L’Histoire est écrite par les vainqueurs, et chaque révolution amène une relecture du passé, une nouvelle version officielle des faits. Passent alors au pilon les mythes et légendes qui l’ont précédé, les héros anciens sont remplacés par des héros flambant neufs, les statues sont déboulonnées, et rapidement remplacées par d’autres. Chacun de son coté corrige sa propre biographie, censure ses erreurs, repeint aux couleurs du jour sa devanture, se découvre rétrospectivement militant, révolutionnaire. Chacun antidate son engagement, et s’invente des prises de conscience, des faits d’armes. Dès l’annonce d’une révolution, il est capital de se trouver dans le peloton de tête ; le résistant de la dernière heure n’a que peu de temps pour se joindre au combat, il doit se saisir au plus vite d’une arme, d’un prisonnier, d’un drapeau. Le temps passe et la mémoire se délite, s’embrume. Aux mensonges et aux illusions vient s’ajouter l’oubli. Le flou du souvenir vient confirmer les tromperies des uns, les alibis des autres, et semer le doute sur la réalité des événements. La bonne conscience de tous est indispensable à la normalisation. Il est de toute importance que la population entière se place du coté gagnant. Au prix qu’il faut. Dans la nouvelle version de l’histoire, la France entière a pris la Bastille, aucun Allemand n’a voté pour Hitler, et toute la Roumanie s’est soulevée d’un même élan pour chasser le couple Ceauscescu.

C’est ce que veut vérifier Jderescu, propriétaire/présentateur/réalisateur d’une station de télévision locale, dans une petite ville à quelques kilomètres de Bucarest. Est-ce que la révolution a bien eu lieu chez eux ? Est-ce que la ville a elle aussi participé à l ‘écriture de l’histoire ? Loin du centre de l’action, loin des caméras, lorsque les témoins perdent la mémoire, lorsqu’ils y mêlent leurs excuses, leurs rancœurs, comment encore raconter son passé? Qui était réellement là, en première ligne? Qui s’en souvient encore ? Qui s’en souvient vraiment? Et les héros de l’histoire eux-même commencent à douter. Ils savent la mesure, petite ou grande, de leur propre implication. Ils connaissent leur propre faiblesse, leur propre force, ils savent la peur qu’ils ont surmontée ou pas, mais n’ont que leur parole pour alléguer de leur éventuel courage, de leur bravoure inattendue. Les vainqueurs et ceux qui se rallient à eux n’ont que faire de ce courage, il ne fait que révéler leur propre absence, leur propre lâcheté. Dans la nouvelle version de l’histoire, les vrais acteurs sont des témoins gênants, face au souvenir commun. Ils sont les seuls à pouvoir révéler qui était ou non sur les barricades, qui a pris les armes, et qui a hésité jusqu’au bout, et a attendu l’issue du combat pour choisir son camp. Comme l”a fait de tout temps la majeure partie de la population. La majorité est en effet doté d’une seule force, celle de son inertie. La révolution est un mythe aux places limitées, mais après les faits, il est indispensable que chacun se l’approprie. Et sacrifie ces témoins sur l’autel de la bonne conscience collective.

Alice’s mother had attended high school once, and this — in her own opinion at least — made her an expert on education. She wrote several letters to the editor unmasking the school board’s secret agenda to make all students into unemployed drones, and had even gone to the meeting where the new curricular standards were discussed to add her opinion.

“Kids do not need to know algebra,” she announced when she got to the microphone. “I have never once used it in my adult life. Nor have I used trigonometry, scientific method, the Industrial Revolution, existentialism, transcendentalism, or participles.” She never actually got to explain what kids ought to learn, because by the time she had finished her catalogue of useless knowledge, her two minutes were up.

But Alice has to learn about the Industrial Revolution because it’s on the state proficiency exam. Once she found out that it didn’t involve riots or protests, she lost interest. Not that she’s a violent person, but what’s the point of calling something a revolution if it’s only about the invention of steam engines and the mechanization of the textile industry? Eventually Mr. Alston’s history class got to the part about labor unions and child labor laws, which was pretty violent, but by then Alice was too disillusioned to care.

She would like to start a revolution, but doesn’t know where to begin. Putting up flyers announcing a sit-in seems to defeat the spontaneous quality of revolution. Besides, her fellow students aren’t interested in revolting. They might protest if lunch period were shortened, or if all hall passes were revoked, or if the administration decided to actually enforce the cell phone policy. But few of them care about injustice.

Alice doesn’t have a cell phone. Her mother read an article that said they give you brain cancer, and refuses to buy her one. This sets Alice apart from her classmates. While Mr. Alston drones on about Luddites and Wobblies, they are all secretly texting under their desks or behind their book bags. She is doing her Latin homework.

She knows the real rules of school – not the ones forbidding saggy pants or electronic devices. The Real Rules: 1. Never volunteer an answer in class. Stare at the teacher until she gives the correct answer. 2. Never write anything down until the teacher tells you it will be on the test. 3. Never ask a question about the lesson; the answer is sure to involve more work for you. 4. If there’s something you don’t get, give it up; it’s better to appear lazy than stupid. 5. When you cheat on a test, make sure you get a couple wrong so it won’t look suspicious. 6. Plagiarism is the key to success.

It would be something, she thinks, if people would riot over books the way they fight their way into Best Buy when a new gaming system is released. It would be something if students would begin assaulting the teachers who don’t challenge them to think, instead of abusing the ones who take away their phones.

What if everyone looked down on people with small vocabularies (consisting mainly of words which, when spoken in class, will earn you a disciplinary action), instead of making fun of those who use words like ‘non-sequitur’ and ‘brevity’?

And thus were sown the seeds of Alice’s revolution…

Mit der Globalisierung der Wirtschaft haben sich auch die Verwaltungsstrukturen der Unternehmen über die Welt verbreitet. Management ist zu einem weltumspannenden Schlagwort geworden und bestimmt die Handlungsweise von Amerika bis Asien.

Organisieren, koordinieren, kommandieren, kontrollieren – die hölzerne, inzwischen weit verbreitete Sprache der Wirtschaftstechnokraten kündet von unfehlbarer Verwaltungseffizienz. Allerorten macht sich der neue Glaubenssatz von Industrialisierung und Verwestlichung breit. Von Stanford bis Tokio, von Madrid bis Dakar, von Athen bis zu den Pariser Vorstädten – überall befindet man sich im “Reich, in dem die Sonne nie untergeht”, im allmächtigen Managementimperium.

„Management“ heißt der kommunikationswirksame Verkaufsschlager der westlichen Industrieländer. Hinter dem Zeitgeist-Konzept verbirgt sich ein uralter, der westlichen Tradition entsprungener Begriff, der sich ursprünglich auf Haus, Familie, Gerätschaften und Haushaltsführung bezog.
Von Ökonomen aufbereitet und mit einer wissenschaftlich-technischen Aura versehen, wurde „Management“ zur Wirtschaftsdoktrin, zu einem Propagandainstrument der neuen Globalisierung eines Marktes ohne Grenzen.

Genau wie die großen religiösen und politischen Imperien ist auch das weltweite Management ein Teil der Geschichte. Wer den Versuch wagt, die Entwicklung der Gesellschaft über einen sehr langen Zeitraum nach dem Muster der Erdgeschichte zu analysieren, wird auf die „geologischen“ Schichten einer Zeitarchitektur stoßen, die den Ist-Zustand der Zivilisationen in sich tragen. Traditionen überlagern sich wie Sedimente, auf deren Oberfläche jeweils eine neue Epoche entsteht, die dessen harrt, was unausweichlich auf den Menschen zukommt.

Jede Form von Modernität ruht daher gewissermaßen auf einer verschütteten Vergangenheit, die sich der Mensch in Mythen oder wissenschaftlichen Deutungen zu erklären versucht. Doch um sich mit der Endlichkeit abzufinden, sie gewissermaßen zu bezähmen, bedarf eine menschliche Gesellschaft der Fähigkeit, die Schattenlinie zu erkennen, die jene Momente markiert, an denen Unumkehrbares geschieht. So gesehen, ist die lange Geschichte einer Zivilisation ein einziges, aus Schriftsedimenten bestehendes Textkompositum, durchzogen von eben dieser Schattenlinie, die eine nie endende Inszenierung der Zeit gestattet, eine Untiefe der Erinnerung, die ihr Spiel mit der Wirklichkeit treibt und dem Unsagbaren huldigt.

Der Film versteht sich als eine Reflexion über den globalisierenden Westen. Er will an der Oberfläche der Sedimentschicht unserer Epoche den Moment entschlüsseln, der eine neue Qualität gegenüber den Brüchen und Übergängen der Vergangenheit darstellt: Wir leben heute in einer Ideenwüste leben, die aus dem Irrglauben geboren wurde, dass die Menschheit – unter der Wirkung der wissenschaftlich-technischen Wirtschaftsallmacht – zu einer dem Glück geweihten und von allen Zwängen befreiten „Post-Menschheit“ mutiert.

Laut diesem neuen Glauben befinden sich die desaktivierten, zu bloßer Folklore verkommenden Zivilisationen auf dem Wege der Selbstvernichtung. Damit erübrigen sich die Analyse des Textkompositums der Gesellschaft und die Suche nach der Schattenlinie, auch ist es nicht mehr nötig, eine Gesellschaft mit ihren unfassbaren Geheimnissen, ihrer Verletzlichkeit begreifen und ihr schöpferisches Potenzial und ihren Umgang mit den ihr eigenen Todestrieben erkennen zu wollen.

Die Arbeitsthese dieses filmischen Essays ist ein Satz, den Jean Paulhan in einer Abhandlung über die kubistische Malerei verwendete: „Entfernt die Bäume, die mir den Blick auf den Wald verstellen.“ Diese Metapher aus dem Pflanzenreich habe ich mir zum Grundsatz gemacht, denn unserer Zeit fehlt es an Erklärungen; ein Defizit, das durch die Fragmentierung und Abschottung des Wissens weiter akzentuiert wird. Doch genau diese Erstarrung hindert uns daran, eine Welt zu begreifen, die aus den Fugen gerät, aber nach wie vor in tief wurzelnden, noch immer wirksamen Traditionen verankert ist. Manche dieser Traditionen sind im Untergang begriffen, andere aber trotzen der Gleichschaltung durch die westlichen Systeme.
In dieser Partie mit unsicherem Ausgang ist das weltweite Management – vom Westen als reines Instrument der Vereinheitlichung mittels wissenschaftlich begründeten Verwaltens konzipiert – ein neuer Einsatz/Trumpf.

Wie bereits frühere Filme des Autors stellt auch „Dominium Mundi – Die Weltherrschaft des Managements“ von Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftswissenschaftlern, Biologen und anderen zementierte Gewissheiten infrage. Die Methode des Films besteht nicht darin, sein Sujet – die Funktionsweise einer Zivilisation – zu zerpflücken und zu zerstückeln. Vielmehr seziert er es in der Manier des Kubismus: aus allen Perspektiven, von innen und von außen.

Grundansatz und Anliegen des Films ist es, die Fähigkeit zum Widerstand und die Fortdauer des „Materials Mensch“ sowie die immer währenden Widersprüche, die gewaltigen industriellen Umbrüche und die poetischen Rückzugsmöglichkeiten aufzuzeigen, die ein Film greifbar machen kann, wenn er mit der Gründlichkeit einer literarischen Erzählung vorgeht. Formal handelt es sich bei dem Film also nicht um ein Lehrstück, sondern um die Enthüllung miteinander verquickter Fragestellungen, die aus einem ganz einfachen Grunde undurchsichtig und schwer zu umreißen sind: Denn was der Westen vom Westen nicht wahrnimmt, kann auch in unsere Analysen nicht einfließen.

Erster außerordentliche Kongress der PSUV – Chavez fordert die Fünfte Internationale

von Alan Woods vom Kongress der PSUV

23.11.09

Bei der Eröffnungssitzung des PSUV-Kongresses hielt der venezolanische Präsident Chavez eine radikale, linke Rede und forderte die Gründung einer neuen Internationale. Er erklärte, es sei notwendig, den bürgerlichen Staat zu zerschlagen und ihn durch einen revolutionären zu ersetzen, er bezog sich dabei auch auf die Bürokratie innerhalb der bolivarischen Bewegung selbst. In dieser Rede spiegelte sich der enorme Druck der Massen wider, die das Gerede vom Sozialismus allmählich satt haben, während ihnen der wirkliche Fortschritt in Richtung echter Veränderungen frustrierend langsam vorkommt.

Am Samstag, den 21. November, begann der erste außerordentliche Parteitag der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Partei Venezuelas (PSUV) seine Sitzungen, an denen über 772 Delegierte teilnehmen, in der  Mehrheit ArbeiterInnen, Bauern und Bäuerinnen sowie StudentInnen, die von 2,5 Millionen PSUV-Mitgliedern gewählt wurden. Es herrschte eine Atmosphäre der Begeisterung und der Hoffnung.

Die Eröffnungssitzung begann mit revolutionären Liedern und einer Reihe von Eröffnungsansprachen von Ehrengästen aus Nicaragua und El Salvador. Danach eröffnete Hugo Chavez die offizielle Tagung mit einer fünfstündigen Rede, die kurz nach Mitternacht endete.

Im ersten Teil seiner Rede lag der Schwerpunkt auf der Notwendigkeit der Schaffung einer neuen revolutionären Internationale, die er als die Fünfte Internationale bezeichnete. Chavez führte aus, dass Marx die Erste Internationale gegründet habe, Engels sei an der Gründung der Zweiten Internationale beteiligt gewesen, Lenin habe die Dritte und Trotzki die Vierte Internationale gegründet, aber aus den verschiedensten Gründen existiere keiner dieser Internationalen heute mehr.

Chavez erklärte, dass sämtliche Internationalen ihren Ursprung in Europa gehabt und die damaligen Klassenkämpfe in Europa widerspiegelt hätten, dass aber heute das Epizentrum der Weltrevolution in Lateinamerika und besonders in Venezuela liege. Er wies darauf hin, dass an diesem Kongress 55 linke Parteien aus 39 Ländern teilnähmen, die ein Dokument namens Caracas-Abkommen( El Compromiso de Caracas) unterzeichnet hätten, das auf den Ideen eines weltweiten Kampfes gegen den Imperialismus und den Kapitalismus und für den Sozialismus basiere.

Er betonte diese Idee mehrere Male im Verlauf seiner Rede, die auch viele radikale Vorstellungen und Attacken gegen den Kapitalismus enthielt, der, wie er sagte, eine Bedrohung für die Zukunft der menschlichen Rasse sei. Er spielte auf die gegenwärtige weltweite Krise des Kapitalismus an und verurteilte die Versuche der westlichen Regierungen das System mit verschwenderischen staatlichen Maßnahmen zu retten. Unsere Aufgabe sei es nicht, so Chavez, den Kapitalismus zu retten, sondern ihn zu zerstören.

In Bezug auf die Situation in Venezuela sagte er, dass es noch nicht gelungen sei den Kapitalismus zu beseitigen, aber man sich in diese Richtung bewege. Seine Ankündigung, sieben Banken zu verstaatlichen, wurde mit begeisterten Beifallsbekundungen begrüßt. Er verurteilte die venezolanische Oligarchie als fünfte Kolonne, die sich an den Imperialismus verkauft habe.

Chavez erklärte, dass der Staat in Venezuela ein kapitalistischer Staat geblieben sei und dies ein zentrales Problem für die Revolution darstelle. Er hielt ein Exemplar von Lenins Staat und Revolution, das er den Delegierten empfahl, in die Höhe und sagte, er akzeptiere Lenins Ansicht, dass es notwendig sei, den bürgerlichen Staat zu zerschlagen und diesen durch einen revolutionären zu ersetzen, diese Aufgabe müsse noch ausgeführt werden.

Chavez widmete sich auch dem Problem mit der Bürokratie, er warnte, dass ihm bewusst sei, dass einige der anwesenden Delegierten mit irregulären Mitteln gewählt worden seien und einige Leute nur daran interessiert seien ins Parlament oder als Gouverneure oder Bürgermeister gewählt zu werden, was er als nichtannehmbar bezeichnete.

Zum derzeitigen Konflikt mit Kolumbien wiederholte er seine Forderung nach der Schaffung einer Volksmiliz, jeder Arbeiter, jeder Bauer, jeder Student, jeder Mann und jede Frau sollten eine militärische Ausbildung erhalten und das solle nicht nur auf dem Papier festgehalten, sondern auch in die Praxis umgesetzt werden.

“Ich schreibe diesem Kongress große Bedeutung zu”, erklärte Chavez, “und ich beabsichtige in seinem Verlauf eine aktive Rolle zu spielen.” Er bestand darauf, dass dieser Kongress nicht am folgenden Tag enden solle, sondern in den nächsten Monaten regelmäßig weiter tagen solle, um all diese Fragen gründlich zu diskutieren. Er verlangte, dass die Debatten demokratisch sein, verschiedene Meinungen berücksichtigt werden und die Delegierten der Basis Bericht erstatten und mit ihr die verschiedenen Vorschläge und Dokumente diskutieren sollten.

Der Präsident betonte, dass das kommende Jahr ein sehr schwieriges werden würde. Die Opposition würde alles Mögliche anstellen, um im September 2010 die Wahlen zur Nationalversammlung zu gewinnen. “Danach werden sie auf mich losgehen”, sagte er. An diesem Punkt rief ein Delegierter: “Sie werden auf uns alle losgehen.”

Das alles beleuchtet ein zentrales Problem. Nach elf Jahren gibt es Anzeichen, dass die Massen über das langsame Tempo der Revolution ungeduldig und frustriert werden. Die Krise des Kapitalismus zeigt seine Auswirkungen und viele sind empört über die Bürokratie und die Korruption, die sie überall, auch in der Bolivarischen Bewegung selbst, wahrnehmen.

Diese Bitterkeit wird manchmal in Streiks zum Ausdruck gebracht. Der Präsident zeigte sich über manche Streiks enttäuscht, obwohl er sich für einen Dialog mit den ArbeiterInnen einsetzte. Dahinter steht aber ein allgemeines Befinden, dass die RevolutionsführerInnen den Kontakt zur Basis verloren haben und nicht auf die Massen hören und deren Probleme verstehen.

Während seiner Rede betonte Chavez auch die Notwendigkeit die Traditionen revolutionärer Gewerkschaften neu zu beleben, da die Arbeiterklasse die führende Rolle in der Revolution habe. “Das Bewusstsein der Arbeiterklasse ist der Schlüssel zum Aufbau des Sozialismus”; sagte er und fügte hinzu, dass zwischen der Partei und den ArbeiterInnen ein enges Bündnis bestehen müsse.

Es ist klar, dass Chavez versucht, den Kongress zu nutzen, um der Revolution neues Leben einzuhauchen. Es bleibt zu hoffen, dass dies ein Neubeginn für das Voranschreiten der Bolivarischen Revolution sein wird, die nur erfolgreich sein kann, wenn sie in die Offensive geht, radikal mit dem Kapitalismus bricht, der Oligarchie entscheidende Schläge versetzt und einen echten ArbeiterInnen-Staat errichtet als notwendige Bedingung für das Vorwärtskommen des Sozialismus und dem Beginn einer revolutionären Welle in ganz Amerika und auf der ganzen Welt.

What the hell is wrong with Iran? I mean seriously, what the bloody heck is up with the State of Iran?

2009 in a nutshell:
The suspicious election fraud surrounding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
…Which led to the biggest protests since the Iranian Revolution, exactly 30 years ago
The arrest, torture and killings of protesters (many who were University students)
The expansion of the Army of Guardians to now have supercontrol over economic, political, and social affairs, including a special branch to produce their own print, photo and television elements.
Free Speech, anyone?
Free Press, anyone?
Is there anyone left?
Is there anything left?

And now Iran is putting 6,000 military stations into ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS to help promote their twisted, sick, murderous ideals. (As the New York Times states, “It is implanting 6,000 Basij militia centers in elementary schools across Iran to promote the ideals of the Islamic Revolution, and it has created a new police unit to sweep the Internet for dissident voices.”)

Well, ain’t that just the way things are.

(For pictures of the protests around the election in June, go here)

-etw

A few years ago I decided I didn’t like the term resolution when it comes to describing New Year’s Resolutions.  It sounds self-defeating.  When I thought about it some more a word popped out to me that sounded more encouraging.  That word is REVOLUTION. To me that word sounds more exciting and encouraging when it comes to changing one’s life for the better.  Resolution sounds like you’re resolving some huge conflict.  How depressing! I want to be excited about changing my life, not feel like it’s something that I have to do, but something that I want to do.

Thanksgiving is this week and then next month will be Christmas and then 2010 will be here.  I remember thinking the year 2000 sounded big and scary.  The year 2010 sounds futuristic.  I love the idea of a fresh start.  A day when I can wake up and feel like my world is brand new.

The list for New Year’s Revolutions usually consist of:

* weight loss

* eating healthy

* exercise

* family time

* being happy

BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!

I decided I better start brainstorming my NYR’s for 2010 so that I can be ready for when January 1st rolls around. The above list is classic.  A lot of people wants to look thin, young and beautiful.  They want to have many beautiful possessions that show how well they’re doing financially. These things are great to a degree, but I know I’m aging (I’m already getting gray hair ACK!) and I also know that finances go up and then they can go down.  Here is my little Revolution list for 2010:

1.  I want to like myself for who I am.  I’ve grown a lot in coming to terms with accepting myself as more of a tomboy than a girlie girl. I want to be comfortable enough to take myself out for a movie and enjoy it.  It’s refreshing to not feel the pull to have to keep perfectly in-style with society’s choice of clothing.

2.  I want to work on my relationship with my immediate family.  I want to communicate better even when it might be easier to remain silent.

3.  I want to enrich my marriage so that it can be the best that it can be spiritually, physically and verbally.  I want to show how much I value my husband each day in unique ways.

4.  I want to work on cultivating quality friendships vs having a lot of acquaintances who don’t truly know me 100%.  Having a small circle of honest friends is worth more than a whole tribe who doesn’t know you at your very core.  As I’m getting older I’m learning that friendships come and they go.  Some are forever and some are for a season.  I would love to have an older sophisticated woman mentor me as I’m heading toward my 40’s. I’m actually looking forward to turning 60 some day.  That’s all thanks to Judi Dench.

5.  I want to deeper my spiritual walk.  This past year I  was making progress and then I chickened out.  I sense that God is putting me through a spiritual dry spell, so that I can learn to lean on Him.  I just can’t seem to find a church home. Either that, or I’m being rebellious and stubborn.

Well the clock has struck 9 and I better go get some decent sleep.  I’m looking forward to 2010, are you?

By, Diane Lang

Why do you want to go back to work? It seems like a simple question but there are a lot of things to consider. Is it out of financial necessity? Divorce? Empty nest? Do you want a career or a job?

Take a closer look at your motivation by answering the following questions. Just make sure to be honest with yourself. It’s natural to have a mix of feelings and emotions as you are making the decision. Answering these questions will help you sort through your thoughts to make the right decision.  A decision that is good for you and your family.

1. Is going back to work at this moment right for you? Why?

There are a few things you need to consider. What type of job do you want? Are you looking for a career or a job? There is a big difference between the two. A job can be a means to an end. A career is something you feel passionate about, something that creates a sense of purpose and happiness in your life.

2. Will having a second job (the first being a mom) make you the best mom you can be?

Being a mom is a full time job. Just because you don’t get a paycheck or benefits doesn’t mean it’s not real work. Being a mom is the most important job in the world. It’s a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week with no sick days or vacation pay. It’s a lot of responsibility. Are you ready for more?

3. Is it financially feasible?

This is a question that requires a lot of thought. You will have to consider your

travel time, commuting costs, wardrobe, daycare (if needed), lunch and other

added expenses. Is it financially worth it?

4.  Why do you want to go back to work?

Knowing why you want to go back to work will help validate your decision. Working gives moms a sense of independence. For others, it’s confidence. It could be financial. Some moms need a balance of personal and professional accomplishments.

For me, going back to work was important. I knew going back to work would make me a better person and a better parent. Everyone is different. There are many options for the mom who chooses to reenter the workforce. We will go over them in future articles.

Diane Lang is the author of Baby Steps the path from Motherhood to Career. For more information or to order a copy of Diane Lang’s book please call: Kendall Hunt Publishing 1-800-228-0810 or order the book at: Amazon.com

For current information, appearances or booking. Visit Diane Lang’s website: www.dlcounseling.com or contact Diane at Lifeline36@aol.com

Well, holy crap, guys! I don’t know if it’s coincidence or there are darker forces at work, but the very day I bring up karmaloop in this journal, touting their freaking awesome Tripp NYC Catwoman hoodie, I get a bulk email from the dude who runs it. The email notes that I and whoever the other recipients are on his mailing list have not bought anything in awhile and contains a pretty good discount code.

I am broke as a joke, no Black Friday or anything for me these days because I got a squeaky-tight budget right now that cannot handle impulse buys no matter how sweet the retailer makes the pot, so I see no harm in passing the coupon code on to you. I have included random pictures of cool stuff from the site to entice you to give it a whirl, because I seriously have zero use for this coupon and I hate to see a) a chance to save money go to waste, and b) a cool site have to drum up business like this, meaning they might go under. So please, go for it.

Happy Commencement of the Commercial Holidays, y’all! Enjoy — and if you use it, send me pictures of your shit!

Karmaloop Fam,

I wanted to hit you up because I see that you haven’t shopped at Karmaloop.com in a while. I know the economy has been messed up and that may be one of the reasons you haven’t shopped recently.

USE THE CODE: BACKON
and BAM 20% OFF YOUR ENTIRE ORDER + $20 Gift code for next purchase when you check out!!!

$20 Gift code will be emailed to you within a week of purchase

But if there are any other reasons I want to know! We pride ourselves on our connection to our customers and if you had any problems, issues, or aren’t seeing what you like hit me up my email and cell # is below. Actually, hit for any reason if you have ideas or just want to chop it up.

I get back to everyone but I get tons of emails so if you don’t hear back that means either 1. I didn’t get the email for some reason or 2. I will be getting back soon…but feel free to hit me again if you thing I might have missed your email.

We have literally thousands of berserk new styles that have dropped on the site in the last week for both men and women…it is never too early to do a little holiday shopping or buy yourself something nice…you deserve it!!!! Everyone deserves to look fresh…but no one more than you!

NEW ARRIVALS GUY’s:
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NEW ARRIVALS GIRL’s:
http://www.karmaloop-updates.com/gmrrylwhgrkdwrqmdkysndstthdcmqqqmsqkqwwylknmgc_zwswddbfmbrd.html

Greg Selkoe, Founder, Kung Fu Master, member of the Golden Horde, & Dog Trainer
Karmaloop.com, Karmaloop TV, & Junglelife.com
W: 617.695.0689
C: 617.216.1013
F: 617.249.1952
T: twitter.com/selkoe
F: facebook.com/selkoe

or send a postal mail to:
Karmaloop.com
131 Tremont St, Fl 2
Boston,MA
02111

It’s cute when he says “chop it up,” but honestly, I’m not totally sure what that means. Just shoot the breeze or is there something more definitively involved? Let me know. Keep me young.

Great stuff here. Who Are The Maoists and What Do They Want? A good overview of the Maoist revolution in India.

Now from a generic Left POV, I would have to say that this post makes it clear that all of the previous solutions have completely failed to address the needs of the vast majority of Indians.

That includes the Congress Party, of course the BJP and the Right, the “Indian socialism” of the first 20 years of India’s statehood, and even the parties of the Left, including, to their shame, the Communist Parties in power. Not to mention the neoliberalism of the last 15 years or so. Failed, all failed.

Now that leaves your generic Leftwinger a couple of choices. To continue to support the various failed projects of the past, Left, Right or Center, or to try something new for a change. It’s clear that the Maoists, for better or worse, are the only people in India who even have a chance at addressing the various problems outlined below. Therefore, I support the Maoists! Not because I’m a Maoist myself (I’m more of a grocery list Leftwinger, and I even support social democracy in many places as the greatest good for the greatest number) but because their model is way better than all of the atrocious alternatives.

There aren’t enough Communists in India to put this project forward, nor enough in the world to support them. So the Maoists need the support of all Communists, socialists and even progressives in general for their cause, and they ought to welcome support from the non-Marxist Left and even non-Leftist liberals and progressives.

After reading this, all I can say is, “Go Maoists Go!”

War Against the Maoists: But Who Are They and What Do They Want

Rita Khanna

Radical Notes Journal

November 19, 2009

Author’s Note: This is meant to be a simple and brief exposition of the goals and strategies of the Maoist movement in India for people who may not have much awareness about it and are confused by the propaganda in the mainstream media. This does not go into the arcane debates about mode of production in India, the debates among communist revolutionaries over strategy and tactics etc. This aims at people who, for example, are perplexed why the Maoists, instead of trying to ensure safe drinking water like an NGO, rather, often resort to violent activities against the Government.

The Indian government is launching a full-scale war against the Maoist rebels and the people led by them in different parts of the country. The initial battles, without any formal announcement, have already started. For this purpose, they intend to deploy about 75,000 security personnel in parts of Central and Eastern India, including Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Jharkhand. The government will organize its regular air force in addition to paramilitary and specially trained COBRA forces. The air force has begun to extend its logistic support.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P. Chidambaram have declared the Maoist rebels to be “the biggest internal security threat” to India and a hindrance to “development.” The mainstream media seem to have taken them at their face value.

Their publications and television programs seem to be building a war hysteria against the Maoist rebels regardless of the fact that this attack by the government will be directed against some of the most deprived of the Indian people. Indeed this is turning into a war of the state against its own people!

While paying lip service at times to the notion that the current people’s insurgency led by the Maoist rebels has its root in decades of vicious exploitation of the poor, especially the Dalits and tribals, the blare of government propaganda tries to convince us that the Maoist rebels are dangerous, bloodthirsty terrorists determined to establish their areas of influence.

The Government is preaching that the Maoists can go to any extent to maintain their influence in these areas – by either preventing the government from undertaking development activities or by using the power of their guns and killing disobedient individuals. Their ideology is to terrorize the common people, wrest power from the democratically elected governments and destroy the entire fabric of the society.

The government and the media want us to believe that the only people, apart from a few romantic misguided intellectuals, who willingly support Maoists are the poor, ignorant, uneducated, uninformed tribal people. They seem to claim that no sensible, intelligent person living in a society like ours would support them voluntarily. But is this a true picture?

Could it be that the Maoist rebels are supporting and organizing the poor, exploited people to fight oppression, to establish a more egalitarian society where the wealth of our growing economy will be spread among all, not merely among a very small minority? Could it be that in the name of suppressing the Maoists, the state is going all out to break the backbone of these poor peoples’ fight? Could it be that the government is planning to wage a war, in our name, against our own sisters and brothers to help line the pockets of the rich?

In this hour of crisis, we must ask those questions that the government seeks to suppress.

What do we really know about the Maoist rebels, their ideology, their plans and programs? Why does the government need to go to war against its own people and inside its own territory? Are the Maoists really blocking development? Who are these Maoists anyway and what do they want?

Let us take one question at a time.

Who are these Maoists?

The Maoists are revolutionaries mainly extremely poor people, including a large number of Dalits and tribals. They come mainly from the toiling masses of India, and they are trying to organize the vast population of such masses of this country. They seek to arm and train them so that these masses can resist the onslaught of the rich. In this effort, they go beyond the idea that mass movements should focus on some specific issues like wage increases, better health care, more honesty of public servants and so forth.

The view of the Maoist rebels is that the poor and exploited people must first and foremost establish their own democratic political power and their own state power in various places. This is because without controlling state power, the poor and the exploited can at most hope for only limited improvements in their living conditions, i.e., so long as it does not inconvenience the rich who usually control the state power.

So, the Maoists mobilize the poor to fight against the existing state, even with arms if possible, as they consider the existing state to be a set of agents acting for the big multinational corporations, rich landlords and the wealthy in general.

The fight is an extremely challenging and unequal one, as the rich are aided by the government bureaucrats, the police and even the military. Also, contrary to what the Government and the mainstream media are propagating, the Maoist rebels are actually completely opposed to individual killings; they openly denigrate such stray terrorism-like acts. What they have been attempting to build up is a mass movement, even armed, to take on the violence of the ruling classes and its representative state machinery.

The Maoist movement was born in India in the late 1960s, after a radical section of political workers broke away mainly from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM) because they felt the CPIM and other such parties like CPI, RSP, etc. had discredited themselves with their opportunist politics of placating and compromising with the rich. The movement has a long history of development. The present party, CPI (Maoist), came into being in 2004 by the merger of a number of fraternal organizations.

Is development in India arrested because the Maoist rebels are blocking it?

What is the state of the people of India at present? With its current high rate of growth, this is also a country of abject poverty and extreme inequality. Home to 24 billionaires (second largest in Asia according to Forbes), India can also boast of 230 million people who go to bed on a half-empty stomach (World Hunger Report).

A country whose economy grows at 9% cannot feed its own population – at least 50% of the people live below the official poverty line and 47% of children below the age of three are underweight (World Bank Report, Undernourished Children: A Call For Reform and Action).

In this so called “hub of knowledge economy,” only 11% of the total population can afford higher education, and 50% of the students drop out before 8th grade to start living as casual laborers (Education Statistics, Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development). This is true of most of India, not just the areas where Maoist influence and control is high. Then how can we say that development in India is being blocked by Maoists?

Maoists do not oppose “development” at all, they only oppose the “pro-rich development” at the expense of destitution or often total destruction of the poor. For example, in the Dandakaranya region of Chhattisgarh, they oppose the setting up of helipads, but there, the poor themselves, led by the Maoist rebels, have built irrigation tanks and wells for help in agriculture, something the Indian government did not bother to do.

The Indian government routinely blames the Maoist rebels for blowing up schools! But what the government tries to suppress is that these blown up school buildings were actually being used or requisitioned as  camps for security personnel!

And what changes do they want? Why do they want these changes?

(1) Overhauling the entire structure of oppression instead of piecemeal reforms

In addition to all the woes described above, India is also a country where thousands of Muslims can be butchered in broad daylight by fascist Hindu forces (the most widespread and gruesome such pogrom in recent times happened in Gujarat in 2002), while the ministers and police look the other way.

And these features are not the stray results of the misdeeds of a few villains. The existing sociopolitical system in India has a built-in mechanism which ensures that the common masses will be oppressed by a rich and powerful few. Widespread systemic violence is required and is routinely applied by the Indian state so that common people remain disciplined and do not revolt in the face of oppression.

(2) Land to the tillers and destruction of the landlord class

About 60% of the Indian population is still dependent on agriculture. However the primary input, land, is predominantly concentrated in the hands of a few landlords and big farmers. Close to 60% of rural households are effectively landless (NSS Report). The elite in the villages, by their collusion with the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, have blocked any meaningful land reforms.

In the last four decades the proportion of households with little or no land (landless and marginal farmer households) has increased steadily from 66% to 80%. On the other hand the top 10% of the rural households own more land now than in 1951 (NSS report).

The Maoist revolutionaries want to change this to ensure equitable distribution of land. They do not deter the landless and poor peasants and the poor rural labourers from collective armed fight against the existing state power for achieving this goal.

(3) Freedom from money lenders and traders

Indebtedness in rural India has been increasing by leaps and bounds, especially in the recent decades. Public rural banks are closing down due to relaxation of government regulation. Therefore, instead of securing credits from public institutional sources, rural folk are now being forced to approach the village money lenders (who are often big landlords or rich farmers as well) on a larger and larger scale.

Unscrupulous traders are adding to the misery of poor peasants. They sell spurious inputs to small and marginal peasants at exorbitant prices. They also make huge profits by buying their harvest at throwaway prices and selling them in urban areas at a premium.

Not-so-well-off peasants, in this no-win situation, of course end up needing substantial credit. Private moneylenders and various for-profit financial companies take advantage of this situation by extracting enormous sums from peasants. Interest rates can be as high as 5% per month. The BBC News reported that more than 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997 under the pressure of such indebtedness.

The Maoist rebels want to change this.

(4) End of caste system and eradication of untouchability

It is well known that the caste system is still thriving in India. Economically it keeps the overwhelming majority of the people in dire poverty and politically it suppresses their fundamental democratic rights. Often the lower castes are robbed of their human dignity. They are even denied access to public facilities like some sources of drinking water, schools etc.

An Expert Group of the Planning Commission reports that in 70% of villages lower caste people cannot enter places of worship and in more than 50% of villages, they don’t have access to common water sources (Expert Committee Report to the Indian Planning Commission).

According to an NCDHR report, on average, 27 atrocities (including murder, abduction and rape) against Dalits take place every day. The well-off landed sections in the villages still come mainly from the upper castes. They use Brahminical ideology to try to keep all other sections of the population under domination.

The same is true for usurers, merchants, hoarders, quarry owners, contractors – all mainly come from the upper castes. In short, the upper castes are still very much in command in all aspects of rural life. Often they run a parallel raj with their own private army of goondas.

The Maoists want to break this stranglehold of the upper castes and ensure equal rights for Dalits and Adivasis.

(5) Freedom from exploitation by foreign multinationals and its local partners

Since 1991, foreign capital, in alliance with big capitalists like Reliance, Tata and state bureaucrats, has penetrated vast sectors of the Indian economy. Every sphere of our life, starting from road construction, electricity generation and communication networks to food retail, health and education are under direct control of this coterie. In the name of “development” thousands of acres of land are being transferred to big business and multinationals.

For example, in Bastar, Chattisgarh, in the name of the Bodh Ghat Dam project, tens of thousands of Adivasis are being forcibly evicted from their “jal-jangal- zameen” (water-forest- land). In Niyamgiri, Orissa the land which is the abode of several Dongria tribes has been handed over to the multinational Vedanta group, which will completely destroy the livelihood of these tribes, affecting more than 20,000 people. The state government and the mainstream opposition parties of the state are actively supporting such activities.

The Maoists, over the years, have been resisting such plunder.

(6) Ensuring people’s democratic rights

It is well known that elections are often a sham in India. The parliament, as we have seen several times, is a bazaar where the rich and super-rich can buy the MPs. According to the ADR (Association of Democratic Reform), the average asset of an MP has gone up to 5.12 crore in 2009 from Rs 1.8 crore in 2004. In our democracy the erstwhile rajas and maharajas, like the Scindias, are still proliferating and control the local economy and polity in many places.

And we also know the state of the judicial system in our country. The Salman Khans and Sanjeev Nandas can kill by running over commoners with their cars, yet they can still escape the law for a very long time, perhaps forever.

B.N. Kirpal, the judge, who arbitrarily ordered that Indian rivers be interlinked, ignoring the resulting ecological and human calamity, joined the environmental board of Coca-Cola after he retired.

The Maoists want to establish people’s court where poor people can get true justice. In fact, such courts run in many places where the Maoist movement is strong.

(7) Self-determination for the nationalities

The Indian government ruthlessly suppresses the national aspirations of many people. These people and their land became part of India by accident – because the British raj annexed their homeland or a despotic king wanted their land to be a part of India. Lakhs of Indian troops have been deployed in Kashmir and the northeastern states to curb the  struggles of the people in these states for their national self-determination.

Since 1958, AFSPA has been imposed in northeastern states, which allows armed forces to conduct search and seizure without warrant, to arrest without warrant, to destroy any house without any verification and to shoot to kill with full impunity. In Kashmir, there is 1 military personnel for every 15 civilian.

Cold blooded murders, like those of Thangjam Manorama Devi, Chungkham Sanjit, Neelofar and Asiya Jan, are carried out frequently in the name of “countering terrorism.” The Maoist rebels seek to establish freedom of self-determination for all nationalities.

So, to sum up, the new society the Maoists want to establish will have the following components:

• Land to the poor and landless. Later on cooperative farming is to be established on voluntary basis.
• Forest to the tribal people.
• End of the rule of the rich and the upper caste in villages and the uprooting of the caste system. Uproot all discrimination based on gender and religion.
• Seizure of the ill gotten wealth and assets of multinational corporations and their local Indian partners.
• Self-determination for the nationalities, political autonomy for the tribes.
• Establish a state by the poor and for the poor, where the present day exploiters would be expropriated.
• Participation of people in day to day administrative work and decision making. Democracy at the true grassroots level with people having the power to recall their democratic representatives.

In summary: ensuring freedom, rights and democracy for all sections of the toiling masses.

What have the Maoists-led people’s struggles achieved so far?

Information in this section is taken, purposely, from the Expert Group Report to the Planning Commission, which is available on the web.

Contrary to what the media try to portray, the government’s own report says that the movement led by the Maoist rebels cannot be seen as simply blowing up of police stations and killing individual people. It encompasses a mass organization. Mass participation in militant protest has always been a characteristic of such mobilization.

Although the Maoists by their own admission are engaged in a long term people’s struggle against the oppression by the present India state, their movement has already achieved some short term successes in improving the condition of the poor people.

The Maoist movement in India was built around the demand of “land to the tillers.” Numerous struggles, led by the Maoists, have been fought all over the country, especially in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, to free land from the big landholding families. In many such cases landlords have been driven away from the villages and their land has been put in the possession of the landless poor. But the police and paramilitary do not allow the poor to cultivate such lands.

In Bihar, landless Musahars, the lowest among the Dalits, have struggled and taken possession of fallow government land. This has had the support of Maoists.

Under the leadership of the Maoists, the Adivasis have reclaimed forest land on an extensive scale in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, Orissa and Jharkhand. The Adivasis displaced by irrigation projects in Orissa had to migrate to the forests of the Visakhapatnam District of Andhra Pradesh in large numbers. The Forest Department officials harassed and evicted them on a regular basis. The movement led by the Maoists put an end to this.

In rural India, the Minimum Wages Act remains an act on paper only. In the forest areas of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand, non-payment of legal wages was a major source of the exploitation of Adivasi laborer. Maoists-led struggles have put an effective end to it. These struggles have secured increases in the rate of payment for picking tendu leaves (used for rolling beedies), washing clothes, making pots, tending cattle, repairing implements etc.

The exploitation previously had been so severe that as a result of the sustained movement led by the Maoists, the pay rates of tendu leaves collection have over the years increased by fifty times.

The movement has given confidence to the oppressed to assert their rights and demand respect and dignity from the dominant castes and classes. The everyday humiliation and sexual exploitation of laboring women of Dalit and tribal communities by upper caste men has been successfully fought. Forced labour, begari, by which the toiling castes had to provide obligatory service for free to the upper castes, was also put an end to in many parts of the country.

In rural India, disputes are commonly taken to the rich and powerful of the village (who are generally the landlords) and caste panchayats, where the dispensation of justice is in favour of the rich and powerful. The Maoist movement has provided a mechanism, usually described as the “People’s Court” whereby these disputes are resolved in the interests of the wronged party.

Why then does the government need to go to war against its own people led by these rebels instead of hailing them as true patriots?

There is a simple answer. Chattisgarh, Orissa are rich in mineral wealth that can be sold to the highest multinational bidder. The only obstacle standing between the corrupt politicians and ALL THIS MONEY are the poor, disenfranchised tribal people (and the Maoists leading them). So, this war. This is not something new in India or for that matter in other parts of the world.

Mobutu’s corrupt regime selling off the Belgian Congo piece by piece to the US, Belgium and other countries comes to mind. In the sixty years of independence from direct colonial rule, the Indian state has been doing the same. It has systematically impoverished the overwhelming majority to serve the interest of a powerful few and their foreign friends.

The impending war to evict the tribal people from their villages, on the pretext of eliminating the Maoists, will be fought at the behest of big corporations, who want to control and plunder our resources such as minerals, water and forests. It is high time that we recognize this pattern of waging war which will be fought by the poor on both sides, but will benefit only the big capitalists and their cheerleaders in the government.

Note: For an interested reader, the Banned Thought site contains an enormous wealth of information about the Maoist rebels, including their own documents.

A common observation of our era is that is it the era of liberal democracy – we are part of the “Third Wave” of democratization which effectively represents the epochal victory of liberal democracy (at least as a formal political system) against all other authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government.

But, could we not make the observe claim: it is not that we live in the era of liberal democracy, but that we live in a period in which dictatorship is no longer a possible form of political rule. By dictatorship I mean the classical form of “tyrannical” modern government: the types of regimes signified by the names of Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini. That is, these are not simple despotisms (of the kind we still have in many parts of the world – pick your own “corrupt African dictator” as an example), but authoritarian rule which is heavily dependent upon the state’s ability to employ state-directed mass mobilization. Presently, you may find many a despotic regime, but the crucial element of mass mobilization is missing: North Korea and Venezuela (in contrasting ways, of course) may represent the last of the species – but even Venezuela, however much one may try to paint Chavez as a dictator, still lacks the total dictatorial power of a Stalin – recall that Chavez still deals with an active political opposition, has no option of condemning enemies to a Gulag, and must still legitimize his rule via a formal democratic process – all these are preposterous propositions to the classic dictatorial model.

So the question is not “why is liberal democracy today’s predominant form of government,” but “what has changed to make dictatorship impossible?” The questions are not necessarily related: what has made dictatorship impossible is not necessarily that which has made liberal democracy possible. Indeed, the death of dictatorship should signal an epochal shift in the organization of the modern world. The question is highly significant politically, as well: for example, it was interesting to see Thomas Friedman on Charlie Rose express his frustration at the blackmailing behavior of Afghan president Karzai: Friedman made the point that, in essence, the Obama administration has to bribe Karzai for his continued support of US military efforts in the country. It seems that this form of blackmail was not possible in the past: a weak state blackmails the stronger not by playing a game of power politics (a la the Cold War) and finding a new international patron, or building up domestic resources to challenge the hegemon, but by threatening the strong state with its failure. How is this possible?

The rhetorical question Friedman asked was significant: did Nehru have to paid to build modern India, did Nasser have to be bribed to modernize Egypt? What explains Karzai’s “irresponsible” behavior towards his own historical mission of constructing an Afghan nation? How ironical: US foreign policy should, it seems, reminisce of the glory days when the business of rule in proxy states was carried out by authoritarian dictators (like Pinochet) – such leaders are both politically and economically much more efficient than the “democratically” elected Karzai and the “democratic” regime of Pakistan (recall Musharraf’s inability to hold on to power and reinstitute a military dictatorship in that country).

Here I think lies part of the answer to the question of why dictatorship is no longer possible: it is not simply that there are today international norms and diplomatic pressures which prevent petty leaders from assuming dictatorial powers and require them to pursue democratic legitimation through elections (even if rigged, etc.). The answer perhaps lies elsewhere: it is that the institutional logic of liberalism as a global system has created such conditions that it is impossible for petty leaders to become dictators. It is not that leaders such as Karzai and others would not desire political power beyond the principle of electoral legitimacy, but that they lack the mass social movements to back the state in a mass political project of the kind typically intended by dictatorship (imperial grandeur and expansion under Napoleon, a classless society under Stalin, an organic national body under Nazism and facism). Indeed, petty dictators today do not defy, but operate within the very confines of the (normative and institutional) standards of liberal democracy. Did we not see this most recently in Iran? The model of “theocratic dictatorship” seems very far from the model of a despotic society, with millions of Iranians marching against electoral fraud. In addition, these standards pervade the institutional structures of so-called developing societies: the (sometimes forceful) institution of “market relations” between households and the economic system and the resulting view of the state as a mere “nightwatchman” of liberal society has deeply transformed social dynamics throughout the developing world. In other words, the rise of petty, corrupt authoritarianism against the radical social transformative goals of dictatorship is a direct consequence of the global hegemony of liberal democracy as the world’s dominant political system, and liberal capitalism as the necessary economic system of liberal democracy. That is, what some democratization theorists call “illiberal democracy” (for which Russia serves as a typical case) is not some aberration caused by local conditions but in fact the direct product of the hegemony of liberal democracy. The question is, is the possibility of mass, revolutionary dictatorship (of either the Left or the Right) irretrievably lost as a political choice?

The more fundamental normative question is, of course, should we even want dictatorship to exist as a political choice? Who would today want to live under a Stalinist regime, let along a society ruled by Hitler’s Nazis, permeated by his SS organization? The problem is not that simple, however. It is true that the era of the “Third Wave” (borrowing from Samuel Huntington’s designation which informs basic understandings of the process of democratization beginning in the late 1980s and 1990s) has introduced more liberal democracies on the planet. On face value, this may appear to be a good thing. What the “Third Wave” has introduced as well, however, is a new form of corrupt authoritarianism. True, the “Third Wave”, coupled no doubt with “structural adjustment” policies advocated by the IMF, has led to the shrinking of the state, particularly its control over the economy and in social spending (particularly true for states in the Third World and the former socialist bloc). It has also been accompanied, however, as many analysts point out, with the increasingly problems of legitimacy, state “failure,” the growth of criminality and transnational organized crime, increasing ethnic conflict within states, and the rise of nationalist and religious revivalisms and fundamentalisms. These should not be seen as unrelated to global political and institutional changes. Indeed, I would go further and suggest that what these portend is not simply a political crisis of the state, but a more fundamental crisis of the project of modernity. The suggestion that we should today, in line with the norms of liberal multiculturalism and the varying postmodern and postcolonial theories that are brandished about, be concerned not with modernity as a universal human condition (regardless of the different “paths” which lead to it) but with “multiple” and even irreconcilable and incommensurable modernities. By these standards, Bin Laden’s fundamentalism is also an alternative form of “modernity.” But all these point to the intricate relationship between modernity and dictatorship: perhaps then, we should revise our conventional view of dictatorship as constituting somehow a traditionalist reaction towards modernization (a view commonly invoked to explain fascism in Germany, Italy and elsewhere, as well as for Stalinism – i.e., that Stalin represented a kind of “return to Russian traditionalism” against the radical ultra-modernity of communism) and see dictatorship as a peculiarly modern phenomenon. Should we, then, rather than celebrate, see in the demise of dictatorship a much more troubling sign of the crisis of the universal project of modernity?

Hello Friends,

Just a quick post right now while I try to finish up some writing I have been working on. I recently started journaling again, and my desire to put pen to paper has consumed me. I did find a few nifty links for you to check out though, so enjoy!! The Living Revolution is all around us…

Check These Out!!

Radical Simplicity

Wildroots Homestead

Homegrown Revolution

Unschooling

These are some examples to encourage you that the Living Revolution is already in progress all around us! There are so many ways to undo the mess we have made of the world, let’s go get our hands dirty and have some fun! Until next time…

Peace.Tobias.

By Dr. Steven Best, 11/13/09

I.

The nonhuman animal advocacy movement is at a crucial crossroads where truly it is now do or die. In the early 1980s, a new animal rights movement glowed bright with potential; in just a few years, however, the light faded to black as corruption, opportunism, and bureaucracy snuffed out the promise of genuine change. As they evolved, it became increasingly obvious that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other groups emulated the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to become corporate behemoths and mainstream machines. Increasingly co-opted and compromised, animal rights groups frequently worked with, rather than against, the exploitation industries in order to regulate, not eliminate, the ongoing nonhuman animal holocaust.

In the last decade, for instance, PETA pressured McDonalds, Burger King, and KFC to increase cage size and adopt “less cruel and more profitable” slaughter methods,[1] while HSUS aggressively campaigned for “humane meat” and “cage-free eggs.” These groups ultimately serve corporate exploiters’ interests and champion capitalist principles generally. But whereas PETA began as a grassroots organization in 1980, and continues to defend the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and to promote veganism, HSUS has been a bureaucratic welfare group since its inception in 1954, it consistently denounces the ALF, and has always capitulated to carnivorous culture as it barely gives support even for vegetarianism.

Lest anyone in either the industry or advocacy camps had any doubts, HSUS President and CEO Wayne Pacelle put them to rest in a sycophantic July 2009 interview on Agritalk radio. Pacelle virtually apologized for being vegan in his private life and assured the flesh, vivisection, hunting, zoo, and circus industries that they had nothing to fear from HSUS, as his goal is to promote “decency and mercy toward animals” and not to close their operations.[2]

II.

In direct response to the wretched reformism and opportunism of bureaucratic “welfarism,” a new movement emerged to reconstruct nonhuman animal advocacy unequivocally as a struggle for animal rights, not “welfare”; for the total abolition of nonhuman animal slavery rather than its regulation; and for veganism, not “humane” animal-derived products of any kind. To a significant degree, the new vegan abolitionist movement has been shaped and defined by the work of Gary Francione, professor of law at Rutgers University. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Francione exposed the duplicity of “new welfarists” who use the term “animal rights” but pursue “welfarist” policies. These policies, Francione argues, are incoherent and dilute the meaning of rights; “welfarism” in any form, he insists, works to the benefit of industries and thus increases, rather than decreases, the demand for animal-derived products; it only aggravates, rather than alleviates, speciesism and the plight of nonhuman animals in horrific systems of exploitation.

Francione tapped and mobilized growing dissatisfaction with corporate reformism and sparked a growing vegan abolitionist movement. More accurately, he revived a vegan movement first created by Donald Watson in 1944, and was sustained by vegan societies such as in the UK and US. These societies maintained Watson’s broad and political vision of veganism not merely as a diet but rather as an ethical and political commitment to the abolition of nonhuman animal exploitation and, indeed, to all systems of oppression.[3] Francione wedded the pacifist ideals of ancient Jainism, Watson’s vegan viewpoint, and the philosophy of animal rights first systematically developed in 1983 by Tom Regan, merging these influences in a new matrix of pacifist vegan abolitionism.

Francione typically speaks as if he invented veganism, and sycophantic followers such as Roger Yates claim that a bona fide “animal rights movement” only began in 2006 with the ascendant influence of Francione’s work.[4] But Francione mostly returned to Watson’s original teachings, albeit often in diluted form that retains the ethical vision linking food choices to moral commitments to oppressed nonhuman animals, but without a consistent political commitment to working against all forms of oppression and exploitation. Abolitionist approaches toward speciesism began within the nineteenth century feminist-antivivisectionists, were deepened in Watson and emerging vegan societies, informed the hunt saboteur movements in the UK from the 1960s to the present, and were advanced in historically momentous ways in 1976 when Ronnie Lee founded the Animal Liberation Front.

While Francione advanced a forceful critique of “welfarism” and took animal rights philosophy to a new level, he has nonetheless proved to be bereft of political vision and incapable of forging a genuine resistance movement that can evolve beyond the marginalized position currently embraced by less than one percent of the human population. In Francione’s religious, tepid, and apolitical rendering, vegan abolitionism remains an elitist, white, Eurocentric consumerist lifestyle easily co-opted by capitalism and dominant ideologies. Moreover, Francione has spawned a cult-like following – “Franciombes” – who parrot his fundamentalist, rigid, bellicose, and Manichean positions; with slavish devotion to their Master and his hostile manner, Franciombes defame his critics in a style more suited to Machiavelli than Jains.

III.

The Guru and his disciples come together in a dance of doctrine and dogma. Like Christian fundamentalists, Francione and his followers believe they possess the Truth while all others struggle in error. As Francione argues there is literally “no alternative,” only chaos and ruin, except for their approach based on obedience to law, peaceful education, and focus on individuals and consumption habits over institutions and productive imperatives stemming from global capitalism. For them, the world is black and white, answers are cut and dry, and complexity is reduced to the Procrustean bed of either/or, rather than enlivened through the dialectical logic of both/and.

According to the pacifist party line, militant direct action (MDA) tactics such as economic sabotage are ALWAYS wrong and NEVER effective. Excusing themselves from the work of analyzing the complexities and unique specific situations, Franciombes fashion a handy a priori “truth” and apply it mechanically to every action that has happened or will happen. Their ignorance of history is matched only by their mental rigidity. For over three decades, in dozens of countries throughout the world, in countless thousands of actions, liberators and saboteurs have freed hundreds of thousands of captive nonhuman animals; permanently shut down numerous breeders, “fur farmers,” and vivisectors; and convinced countless numbers of individuals to find gainful employment in careers other than nonhuman animal exploitation, while inspiring people worldwide to join the animal liberation movement.

In all this, Franciombes see no value or gain and, despite operations closed forever, they can only repeat the baseless claim that all damaged property is rebuilt and all liberated nonhuman animals are “replaced.” This may happen in some cases, but in light of the many operations shut down for good, this clearly is a false claim; even when animals are replaced and property rebuilt and restored, rising insurance costs are enough to weaken and jeopardize the viability of small and moderate operations at least. Whereas dogmatic pacifists hide under the cover of ignorance and denial, corporate exploiters themselves have testified to the effectiveness of ALF actions.[5]

By vilifying sabotage tactics as “violent,” and by conflating attacks on property with assaults on people, Franciombes adopt the reactionary discourse and position of the FBI and the corporate-state-media complex. They needlessly and divisively pit education in opposition to illegal tactics (even open rescues), as if the two tactics were irreconcilably opposed rather than complimentary aspects of a revolutionary process.

Despite some talk of capitalism, commonalities of oppression, and alliance politics, Francione ultimately pushes a simplistic, single-issue “go vegan” approach pitched to a white, affluent, privileged, Western audience, with no intent to engage people of color, working class families, the poor, or China and India – the world’s most populous nations now in rapid transition from maintaining traditional plant-based diets to embracing Western diets rooted in consuming “animal products” including flesh, milk, and eggs.

Francione thereby reinforces the dismal elitist, classist, and racist stigmas attached to activists for nonhuman animals since the beginning of “animal protectionism” in the early nineteenth century, and he further isolates veganism and animal rights from progressive movements and the social mainstream. Unable to articulate a structural theory of oppression, exploitation, and ideological hegemony, and mired in Western dualisms and the construction of false oppositions such as between production/consumption, individual/social, and psychological/institutional, Francione exculpates the logic and global machinery of capitalism to lay the entire burden of blame and responsibility on individual consumers.

Certainly, humans do have agency and need to take responsibility for transforming their personal lives, such as by engaging the ecological and ethical imperative to go vegan. But politically and pedagogically it is also crucial for citizens to recognize the formidable power of the structural forces in their lives and the ways in which sedimented economic and political institutions pose profound obstacles to teaching, learning, and progressive ethical and social change. Psychological and ethical change is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of the large-scale social transformations needed for creating viable democratic and ecological cultures.

Internalizing the capitalist ideology of liberal individualism, this pseudo-abolitionist offers nothing but the most banal and tepid reformism which is no more effective in changing the overall social relations of domination than “welfarism” is in breaking the chains of speciesist oppression. Rather than advancing on Watson’s formulation, Francione offers a regressive and hollow version of a rich ethical political ideal opposed to all forms of exploitation and hierarchy.

IV.

Franciombes eliminate complexity and ambiguity from the social-political picture, and reek of arrogance, dogma, and condescension. They cling to the religious conviction that any approach to veganism, animal rights, or abolitionism other than what Francione has set in stone is false, reactionary, and “welfarist.” They promiscuously deploy the phrase “new welfarist” to discredit others in the movement, much as McCarthyites hurled the epithet of “communist” and post-9/11 patriots terrorize with the discourse of “terrorism” to discredit their opponents as irrational extremists.

Indeed, in McCarthyist fashion, upon receiving alleged death threats from supporters of confrontational or illegal direct action, Francione made reckless accusations and named names of anyone (including avowed pacifists) remotely connected to such a devious terrorist plot. Moreover, Francione routinely brands his opponents as “mad” or “insane,” as if disagreement with his divine teachings were evidence of psychological impairment and oblivious to the normalizing and ableist implications of crude dichotomies of sane/insane and rational/irrational.

Unable to grasp the root causes of hierarchical domination and ecological crisis, blaming individuals over institutions, Francione is hardly positioned to grasp the nature of the problems afflicting other animals and the planet let alone to offer potential solutions and viable tactics. And thus we get nothing beyond the hopelessly vague, liberal pseudo-panacea of “vegan education.” Apparently limited to blogging and podcasting to the choir, Francione & followers are bereft of politics, and, in fact, they lack even the most rudimentary elements of a theory and practice of education – more than a small problem for an approach seeking change through vegan education. Their outlook is utterly delusional in the conviction that veganism is the main vehicle and catalyst for individual enlightenment and, thereby, for social change. These pugilistic pacifists cling to a Christian-like faith that somehow, someday their insular polemics and feeble “education” efforts will transform the heart and soul of humanity and, thereby, change society as a whole. Oblivious to the threshold we are about to cross, they promote slow, incremental change amidst rapid, systemic ecological breakdown.

Incredibly, as global ecological and social crises rapidly mount, Francione ignores the most crucial events of the day – human overpopulation, species extinction crisis, deforestation, global climate change, and the destructive growth imperatives inherent in the capitalist economy. The chaos theory model Franciombes use to buttress their collective hallucination of a “vegan revolution” is far more applicable to the exponential growth of flesh consumption in China and India. For every person who becomes vegan, a thousand flesh-eaters arise in these rapidly industrializing societies and elsewhere such as Brazil and South Africa. The Franciombe concern over “replacement” of liberated nonhuman animals seems to elude them as it applies to their own single-issue approach, which fails to realize that for every vegan convert they celebrate, armies of necrovores are continuously born and raised.

Francione’s approach is complacent, detached from reality, and irrelevant to the massive and complex struggle necessary to forestall biological meltdown and ecological catastrophe. Pacifist lifestyle veganism is another dead-end and groundless hope, totally inadequate to the unprecedented challenge of a planet in crisis. If once progressive, Francione’s approach is now clearly reactionary. It is a pseudo-abolitionist movement, bourgeois lifestyle veganism; it is a one-dimensional, single-issue, Eurocentric, white, elitist, consumerist, capitalist construct that vegans and abolitionists need to shed quickly.

Where Franciombes seek to trademark abolition and revile as mere “welfarism” any vision not their own, this group aims to blow the doors off their cultish theology in order to reinvigorate thinking, restore common sense, situate veganism in its broadest political context, and revitalize possibilities for revolutionary change. Our options are not confined to either the “welfarism” of HSUS or the pseudo-abolitionism and lifestyle veganism of Francione. There are other ways, such as history reveals and the future requires.

V.

We need a far richer and more radical concept of abolitionism that draws from and revitalizes the strength and power of the nineteenth century anti-human slavery movement that erupted in the US (and of course earlier in the UK). Unlike the pale imitation and caricature espoused by Franciombes, the version of abolitionism we champion is far more in tune with the radicalism, pluralism, and alliance politics (imperfect and impermanent as it was) of nineteenth-century abolitionism. But eschewing nostalgia and outmoded political models, this approach also draws from numerous other contemporary theories and political movements. We recognize the need for radical social change and we understand that the fight against speciesism, capitalism, the state, and hierarchy in all forms will be waged on many different fronts simultaneously. We seek to reinvigorate a movement sold-out by corporate opportunists and paralyzed by pacifists who sympathize with the latent “humanity” of oppressors and demonize the militant wing of animal liberation, a perverse inversion of loyalties and misguided sentiments manifested in the Stockholm Syndrome mindset evident in the mindset of fundamentalist pacifists who enjoin activists to respect the humanity of murderous oppressors as they demonize and vilify militant liberationists⁶

We cannot stop the speciesist and corporate war on nonhuman animals and the planet with blogging, leafleting, tabling, and recipe books alone. Capitalism is inherently destructive, and change will never come solely through education and persuasion, nor without a movement more powerful than the agents and institutions of omnicidal destruction. As radical pedagogy theorist Paulo Freire himself insisted – education can only be part of a much broader and multi-pronged movement of resistance, struggle, and change. Thus, like all priorl revolutions, human and nonhuman animals will not win liberation because oppressors suddenly see the light, but rather because enough people become enlightened and learn how to rock the structures of power, to shake them until new social arrangements emerge.

It is not only the content of Francione’s positions we challenge, but also the very form and method of his approach. We cannot progress in the struggle for liberation or hope to be politically relevant unless we abandon Francione’s dualistic, either/or logic for a dialectical both/and logic, one that abandons all bogus dichotomies and false separations. Thus, we need education and agitation, mainstream and militant tactics, peaceful resistance and confrontation and sabotage, and aboveground/legal and underground/illegal means of weakening speciesist capitalism.

We need more, not less, vegan education, of a kind that shatters the enclaves of white privilege in which Franciombes entomb abolitionism and reaches out to the poor, working classes, inner cities, less-industrialized nations, and, crucially, the emerging crisis flashpoints in the burgeoning population giants of China and India. And, despite one of his most persistent and vapid imposed false options, those who work underground to liberate nonhuman animals through raids can and do rescue other animals from “shelters.”

While we support the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, and defend the importance of economic sabotage, we also recognize that property destruction is only a rear-guard and minor means of resistance that has to yield to a broad social movement. Still, it remains an important – sometimes seemingly the only – means of resistance against the capitalist property system, and merits support as we simultaneously work toward building political alliances on a global scale and in an unprecedentedly broad and inclusive way.

The pluralist and contextualist approach central to our position absorbs the partial value and validity of vegan abolitionism, but without the debilitating dogmatism and disabling rejection of effective tactics simply because they do not conform to an ancient code or utopian ideal that only serves to strengthen oppression and to reassure oppressors they have nothing to fear from an “opposition” movement.[7] It abandons single-issue fetishism and the complacency of class and racial privilege in favor of diversity, solidarity, and bridge-building with those most economically disadvantaged and politically marginalized. Only in this way, can the profound importance of veganism and animal rights be recognized and respected by a social majority; only in alliance with other struggles can its revolutionary potential be realized.

In the consumerist and privatized lifestyle form promoted by Franciombes, however, veganism is the opiate of the people, and Murray Bookchin’s polemic against apolitical “lifestyle anarchism” can be fruitfully applied to the vaporous lifestyle veganism championed by Franciombes and others.[8]

We endorse a form of abolition that (1) defends the use of high-pressure direct action tactics, along with illegal raids, rescues, and sabotage attacks; (2) views capitalism as an inherently irrational, exploitative, and destructive system, and sees the state as a corrupt tool whose function is to advance the economic and military interests of the corporate domination system and to repress opposition to its agenda; (3) has a broad, critical understanding of how different forms of oppression are interrelated, seeing human animal, nonhuman animal, and earth liberation as inseparable projects; and, thus, (4) promotes an anti-capitalist alliance politics with other rights, justice, and liberation movements who share the common goal of dismantling all systems of hierarchical domination and rebuilding societies through decentralization and democratization processes.[9]

VI.

We form this new group out of the need for a radical social approach to veganism and animal rights that transcends bourgeois liberalism; the need for a global Left that renounces speciesism and all other ancient and lingering prejudices and forms of oppression; the need for post-hierarchical worldviews and democratic and ecological societies; and the need for total liberation and revolutionary transformation.

Forget Francione …

We must link the liberation of other animals to human and Earth liberation, and build a revolutionary movement strong enough to vanquish capitalist hegemony and to remake society without the crushing loadstones of anthropocentrism, speciesism, patriarchy, racism, classism, statism, heterosexism, ableism, and every other pernicious form of hierarchical domination. Humanity may not succeed in this endeavor, but it is one that we must undertake. It is no longer the classical choice between “revolution or barbarism,” but now that of revolution or ecological collapse and mass extinction.

We have two goals. First, we aim to expose the fatal flaws in Francione’s approach, and provide a positive alternative to his apolitical, one-dimensional, and single issue form of abolitionism. This approach provides a greater openness, diversity, and flexibility of tactics in contrast to the dogmatic and artificially constrained options Francione leaves open for his extreme pacifist approach. Since this alternative model is richer, multidimensional, and far more political, it opens to an alliance politics with other progressive and radical causes and groups.

And as we promote alliance politics, it is crucial to find ways of building bridges and forming commonalities. And thus our second and quite modest goal is simply to open a space for new forms of thought and struggle that revolve around the ideal of total liberation and a new ethics and politics that transcend humanism – however broadly defined – and encompasses all sentient beings and the natural world. We must first and foremost forge channels of communication to link vegan and nonhuman animal liberation communities with human animal liberation and environmental communities, representing a politics for the 21st century. In this endeavor, we hope to make this site and possible others a rich storehouse of information and a valuable medium for discussion and debate.

We reach out to any and all people from any of these communities to contribute to this crucial endeavor. Clearly, this broad spectrum of thought and politics will not agree on all points, but it is more important to focus on similarities and shared concerns, such as arise from the devastating impact of capitalism on social, sentient, and natural worlds with mutual concerns of peace, justice, equality, democracy, rights, autonomy, and ecology.

Notes:

[1] For PETA’s approach, see “The Case for Controlled-Atmosphere Killing”.

[2] For a transcript of the interview, click here.

[3] For Watson’s seminal 1944 essay arguing for a broad ethical and political concept of veganism, see: ukveggie.com/vegan_news/vegan_news_1.pdf.

[4] Roger Yates, “Three Years Young”.

[5] Susan Paris, president of vivisection-industry front group Americans for Medical Progress, for example, admits the ALF has had a large impact on vivisectionists, writing, “Because of terrorist acts by animal activists like Coronado, crucial research projects have been delayed or scrapped. More and more of the scarce dollars available to research are spent on heightened security and higher insurance rates. Promising young scientists are rejecting careers in research. Top-notch researchers are getting out of the field.” Moreover, the August 1993 Report to Congress on Animal Enterprise Terrorism describes the effectiveness of ALF tactics:, “Where the direct, collateral, and indirect effects of incidents such as this are factored together, ALFs professed tactic of economic sabotage can be considered successful, and its objectives, at least towards the victimized facility, fulfilled.” Both quotations cited at animalliberationfront.com.

[6] For a vivid and grotesque example of the Stockholm Syndrome and the internalization of the capitalist superego, see Lee Hall’s scurrilous attack on MDA in her self-published screed, Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror (2006). For critical dissection of the multitude of fallacies, errors, and abysmal scholarship informing this pacifist propaganda tract (which one could easily mistake for a political attack from a vivisection industry front group or the FBI), see the essays by Best and Miller listed in note 7. Also see the devastating critiques from UK activists deeply involved in the campaigns Hall distorted and denounced: Steven Best, Jason Miller, Joan Court, Janet Tomlinson, and Lynn Sawyer, “Presence of Malice: UK Activists Vs. Lee Hall”, Alison Banville, “Lee Hall: Unplugged and Unmasked”; and Lynn Sawyer, “On the Practice of Pluralism: A Response to Lee Hall and the London Vegan Festival Controversy.”

[7] On the importance of a pluralist and contextualist method, see Steven Best and Jason Miller, “Pacifism or Animals: Which Do You Love More? A Critique of Lee Hall, Friends of Animals, and the Franciombe Effect in the New Abolitionist Movement”, and “Averting the China Syndrome: Response to Our Critics and the Devotees of Fundamentalist Pacifism”.

[8] See Murray Bookchin, “Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm”.

[9] On alliance politics in a total revolution framework, see the Introduction to Steven Best and Anthony J. Nocella II (eds.), Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (2006, AK Press).

——————————————————————————————

Dr. Steve Best is TPC’s Senior Editor of Total Liberation. Associate professor of philosophy at UTEP, award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist, Steven Best engages the issues of the day such as animal rights, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media, globalization, and capitalist domination. Best has published 10 books, over 100 articles and reviews, spoken in over a dozen countries, interviewed with media throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and was voted by VegNews as one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians.” He has come under fire for his uncompromising advocacy of “total liberation” (humans, animals, and the earth) and has been banned from the UK for the power of his thoughts. From the US to Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to South Africa, Best shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.

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The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.

-Abbie Hoffman

Hello, world! We are the Urchins. Welcome to our website. We’re just your average, run-of-the-mill starving artist revolutionaries taking our movement to the internet in hopes of reaching millions. We’re young, poor, and in love with the world. And we know we can’t be alone. Urchins are everywhere. See that skinny kid in the corner reading a well-loved copy of Ulysses? Probably an Urchin. Remember that graffiti of an excerpt from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own you pass on your way home? Probably the work of an Urchin. And that person at your local bookstore who keeps moving his favourite books to the front of the displays? Definitely an Urchin.

Urchins of the world, our time has come! Let us rise up and with one slightly superior voice cry out, ‘Revolution!’

1. $493 Billion In Tax Increases On Health Insurance, Medical Innovation, Payroll And Small Businesses Would Pay For The Bill. (Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)

2. Americans Won’t See Benefits Of This Health Care Experiment Until 2014, But They Start Paying For It In 2010. (Page 13, Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)

3. Reid’s Bill Allegedly Reduces The Deficit By $130 Billion In Ten Years, But The Obama-Reid-Pelosi Spending Agenda Produced Deficit Of $176 Billion Last Month Alone. (Table 3, Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)

4. $465 Billion In Medicare And Medicaid Cuts Would Pay For Two New Unsustainable Entitlements. (Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)

5. Health Care Costs For The Federal Government – And Your Family – Would Increase, Not Decrease. (Page 16, Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)

6. A New Medicare Commission Of Unelected Bureaucrats Would Ration Care.(Sec. 3403, H.R. 3590, Amendment In The Nature Of A Substitute, “Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act,” Introduced 11/18/09)

7. The “Doc Fix” Provision That Would Add $250 Billion To The Deficit Is Not Included In The Democrats’ List Price For Their Health Care Experiment. (Page 17, Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)

8. Taxpayer Dollars Would Fund Abortions. (Sec. 1303(a), H.R. 3590, Amendment In The Nature Of A Substitute, “Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act,” Introduced 11/18/09)

9. A New Entitlement Program For Long-Term Care That One Democrat Senator Called “A Ponzi Scheme” Would Be Created. (Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09; Shailagh Murray & Lori Montgomery, “Centrists Unsure About Reid’s Public Option,” The Washington Post, 10/28/09)

10. States Burdened With $25 Billion In Unfunded Mandates From Medicaid That Would Force Them To Increase Taxes. (Page 7, Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)

Copyright (c) 1968 Apple Records/EMI. All rights reserved. [NOTE: Lyrics are reproduced in accordance with Title 17, Section 107 of the US Code - 'for non-profit educational purposes'. This blog is strictly non-commercial and does not receive or collect any revenue.]

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right?

All right!
All right!

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re all doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right?

All right!
All right!

You say you’ll change the Constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right?

All right!
All right!

(01/10/2009 and 15/10/2009)

Working men’s Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priest will not avail to redeem them. (Karl Marx, The Civil War in France)

The experience of the Paris Commune brought the idea of self-emancipation out of the manifestos and into the stream of reality (Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution)

These quotes clearly give the rationale behind starting with the Paris Commune this year, rather than progressing in a plain chronological order. The commune gives us a historical example of a working class insurrection and an experiment at sustaining a truly democratic form of societal order. It brings into clear focus the varied questions of the State, organisation, institutions, democracy/dictatorship of the proletariat, class struggle, self-emancipation, the economy, the need for a people’s army, issues surrounding nationalism and the question of violence. These few motifs that we will keep returning to, crystallise many of the issues that led us to choose to read up on various revolutions this year. I think the Paris Commune works as a very good introduction to all that we plan to cover this year.

[After this, we will go back and look at two bourgeois revolutions - the English (1640) and the French (1789); then go forward to look at the Russian, Chinese and finally a few Latin American examples - See here]

So, first a rough outline of a few questions that cropped up in the discussions:

- State Power – creation of an alternate State

The question of State Power is central both to Marx’s and Lenin’s analyses – as Lenin insists, the Commune brought to the fore the issue of smashing the state machinery (rather than just slowly reforming it). Our question was whether what the communards were trying to do was to create an alternate State; an alternate that stood independent from the actually existing State; if it was not simply a question of taking over State power and destroying it from within, but of creating an “alternate State” capable of destroying it from without. That is, whether it is necessary to take hold of the actually existing State power (after a successful revolution) to then transform it, or whether it is possible (and possibly preferable) to create an expanding movement/organisation that can emerge as a threat to the State “from beneath” so to speak.

- Direct democracy/parliamentarism

The enumeration of the radical democratic measures taken by the communards in Marx’s account brings up the issue of the form that a truly democratic system should take. Here is Hal Draper’s very useful summary of the measures:

• Election of all Commune members by unlimited universal suffrage […];
• All officials “responsible and revocable at short terms;
• Workmen’s wages for all officials;
• Depoliticization of the police, under Communal control;
• Separation of church and state;
• All judges elective, responsible, and revocable;
• Local municipal liberty;
• The commune “to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time”;
• Abolition of the standing army and “state functionarism,” etc.
(Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Vol. III, p.273)

The question is not simply about the feasibility of these measures at the time (in fact, they would probably have been difficult to maintain in full measure against the constant threat of war); but rather the vision of democracy that their experience provides us with in the present. The commune was an effort of introducing a democracy from below, the only possible way of having a “true” democracy.

And then of course, Marx’s and Lenin’s critiques of parliamentarism (and bureaucracy) also relate directly to this issue, given that “the commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time”. The question is one of democracy; about how we can change from a bureaucratic top-down system to a system where the governance is truly in the hands of the people.

(and what was that organising the economy like the postal service about? (See Lenin))

- withering away of the state

Lenin’s analysis in State and Revolution obviously focuses on this issue. But this is at the centre of my enquiry, so more on this later!

- networking of communes

This issue was a bit obscure to me, and I’d like some more history, if anyone can suggest anything. The commune, it seems, was “to serve as model to all the great industrial centres of France […and] to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet” (Marx). I also got the impression from Marx’s text that they were trying to create a network of communes around France, so as to decentralise state power, and to have a locally organised government for all of France.

- continued relevance of the commune to marxist struggles

This question surprisingly cropped up, and we came up with a few (and there are many more!) reasons why the commune is still relevant to any thinking of emancipation. First, it was one of the first lived experiences of self-emancipation. As Lenin points out, “the only “correction” Marx thought it necessary to make to the Communist Manifesto he made on the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Paris Commune”. So the experience of the commune cannot be simply reduced to its historical particularity, there were lessons to be drawn from it at the time Marx was writing, and there are now.

Second, Marx emphasises that “this was the first revolution in which the working class was openly acknowledged as the only class capable of social initiative”, the commune gave us a historical figure of that elusive proletariat.

Also, if we go Badiouian (and this is from Marx), at that point, the commune gave the people of France, the workers, the peasants, the petit-bourgeoisie, a binary choice, a choice in which all the complexity of the situation was concentrated: “Commune or Empire”, and there was “but one alternative”.

Finally, the commune brought forth an “immortal cause”, that of human emancipation, and gave us a vision of the end of classes, the dawn of a true rule of the people. A painfully short, bloody, and to any objective analysis, failed insurrection in the particularity of France gave voice to an immortal struggle that breaks the bounds of any nation and expands to include the people of the whole world.

- national struggle/international struggle

This of course brings in the problematic question of a national struggle that is internationalised. Marx says that “the Commune annexed to France the working people all over the world”. But even so, one can point out it was a particularly Parisian struggle. Is it possible even to have a revolutionary struggle that detaches itself from its national surroundings? No. But I’d like to think that it is possible to have a struggle that does not merely wallow in its particularity but opens itself to the emancipation of all.

- people’s army

For the commune of course, this was part of the democratic measure – one must arm the people, who can organize and fight for themselves. But is the “suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people” a necessary measure in any revolution? And what after the revolution? Nepal springs to mind.

- violence

The extremely violent suppression of the commune is almost unimaginable. It seems that the Versailles state almost tried to wipe out all of the Parisian population! Against such a force what sort of resistance is even feasible? The (good) violence of non-violent resistance against an oppressive State order reaches its limit when faced with the horrifying violence of the State. But then, simply taking up arms against such a force is also not likely to lead to a victory. Heroism cannot always compensate for numbers. Using (bad) violence, i.e., terroristic violence, does not just relieve the State of even needing to hide its oppressive authority but is also positively suicidal in most cases. What would be the best possible way of combining strategic violence with general non-violence, so as to attain a lasting victory against the generally violent State authority?

These are just a few issues I remember from our discussions. I’d be glad to hear more, or to get further references!

[reading list for the two sessions:

Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, ch.5, ch.6

Timeline of the Commune

Engels' Postscript to The Civil War in France

Selections from Lenin's State and Revolution

Selections from Hal Draper's Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Vol II, III

(optional) Badiou's essay on the Paris Commune (from Polemics)]

Här följer uppföljningen till Världshistoriens bästa politiska filmer (USA), som vi publicerade förra veckan. Vi vill uppmärksamma läsaren på att vi inte har med Harlan County, USA. Varför undrar ni nu? Svaret är: Vi har helt enkelt inte sett den ännu, och dessutom är det en dokumentär, och det kommer en exklusiv dokumentär-lista i framtiden. Dock ska det enligt alla rykten vara en film i klass med Matewan, och att Matewan är ett mästerverk vet ju alla som sett den.

Moderna Tider
Människa mot Maskin. Arbetarklass mot borgarklass. Charlie Chaplin gestaltar luffaren som möter det löpande bandet i fabriken. Han blir slagen och utskälld inne i fabriken där manicken som liknar en matmaskin en vacker dag gör att lunchrasten endast varar i 15 minuter. Avskedad och arbetslös slår han följe med en hemlös för att söka efter lycka och pengar. I mångt och mycket en grundcirkel i det kapitalistiska systemets utsugning av arbetaren.

Panther
Folket kallade dem hjältar, FBI kallade dem samhällets fiende nummer ett – det handlar om “The Black Panthers” – De Svarta Pantrarna. Under 1960-talet gjorde USA:s ungdomar för första gången uppror mot det etablerade samhället. Om hur man bygger en klassrörelse och vilka metoder makten tar till när de känner sig hotade. Om ni någonsin undrat hur heroinet blev populärt i USA – se då filmen. Om ni någonsin undrat hur man som aktiv socialist kan agera i sitt bostadsområde – se då filmen.

Livet är underbart
George Bailey har alltid försökt göra det rätta men tror nu han att han misslyckats och försöker därför ta sitt liv. Gud skickar då en ängel till jorden för att övertyga Bailey om att han trots allt har mycket att leva för. Om att kämpa för familj, vänner och samhälle mot rikingarnas fula trix. Lite amerikanskt puttenuttigt, men likförbaskat en suverän matiné om överklassen och deras skitsystem. Gjuten att glo på en regnig dag tillsammans med dom man älskar. Brukar gå på TV kring jul.

Matewan
Kolgruvearbetare i Mingo County, West Virginia, försöker 1920 bilda en fackförening men blir hela tiden motarbetade av företaget och deras hantlangare. There is power in a union! Se den! Gör det!

*Bubblare: Robocop 3, V för Vendetta, Boyz n da hood, Into the Wild.

Tidigare ur serien Världshistoriens bästa politiska filmer

Recensioner av nya Stieg Larsson-filmen: AB GP