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Marx and Engels and Russia's Peasant Communes
Ian Angus
Did Marx view enclosure of the commons as a progressive historical stage on the path to socialism?
My article in the new issue of Monthly Review. https://monthlyreview.org/2022/10/01/marx-and-engels-and-russias-peasant-communes/ |
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Re: Seeking Endorsers for a Call to Peace
Mark Baugher
On Oct 2, 2022, at 10:38 PM, Joseph Green <jgreen@...> wrote: Your "Apparently" is not very apparent to me. One can recognize the role of US imperialism and NATO in the Ukrainian invasion while supporting the Ukrainian right to self determination. Doing otherwise makes no sense to me. Mark |
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Re: Seeking Endorsers for a Call to Peace
A call for disarmament would be a great idea, but is impossible while the US, since the obama administration's launch of the program, has been engaged in a 10-year, $1.5 trillion (with a T) "modernization" of the US nuclear arsenal. That program is creating new bombsv-- so-called "useable" bombs that have adjustable explosive power, some that can be set anywhere from 0,5 kilotons to 50 kilotons or even 300 kilotons. (50 kilotons would be twice the size of the bomb on Nagasaki. What he above critic, Joseph Green, ignores about Russian behavior since the breakup of the Soviet Union is that the person running the country was not Putin but the very pro US Boris Yeltsin. Saying Yeltsin was trying to build an empire at the time that he was allowing the US and its corporate interests pilfer all they could from the wreckage of the Soviet economy and the collapse of the Soviet military, education system, health system, living standards, is simply ludicrous, and yet it was at that time that the US was working to expand NATO, instead of discolving that Cold War relic. There was a unique opportunity at that time to reach out by the US to bring Russia into Europe as the US was at the time trying to do with China. I was living and working in China in 1991-2 as a Fulbright Professor, and the line from the US then was that promoting capitalist investment in and trade with China would bring along with it democracy, freedom and friendlier relations. The same was being mouthed with regard to China, but what was actaully happening -- a continued expansion of NATO, beginning with the old DDR, which in earlier talks with Gorbachev, Reagan had promised not to put US NATO forces in -- was clearly the opposite. Green's portrayal of Russia (or as he puts it "the Russian bourgoisie) as obsessed with rebuilding its old empire, is facile nonsense. Russia at that point was falling apart in every way, and the US was taking advantage of it. It might be more appropriate to say that the "US bourgoisie" has never accepted the idea of Latin American and Caribbean self-determination. But my point is that all this stuff about self-determination of countries in Eastern Europe ignores the reality of nuclear weapons in the US and Russia. nuclear strategy is about trying to achieve a first-strike capability to overcome the stalemate of Mutual Assured Destruction. Absent the ability to create Reagan's "star wars" dream of an impenetrable anti-missile shield over the US, which would allow such a wipe out of Russia and/or China with little risk of retaliation, the only way to achieve that is ever more and icreasingly accurate accurate sub-launched missiles and ground launched or plane launched nuclear weapons on NATO countries near Russia's borders able to hit Russian targets in minutes instead of 20 minutes or half an hour or more, and that is what NATO expansion is all about. It's what the basing of hundreds of F-35 stealth fighter bombers, each capable of carrying two 50-kiloton smart bombs, in front-line nato countries like Poland and other old Warsaw Bloc nations is about for example -- something that well preddated the military threat to Ukraine. My point is you cannot talk seriously or realistically about defeating Russia without also recognizing that what you are talking about is pushing a clearly wounded Russia, whether led by PUtin or some other leader, to the point of using their one truly threatening weapon system -- their nukes. And you haven't addressed that at all. Yes, let's call for talks, and disarmament, but the US, as the world's most powerful country, has to be the one to make the first steps towards that, by ending its first-strike option, and by proposing enormous cutbacks in its nuclear weapons, a pull back of its Trident subs from Russian and Chinese borders, and an end to talk about putting nuclear weapons or delivery systems near Russian and Chinese borders. Then we can talk about disarmament. Dave On Mon, Oct 3, 2022 at 6:05 AM <anthonyboynton@...> wrote:
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Re: Seeking Endorsers for a Call to Peace
anthonyboynton@...
I don’t think there are very many “good things” in this document for the authors' not so good intentions to hide behind. IMHO, this document is another effort to engage liberal public opinion, and international institutions even, in the effort to get Ukraine to give up territory to Russia. It does not call for immediate withdrawal of Russian military forces. It calls for " phased withdrawal of Russian military forces." It does not say anything about Russian disarmament, even though Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons, but it does call for disarmament of Ukraine when it includes a point that says, "an end to the delivery of lethal military aid to Ukraine". It gives credence to Russia's discredited claims and annexations, claims and annexations which are illegal under international law, when it includes the point, " the resolution of jurisdictional issues, notably Crimea and the Donbas region", and it denies Ukraine's rights as a nation, while implicitly allowing them to Russia, when it adds the point " a constitutionally enshrined policy of neutrality for Ukraine." |
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Re: Re : Italian post-fascists in power
Vladimiro Giacche'
Incomplete bio though.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
She is also fiercely a supporter of NATO (in line with the tradition of Italian post-war fascists), of Zelensky and obviously of sending arms to Ukraine. She voted in favor in Parliament: the only relevant case in which she voted in favor of a measure decided by Draghi government. VG Inviato da iPhone Il giorno 28 set 2022, alle ore 19:14, Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001@...> ha scritto: |
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Re: Seeking Endorsers for a Call to Peace
Joseph Green
On 2 Oct 2022 at 20:26, Dave Lindorff wrote:
> Sure Putin committed a war crime by invading Ukraine, but does
> anyone seriously think he would have done that had the US not
> advanced NATO under Clinton, Obama, Bush and now maybe Biden right
> up to Russia's western border with Europe?
Yes, I and others have seriously and extensively documented that Russian
imperialism invaded Ukraine for its own imperialist motives, not from any fear of
NATO. Russian imperialism has been seeking to reestablish Russian empire.
Indeed; from the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991 to the present, the
Russian bourgeoisie hasn't accepted the right to self-determination of the
resulting republics. See for example the "TIMELINE ON 30 YEARS OF RUSSIAN
INTERVENTION AGAINST THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE OTHER FORMER
SOVIET REPUBLICS" (http://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-220405.html).This
is the context in which Putin finally declared that Ukraine wasn't even a legitimate
state.
Apparently you haven't accepted the right to self-determination of the former
Soviet republics either, because you wring your hands over what Russia faces on
its borders with former Soviet republics but not over what former Soviet republics
faced on their borders with Russia. In fact, it is Russian government hostility that
has sabotaged what would have been very calm relations with Russia. Economic,
cultural, social, and even family relations would have ensured continued relations
between countries that were now independent, but the repeated brutality by
Russian imperialism has poisoned those relations.
Of course all imperialist powers justify their crimes by pointing to actions of other
imperialist powers, but Lenin pointed out that the real issue behind imperialist
crimes was modern monopoly capitalism. Moreover, Russian imperialism has
always been the enemy of Russian working people. Back in June 2000, I wrote
the article "Putin's two wars:; on Chechnya and Russian workers"
(http://www.communistvoice.org/24cPutinChechnya.html). It is in the interest of
Russian as well as Ukrainian workers for Russian aggression to be defeated and
for Ukraine to maintain the right to self-determination. Marx and Lenin placed a
high value on the right to self-determination, but those who pooh-poohed the
Russian war crimes are blind to the importance of Ukrainian self-determination.
Nor should it be forgotten apologists of Russian interference harangued for years
against democratic movements in the former Soviet republics, and presented
"color revolutions" in its neighbors as the big existential threat to the Russian
government. It feared that movements in neighboring countries might spread to
the Russian people. And it has backed repression of democratic movements
elsewhere as well, such as its participation in the slaughter of the Syrian
democrats.
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Re: TCM Examines the Hollywood Blacklist on Its 75th Anniversary
Dayne Goodwin
Thursday Sept. 13 SPECIAL THEME: 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST – NIGHT 1 High Noon on the Waterfront 8:00 PM High Noon on the Waterfront (2022) 8:30 PM High Noon (‘52) 10:00 PM High Noon on the Waterfront (2022) 10:30 PM On the Waterfront (‘54) 12:30 AM High Noon on the Waterfront (2022 Thursday Sept. 20 SPECIAL THEME: 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST – NIGHT 2 8:00 PM Salt of the Earth (‘54) (Herbert Biberman, Paul Jerrico, Will Geer, Rosaura Revueltas, Michael Wilson) 10:00 PM A King in New York (‘57) (Charlie Chaplin) 12:00 AM The Brave One (‘56) (Dalton Trumbo) 2:00 AM Time Without Pity (‘57) (Joseph Losey) Thursday Sept. 27 SPECIAL THEME: 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST – NIGHT 3 Looking Back 8:00 PM The Way We Were (‘73) 10:15 PM The Front (‘76) 12:00 AM The Majestic (2001) On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 8:45 PM Michael Meeropol <mameerop@...> wrote:
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Re: TCM Examines the Hollywood Blacklist on Its 75th Anniversary
A Compassionate Spy Here's a couple of great reviews that followed the Venice world premiere and the Telluride festival. This last is a wrap-up review of the best 8 films shown at last month's Venice Film Festival, where 'A Compassionate Spy' had its world premiere on Sept. 2: After the intro, scroll down to film number 5! On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 10:45 PM Michael Meeropol <mameerop@...> wrote:
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“Women, Life, Freedom” - protest in Iran
Dayne Goodwin
How Iran’s Hijab Protest Movement Became So Powerful by Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, October 2, 2022
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/fatemah-shams-how-irans-hijab-protest-movement-became-so-powerful Four decades after the Islamic Revolution, simmering tensions have come to a head. What sets the current wave of protests apart from those that came before? To talk about the situation, I recently spoke by phone with the Iranian scholar Fatemeh Shams, who has been living in exile since 2009. Shams teaches Persian literature at Penn ... . . . But here, the focus, the core of this revolutionary movement, is the bodily autonomy of women, and reclaiming the bodily autonomy of women. This slogan comes from the Kurdish freedom movement, and is a result of decades of grassroots activities and efforts of Kurdish women in one of the most economically deprived regions of Iran, the Kurdish provinces. The Kurdish women of Kurdistan and Turkey used this slogan for the first time. And Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the emancipatory Kurdish movement, in 1998 gave a very famous speech in which he said that women are basically the first captives in history and until they’re not liberated, any emancipatory movement, in fact, will be doomed to fail. . . . So I think from here onward, there will be a nationwide strike to stop collaborating with the government. And I think that will definitely change the face of this moment. It’s very difficult. I think whoever claims that he or she can tell or foresee the future of what’s going on today in Iran is wrong, and a little bit also deluded. I think we should be very, very careful with making assumptions and judgments at this point. But another thing that I think is really important is that we see a new generation of Iranians between seventeen and thirty years old in the streets, and their values and their norms are entirely different even from those of us who were born in the nineteen-eighties. We also see a change in gender-related norms and values. These are the concepts that refer to virtue and honor, and traditionally relate to the male protection of females virtues, and the female body. You see today in the streets, these two notions have been completely, entirely reversed. You see that men are actually standing side-by-side women, and they’re protecting them. But they’re protecting them against the oppressive forces of the state. So the heterogeneous norms of the society have changed and have been reversed. Even if they brutally oppress this movement right now, it’ll erupt again. # # # |
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Re: TCM Examines the Hollywood Blacklist on Its 75th Anniversary
Michael Meeropol
John -- title of the film?? |
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Re: A Compassionate Spy
I think it is going to be in a smaller documentary festival called something like DNY but when I know.more I will alert the list. It is being shown as the opening film of the Chicago Festival on Oct. 12 at 7 pm. I hope folks on the Marxmail list in that area can make it. We need a full house like we had at the Lido in Venice and at four showings at Telluride to convince a distributor to buy the rights to release it to the public. We are hoping for a screening channel. It is a powerful anti nuclear, anti hegemonic perialist film about a courageous teen physicist who acted pm his conscience and likely saved the world and especially the Rußsian and Eastern European people from a UD nuclear Holocaust I'm 1951-2 by helping the Soviets get their bb I'm just four years after Nagasaki.
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Re: Seeking Endorsers for a Call to Peace
Michael Meeropol
Dear David --- I said the following: On some level it appears to be > a positive document > as it asks the US to "give up" a desire for world dominance - It APPEARS TO BE "A POSITIVE DOCUMENT" and I explained why. I kinda suspected it was vacuous and appreciated Joseph's detailed analysis .... On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 4:07 PM David Walters <dwaltersmia@...> wrote: My thought on this is: why does Michael think this a "positive statement"??? |
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Re: Chris Hedges: The Return of Fascism
So was everybody who was on RT America a Putin mouthpiece? Thom Hartmann, Larry King, Jesse Ventura, Abby Martin, Mike Papantonio, etc ?
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Re: Re : Italian post-fascists in power
This segment on Twitter is longer than any that are up on YouTube, but still I would want to see the whole thing. It shows that as in the US, and in every other country where it has reared it's ugly head, the neofascist movement has been building for a long,long time. David Broder of Jacobin on Meloni
https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/the-far-right-victorious-in-italy-w-david-broder |
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Re: One Ukrainian democratic socialist's opinion on the war
You might also want to hear this interview with members of the Worker's Front (Marxist-Leninist) of Ukraine. I believe this gives you a more balanced, and realistic point of view.
Yes, we need a truce, or a cease fire, but from a Marist point of view, there are no good guys on either side. https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/ukraine |
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A Compassionate Spy
Glenn Kissack
Dave, I’m very much looking forward to seeing A Compassionate Spy. The trailer is fascinating. When do you think it will be showing in NYC?
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Re: Seeking Endorsers for a Call to Peace
Precisely. Martin Luther King had it right in his Riverside Church Speech -- the one that led to his assassination a year later because it was so dangerously accurate -- when he said that the US was the number one purveyor of violence in the world. It has only become more so since then launching imperial wars like Vietnam, Iraq (twice!) wars, Afghanistan, etc., illegal incursions, bombings and special forces actions at will, and attacking other nations economically. Sure Putin committed a war crime by invading Ukraine, but does anyone seriously think he would have done that had the US not advanced NATO under Clinton, Obama, Bush and now maybe Biden right up to Russia's western border with Europe? Of course not! And how many war crimes including the biggest: the Crime Against Peace, has the US committed just since WWII? Russia wanted a sphere of influence around its borders like the US has in the Americas with Canada and Central and South America. America was pushing for a NATO Ukraine when it supported the 2014 coup. It won't do to have US policy be: "There's no alternative now except getting rid of Putin." Down that road is atomic warfare, and having pushed things to this point by fomenting a coup and then enouraging Ukraine's government to fight an endless war to "bleed" Russia in the interest of the US's global dominance strategy, the US has to step in and stop the madness by pushing for piece, ending the provision of ever more deadly and long-range offensive weapons for Ukraine, and demand a cease fire and talks by both sides. Where do I sign? Dave Lindorff producer of "A Compassionate Spy", a Steve James directed Participant Film about Ted Hall, youngest physicist at Los Alamos and youngest Soviet atomic spy, who at 19 gave the Soviet Union detailed schematics and other information about the implosion system for the Plutonium bomb, to prevent a US monopoly on the bomb after the war. Here's a trailer for the film from its world premiers Sept. 2 at the Venice Film Festival: Here FYI is a video of the only trailer of the film, which was used at the Venice Festival: |
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Re: Seeking Endorsers for a Call to Peace
Mark Baugher
On Oct 2, 2022, at 1:07 PM, David Walters <dwaltersmia@...> wrote:He explained that in his message "as it asks the US to 'give up' world dominance." Mark |
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Re: Seeking Endorsers for a Call to Peace
Dayne Goodwin
On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 2:07 PM David Walters <dwaltersmia@...> wrote: My thought on this is: why does Michael think this a "positive statement"??? Good work! Joseph Green dayne |
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Re: H. Bruce Franklin’s Most Important Books
Dennis Brasky
To further strengthen his credentials as political swine, Franklin was (and probably still is) a vociferous defender of that great peoples' champion, Barack H Obama, who when he was informed of the extent of US torture chambers in Iraq and Guantanamo, courageously replied, "We have to look forward, not backward." Captured German Nazis after WW2 probably would have agreed, allowing them to escape from the judgment at Nuremburg! On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 11:33 AM Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001@...> wrote: https://monthlyreview.org/2022/09/01/h-bruce-franklins-most-important-books/ |
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