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Mark Lause | 1 Jun 01:07
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Re: A new NEWSWEEK Poll underscores Obama's racial challenge.

oaquín Bustelo <jbustelo <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> The article on the Newsweek poll cited by Dbachmozart confirms what
> I've stated repeatedly on this list: the claims about Obama's lack of
> support among the "white working class" is a crock. The most important
> stratification is generational:
>

This jibes with all the anecdotal evidence and experience I've had of
the campaign.

The attempt of the media to frame the campaign in terms of gender,
race and class is essentially spin.  The entire divide-and-conquer
aspect of this is entirely tertiery to them, but it's there
nonetheless.

The attempt to see it as any kind of litmus test allows the image
industry to frame the discussion for us.

Solidarity!
ML.

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Alex Briscoe | 1 Jun 01:17
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construction

It seems that a lot of gateway immigrant Poles have
packed up and left Chicago since Poland gained entry
into the EU.

I live in one of the major gateway neighborhoods for
Poles and one indicator is the number of laborers
hanging out on the local corner.  We still have a good
number of Latin Americans every morning (about 100+)
but the other day, I saw hardly any Poles.  Now, there
were cop cars on the Polish side of the lot, I think
because of street construction and weather, and I'll
keep looking (I drive past every day on my way to
work), but my general impression in the last year plus
is that there has been a big decline in the number of
Polish laborers and Poles on the street in this area.

It would make sense because these workers can now get
access to universal health care and I would imagine
most of the other benefits as members of the EU.  A
big ongoing issue is injury on the job among these
workers (I worked casual labor a few years back for
about four weeks).  They tell me that good bosses will
give you some money ($500 for a broken foot?) and pay
your hospital bill.  The others I guess, it goes to
the taxpayer and the worker is fucked.

One of the public hiring scandals here was broken in
part as a result of a city dept refusing to board up
trenches during excavations.
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David Picón Álvarez | 1 Jun 01:59
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Re: construction

From: "Alex Briscoe" <obeynow20001 <at> yahoo.com>
> Have comrades in Western Europe noticed an uptick in
> Polish immigrants from the U.S. in the last few years?
> Perhaps you're seeing the people I used to see on my
> street?

Not here in NW Spain, but I hear there are quite a few Polish immigrants in 
the UK for instance, though if they come from the US or not is hard to tell. 
To be fair though, Poland has improved economically somewhat, at least so I 
have been told, such that many immigrants to Western Europe have decided to 
go back: many people would rather earn less money if they can live in their 
home culture surrounded by their friends and family. I read somewhere of 
Polish cities advertising in the UK that they need their people back, IIRC. 
So maybe it's just Polish immigrants to the US have reconsidered and gone 
back.

--David.

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Debordagoria | 1 Jun 02:10
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Marxist Neo-Luddism [was: the question of luddism]

On the issues of technophilia and technophobia, I would like to
recommend the work of Marxist neo-Luddites Kevin
Robins and Frank Webster in general, and Robins' book
Times of the Technoculture in particular. 

   Robins and Webster's work attempts to place 
information and communications technologies within
the historical context of the development of
capitalism.  By focusing on the commodity logic of
the new technologies of the "communications
revolution" they place themselves in opposition to
the prevailing view of them as pristine creations, as
the socially-neutral outgrowth of the advance of human
knowledge.  

   Henry Ford's application of "scientific management"
principles to factory production involved the transfer
of knowledge and skill from person to machine.  Robins
and Webster describe how this technological domination
becomes extended to spheres far beyond the workplace
as part of the opening of social life to more effective
colonization by capital.  They dub this technological
mobilization of society "neo-Fordism," for they see it
as an intensification of Fordism's original drive to
incorporate both work and leisure time into a
comprehensive system of management control.  At work 
here is a process of "social deskilling," whereby
people lose their "social capital," their ability to
create their own networks of mutual benefit as it is 
objectified and incorporated into commodities and
(Continue reading)

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Ruthless Critic of All that Exists | 1 Jun 02:19
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Re: Kautsky and Patriotism

On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 6:15 PM, Dogan Gocmen <dgn.gcmn <at> googlemail.com>
wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> sorry for spaming you again. I am writing you in request to answer a
> question. Lenin mentions in his paper "Fighting Militarism and
> Antimilitarist Tactic" a title by Kautsky called "Patriotism, War and
> Social Democracy". I was not able to find this title anywhere.
> Can anyone help with this?

"The war brought on the denouement and on its very first day revealed all
the fraud and rottenness of Kautskyism. Kautsky recommended either
abstention from voting credits to Wilhelm or voting for them "with
reservations". Then during the following months a polemic was waged in which
it became clear what exactly the nature of Kautsky's recommendation was.
"The International is an instrument of peace and not of war"—Kautsky seized
upon this truism like an anchor of salvation. Having criticised their
chauvinist excesses, Kautsky began to prepare for a general conciliation of
the social-patriots after the war. "All men are human and make mistakes;
nevertheless the war will pass and we can make a new start."

"When the German revolution broke out Kautsky became something of an
ambassador of the bourgeois republic and preached a break from Soviet Russia
("it doesn't matter as it will fall within a few weeks") and working out
Marxism in a quaker direction crawled off to Wilson on all fours."

 -- Trotsky
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james daly | 1 Jun 12:43

Re: Marx, materialism and idealism


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Haines Brown" <brownh <at> hartford-hwp.com>
To: "James Daly" <james.irldaly <at> ntlworld.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 5:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Marx, materialism and idealism

Sorry for the delay in getting back to Haines's welcome reply...

*********
Haines wrote

James writes:

The inanities of Diamat about idealism and materialism seem to be the too 
easily resolved conflict over which came first -- rocks or brains.

*******

Sorry for the perhaps provocative, smart alec throwaway line, but it is an 
expression of resentment over ruthless state and (all)party enforcement of 
conformity about mind-boggling propositions, which derived from a Kautskyan 
and Plekhanovite mechanistic bourgeois mindset which ejected the writings of 
Marx's formative years out of the canon as juvenilia.  That's why I called 
it Diamat and not dialectical materialism.  I still stand by what I said 
about Hegel, Feuerbach and Marx, and I think that is a quasi-agitprop call 
to arms, whereas setting the task as getting the framework of the universe 
right seems, wrongly no doubt, an invitation to soporific quietism.

In fact I fully recognize the value of Haines's anti-positivist, realist and
(Continue reading)

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Dogan Gocmen | 1 Jun 13:17

Re: Kautsky and Patriotism

Ruthless Critic of All that Exists:
> "The war brought on the denouement and on its very first day revealed all
> the fraud and rottenness of Kautskyism. Kautsky recommended either
> abstention from voting credits to Wilhelm or voting for them "with
> reservations". Then during the following months a polemic was waged in which
> it became clear what exactly the nature of Kautsky's recommendation was.
> "The International is an instrument of peace and not of war"—Kautsky seized
> upon this truism like an anchor of salvation. Having criticised their
> chauvinist excesses, Kautsky began to prepare for a general conciliation of
> the social-patriots after the war. "All men are human and make mistakes;
> nevertheless the war will pass and we can make a new start."
>
> "When the German revolution broke out Kautsky became something of an
> ambassador of the bourgeois republic and preached a break from Soviet Russia
> ("it doesn't matter as it will fall within a few weeks") and working out
> Marxism in a quaker direction crawled off to Wilson on all fours."
>
>
>  -- Trotsky
Trotsky's critique refers to Kautsky's position after his right wing 
turn. Similar statements are to be found in Rosa's, Lenin's writings 
too. The paper I refer to is from 1907, which Lenin as well as Rosa 
praises. I found it in a library as micro film. So it is not available 
as hard copy but it is available. Thanks.

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Ian Angus | 1 Jun 14:55
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Climate and Capitalism’s Top Ten (May 2008)

The most-read articles on Climate and Capitalism
<www.climateandcapitalism.com> in May 2008
… and some unabashed bragging about a widely-reproduced article on the
Food Crisis.

I reported in my previous Top 10 that traffic on our site jumped 50% in March.
After growing another 12% in April, it held steady in May.

These were the ten most-read Climate and Capitalism articles in May 2008:

* Global Warming and the Iraq War
* Individual Versus Social Solutions to Global Warming
* Global Warming Intensifies Grain Crisis in India
* Cyclone Nargis and Climate Change: The Deadly Legacy of Oil
* How the Oil Industry Sabotages Emission Reductions
* Bush Says Starving India Eats Too Much
* Them Belly Full But We Hungry (Bob Marley video)
* Slideshow: The Global Food Crisis
* What's Causing the Food Crisis?
* CDM Scams: 'enough lies to make a sub-prime mortgage pusher blush'

And now some unabashed bragging …

The ninth article on the Top 10 list is actually a link to
one of the most widely-read articles I've ever written. "Food Crisis"
was originally
published in two parts in Socialist Voice <www.socialistvoice.ca> and
simultaneously in The Bullet <www.socialistproject.ca/bullet>, in late
April and early May.
(Continue reading)

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Louis Proyect | 1 Jun 15:27
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The Stern-Rosselli rift

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-union1-2008jun01,0,5595762.story
 From the Los Angeles Times
A nasty rift in a powerful union
Local head Sal Rosselli is fighting national leader Andrew Stern over 
how to make the SEIU even bigger.
By Paul Pringle
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 1, 2008

OAKLAND — Sal Rosselli had been hardened by nearly three decades of 
front-line unionism. Time and again he staged insurgent organizing 
drives and do-or-die strikes, staring down major corporations.

Now he blinked away tears as he huddled with supporters in his 
Oakland headquarters, a sooty-windowed, bunker-like building strewn 
with leaflets and picket signs, a place suddenly under siege.

Rosselli was describing his latest battle, his toughest ever: a 
face-off against a comrade in struggle, Andrew Stern, whom many view 
as the most powerful labor leader in America.

The two are locked in a nasty, often personal fight over how to make 
the nation's fastest-growing union -- 1.9 million members -- even 
bigger. Stern, its president, has sought more common ground with 
employers as a means to unionize entire industries. Rosselli believes 
building membership first requires getting the best deal for workers 
already under labor's tent.

"If you stick your head up, if you question what he's doing, you'll
(Continue reading)

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Haines Brown | 1 Jun 15:33

Re: Marx, materialism and idealism

James, your reply much appreciated.

> Sorry for the perhaps provocative, smart alec throwaway line, but it
> is an expression of resentment over ruthless state and (all)party
> enforcement of conformity about mind-boggling propositions, which
> derived from a Kautskyan and Plekhanovite mechanistic bourgeois
> mindset which ejected the writings of Marx's formative years out of
> the canon as juvenilia.  That's why I called it Diamat and not
> dialectical materialism.

Well, yes, your comment understood.

But my real concern is, why should we be concerned with this
"mechanistic bourgeois mindset"?

Whether we happen to be bourgeois reformers or Marxist
revolutionaries, our real concern is action today and the intellectual
environment that informs our action. Of course, I can read Alcuin,
Bonaventura or Adam Smith with pleasure and benefit, but that is a
personal pleasure and a very minor achievement in relation to class
struggle today.

I don't want to appear anti-intellectual, but it seems to me that the
old (pre-WWII?) intellectual framework (whether we speak of the
bourgeoisie or working class) seems today to be pretty decrepit, and
at the same time there are new exciting intellectual currents that are
sorely in need of our development.

We often assume that one way to advance understanding is to launch a
critique of received opinion, but this is not really what is involved
(Continue reading)

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