Louis Proyect The Unrepentant Marxist, has an interesting post about whether economic catastrophe automatically means political change. Is catastrophe around the corner? He argues politics can trump economics. Ultimately, it was the emergence of an oppositional political culture in Cuba that led to a revolutionary onslaught. This brings me to a point that Gindin made in his presentation. He said that the problem today is political more than anything else. He said that if you had told him in 1975 that the U.S. would undergo the loss of good trade union jobs and welfare state social legislation with so little protest over the next 30 years or so, he simply would have not believed it–and neither would have I.
If there is anything that we can learn from Cuba’s socialist revolution, it is that leftists have to learn to break with the two-party system that keeps opposition politics within acceptable, capitalist parameters. For us, the launching of a mass, left of center leftwing party would be equivalent to the launching of Granma in 1956. It would be less dangerous but just as fragile an enterprise given the power and wealth of our class enemies. But no other course makes sense, especially given the ripening of economic conditions that might even result in a catastrophe down the road, for in that eventuality extremism of the right would challenge civilization as we know it.
Sonia has a post about how the mainline feminist groups as National Organization of Woman, don't mention oppression of women under Islamism, as in Saudi Arabia.
Anok tagged me. Instead of accepting the tag, I'll plug her blog. I like her feistiness.
Phil A Very Public Sociologist has a post about socialists and porn. I always hated how feminists misunderstood pornography. Blaming it for sociopathic behavior, has never been proven in a cause and effect model.
It's probably the kiss of death for her. I like Confessions of a Closet Republican a right of center blog. What I like about Incognito, is she is not predictable. She doesn't define herself as anti, as other conservatives. RENEGADE EYE
38 comments:
Is better the enemy of good enough?
btw- The Granma wasn't "launched" in 1956. That's when it "landed"... much to the dismay of the Cuban people.
In the words of Lennon, the corpocracy has kept us "doped with religion, sex and tv...." People are more concerned with who gets voted off American Idol than the president destroying evidence of wrongdoing. The US does need a new party, a real opposition to two parties owned part and parcel by the corporations.
Farmer: Granma Nat'l Park in Cuba, has been declared a "World Heritage Site," by UNESCO.
Speaking of useful idiots, what do you think of the Republican Party establishment's atitude toward front runner Mike Huckabee?
Lew: The Democratic Party is the enemy, more than anything. It's the main obstacle to any social change.
Well ren, unfortunately there's no accounting for taste. btw- The Granma was actually launched in 1943... it landed in 1956... and the newspaper of the same name wasn't "launched" 'til many years later.
Tell Louis, the unable to either add or keep facts straight "censorboy", that either the "Cuban revolution" was launched in '56, or that the "Granma revolution" was launched in '56, but the Granma was REALLY launched in '43.
I'm sure the "World Heritage Site" and Cuban "state" of the same name (Granma) weren't "launched" until MUCH after 1956.
Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US
The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.
"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.
A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.
They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.
Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.
The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.
The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website.
The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom movement says.
Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said.
"This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said.
"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.
The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England.
Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said.
One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.
"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.
The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means.
Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.
Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.
"Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said Young.
"We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the battle would not be won in her lifetime.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Descendants_of_Sitting_Bull_Crazy_Horse_1220.html
They'd all better run out and apply for green cards, otherwise we'll deport the b*stards!
It is just a tiny regional axi right now. I went to visit indian reservations in the US and one of them was in New Mexico. It felt bizarre over there because I knew right away that the little white guy was not welcome at all.
A few years ago I entered an indian reservation in Kanawaki (it's close from Montreal) and there was a huge sign before entering the reservation "forbidden to white people", and I still entered the reservation. The tribe from Kanawaki in Canada wants to go back to the US, and they don't feel canadian at all. These people had been deported from the US a few hundred years ago and even with time they attach their dependence to the US.
You know there is no country in the world that has been able to keep its physical frontiers.
...which is why it is ridiculous to idolize the causes of "indigenous" people....
THERE ARE NO INDIGENOUS PEOPLE!!!!!
Everyone's an immigrant!
Record inequality in the US: Billions for Wall Street bosses as workers’ share of income shrinks
The wealthiest one percent saw its share of national income double from 1979 and 2005, rising from 9 percent to 18 percent. During that quarter-century, the average income of this top layer more than tripled, rising 228 percent, from $319,000 to $1.1 million. During the same period, the average after-tax income of the poorest fifth grew only 6 percent, the average income of the middle fifth grew 21 percent, less than one percent a year.
The disparities between rich and poor, and between rich and the middle, ballooned accordingly. In 1979, the top 1 percent averaged 8 times more than middle-income families and 23 times more than the poorest 20 percent. By 2005, the top 1 percent had 21 times the income of middle-income families and 70 times the average income of the poorest 20 percent.
Jared Bernstein of EPI, summing up the record of the years 2003-2005, wrote, “Over those two years, the growth of inequality transferred $400 billion dollars from the bottom 95 percent to the top 5 percent.” He concluded, “Such concentration of income is unsustainable in a democratic society.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/gold-d20.shtml
“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.” (Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1)
Then I guess Marx was wrong.... again!
These are 2 different issues. The 1st text talks about currency mass and equality, your url deals with Purchasing Power Parity. There is no "equality" anyway, that does not exist, but the numbers speak for themselves: “Over those two years, the growth of inequality transferred $400 billion dollars from the bottom 95 percent to the top 5 percent.”
This might be a cultural issue in which some people believe they have to take from the rich to give to the poors (Marx) while others think they need the rich to create jobs for the poor (Kant).
Farmer John: the favorite country of Karl Marx was the USA, it was the only country back then that had achieved the democratic excellence with its defaults too, but better than any other countries in the world.
That said, we are in the XXI1st century now, things usually evolve and change for the best or the worse. Each society has her own problems and her own qualities. For example Russia tried to adopt marxism, but since there is no word in russian that defines "society", they decided that the power of the State should also supply the means of production.
I think we do have a problem in the american society because there is virtually no social integration - otherwise freedom could not be achieved in a darwinist sense because it is intertwened with the survival of the fittest. So marxism is easy to be introduced in the USA. It's not a fashioned model at all, it is a model that can be easily introduced with social disparities, or color of skin, and even religious differences. This model is more and more obvious knowing that the middle american class is getting poorer year by year since the 70s. In fact we are digging more and more on these differences.
There is no perfect society (Die Gesellschaft min german) but IMO
making the human being more equal between themselves inside a society is the way to reverse revolutionnary changes, and if it cannot be done at least the conscience of our political guys should be relieved. The differences in the US are way too big especially between racial statistics (why are the african americans political prisoners of the system?) and these are these conditions that forced people to live inside their own society because justice is not blind between different human beings. This is the 1st thing I noticed when I got here in the US. There is a mathematical proof of the relationship between productive activity and survival of the society to fulfill peaceful conditions between the rulers and the prey:
For the case when the prey produce twice as much as they consume (P = 2) and rulers are not greedy ( G = 1 ), which means they consume as much as the prey, the maximum percentage of rulers that can be tolerated is 50 percent. In general, the greedier the average rulers is, the less rulers that can be supported. Similarly, the higher worker productivity gets, the more rulers can be supported.
Click here
... etc
The 1st time when I read Karl Marx I was 18 years old, and I read it to improve my german vocabulary and trying to understand the german society between the East and the West. Then later on I went to KarlMarxStadt (that was in Eastern Germany) which is called Chemnitz today.
politiques: I think it's funny that people think that Marx believed the more skilled and productive, should be rewarded equally with the lesser skilled and productive. In his correspondence with LaSalle, it was Lasalle who was for the rigid definition of equality. Marx called the less productive paid equally with the more inequality. See Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Programme"
Farmer: Russell Means will do anything for publicity. He has no following amongst Native Americans. The American Indian Movement kicked him out.
PolUSA,
I think you need to burn your Marx, who delights in Mischief...
Hesiod, "Works and Days"
So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honour due. But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with is neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.
Perses, lay up these things in your heart, and do not let that Strife who delights in mischief hold your heart back from work, while you peep and peer and listen to the wrangles of the court-house. Little concern has he with quarrels and courts who has not a year's victuals laid up betimes, even that which the earth bears, Demeter's grain. When you have got plenty of that, you can raise disputes and strive to get another's goods. But you shall have no second chance to deal so again: nay, let us settle our dispute here with true judgement divided our inheritance, but you seized the greater share and carried it off, greatly swelling the glory of our bribe-swallowing lords who love to judge such a cause as this. Fools! They know not how much more the half is than the whole, nor what great advantage there is in mallow and asphodel.
Equality at some point may be in disagreement with freedom, and it is as old as the works from Aristotle and Socrates. If I remember well it was Socrates that believed since stones of different color could not be mixed together, then people of different class should do the same, creating therefore inequalities. That's how the idea started.
The "left" has always defended historically "equalities" for natural and legitimate reasons. The right always put "freedom" before "equalities", and this is why Karl Marx work is not dead. He'll come back again in a nietzschean aspect because no government has ever been able to put his work in practice. It is even more reliable for the case of the US, since there were beliefs that they need the upper-class to
control the lower class, when in fact the upper-class (the 5%) squeezes the lower class (the 95%) in a form of modern day slavery. I don't call that freedom for sure :-)
Read the link on my blog to find out the equilibrium between PREY and GREED. It is a mathematical formula that is worth reading. When the equilibrium will be broken, then a social revolution will happen (I'll dig more into it later).
For the "Critique of the Gotha program" I don't believe in that, I would situate myself closer to the beliefs of Kant (slave/master) and Rousseau (the social contract). My line of work is more into the fields of re-engineering a better society, ipso facto I necessarly have to review Marx, Ricardo and other philosophers and economists. At some point in the future, capitalism will be dead, then we'll have to re-engineer another society. Trading will always take place though, we'll substitute in the next millenium all the raw materials though biochemical mechanisms, which is the alternative to capitalism as we know of. I hope by then we'll work to live and not the other way around like many people do. There is this feeling in the US that if you stop working then it is the death of the brain. And it is wrong because the human being should spend his time exercising himself with different hobbies, but people have been conditioned this way. Right now we live in a world that asks us to make money with money (wealth accumulation) and it never ends.
There is a french guy (Weber I believe) who drew a graph on how people's life change since this world appeared and he had showed how capitalism would not survive, but unfortunately I can't find anymore this graph online.
Farmer John: errare humanum est.
Renegade Eye: I define myself as a socialist while I defend libertarian ideas. Karl Marx was a genius when he wrote his essay "Das Kapital" but I won't endorse all Karl Marx ideas, especially not "communism". I lived in the communist countries when I was a kid and it was hell over there.
I believe I'm still in the stage of libertarian socialism. It's very hard to achieve at the same time freedom and equality. People are not born equal, people are not free, but we have to make people equal in rights and in freedom. If they are not equal in rights, then how can they be free? I was born in a french system anyway with 3 main pillars: liberty, brotherhood and equality. Even the french system places liberty first before equality, I just don't.
Joseph Déjacque
(b. December 1821, Paris - d. 1864, Paris) was a French anarcho-communist poet and writer. He sought to abolish "personal property, property in land, buildings, workshops, shops, property in anything that is an instrument of work, production or consumption."[1]
Déjacque was the first to use the term "libertarian" in print in 1857 in a letter criticising Pierre Joseph Proudhon for an attack by the latter on feminism and his support for individual ownership of the product of labor and a market economy, saying: "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature."[2]
Of unknown origins, Déjacque was first heard of when arrested as part of the revolutionary upheavals in France in 1848. Imprisoned for a time for socialist agitation, he was released but rearrested in 1851 and sentenced for two years for his collection of poems "Les Lazaréennes, Fables et Poésies Sociales". He escaped to London around the time of the December 2, 1851 coup d'état. While in Jersey between 1852 and 1853 he published "La question révolutionnaire", an exposition of anarchism. [2] From there he passed on the USA where he spoke to workers associations in New York and was a signatory to the programme of the First International there in 1855.[citation needed]
Whilst staying in New Orleans from 1856 to 1858, he wrote his famous anarchist utopia "L'Humanisphère, Utopie anarchique" but could not find a publisher. Returning to New York he was able to serialise his book in his periodical "Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement social". Published in 27 issues from June 9, 1858 to February 4, 1861, Le Libertaire was the first anarcho-communist journal published in America. As well as many articles on revolution and current political events both in France and the USA he attacked the hanging of John Brown after the raid on Harpers Ferry and propagandised for the abolitionist cause. His stay in New York ended when his work prospects ran out due to the economic slump occasioned by the outbreak of the American Civil War. He returned to London and then to Paris where he died a few years later in extreme poverty.
Click here to
3 main pillars: liberty, brotherhood and equality
Sorry it is first by order of importance liberty, then equality, then fraternity. I caught a cold a few days ago and it's knocking me out, unless my formulation was a freudian slip.
I'm afraid I believe much as Isaiah Berlin...
The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution In which all good things coexist seems to me not merely unobtainable--that is a truism--but conceptually incoherent. Some among the great goods cannot live together. That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.
Well I would have never ever tried to convince you anyway :-) It takes a full time job to learn about political philosophy before we can even make up our mind. I still have a long way to go to stick to my own path. It is common wisdom that every human being tend to the same values but they choose different paths on their pascalian journey. This is why I chose socialism but at the same time I cannot forget the libertarian ideas: if you try to control everything you become a tyran, if you don't control anything, people become slaves. The path between equality and freedom is called justice, because it is the "right" thing to do.
A democratic socialist (not a communist) does not condemn the capitalist system to an end, but he offers alternatives. It really depends on what you cherish the most between "democracy", "market", and "investment". I think it is a notion that is not really understood in the US, maybe because when people think of "socialism" they think about the Soviet-Union while it is not the case at all. Even socialists won't agree with each other and they'll argue about different notions in capital and socialism, because nobody has been able to solve the equation whether socialism can outperform capitalism (monopoly VS control of prices for example).
We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss
95% of our choices are completely unconscious. That leaves us 5%.
"The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution In which all good things coexist seems to me not merely unobtainable--that is a truism--but conceptually incoherent. Some among the great goods cannot live together. "
Something the libertarian socialist, Proudhon said 100 years before that phony, I.B. did, and meant something quite different than arousing cynicism. While "perfection" is impossible, "better' is not. There will always be a struggle between authority and liberty, says Proudhon. the task is to limit authority. As Berlin, and Farmer John use this concept, it is a straw man
As usual, what’s left of the left is stuck in a revolving door, going around and round in circles.
If there is anything that we can learn from Cuba’s socialist revolution, it is that leftists have to learn to break with the two-party system that keeps opposition politics within acceptable, capitalist parameters…
I think many sussed that out around 100 years ago.
Sonia has a post about how the mainline feminist groups as National Organization of Woman, don't mention oppression of women under Islamism, as in Saudi Arabia.
This is because of the relativism of the western liberal who just can’t bring themselves to admit that one culture is more advanced than an other.
Phil A Very Public Sociologist has a post about socialists and porn. I always hated how feminists misunderstood pornography. Blaming it for sociopathic behavior, has never been proven in a cause and effect model.
Again this comes from a view of humanity that says that we all potential attack dogs and rapists just waiting to be exposed to some images before we start to pillage the village. That is an extremely conservative view of humans and gives little hope for political change.
The path between equality and freedom is called justice, because it is the "right" thing to do.
Sorry but I've a "Platonic" paradigm. Justice is the opposite of Wisdom, much as "temperance" is the opposite of "courage".
Perhaps if your friends here at Ren's (like Larry) chewed on THAT for a few years, they'd better understand what Berlin was saying about "great goods" not being able to live together and the tragic indeed nature of choice. In fact, maybe they'd be inclined to throw "Critical Theory" into the dustbin, where it belongs and laugh at those who strive for an incoherent "better" without having first glimpsed a vision of the Absolute "Good".
"Platonic" paradigm. Justice is the opposite of Wisdom, much as "temperance" is the opposite of "courage"
Good point when it comes to virtue (Aristotle?) It's Sunday and I'll go into details tonite. I'll show you a method called "how to balance your head".
Sorry the link is unfortunately in french, but you can visit this website: http://www.dieguez-philosophe.com/
Political philosophy is about going into details, and it is also a "trade of ideas". There is no method in the philosophical sense, because the "natural reason" is confusable with our "common sense", it is all about persuasion first. There was this french philosopher Descartes that wrote in his life: "Never We will become mathematicians, even by heart retaining all the demonstrations of the others if our spirit is not able in its turn to solve any kind of problem; and we will never be philosophical if we read all the reasoning of Plato and Aristotle and that it is impossible for us to make a firm assessment on a given question: indeed, we will appear to have learned not from sciences, but from history."
This guy had written a book called "La Methode" which later became the philosophical doctrine of Rene Descartes (cartesianism).
It teaches that philosophy must begin with universal doubt; whereas scholasticism had never questioned fundamentals.
No one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up.
Before believing into something you have to doubt first, else how can we establish our own reason? There has been a whole thinking school back then between pragmatism (the French for example) and dogmatism (the English), until philosophy found new thinkers such as Durkheim, Levy-Bruehl, Kant, Bergson, Nietzsche, and Freud to understand how we rational animal have evolved in this intellectual world. Then I met this french philosopher who proposed a new discipline called philo-anthropology: he analyzes the brain of the philosophy (critical thinking) through anthropology. His method gave birth to new disciplines (maternology) and we could assume to do the same with political philosophy, but I do not have the knowledge to do that and I lost interest in writing for one simple reason: people can agree or disagree, no matter how hard you can try, you have to respect their choice. This is why I stopped teaching also.
o.t. - merry CHRISTmas, ren - peace be unto you, if not in your outward life, then in your soul.
p.s. - i think chinese fud sounds good this holiday!
I see you've read the "Meno", so perhaps we agree on this polUSA. That one cannot teach that which the other does not wish to learn... well... not without using pain or pleasure, anyways. ;-)
And it almost sounds like you're reaching towards anthroposophy, I analyze the soul of philosophy through architecture. I once attempted to analyze the floor plans (brains) of the two Goetheneum's to distill changes to the movement... as it killed off its' "leaders"... as for me, my brain will stick with the Parthenon.
Anthroposophy seems to be more like a spiritual world that took its roots in Buddhism with the monks from Tibet. At least that's what I think after reading a book from T. Lobsang Rampa describing the Akashic records (he is not mentioned on the wikipedia link and I believe the book was written in the 30s).
The human mind is wonderful. People can create new disciplines and they can firmly believe in them until something happens. In the 20s in the USA there was a discipline based on anthropology. I don't recall the name but this author had written insanities about the Jews then a few years later the Nazis from Germany had chosen this discipline to exterminate them in Germany.
Merry X-mas
Merry Christmas, politiques.
...and Merry Christmas, Renegade Eye!
leftists have to learn to break with the two-party system that keeps opposition politics within acceptable, capitalist parameters.
The leftists had learned it in 1917. They broke with a two-party system and imposed a one-party system.
"Why, how can you ask such a question? You are a republican."
"A republican! Yes; but that word specifies nothing. Res publica; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs -- no matter under what form of government -- may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans."
"Well! You are a democrat?"
"No."
"What! "you would have a monarchy?"
"No."
" A Constitutionalist?"
"God forbid."
"Then you are an aristocrat?"
"Not at all!"
"You want a mixed form of government?"
"Even less."
"Then what are you?"
"I am an anarchist."
"Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the government."
"By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me."
In What is property by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Indiscrimnate anarchism, as was practiced by Diogenes of Sinope, had few virtues.
For it can take quite some time (and much corresponding pain) for an "equilibrium" of order to arise "spontaneously" from anarchy... and even that equillibrium point arises out of the melding of the "most successful" gaming strategies.
- said a wise man of Gotham.
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