March 13, 2015
Stalin: The original 99 per cent by Roland Boer in Stalin's Moustache 14 03 15
source: http://stalinsmoustache.org/2015/03/14/the-original-99-per-cent/stalinsmoustache
The Occupy Movement – with its slogan ‘we are the 99 per cent’ – may perhaps not be willing to acknowledge the origin of that idea. But it comes from none other than Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jugashvili, more commonly known as Joseph Stalin. In his lengthy report to the sixteenth congress, in 1930, of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), he observes:
"The share of the kulaks and urban capitalists was in 1927-28—8.1 per cent; in 1928-29—6.5 per cent; in 1929-30—1.8 per cent.
Meanwhile, what was happening to the 99 per cent, or more exactly, the 98.2 per cent?
All this taken together, plus the introduction of the seven-hour day for over 830,000 industrial workers (33.5 per cent), plus the introduction of the five-day week for over a million and a half industrial workers (63.4 per cent), plus the extensive network of rest homes, sanatoria and health resorts for workers, to which more than 1,700,000 workers have gone during the past three years—all this creates conditions of work and life for the working class that enable us to rear a new generation of workers who are healthy and vigorous, who are capable of raising the might of the Soviet country to the proper level and of protecting it with their lives from attacks by its enemies. (Applause.)
It is not surprising that the workers and peasants in our country are living fairly well on the whole, that general mortality has dropped 36 per cent, and infant mortality 42.5 per cent, below the pre-war level, while the annual increase in population in our country is about three million. (Applause.)
As regards the cultural conditions of the workers and peasants, in this sphere too we have some achievements, which, however, cannot under any circumstances satisfy us, as they are still small. Leaving out of account workers’ clubs of all kinds, village reading rooms, libraries and abolition of illiteracy classes, which this year are being attended by 10,500,000 persons, the situation as regards cultural and educational matters is as follows. This year elementary schools are being attended by 11,638,000 pupils; secondary schools—1,945,000; industrial and technical, transport and agricultural schools and classes for training workers of ordinary skill—333,100; secondary technical and equivalent trade schools—238,700; colleges, general and technical—190,400. All this has enabled us to raise literacy in the U.S.S.R. to 62.6 per cent of the population, compared with 33 per cent in pre-war times.
The chief thing now is to pass to universal, compulsory elementary education. I say the “chief” thing, because this would be a decisive step in the cultural revolution. (Works, volume 12, pp. 301, 308-9)
Yes, this is Stalin’s definition of ‘cultural revolution.’
Pensées / fragments of/by Andrew Taylor 13 03 15
Pensées
I have sometimes been asked during structural or institutional struggles if I plan to "leave or "quit" and I have always said: I'm not threatening to leave: I'm threatening to stay and fight!
................................
Washington has significantly escalated its aggression against Venezuela ~ America's biggest blow against the Nation since the election of president Maduro in 2013. The state by definition is an instrument of the rule of one class over another. The US's 'problem' with Venezuela is not the nonsense DC pedals about "Human rights abuses" or "corruption". On the contrary, America is actively subverting the Venezuelan state because its popular Govt restricts the hand of the anti-people agenda of the foreign and domestic Owning Class.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Sinclair Lewis got it right about the variables of Fascist objects of veneration: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." I always add that Fascism, USA would be militantly pro-Israel as well, with a patsy called Tory Canada acting as crucifer.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Fight on my men, says Sir Andrew Barton,
I am hurt, but I am not slain;
I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile,
And then I’ll rise and fight again;"
I have sometimes been asked during structural or institutional struggles if I plan to "leave or "quit" and I have always said: I'm not threatening to leave: I'm threatening to stay and fight!
................................
Washington has significantly escalated its aggression against Venezuela ~ America's biggest blow against the Nation since the election of president Maduro in 2013. The state by definition is an instrument of the rule of one class over another. The US's 'problem' with Venezuela is not the nonsense DC pedals about "Human rights abuses" or "corruption". On the contrary, America is actively subverting the Venezuelan state because its popular Govt restricts the hand of the anti-people agenda of the foreign and domestic Owning Class.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Sinclair Lewis got it right about the variables of Fascist objects of veneration: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." I always add that Fascism, USA would be militantly pro-Israel as well, with a patsy called Tory Canada acting as crucifer.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
a few of my favourite quotations...
"Fight on my men, says Sir Andrew Barton,
I am hurt, but I am not slain;
I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile,
And then I’ll rise and fight again;"
(Sir Andrew Button in the old Ballad)
“Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man.”
(Shakespeare: Macbeth: Act 4, Scene 1)
“Beloved, we are always in the wrong,
Handling so clumsily our stupid lives,
Suffering too little or too long,
Too careful even in our selfish loves:
The decorative manias we obey
Die in grimaces round us every day,
Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice
Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice. ”
(W.H. Auden, 'In Sickness and in Health')
Handling so clumsily our stupid lives,
Suffering too little or too long,
Too careful even in our selfish loves:
The decorative manias we obey
Die in grimaces round us every day,
Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice
Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice. ”
(W.H. Auden, 'In Sickness and in Health')
"Who so beset him round with dismal stories
Do but themselves confound—his strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight,
He will make good his right to be a pilgrim."
Do but themselves confound—his strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight,
He will make good his right to be a pilgrim."
(John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress)
"To you Beloved Comrade, we make this solemn vow
The fight will go on—the fight will still go on.
Sleep well, Beloved Comrade, our work will just begin.
The fight will go on—till we win—until we win."
The fight will go on—the fight will still go on.
Sleep well, Beloved Comrade, our work will just begin.
The fight will go on—till we win—until we win."
(Lewis Allan)
| "This is the race that Jesus ran: Humble to God, haughty to man, Cursing the Rulers before the people Even to the Temple’s highest steeple" | ||||||||
| (Wm Blake: The Everlasting Gospel) | ||||||||
March 12, 2015
The West’s Historical Amnesia, Moral Collapse, and Criminal Culpability in Syria 12 03 15
Today the Guardian in its trademark handwringing fashion is marking the
fourth anniversary of the Syrian conflict: 200,000 dead, 3.5 million
refugees.
The Guardian should also commemorate three and a half years of bloodshed, destruction, and misery inflicted upon Syria by the United States, the EU, and the GCC—make that murder, war crimes, and collective punishment IMO--much of it enthusiastically endorsed by the Guardian and its media brethren.
source: http://chinamatters.blogspot.ca/2015/03/the-wests-historical-amnesia-moral.html
Posted by China Hand
Think I’m exaggerating? But first read the piece (reproduced below) that I wrote in November 2011, when it was clear that the domestic uprising was headed for defeat and the West and GCC faced the crucial choice whether to let Assad cobble together some reconciliatory process…or try to bring him down with a foreign-supported insurrection.
We all know—or should know—what choice was made.
And we should know—but probably don’t know—the actual cost.
Consider these numbers: 7,000…and 193,000.
7,000 is the estimated death count for the Syrian unrest after the Syrian government had crushed the rebel enclave in Homs in February 2012 and shattered the domestic uprising.
193,000 is the death toll since then…since the United States, the GCC, Turkey, and their enablers began pumping money, arms, and diplomatic support into the various Syria-based paramilitaries that eventually encompassed not only the hapless Free Syrian Army but Al-Qaeda, IS, and their affiliates and allies.
When you read my piece, you’ll see some bad pennies turning up again. Like Victoria Nuland, charged with inciting the Syrian opposition to ignore reconciliation. Like Abdelhakim Belhadj who, on his long march from anti-Qaddafi Islamist to reputed head of IS Libya, shows up in Turkey to succor the Syrian opposition.
A lot of death…a lot of murder…has been packed into those 3 ½ years.
7,000 versus 193,000.
As I mentioned on my twitter feed, I wonder if there’s any second thoughts in the US State Department about spurning the reconciliation route in Syria.
I doubt it. The US foreign policy regime deals in consequences, not causes, so it can shirk responsibility for its failures and claim victories instead.
But remember those numbers : 7,000 vs 193,000.
Here’s another number to remember: 5,400.
That’s the quasi-official death toll for the Ukraine conflict (though unofficial estimates are much higher).
As of now.
Here’s hoping thee and a half years on we won’t see another bloody imperial folly play out in Ukraine.
======================================================================
The Guardian should also commemorate three and a half years of bloodshed, destruction, and misery inflicted upon Syria by the United States, the EU, and the GCC—make that murder, war crimes, and collective punishment IMO--much of it enthusiastically endorsed by the Guardian and its media brethren.
source: http://chinamatters.blogspot.ca/2015/03/the-wests-historical-amnesia-moral.html
Posted by China Hand
Think I’m exaggerating? But first read the piece (reproduced below) that I wrote in November 2011, when it was clear that the domestic uprising was headed for defeat and the West and GCC faced the crucial choice whether to let Assad cobble together some reconciliatory process…or try to bring him down with a foreign-supported insurrection.
We all know—or should know—what choice was made.
And we should know—but probably don’t know—the actual cost.
Consider these numbers: 7,000…and 193,000.
7,000 is the estimated death count for the Syrian unrest after the Syrian government had crushed the rebel enclave in Homs in February 2012 and shattered the domestic uprising.
193,000 is the death toll since then…since the United States, the GCC, Turkey, and their enablers began pumping money, arms, and diplomatic support into the various Syria-based paramilitaries that eventually encompassed not only the hapless Free Syrian Army but Al-Qaeda, IS, and their affiliates and allies.
When you read my piece, you’ll see some bad pennies turning up again. Like Victoria Nuland, charged with inciting the Syrian opposition to ignore reconciliation. Like Abdelhakim Belhadj who, on his long march from anti-Qaddafi Islamist to reputed head of IS Libya, shows up in Turkey to succor the Syrian opposition.
A lot of death…a lot of murder…has been packed into those 3 ½ years.
7,000 versus 193,000.
As I mentioned on my twitter feed, I wonder if there’s any second thoughts in the US State Department about spurning the reconciliation route in Syria.
I doubt it. The US foreign policy regime deals in consequences, not causes, so it can shirk responsibility for its failures and claim victories instead.
But remember those numbers : 7,000 vs 193,000.
Here’s another number to remember: 5,400.
That’s the quasi-official death toll for the Ukraine conflict (though unofficial estimates are much higher).
As of now.
Here’s hoping thee and a half years on we won’t see another bloody imperial folly play out in Ukraine.
======================================================================
What separates the Marxist movement from bourgeois democracy / bourgeois radicalism? A response by Andy Taylor. 12 03 15
I had begun an online conversation on the idea of Revolution in Marxism some ten days ago by posting as follows:
"The appeal of Marxism is to the rational mind ~ in it we find the riddles of history and its development resolved in a mentally satisfying dialectical science. The worker's wage and the bosses' fortune are understood; history's strange tragedies and reversals are clarified.
But to win the whole person Marxism must always and for ever remain a cause, a cause that presents the precious gift and promise of Revolution. Revolution! This is the heart of Marxism! Without the unexpected unforeseen novum of Revolution, without this redemption of all the crimes of class societies when the people win, Marxism becomes mundane, the Communist becomes a former-Communist and the Party a Debating-club."
Various friends and comrades replied making contributions within this conversation about the nature and necessity of Revolution. However it was a reflection offered by a respected friend from the Communist party USA that prompted this exercise.
He had written as follows:
"I have lived my life as a committed Marxist. I join with those struggling for reforms, especially radical reforms, believing that the contradictions of monopoly capitalism cannot be resolved with reforms. Yet I see in today's struggles the promise that a "revolutionary situation" will come when the class consciousness of tens of millions in that movement sees that our only real option is revolution. The idea of revolution was not invented by Karl Marx, Fredrick Engels, Rosa Luxembourg, or V.I. Lenin. Thomas Paine was a revolutionary. So was Thomas Jefferson. So was Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Abraham Lincoln. And Martin Luther King Jr. Revolutionary change is any transformation that fundamentally alters property relations. Ending the institution of chattel slavery, the ownership of human beings, is a fundamental change in property relations."
My Reply:
I also agree with the struggle for reforms especially radical reforms, and I also count not only Marx and Marxists but also Sojourner Truth, Paine, Riel, William Lyon Mackenzie, the Patriote rebels, my own Suffragette grandmother, and many others in that cohort. However I see no evidence in theory or observation that the class consciousness of tens of millions is in the process of effecting socialist revolution or could effect socialist revolution without the necessity of open confrontations of the worker-revolutionaries with the owning class.
Will the bourgeoisie hand everything over to the people?
Not bloody likely!
It is true as you say that "Revolutionary change is any transformation that fundamentally alters property relations" but the abolition of slavery while certainly revolutionary did not usher in a socialist stage of revolution. It certainly deepened and expanded the promise of the American revolution - closing that initial significant epoch prior to the counter-revolution of the southern state governments. that defeated radical Reconstruction.
But as Marx wrote in ch 2 of The Manifesto "The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property"; "The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property" and that "...the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."
According to the theory of Marx expressed in Marx to Dr Kugelmann Concerning The Paris Commune , in The Eighteenth Brumaire; as in Engels' Anti-Dühring, and Lenin in The State And Revolution, ~ this particular revolutionary change will come as the result of titanic violent transformative struggles . Both Engels and Lenin were emphatic on the point that the bourgeois state does not "wither away" in history but is "smashed" and "abolished" by the proletariat in the course of the socialist revolution.
You mentioned Martin Luther King as a revolutionary but not Malcolm X. This was a telling if commonplace omission since Martin receives his rightful due from the State and the Press while Malcolm receives short shrift. I read King and Malcolm together and take lessons from both in understanding the complexity of the creation and destruction of the racial and class structure in America, noting not only the inseparable link between social reform and social revolution, but rejecting any sort of arbitrary schematic antithesis between them. An online Glossary of Marxist terms expresses the difference between the revolutionary struggle for reforms versus mere reformism: "Revolution only comes about when the possibility for reforms is exhausted, but revolution is only possible if the working class is sufficiently well-organised and educated to overthrow the bourgeois and take intellectual and practical leadership of the whole of society."
As we see in the events in Venezuela in the last years up to today the imperialists have not slowed or faltered in their subversive craft. In fact, without a forceful advance against Capital by the Venezuelan revolutionary masses to Socialism their substantial victories could soon be reversed by the concealed intrigue and open violence of Reaction led within by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and externally by the United States, the centre of global imperialism.
In summing up, I continue to think that the final socialist end and goal of Revolution and the violent clash of powers entailed in that break is a most decisive aspect distinguishing the theory of the Marxist revolutionary movement from that of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois radicalism. Is the owning class "withering away" or losing it's hostility toward a people's agenda and fundamental change? Sadly, not ~ by no means!
"The appeal of Marxism is to the rational mind ~ in it we find the riddles of history and its development resolved in a mentally satisfying dialectical science. The worker's wage and the bosses' fortune are understood; history's strange tragedies and reversals are clarified.
But to win the whole person Marxism must always and for ever remain a cause, a cause that presents the precious gift and promise of Revolution. Revolution! This is the heart of Marxism! Without the unexpected unforeseen novum of Revolution, without this redemption of all the crimes of class societies when the people win, Marxism becomes mundane, the Communist becomes a former-Communist and the Party a Debating-club."
Various friends and comrades replied making contributions within this conversation about the nature and necessity of Revolution. However it was a reflection offered by a respected friend from the Communist party USA that prompted this exercise.
He had written as follows:
"I have lived my life as a committed Marxist. I join with those struggling for reforms, especially radical reforms, believing that the contradictions of monopoly capitalism cannot be resolved with reforms. Yet I see in today's struggles the promise that a "revolutionary situation" will come when the class consciousness of tens of millions in that movement sees that our only real option is revolution. The idea of revolution was not invented by Karl Marx, Fredrick Engels, Rosa Luxembourg, or V.I. Lenin. Thomas Paine was a revolutionary. So was Thomas Jefferson. So was Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Abraham Lincoln. And Martin Luther King Jr. Revolutionary change is any transformation that fundamentally alters property relations. Ending the institution of chattel slavery, the ownership of human beings, is a fundamental change in property relations."
My Reply:
I also agree with the struggle for reforms especially radical reforms, and I also count not only Marx and Marxists but also Sojourner Truth, Paine, Riel, William Lyon Mackenzie, the Patriote rebels, my own Suffragette grandmother, and many others in that cohort. However I see no evidence in theory or observation that the class consciousness of tens of millions is in the process of effecting socialist revolution or could effect socialist revolution without the necessity of open confrontations of the worker-revolutionaries with the owning class.
Will the bourgeoisie hand everything over to the people?
Not bloody likely!
It is true as you say that "Revolutionary change is any transformation that fundamentally alters property relations" but the abolition of slavery while certainly revolutionary did not usher in a socialist stage of revolution. It certainly deepened and expanded the promise of the American revolution - closing that initial significant epoch prior to the counter-revolution of the southern state governments. that defeated radical Reconstruction.
But as Marx wrote in ch 2 of The Manifesto "The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property"; "The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property" and that "...the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."
According to the theory of Marx expressed in Marx to Dr Kugelmann Concerning The Paris Commune , in The Eighteenth Brumaire; as in Engels' Anti-Dühring, and Lenin in The State And Revolution, ~ this particular revolutionary change will come as the result of titanic violent transformative struggles . Both Engels and Lenin were emphatic on the point that the bourgeois state does not "wither away" in history but is "smashed" and "abolished" by the proletariat in the course of the socialist revolution.
You mentioned Martin Luther King as a revolutionary but not Malcolm X. This was a telling if commonplace omission since Martin receives his rightful due from the State and the Press while Malcolm receives short shrift. I read King and Malcolm together and take lessons from both in understanding the complexity of the creation and destruction of the racial and class structure in America, noting not only the inseparable link between social reform and social revolution, but rejecting any sort of arbitrary schematic antithesis between them. An online Glossary of Marxist terms expresses the difference between the revolutionary struggle for reforms versus mere reformism: "Revolution only comes about when the possibility for reforms is exhausted, but revolution is only possible if the working class is sufficiently well-organised and educated to overthrow the bourgeois and take intellectual and practical leadership of the whole of society."
As we see in the events in Venezuela in the last years up to today the imperialists have not slowed or faltered in their subversive craft. In fact, without a forceful advance against Capital by the Venezuelan revolutionary masses to Socialism their substantial victories could soon be reversed by the concealed intrigue and open violence of Reaction led within by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and externally by the United States, the centre of global imperialism.
In summing up, I continue to think that the final socialist end and goal of Revolution and the violent clash of powers entailed in that break is a most decisive aspect distinguishing the theory of the Marxist revolutionary movement from that of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois radicalism. Is the owning class "withering away" or losing it's hostility toward a people's agenda and fundamental change? Sadly, not ~ by no means!
March 10, 2015
'Is fascism always antisemitic? No, it is not.' Re-post by Andrew Taylor, 25 06 14
Before turning to the core of the Fascist credo I want to lay to rest the unhistorical myth that antisemitism is an invariable element of Fascist power. My idea for writing on this subject arose from conversations with liberal friends who backed away from the idea of a surge of fascism in Ukraine, saying that since Ukrainian Jews are not being especially persecuted under the Kiev regime its doubtful they have powerful fascist elements operating there.
The Mainstream press has been calling Right Sector and Svoboda "imaginary Nazis" on the basis of the Israeli and Zionist deal struck with The Right Sector: (See: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/03/putins-imaginary-nazis-105217.html#.U6ti2UBVWEk)
Early in March of 2014 right after the Maidan coup d' etat, the Israeli ambassador in Kiev, Reuven Din El, met with Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh 'opening a hotline' with the fascist movement to “prevent provocations"...Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League wrote the following in the Huffington Post:
"Dmitro Yarosh, leader of Right Sector, met with Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, Reuven Din El, and told him that their movement rejects anti-Semitism and xenophobia and will not tolerate it. He said their goals were a democratic Ukraine, transparent government, ending corruption, and equal opportunity for all ethnic groups".
...
"Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, together with UDAR leader Vitaliy Klichko, brought Svoboda into the opposition coalition in 2012. Now, having brought Svoboda into the government, it is up to Prime Minister Yatsenyuk to ensure that anti-Semitism is not tolerated and that democratic norms are adhered to. By sending that message to the people of Ukraine now, the prime minister will reassure the Jewish community and set an admirable example.
"Guiding Ukraine’s nationalists to adopt the path of Metropolitan Sheptytsky will be a major test of Ukraine’s democratic development and an important step forward for the country. If achieved, the future of Ukraine’s Jewish community may be bright, not bleak."
(See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/abraham-h-foxman/in-ukraine-new-government_b_4875833.html)
This has been deeply disturbing to me. Is the message that Israel and diaspora Zionist leadership abroad will tolerate the glorification of Stephan Bandera, the persecution and murder of anti-Maidan activists, tolerate White power and neo-nazi flags and banners, the publication and distribution of National-Socialist literature...as long as the Jews of Ukraine are not molested? Despicable rhetoric from top Ukrainian politicians calling Russian-identity people of The Donbass and Odessa and the people of Russia "subhuman" is ok so long as 'our people' are not targeted? (See a critique of Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yatsenyuk's message which he inscribed in the official book of the Embassy of Ukraine in the USA: "We will commemorate the heroes by cleaning our land from the evil"...
“They lost their lives because they defended men and women, children and the elderly who found themselves in a situation facing a threat to be killed by invaders and sponsored by them subhumans. First, we will commemorate the heroes by wiping out those who killed them and then by cleaning our land from the evil”, - he said.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/06/ukraine-echoes-of-the-third-reich-yatsenyuks-subhumans-.html
Since than the Kiev authorities have continued in the rhetoric and promises of the Third Reich.
The Ukrainian govt has decreed Hitler's Land im Osten (land in the east) as a promise to volunteer soldiers willing to fight the people of the Donbass: The Kyiv Post news story on this development was entitled: "Ukraine's Land Agency give land to soldiers in the east for free"
...
"Land parcels will be given out for free to the servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other military formations, as well as to the employees of Interior Ministry and the Security Service of Ukraine that are defending territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country in eastern and southeastern regions of Ukraine." http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukraines-land-agency-give-land-to-soldiers-in-the-east-for-free-352100.html
Fascism is not inherently antisemitic. It is inherently anti-individualistic, that is ~ inherently antagonistic to the dignity and destiny of the human subject. Fascism castigates the 'moral decay' in Liberalism, 'the impotence of Democracy' and the 'abomination' of Socialism because liberalism, democracy and socialism are all manifestations/phases of individualism that affirm to different degrees the emancipation of the human person.
Contrary to popular commonplace notions, above all things, it is fascism not socialism which is the bitter enemy of Individualism (1). Fascism is intrinsically anti-socialist and in fact grabs power in history in response to the gains of the people, the gains of the Left. Hegel's influence notwithstanding, Marx's fundamental option was for the emancipation of the person and the Class from domination/exploitation by others. His theory of 'The State' after all, posits that the state with its coercive powers will at last wither away, and its dying off will destroy all the tentacles which have marked the un-freedom of humankind. Socialism is the expansion of "des droits de l'homme" from the realms of morality and politics to the economic social realm. It is the fulfillment of the individual in a free association of individuals, the harmonisation of the one and the many. True, for Marx, the working-class passes by revolution from the coercive capitalist state where the few control the many by means of the coercive socialist state (where the many control the few), but this is a transition, a temporary period of working-class power that is succeeded by a stateless communist world.
How does antisemitism fit into the Fascist worldview? The case of German Nazism has become the rule in determining this question, rather than merely one historical incidence of a certain genre of Fascism. In point of fact German antisemitic Fascism was rather different from that of Italy or Spain in this regard, and was in many ways sui generis in its antisemitic racialism. In 1920's and early 30's Italy, the fascists were quite friendly with the Jewish component of the capitalist establishment and of the 117 original members of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, founded on 23 March 1919, five were Jewish cadre. Antisemitism was most decidedly not the policy or belief of mainstream Italian Fascism. Whether due to direct German Nazi pressure or Mussolini's frustration that Italian Zionists rejected his mid 30s proposal that Ethiopia would make an ideal Holy Zion given that Falashas were already resident there (2), it can not be claimed that before the late 1930's Italian Fascism was intrinsically or even typically antisemitic.
As viciously single-minded and obdurate as was the antisemitism of German Fascism, in fact the historical record of The Third Reich indicates that Zionism's relationship with Nazism was to say the least ambiguous, with some Zionists collaborating with the Nazis (3)(a) and with Zionist leaders opposing the early 1930's worldwide Boycott of the Hitler Regime (3)(b).
Sinclair Lewis got it right about the variables of Fascist objects of glorification."When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." I always add that Fascism, USA would be militantly pro-Israel, as well.
If Fascism is not intrinsically antisemitic, but anti-individualist, anti-liberal and anti-socialist, what are some of its other distinguishing hallmarks? Political Scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt wrote an article a decade ago about fascism (“Fascism Anyone?,” Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20) Analyzing the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Pinochet (Chile), and Suharto (Indonesia) Britt claims that all had 14 elements in common. I will conclude by including an excerpt listing his 14 characteristics which he terms the "identifying characteristics of fascism":
"1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.
"2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.
"3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and “terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.
"4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.
"5. Rampant sexism. Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.
"6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.
"7. Obsession with national security. Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.
"8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.
"9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.
"10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.
"11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.
"12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. “Normal” and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.
"13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.
"14. Fraudulent elections. Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.
Source for Lawrence Britt article excerpt: http://www.deliberation.info/the-14-characteristics-fascism/
Notes
(1.) The 'individualism' often alleged to be manifested by both libertarianism and consumer-capitalism are perverse misnomers. Marx's idea of the individual and freedom is 'freedom for' not 'freedom from' society.
(Cf. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts)
(2) Ray Moseley. Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce. First Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004. pp115-116.
(3)(a) an example is depicted in In Ben Hecht's book "Perfidy"(1961) describing the events surrounding the 1954–1955 Kastner trial in Jerusalem when a leading member of David Ben Gurion's Mapai party was accused of collaborating with the Nazis during the genocide of Hungarian Jewry. "Perfidy” relates this history of a Hungarian Zionist leader who arranged for his family and several hundred socially prominent Jews to escape while facilitating the removal of the rest of Hungarian Jews to Nazi concentration camps; Hannah Arendt, in her 1960 book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report in the Banality of Evil,” writes: “To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story.”
(3)(b) In “The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine” (which has as an afterword remarks by Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League), the pro-Israel writer Edwin Black reports that Zionist leaders in 1933 concluded a secret pact with the Third Reich that transferred 60,000 Jews and $100,000 to Palestine, the Zionists promising in return that they would halt the worldwide boycott “that threatened to topple the Hitler regime in its first year”; also see the documentation of certain Zionist leaders with Nazism in Lenni Brenner's 2 books: “Zionism in the Age of Dictators,” Lawrence Hill and Co (March 1983), and “51 Documents, Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis” , Croom Helm Ltd. (1983)
The Mainstream press has been calling Right Sector and Svoboda "imaginary Nazis" on the basis of the Israeli and Zionist deal struck with The Right Sector: (See: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/03/putins-imaginary-nazis-105217.html#.U6ti2UBVWEk)
Early in March of 2014 right after the Maidan coup d' etat, the Israeli ambassador in Kiev, Reuven Din El, met with Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh 'opening a hotline' with the fascist movement to “prevent provocations"...Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League wrote the following in the Huffington Post:
"Dmitro Yarosh, leader of Right Sector, met with Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, Reuven Din El, and told him that their movement rejects anti-Semitism and xenophobia and will not tolerate it. He said their goals were a democratic Ukraine, transparent government, ending corruption, and equal opportunity for all ethnic groups".
...
"Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, together with UDAR leader Vitaliy Klichko, brought Svoboda into the opposition coalition in 2012. Now, having brought Svoboda into the government, it is up to Prime Minister Yatsenyuk to ensure that anti-Semitism is not tolerated and that democratic norms are adhered to. By sending that message to the people of Ukraine now, the prime minister will reassure the Jewish community and set an admirable example.
"Guiding Ukraine’s nationalists to adopt the path of Metropolitan Sheptytsky will be a major test of Ukraine’s democratic development and an important step forward for the country. If achieved, the future of Ukraine’s Jewish community may be bright, not bleak."
(See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/abraham-h-foxman/in-ukraine-new-government_b_4875833.html)
This has been deeply disturbing to me. Is the message that Israel and diaspora Zionist leadership abroad will tolerate the glorification of Stephan Bandera, the persecution and murder of anti-Maidan activists, tolerate White power and neo-nazi flags and banners, the publication and distribution of National-Socialist literature...as long as the Jews of Ukraine are not molested? Despicable rhetoric from top Ukrainian politicians calling Russian-identity people of The Donbass and Odessa and the people of Russia "subhuman" is ok so long as 'our people' are not targeted? (See a critique of Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yatsenyuk's message which he inscribed in the official book of the Embassy of Ukraine in the USA: "We will commemorate the heroes by cleaning our land from the evil"...
“They lost their lives because they defended men and women, children and the elderly who found themselves in a situation facing a threat to be killed by invaders and sponsored by them subhumans. First, we will commemorate the heroes by wiping out those who killed them and then by cleaning our land from the evil”, - he said.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/06/ukraine-echoes-of-the-third-reich-yatsenyuks-subhumans-.html
Since than the Kiev authorities have continued in the rhetoric and promises of the Third Reich.
The Ukrainian govt has decreed Hitler's Land im Osten (land in the east) as a promise to volunteer soldiers willing to fight the people of the Donbass: The Kyiv Post news story on this development was entitled: "Ukraine's Land Agency give land to soldiers in the east for free"
...
"Land parcels will be given out for free to the servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other military formations, as well as to the employees of Interior Ministry and the Security Service of Ukraine that are defending territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country in eastern and southeastern regions of Ukraine." http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukraines-land-agency-give-land-to-soldiers-in-the-east-for-free-352100.html
Fascism is not inherently antisemitic. It is inherently anti-individualistic, that is ~ inherently antagonistic to the dignity and destiny of the human subject. Fascism castigates the 'moral decay' in Liberalism, 'the impotence of Democracy' and the 'abomination' of Socialism because liberalism, democracy and socialism are all manifestations/phases of individualism that affirm to different degrees the emancipation of the human person.
Contrary to popular commonplace notions, above all things, it is fascism not socialism which is the bitter enemy of Individualism (1). Fascism is intrinsically anti-socialist and in fact grabs power in history in response to the gains of the people, the gains of the Left. Hegel's influence notwithstanding, Marx's fundamental option was for the emancipation of the person and the Class from domination/exploitation by others. His theory of 'The State' after all, posits that the state with its coercive powers will at last wither away, and its dying off will destroy all the tentacles which have marked the un-freedom of humankind. Socialism is the expansion of "des droits de l'homme" from the realms of morality and politics to the economic social realm. It is the fulfillment of the individual in a free association of individuals, the harmonisation of the one and the many. True, for Marx, the working-class passes by revolution from the coercive capitalist state where the few control the many by means of the coercive socialist state (where the many control the few), but this is a transition, a temporary period of working-class power that is succeeded by a stateless communist world.
How does antisemitism fit into the Fascist worldview? The case of German Nazism has become the rule in determining this question, rather than merely one historical incidence of a certain genre of Fascism. In point of fact German antisemitic Fascism was rather different from that of Italy or Spain in this regard, and was in many ways sui generis in its antisemitic racialism. In 1920's and early 30's Italy, the fascists were quite friendly with the Jewish component of the capitalist establishment and of the 117 original members of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, founded on 23 March 1919, five were Jewish cadre. Antisemitism was most decidedly not the policy or belief of mainstream Italian Fascism. Whether due to direct German Nazi pressure or Mussolini's frustration that Italian Zionists rejected his mid 30s proposal that Ethiopia would make an ideal Holy Zion given that Falashas were already resident there (2), it can not be claimed that before the late 1930's Italian Fascism was intrinsically or even typically antisemitic.
As viciously single-minded and obdurate as was the antisemitism of German Fascism, in fact the historical record of The Third Reich indicates that Zionism's relationship with Nazism was to say the least ambiguous, with some Zionists collaborating with the Nazis (3)(a) and with Zionist leaders opposing the early 1930's worldwide Boycott of the Hitler Regime (3)(b).
Sinclair Lewis got it right about the variables of Fascist objects of glorification."When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." I always add that Fascism, USA would be militantly pro-Israel, as well.
If Fascism is not intrinsically antisemitic, but anti-individualist, anti-liberal and anti-socialist, what are some of its other distinguishing hallmarks? Political Scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt wrote an article a decade ago about fascism (“Fascism Anyone?,” Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20) Analyzing the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Pinochet (Chile), and Suharto (Indonesia) Britt claims that all had 14 elements in common. I will conclude by including an excerpt listing his 14 characteristics which he terms the "identifying characteristics of fascism":
"1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.
"2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.
"3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and “terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.
"4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.
"5. Rampant sexism. Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.
"6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.
"7. Obsession with national security. Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.
"8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.
"9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.
"10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.
"11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.
"12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. “Normal” and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.
"13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.
"14. Fraudulent elections. Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.
Source for Lawrence Britt article excerpt: http://www.deliberation.info/the-14-characteristics-fascism/
Notes
(1.) The 'individualism' often alleged to be manifested by both libertarianism and consumer-capitalism are perverse misnomers. Marx's idea of the individual and freedom is 'freedom for' not 'freedom from' society.
(Cf. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts)
(2) Ray Moseley. Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce. First Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004. pp115-116.
(3)(a) an example is depicted in In Ben Hecht's book "Perfidy"(1961) describing the events surrounding the 1954–1955 Kastner trial in Jerusalem when a leading member of David Ben Gurion's Mapai party was accused of collaborating with the Nazis during the genocide of Hungarian Jewry. "Perfidy” relates this history of a Hungarian Zionist leader who arranged for his family and several hundred socially prominent Jews to escape while facilitating the removal of the rest of Hungarian Jews to Nazi concentration camps; Hannah Arendt, in her 1960 book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report in the Banality of Evil,” writes: “To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story.”
(3)(b) In “The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine” (which has as an afterword remarks by Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League), the pro-Israel writer Edwin Black reports that Zionist leaders in 1933 concluded a secret pact with the Third Reich that transferred 60,000 Jews and $100,000 to Palestine, the Zionists promising in return that they would halt the worldwide boycott “that threatened to topple the Hitler regime in its first year”; also see the documentation of certain Zionist leaders with Nazism in Lenni Brenner's 2 books: “Zionism in the Age of Dictators,” Lawrence Hill and Co (March 1983), and “51 Documents, Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis” , Croom Helm Ltd. (1983)
Karl Marx, Ecologist by Simon Butler
from Green Left Weekly Feb 21, 09
source: http://climateandcapitalism.com/2009/03/02/karl-marx-ecologist/
“Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.”
by Simon Butler
from Green Left Weekly, February 21, 2009
As the world economy spirals down into its deepest crisis since the great depression, the writings of Karl Marx have made a return to the top seller lists in bookstores. In his native Germany, the sales of Marx’s works have trebled.
His theories have been treated with contempt by conservative economists and historians. Yet, in the context of the latest economic downturn, even a few mainstream economists have been compelled to ask whether Marx was right after all.
Marx argued that capitalism is inherently unstable, fraught with contradictions and prone to deep crises.
Exploitation, war, hunger and poverty were not problems that could be solved by the market system, he said. Rather, they were inescapable outcomes of the system itself. This is because capitalism is dominated by the wealthiest corporations and devoted to profit above all else.
Only a move to a democratic socialist society, where ordinary people are empowered to make the key decisions about the economy and society themselves, can open the path to genuine freedom and liberation.
Famous for their critique of capitalism and for advocating social revolution, Marx and his co-thinker Frederick Engels are far less known for their concern for the destruction of the environment and the need for sustainability.
Taken together, their views on the relationship between human society and the environment rank them among the most advanced environmentalists of their day.
According to Marx, capitalism is an economic system profoundly at odds with a sustainable planet. The exploitation of nature is as fundamental to the profit system, he argued, as the exploitation of working people.
One of the key goals of socialism is to liberate the natural world from the anti-environmental impacts of corporate greed. “From the standpoint of a higher economic formation, the private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men”, Marx wrote.
He was scathing of the capitalist economic notion that the air, rivers, seas and soil can be treated as a “free gift of nature” to business.
“Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.”
The market system is incapable of preserving the environment for future generations because it cannot take into account the long-term requirements of people and planet. The competition between individual enterprises and industries to make a profitable return on their investment tends to exclude rational and sustainable planning.
Engels explained this destructive dynamic: “As individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of the immediate profit, only the nearest, most immediate results must first be taken into account.
“As long as the individual manufacturer or merchant sells a manufactured or purchased commodity with the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does not concern himself with what afterwards becomes of the commodity and its purchasers.
“The same thing applies to the natural effects of the same actions.”
In Marx and Engels’s time, this feature of capitalism was especially apparent in farming and agriculture.
“The way that the cultivation of particular crops depends on fluctuations in market prices and the constant changes in cultivation with these price fluctuations — the entire spirit of capitalist production, which is oriented towards the most immediate monetary profits — stands in contradiction to agriculture, which has to concern itself with the whole gamut of permanent conditions of life required by the chain of human generations”, Marx wrote.
Capitalist farming is unsustainable because it inevitably starves the soil of nutrients. It is nothing less than “an art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil”.
Furthermore, Marx held that “all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundations of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction.
“Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology … only by sapping the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the worker.”
Marx and Engels understood the Earth’s ecosystem as dynamic and complex — an intricate, delicately balanced process of interacting components where any changes that occur feed back with new, and often unpredictable, effects.
We disrupt the natural ecosystem at our peril, Engels warned. “Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each victory nature takes its revenge on us.
“Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first.”
Many times Marx described the normal interaction between human society and the natural world as a kind of “metabolism”. Capitalist production creates a “metabolic rift” — a sharp break in the relationship — between humanity and the Earth.
The environmental results of this deepening rift have proved devastating.
“The development of civilisation and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison”, Marx pointed out.
Engels added: “At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature.” On the other hand, “we have the advantage of all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.” That is, we can organise society in step with nature’s limits.
Marx and Engels held that socialism aimed to end class exploitation and also re-establish the “metabolism” between people and the Earth.
This is impossible unless the profit motive is removed from determining production in human society and a system of participatory democracy and rational planning is built in its stead.
Engels argued that only the working people organised as “associated producers” can “govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way”. This “requires something more than mere knowledge. It requires a complete revolution in our hitherto existing mode of production, and simultaneously a revolution in our whole contemporary social order.”
Today, with climate change threatening life itself, the ecological contradictions of capitalism have reached truly dire proportions. The environmental crisis will undoubtedly play a far larger role in the demise of the system than Marx and Engels realised 150 years ago.
Along with their contribution to ecology, another neglected fact about Marx and Engels is that they were not merely political theorists or philosophers — they were also dedicated activists who participated in the revolutionary movements of their day.
They insisted that theory must be made “real” — it must be enriched and developed through revolutionary practice — to have any real significance.
Marx reached this conclusion in 1845 when he was still very young. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways”, he wrote. “The point, however, is to change it.”
source: http://climateandcapitalism.com/2009/03/02/karl-marx-ecologist/
“Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.”
by Simon Butler
from Green Left Weekly, February 21, 2009
As the world economy spirals down into its deepest crisis since the great depression, the writings of Karl Marx have made a return to the top seller lists in bookstores. In his native Germany, the sales of Marx’s works have trebled.
His theories have been treated with contempt by conservative economists and historians. Yet, in the context of the latest economic downturn, even a few mainstream economists have been compelled to ask whether Marx was right after all.
Marx argued that capitalism is inherently unstable, fraught with contradictions and prone to deep crises.
Exploitation, war, hunger and poverty were not problems that could be solved by the market system, he said. Rather, they were inescapable outcomes of the system itself. This is because capitalism is dominated by the wealthiest corporations and devoted to profit above all else.
Only a move to a democratic socialist society, where ordinary people are empowered to make the key decisions about the economy and society themselves, can open the path to genuine freedom and liberation.
Famous for their critique of capitalism and for advocating social revolution, Marx and his co-thinker Frederick Engels are far less known for their concern for the destruction of the environment and the need for sustainability.
Taken together, their views on the relationship between human society and the environment rank them among the most advanced environmentalists of their day.
According to Marx, capitalism is an economic system profoundly at odds with a sustainable planet. The exploitation of nature is as fundamental to the profit system, he argued, as the exploitation of working people.
One of the key goals of socialism is to liberate the natural world from the anti-environmental impacts of corporate greed. “From the standpoint of a higher economic formation, the private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men”, Marx wrote.
He was scathing of the capitalist economic notion that the air, rivers, seas and soil can be treated as a “free gift of nature” to business.
“Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.”
The market system is incapable of preserving the environment for future generations because it cannot take into account the long-term requirements of people and planet. The competition between individual enterprises and industries to make a profitable return on their investment tends to exclude rational and sustainable planning.
Engels explained this destructive dynamic: “As individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of the immediate profit, only the nearest, most immediate results must first be taken into account.
“As long as the individual manufacturer or merchant sells a manufactured or purchased commodity with the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does not concern himself with what afterwards becomes of the commodity and its purchasers.
“The same thing applies to the natural effects of the same actions.”
In Marx and Engels’s time, this feature of capitalism was especially apparent in farming and agriculture.
“The way that the cultivation of particular crops depends on fluctuations in market prices and the constant changes in cultivation with these price fluctuations — the entire spirit of capitalist production, which is oriented towards the most immediate monetary profits — stands in contradiction to agriculture, which has to concern itself with the whole gamut of permanent conditions of life required by the chain of human generations”, Marx wrote.
Capitalist farming is unsustainable because it inevitably starves the soil of nutrients. It is nothing less than “an art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil”.
Furthermore, Marx held that “all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundations of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction.
“Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology … only by sapping the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the worker.”
Marx and Engels understood the Earth’s ecosystem as dynamic and complex — an intricate, delicately balanced process of interacting components where any changes that occur feed back with new, and often unpredictable, effects.
We disrupt the natural ecosystem at our peril, Engels warned. “Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each victory nature takes its revenge on us.
“Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first.”
Many times Marx described the normal interaction between human society and the natural world as a kind of “metabolism”. Capitalist production creates a “metabolic rift” — a sharp break in the relationship — between humanity and the Earth.
The environmental results of this deepening rift have proved devastating.
“The development of civilisation and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison”, Marx pointed out.
Engels added: “At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature.” On the other hand, “we have the advantage of all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.” That is, we can organise society in step with nature’s limits.
Marx and Engels held that socialism aimed to end class exploitation and also re-establish the “metabolism” between people and the Earth.
This is impossible unless the profit motive is removed from determining production in human society and a system of participatory democracy and rational planning is built in its stead.
Engels argued that only the working people organised as “associated producers” can “govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way”. This “requires something more than mere knowledge. It requires a complete revolution in our hitherto existing mode of production, and simultaneously a revolution in our whole contemporary social order.”
Today, with climate change threatening life itself, the ecological contradictions of capitalism have reached truly dire proportions. The environmental crisis will undoubtedly play a far larger role in the demise of the system than Marx and Engels realised 150 years ago.
Along with their contribution to ecology, another neglected fact about Marx and Engels is that they were not merely political theorists or philosophers — they were also dedicated activists who participated in the revolutionary movements of their day.
They insisted that theory must be made “real” — it must be enriched and developed through revolutionary practice — to have any real significance.
Marx reached this conclusion in 1845 when he was still very young. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways”, he wrote. “The point, however, is to change it.”
March 03, 2015
Canadian YCL'r Brendan Campisi about the historic struggle of the Black Panther Party
Download these 2 Talks for your Library of Recordings on Struggles in the Americas!
On the final day of Black History Month, Back in the USSR radio show talked to Canadian YCL'r Brendan Campisi about the historic struggle of the Black Panther Party and the ongoing African American struggle for self-determination, self-defense, and self-respect against the racist capitalist state in America as well as the international connections and solidarity of the Black Panthers with people's struggles around the world as well as the organizations they inspired in Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous, and even White American communities. .
Part One:
http://archive.cfru.ca/…/Back%20in%20the%20USSR%20-%20Febru…
Part Two:
http://archive.cfru.ca/…/Back%20in%20the%20USSR%20-%20Febru…
Recorded at CFRU 93.3: http://cfru.ca/recordings/66
Join comrade Seigfried Barazov every Saturday night from 10 to Midnight for "Back in the USSR Rebel Music and Radio (University of Guelph, Ont.)
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