/f ... aces-frost

Your Sorry Ass

Amber A’Lee Frost, December 19

Friends in Stupid Places

What to do when your friends aren’t comrades


Dear Your Sorry Ass,

I am a socialist living in Eastern Europe. I exist in a small and oddball group of people that got together largely because of the stress produced by our academic program. The sort of bonds created in our circle arise from us sharing in the same kind of hard time. I love them all dearly, but the nature of our group sometimes produces fiery disagreements over politics. Still, we’ve gotten along somehow.

In the past year, one of these friends, previously largely apolitical, has taken a distinct interest in politics that are, to a large extent, the diametric opposite of my own. He’s been sort of an intellectual drifter his whole life, but recently he’s taken a distinct interest in becoming more politically “mature”—meaning he’s turning into something of a reactionary. Jordan Peterson features prominently in this picture, and it seems tied up to a broader project of my friend trying to take responsibility for his life.

While I think it’s great that he’s trying to build a sort of rigor in his understanding of how things hang together in the world that will let him get his life on track, his long-standing love for the power of mythical narratives (apparently the basis of Peterson’s argument, as per his Maps of Meaning) has led him down a road that is currently growing in his mind like a grocery-store-bought cactus. We’ve started having loud arguments about the basic principles of how society should be organized: When, for example, I bring up things like the fundamental unfairness of growing wealth inequality, he’ll counter with explicit defenses of hierarchy, and claims that IQ and hard work are the strongest predictors for success in society. (I guess stupid people deserve to have shitty lives?)

We’ve started having loud arguments about the basic principles of how society should be organized.
I’m happy to have political disagreements with my friends; I like the intellectual challenge. But it now seems like this disagreement colors almost every conversation we have. We’re usually walking on eggshells to avoid something that will set off an unpleasant shouting match. I maintain civility as best I can, I try to break some ground by suggesting short reads he might like. After one argument, he said he can appreciate socialist politics, and considers himself a socialist, to some extent—but then the next time we met, he derided me as a “fucking communist” to our mutual friends while I was out of the room.

I suspect his conviction is not very strong yet, there’s still room to navigate, but time is running out as his opinions congeal and calcify. At this point I don’t really know what to do. I don’t want to lose my friend, but the prospect of convincing someone about the goodness of basic human dignity, is pretty disheartening. Reading Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind has helped me understand the root attitude of his (and Peterson’s) politics, but rather than give me hope it has just made me despair. Is there anything I can do here? How do I salvage a friend and a friendship from this shitty quagmire?

Yours humbly,
Friendly Despairer



Dear Despairer,

To be perfectly honest, your friend sounds like kind of a dick. At the very least, he is exhibiting dickish behavior, and while it is quite possible that he’s “going through a thing” right now, that is simply no excuse for being a dick.

But let’s start with his political leanings. I’ve brought this up in another column, but it bears repeating; it’s very important to make the distinctions between the motivations and beliefs of right-wingers. There are the people who believe that conservative economics are the the most effective and most humane plan for human flourishing—and that any suffering that capitalism might cause is a necessary and unavoidable externality for the greater good. And then there are the people who think suffering is unnecessary, but sometimes deserved, or at the very least, inconsequential.

Your aside, “I guess stupid people deserve to have shitty lives,” indicates that you fear your friend may be in the latter category, which rightfully troubles you; no one wants to have a heartless bastard for a friend. But before you get into the likely long and shitty conversation about the foundations of your friend’s newfound political interests (I say “interests” optimistically, as I agree that “beliefs” might be overstating the problem), I would try to address the social aspect of his anti-socialism.

The truth is that most capitalists are capable of disagreeing with their friends without flying off the handle, and your friend’s response indicates a hostility that may not really have much to do with his politics at all. Arguing is one thing—but talking shit on you contemptuously when you’re out of the room is deeply shitty, so try approaching that first.

One of the most useful skills you can learn as an adult is how to recognize when someone is treating you poorly in the moment. Almost no one ever fully masters how to do it—and I mean ever—but it’s the most disarming social skill that can be employed when dealing with a hostile “friend.” You’d be genuinely shocked at how well a simple and direct challenge like this works: “Why would you do [X]? It’s very unfair and unkind. I would never do that you.” Of course, it only really works if you aren’t guilty of the offending behavior, so take inventory before you try it. You also say you get in “fiery” disagreements—do you yell? Interrupt? People tend to match or escalate tone when in an argument, so try playing the “calmer than you are” game, and if he still flies off the handle, “Why are you yelling right now? We’re having a conversation.”

If I had to guess, there’s probably something else going on in your friend’s life that’s responsible for the sudden dickishness. So if at all possible, try to gently and subtly figure out what that is—afteryou’ve had some distance from politics. Just ask what’s going on and listen.

Yes, it is possible your friend might make the leap to right-wing politics for good, and if that happens, you’re certainly not obligated to remain chummy with anyone who’s both conservative and a dick to you. But it’s early, and there’s no need to panic; people come to politics via weird and meandering paths. There’s really no way to predict how your friend’s foray into reactionary thought will turn out, but your best chance at keeping him from joining the ranks of the alt-right is to be a good friend first, and a political adversary after.
"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."
-Malcolm X
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Fri Dec 29, 2017 10:51 am

Interview on situation in US

BY OAKLANDSOCIALIST ON DECEMBER 29, 2017

The following is an on-line interview the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency did with John Reimann, the editor of this blog site. For the comments of that group, see the bottom of this page. To see their web site, go here.

Q: What is your characterization of the Trump government?

A: We are still a capitalist (or bourgeois) democracy, but there are elements of bonapartism in the Trump government. By that I mean that the mainstream of the capitalist class – which is mainly finance capital – has partially lost control over their presidency. On the one hand, as I’ve written, Trump has served as a money launderer for the Russian oligarchs/mafiosa for decades and has deep links with them. This means that he is tied to one of the main rivals of US imperialism – Russian imperialism. On the other hand, we have to consider the role of racism and sexism in US society. The capitalist class always keeps that pot simmering on the back burner, but usually trying to prevent it from boiling over. Trump is so stoking that flame that it is tending to boil over. Then there are all his appeals to what can only be described as hysteria. This sort of thing is not useful to a stable capitalist regime; it threatens to destabilize US society.

Trump is doing things that no administration would have dared try before, especially as far as deregulation and privatization of public lands, opening them up for the mining, oil and ranching industries. (You have to realize that in many of the Western states in the US, over half the land is owned by the federal government.) So, if you take the Wall St. Journal for example, they are the true militants of the capitalist class and they have a kind of schizophrenic attitude towards Trump. On the one hand, they denounce his “chaos theory of government.” On the other hand, they love his economic policies.

Another important development is the transformation of the Republican Party. The Republicans have systematically built up the Christian fundamentalist and similar rabid right wing types over several decades. They did this to disguise their attacks on the working class. But the tops of the party, and their capitalist masters, always thought they could keep these fanatics under control. Now, they have become a Frankenstein monster and, with Trump as their leader, are tending to take over the Republican Party. This is causing sectors of the capitalist class to gravitate towards the Democrats as being the more reliable of the two capitalist parties. In other words, a shift in the traditional positions of the two parties seems to be under way. It is exactly at such moments, when the political set-up of a country shifts like this, that a movement from below is likely to develop.

Q: What are the main characteristics of the Trump supporters?

A: I think they are all over the place, but the main characteristic they have in common is denialism. It’s literally an infantile attitude – that any facts that are inconvenient to them don’t exist. For example, I have a neighbor who I discovered is a Trump supporter. He was telling me that he supports Trump because he wants the federal deficit to be lowered. He told me this before Trump had unveiled his tax plan, but even then it was obvious that Trump was going to do just the opposite.

Racism is, of course, a strong element among them, or at the very least a willingness to tolerate racism. Some deny that any sizable sector of the working class voted for Trump, but that’s not true. Polls show that over 40% of voters who came from union households voted for him, and the president of the United Auto Workers Union estimated that 30% of UAW members voted for Trump. It’s a combination of racism, sexism, chauvinism, and infantile denialism.

There are also the evangelical Christians, who support Trump almost unanimously. At least the white ones do, and some of the black and Latino evangelicals too. Their religious fanaticism is also a form of denial of actual facts. The fact that Trump has never shown any religious inclination up until now, as well as his obvious “sins” (in their eyes) shows that “morality” has nothing to do with religion; it’s all about power.

Q: How would you describe the different factions inside the US bourgeoisie?

A: Of course, finance capital is dominant, but politically there are some differences. For example, we have the Silicon Valley capitalists who are new to their role as being an important part of the ruling class and therefore new to the role of rulers over society, with all that entails. I think the majority of them have an ahistorical point of view. They completely discount the role of the working class and are entirely unaware of periods like the 1930s. On the other hand, they tend to be socially liberal. For this reason, the great majority of them supported Clinton in the last election. But even there, there are exceptions such as Peter Thiel who is one of the richest of the Silicon Valley capitalists, and he supported Trump.

Then there is the wing of the capitalist class that believes they can return to the situation in the US that existed in the 1920s and earlier, especially as far as workers’ rights and racism are concerned. One of the most prominent of these is the Mercer family, who own Cambridge Analytica. This is the company that did the voter analyses both for Trump and for the Brexit supporters and is supposed to be the most sophisticated software company of its type in the world. There are others like them like Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas billionaire and hard core Israel supporter. These are true dinosaurs.

I think the majority of the US capitalist class still wants to and believes it’s possible to return to the situation of just a couple of years ago. That is the situation of relative stability. So they are trying to get Trump under control and install the Democrats as the congressional majority in 2018 and get Trump out in 2020. Maybe they will succeed, but the US will never be the same. That’s for sure. How will it have changed? Who knows? Who, after all, ever expected Trump to be elected president?

Q: What is the state of the trade union movement since the beginning of the era of Trump?

A: Disaster. Of course, there have been massive attacks on the unions, and they have succeeded in reducing the unionized sector to around 10% of the work force. But the policies of the union leadership have proven completely incapable of opposing this.

I joined the Carpenters Union in 1970. Shortly after that, we started hearing that our union must help the contractors compete with the non-union contractors. In reality, that meant that we union carpenters had to compete with the non-union carpenter for who would work cheapest. (I’d like to suggest my pamphlet on this history.)

Today, the union leadership has doubled down on that approach. They bring employers in to lecture active union members that the union members must be the hardest working workers around. They tell the Chamber of Commerce that “we are on the same side”. Recently the UAW lost a campaign to unionize a Nissan plant in Mississippi. Their theme was “pro-Nissan and pro-union”. How can you possibly be “pro” both? The majority of workers drew the logical conclusion that if you want to be pro-company, then you should vote against having a union.

Basically, what’s required for a start is to return to the methods of the 1930s – the sit down strikes and mass picket lines.

Or take another example: In all the protests against racism, including the Black Lives Matter-type protests, the unions were almost entirely absent. I was in Ferguson shortly after Michael Brown was killed. (See the videos on my blog site from then.) I was told by one UAW member that his local union officials told him “this is not our battle”. Why? Because the (capitalist) Democratic Party didn’t want the issue exposed; they didn’t want the police exposed for who they are.

To return to the issue of workers who voted for Trump: The main question in the US is the absence of a mass working class political party and, historically, the union leadership has been the main barrier to building this. Because of the lack of any real tradition of a working class political party, the very idea that the working class is its own force and can play an independent role in society is extremely weak.


https://oaklandsocialist.com/2017/12/29 ... ion-in-us/
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Thu Jan 04, 2018 5:35 pm

https://www.allianceofmesocialists.org/ ... y-upswing/


Iranian Revolutionary Upswing: A Reader’s View

Another noticeable difference is the presence of women in the front row and fighting the police and even leading the slogans. And different from last time, the uprising has started mostly outside of the capital city of Tehran, and instead in cities which have a more impoverished working class population.

By Behrouz Jalilian

In the past few days the protests, the rallies and the rebellion of the Iranian people, the people of the lower depths, has been gradually speeding up. In the very short time of 3 days, protests from the major city of Mashhad in north east, spread to all major and big cities in Iran. In the second and third day, almost 40 cities called for protest, setting the time and the place to start.

Popular slogans calling the government a thief or slogans which were ultra-nationalist and anti-Arab, changed to more radical, politically aware slogans such as, “We have no jobs,” “Bread, shelter, freedom”, “Capitalist Mullah, give us our money”, “Death to the dictator”, “Worker, teacher, student, unite unite!”, “Free political prisoners”, “ Reformist, Fundamentalist, this is the end of your story”, and many more.

There have been protests, workers strikes, almost every day in last few years in Iran. But none of them could connect to each other to make a general and massive popular uprising like now.

In the beginning of the current wave of protests, and as usual, “the Left” was behind, and very suspicious. They thought this could be a conspiracy of the other side of the regime in opposition to the government. But this view was quickly replaced by wonder and astonishment at the speedy radicalisation of the core of the movement. Now leftist trade unionists, women, writers, university students are joining the protests and trying to influence them politically.

From the day after the great 1979 revolution, the regime tried to crush, imprison, kill, exile the activists, workers’ organisers, members of revolutionary parties. In 1981, the regime succeeded in achieving this by imposing the years of terror and almost wiping out all Marxist activists. At the moment there is a huge gap between two generations of Marxist and leftist activist. The connection is cut off. But the new generation are more eager and quick learners.

In the 2009 massive uprising, despite the disagreement of the older generation, the leftists and most activists fell for the reformists. This time one of the amazingng differences is that no one cares for the reformists. People see their future in the left and its plan and movement. They are progressively leaning toward the left. Unfortunately everything that is happening does not have organisation and leadership, which the left should quickly take. This time almost all left movements in exile and inside the country are on the same wave.

This uprising hasn’t been in the making for a few days or months or even years, but for a long time. The last time (2009), the excuse for popular unrest was “vote rigging” and the reformists, who were part of the establishment, were the leaders. The regime crushed that uprising after a few months and imprisonment the leaders. But this time there are no visible leaders or organisations to cut off. That has made the regime commit many mistakes so far and respond in a confused manner.

The last uprising in 2009, was mostly controlled by the middle class and the urban petty bourgeoisie. In 2009, the working class came late to the movement and were not in charge. But this time, the uprising is totally a class struggle wave of rebellion.

Another noticeable difference is the presence of women in the front row and fighting the police and even leading the slogans. And different from last time, the uprising has started mostly outside of the capital city of Tehran, and instead in cities which have a more impoverished working class population.

The wages are at a historic low and necessary items of living have become more and more expensive. Almost one third of Iranians live under the poverty line. Living expenses are nearly 50 percent more than average wages. People have massive debts to banks and the majority of the working class, cannot see any better future for their families.

The only way to have any success in this great revolutionary upswing is to be organised, and for Marxists and other leftists to be in the leadership. There are potential and capable activists in Iran who have been less affected by Stalinism than the previous generation. They don’t have any illusions about the regime and its knee-jerk anti Imperialism.

The regime defiantly and eventually will find the way to supress the movement but until then, the major duty of the movement and its future leaders is to discover a correct tactic to resist and fight back the system. We are still in the beginning of the revolutionary upswing. That should be the main understanding. Any revolution needs time to progress and develop. At the moment people cannot tolerate the system anymore, and regime on the other hand, is losing control of the situation day by day.

Behrouz Jalilian
December 31, 2017
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby American Dream » Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:36 am

Perspectives for the United States
BY OAKLANDSOCIALIST ON JANUARY 9, 2018

The Marxist method is to start by trying to figure out the main processes – the main forces at work – and get some idea of how they will interact and develop. Only then can we figure out our tasks within that general process. Recently a small group of Marxists – the Workers International Network – held a conference in Britain. Here are some thoughts on the perspectives for the United States that were submitted to that conference:

On November 9, 2016, the world awoke to Americans having elected the most right wing and racist president since before the US Civil War. This is a man who:

Openly encouraged physical assaults on those who opposed his views
Directly appealed to racism
Directly appealed to chauvinism and anti-immigrant bigotry
Bragged about sexually assaulting women.
Denied science, especially regarding global climate disruption/global warming


Since he’s been in office, he has doubled down on all of this. In addition, he has:

Opened up federal lands to the ravages of the mining, oil and ranching industries.
Defended white supremacists as “good people”.
Sent out a never-ending stream of tweets encouraging millions to ignore the facts and instead base themselves on “alternative facts.”
Appointed a whole series of federal appeals court judges who are far right ideologues and will be in their positions for many years to come.
Helped push through a tax bill that sets the stage for future massive cuts in social spending.


Image
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

The election of Trump was a defeat for the US working class. The election of Clinton would have been slightly less of one.

Not only is the election of Trump a defeat for the working class*, he is also partially out of control of the mainstream of his own class – the capitalist class. That’s because he is a long time money-launderer for the Russian oligarchs/mafia.1 As such, he is closely linked with the interests of one of the main rivals for US imperialism – Russian imperialism.

How did this happen? How did the mainstream of the US capitalist class largely lose control over their own presidency, while millions of workers actually voted for this buffoon billionaire? That is what we have to answer if we are to effectively combat him and what he represents.


Continues at: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/01/09 ... ed-states/
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby Karmamatterz » Wed Jan 10, 2018 11:56 pm

The Marxist method is to start by trying to figure out the main processes


They've had over 100 years to work on it. Seems like after previous failures they would realize it just isn't going to work as an economic model.
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Re: The Socialist Response

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Thu Jan 11, 2018 12:44 am

They've had over 100 years to work on it. Seems like after previous failures they would realize it just isn't going to work as an economic model


Could say the same of capitalism.
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