Attachment to the teachings of past centuries does not explain conflict in the church today. Unless we say that some have rejected those teachings and others continue to hold to them. Has any side in the conflict explicitly rejected the teachings of the past? Or implicitly?
Jerry says, "The Church Hierarchy’s betrayal of the poor in Central and South America from 1965 to 1992 has led to a great loss of parishioners to evangelical Protestant groups in the subsequent period.” I think the church hierarchy is well aware of this and this explains their manoeuvring. However much they may identify with the ruling class, they don’t wish to be seen as indifferent to the struggles of the poor.
Editorial Note: The following paper was prepared for
and presented at the III Conferencia
Internacional La Obra de Carlos Marx y Los desafíos del Siglo
XXI (The Third Conference on the Work of
Karl Marx and the Challenges of the 21st Century) in Havana,
Cuba, in May 2006. The conference was organized by the Instituto de Filosofia de Cuba.
The Democrat's dirty little secret is they have not been a party of the left for almost fifty years,ever since Nixon trounced Mc Govern,in nearly every state.Jimmy Carter was the first real neoliberal president,although no one had a term for it then.
I really don't believe we do have a lesser evil.I think these two clowns cancel each other out.Pick your poison,do you want an elitist neoliberal administration,that will likely start new wars,and escalate the new cold war,or do you want no new wars abroad,and escalating neofascism at home?Some choice,huh?One could argue,that,in 2016,Trump seemed like the lesser evil.We knew what an elitist war monger Clinton was.But for many,it looked like Trump was somewhat of a populist paleoconservative in the Pat Buchanan vein,who was going to pull us out of,or de-escalate,some of our imperialist wars,and who cared to some degree about the American worker.
I guess you might call me a Russian stooge,I voted for Jill Stein in 2016.
Another one of those dirty little secrets no one will bring up,is that the ACA was appropriated in whole cloth,from Mitt Romney,and the Republicans.The original ACA,and any expansion thereof,would be a huge gift to the insurance company donors of the Democratic Party.
Not long after I praised
Left Voice and one of its editorial board members Juan Cruz Ferre
in an article titled “Marxist alternatives to Jacobin”, Juan
asked for my opinions on a video that his comrades in Argentina
made titled “The Relevance of Trotsky’s Ideas Today”. What I am
going to write in this article might surprise Juan, who
acknowledged that “we have strong political differences, in
particular with regards to the ‘Leninist’ organization.”
In fact, we don’t have
“strong political differences” as far as I know, except for my
support for Howie Hawkins’s presidential campaign and opposition
to his fellow Left Voice editor Nathaniel Flakin’s belief in the
revolutionary potential of looting and arson, which is admittedly
widespread on the left. Most everything else that Left Voice
publishes is right on the money. For example, I just cross-posted
Nathaniel’s “Could Hitler Have Been Stopped by Voting for
the ‘Lesser Evil’?” to FB and Marxmail. He draws exactly the
same conclusions that I drew in a 2016 article titled “Misusing German history to scare up votes for
Hillary Clinton”.
The Guardian expired, suddenly
without explanation. One would have thought that the publisher
would have at least sent notice to subscribers stating the
reasons for the ceasing of publication, but they didn't.
Nor their Johannesburg correspondent. Left in the lurch by those
mysterious cdes...
When my Southern Italian ancestry Grandfather moved from Upstate New York to the south in 1963 he went to register to vote and was told he had to take a test on the constitution. He was denied the right to vote three times. He was pretty dark-skinned as many Italians from Southern Italy are.
The bad joke was on him; he was as racist as the people who denied him the core. He was a racist in the obvious ways you can see in some Scorcese films. I sometimes wonder if he was so racist because he so much did not want to be "colored." He feared being categorized as colored.
"Subhuman" is pretty bad and anybody who used the term needs to be enlightened in the range of good and bad of humans. Especially since non-human primates such as bonobos and chimpanzees are our cousins and should be treated kindly.
But no joke. The concept "subhuman" has racist connotations no matter who uses it against whom. So please avoid it.
I was in High School in a small town in South Florida in 1973 (age 14) and considered myself a socialist of some sort. It was mainly a mattered of personal experience and a lot of reading because I had only met a few socialists --members of the Catholic left sent into a kind of exile to Immokalee.
I read an advertisement for the Guardian and Dissent Mag in the back of the New Republic so I took my busboy money and bought a sub for both. It was both enlightening and strange to me. I recognized it as kind of Maoist without having any sense of where that was "located." I recognized the orientation of Dissent and learned a lot about NYC intellectuals brain-tossing from it but it wasn't my preferred politics. Strangely enough I think I was an unconscious Shachtmanite because circa 1943 because I believed the Soviet Block, Cuba, China, etc. were a bureaucratic ruling-class. But I also wanted an old fashion romantic revolution. I liked Che and the Black Panthers and thrilled to every revolutionary event.
The Guardian with its kind of Maoist line gave me the notion that there were revolutionaries some place. And it also gave me news from the world I wouldn't have had otherwise. And yet I also thought that the Guardian circa 1973 was a bit crazy in the exact same way Dissent was stodgy and abstract.
I have to laugh. My favorite teacher (a Franciscan nun) warned me not to join the Weather Underground when she saw me reading the Guardian. On the other hand she approved of Dissent and borrowed it from me. She thought it would turn me into a college professor.
“THE
CURVE” will
stream free on
YouTube
pre-election
Watch
first three
mins of the
stunning
COVID-19 doc
now
Directed
by Academy
Award®-nominated
director Adam
Benzine (Claude
Lanzmann:
Spectres of
the Shoah)
Original
soundtrack by
Emmy Award®-winning
composer Joel
Goodman (JFK, Walt
Disney,
Everything is
Copy)
TORONTO,
CANADA: The
filmmakers
behind
anticipated
docu-thriller The
Curve will
stream the
entire movie
ad-free free
on YouTube for
every American
to see, for
the entire two
weeks leading
up to the
election.
Thereafter,
the filmmakers
will pursue
commercial
exploitation
and
distribution
for the movie
via
traditional
channels and
methods, in an
unprecedented
move that
radically
upends the
traditional
global
distribution
model.
In tandem with
the
announcement,
the filmmakers
are today making
the opening
three minutes
of the film available
(https://youtu.be/-tpC4sam_ss) and are launching a crowdfunding campaign to
give voters
and viewers a
chance to be a
part of this
historic
motion picture
(bit.ly/TheCurveFilm).
Made in secret
over the past
six months,
the
documentary
traces the
crucial
three-month
period, from
mid-January to
mid-April,
when the
choices made
by America’s
leaders sealed
the country’s
fate. It is
produced and
directed by
Academy Award®-nominee Adam
Benzine (Claude
Lanzmann:
Spectres of
the Shoah),
produced by
Toronto’s Jet
Black Iris,
and features
an original
score byEmmy®-winning
composer Joel
Goodman (JFK,
Walt Disney, Q
Ball).
Producer-Director Adam Benzine said: “We had an
incredible
reaction when
we began
showing the
movie to
buyers during
TIFF, but what
we found is
that most U.S.
networks don't
have the
ability to
turnaround
broadcast of
the film
before the
election. Many
of the offers
we received
were to play
the film later
in the year or
in 2021.
“This left us
with a choice.
Do we take the
money but lose
some of our
impact? Or do
we try to get
the film in
front of
American
voters before
election day?
“Ultimately,
we believe
that this
movie demands
to be seen
before
November 3. The
Curve is
a landmark
documentary,
capturing a
pivotal moment
in American
history, and
we believe it
will have
wide-ranging
commercial
appeal for a
very long time
to come.”
Combining
original
interviews
with
creatively
treated
archival
footage, and
made under
exceptional
circumstances,
the film
boasts
interviews
with more than
two dozen
experts,
analysts,
researchers,
journalists
and political
figures,
examining nine
key failures
made by the
American
government
that allowed
an emerging
pandemic to
become a
national
catastrophe.
Among the many
experts
featured in
the film are Dr.
Ali Khan,
former
director of
the CDC’s
Office of
Public Health
Preparedness
and Response; Dr.
Emily Landon,chief
infectious-disease epidemiologist at University of Chicago Medicine; Sonia
Shah,
investigative
journalist and
author of Pandemic; Ilan
Goldenberg,
former U.S.
State
Department
Advisor; Dr.
Gavin
Macgregor-Skinner,
director of
the Global
Biorisk
Advisory
Council
(GBAC); and Ed
Yong,The
Atlantic’s
science
writer.
Mr.
Benzine has
assembled an
all-star team
of
predominantly
female
creatives for
the
documentary,
including
Canadian
Screen Award®-nominee Tiffany
Beaudin (Prosecuting
Evil, Man vs.
Machine)
as Editor; Melissa
Hood (The
Reckoning, On
My Way Out)
as Associate
Producer; Diana
Warmé (The
Skyjacker’s
Tale) as
Line Producer;
and
entertainment
lawyer Divya
Shahani as
Executive
Producer.
The challenging art of becoming free | Review of *Soviet Influence on Cuban Culture, 1961-1987: When the Soviets Came to Stay*, by Isabel Story | Michal Boncza | The Morning Star
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a book exploring the complex relationship between the Soviet Union and Cuba in developing a transformative culture on the island
STAGES IN A REVOLUTION: A Teatro Escambray showcase in 1978Photo: Jorge Valiente
Soviet Influence on Cuban Culture, 1961-1987 by Isabel Story (Lexington Books, £65)
ISABEL STORY’S meticulous analysis of the Soviet influence on Cuban culture from 1961 to 1987 in this book vividly brings to life a turbulent period in the history of the island.
She leaves no stone unturned in her dialectical investigation of a complex time, when two contrasting
socialist developments had become intertwined as much by global politics as by ideological affinity.
In the process, Story surgically debunks many of the intellectually lazy and politically motivated assertions of hostile Western academics.
On the eve of the victory of the revolution in 1959, almost a quarter of Cubans were illiterate and many more functionally so.
In that context, Jose Marti’s postulate that “being culturally educated is the only way to be free,” implies far more than just knowing your alphabet.
The Sierra Maestra revolutionaries understood that premise only too well. Che Guevara’s concept of “el hombre nuevo” (new human being) encapsulated a vision of an educated individual at the service of the revolution who is selfless, a patriot and an internationalist.
The new Cuba and its cultural institutions became a hive of often heated polemics about recovering national cultural identity, its content and how to develop it and put it at the service of the revolution in all its rich manifestations in music, visual arts, cinema and theatre.
Decentralisation of decision-making, the setting up of a nationwide network of Casas de Cultura (cultural centres) and the “aficionado” movement for engaging the population, particularly in creative activities in rural areas, all fed on the historic examples of Bauhaus, Soviet Constructivism or the New Deal, where art and culture were symbiotically linked to the economy and industry.
The omnipresent threat of US military intervention and its economic blockade, along with incessant covert meddling, hung in the air like the sword of Damocles, sharpening and widening political awareness among the people.
Not surprisingly, Soviet novelist Alexander Bek’s WWII classic The Volokolamsk Highway was a must-read among those tasked with defending the revolution’s progress.
Nationalism and internationalism became the bricks and mortar of all socialist constructs and the commitment to anti-colonialism was informed by what Marti termed “Our America,” aimed at tackling crippling underdevelopment at home and elsewhere first and foremost.
Hence the aim was to multiply activism by specifically engaging the population of rural hamlets and small townships and this took many of its cues from the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Russian Revolution, with whom the guerillas felt a deep affinity.
As an example Story cites — among many — Teatro Escambray. Based in the provinces, it epitomised the revolutionary approach of addressing local and regional concerns and rejecting the still cosmopolitan theatres of Havana with their repertoire of European plays.
Like the Bolsheviks, Escambray workers perceived theatre not just as sphere of public recreation but rather an engine for social reconstruction.
Soviet technical expertise, particularly in architecture, was especially useful in addressing the dire housing reality of sprawling slums that had to be remedied rapidly, nowhere more spectacularly than in Eastern Havana.
Yet, as Story points out, while the USSR was perceived pragmatically as a source of education and considerable inspiration, it simultaneously was also seen, in a never-ending duality, as a potentially dogmatic, insular and domineering entity.
The degree of separation increased with the time as “Cubanismo” — the Cuban way — defined ever more emphatically not just the internal path to socialism, with its accentuation of the indigenous in cultural practice, but also the deepening ties to Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa.
Ultimately, it was the USSR which succumbed to debilitating internal contradictions. Cuba, on the other hand, drew strength from creatively solving its own. Yet, like some kind of hark back to a previous era and much to the world’s consternation, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin publicly wrote off Cuba’s entire debt of £27 billion while visiting the island in 2017.
Warts and all, Story’s book offers fascinating insights into an unprecedented democratising transformation ushered in by a revolutionary cultural practice conceived, from its inception, for the many not the few.
Its cover price is hefty but it’s definitely one to ask your library to stock.
"I would suggest that every leftist ,communist,socialist,whatever term you want to use,who is over the age of fifty,join a socialist party,where a majority of the members are under thirty."
High-mindedly speaking here, the theme of generational warfare, one thinks, in and of itself, however attenuated and well-intentioned (if it's ever truly well-intentioned) is a dead end. One does not owe an apology to "the young" for the crimes of a generation. "Don't trust anyone over thirty" was journalistic drivel in 1966, and, since this is its second coming, is farcical drivel now--if that's what anyone is saying.
Quite apart from the presumptuous insult involved in this casual ageism--which is after all only a passive-aggressive way of picking a fight, and we all like to fight--the dividing of all humankind into the good under-thirties and the bad over-thirties is perhaps, if one may be forgiven for daring, with whatever lofty intent, to say so, a strikingly inadequate theory of social class. This was true when one was under thirty, and is still true
From what one can tell, there is a lot of vulgar Graeberism--and adventurism and ultraleftism--out there among the young "shadowers" of BLM. If this isn't so, one would love to know what the case is instead of getting a bunch of Bob Dylan you-ain't-hip cr*p about something happening Mr. Jones etc., etc. or the modern equivalent.
Does the new social-justice movement truly have leading voices apart from BLM instead of the usual kibitzers falsely or naively claiming to be in the lead? Who are they and where does one find them?
Does the Occupy heritage, now in a second incarnation, still deserve to be in the lead, or has it become another banana peel leading to another pratfall in the long Mack Sennet descent into barbarism?
I would suggest that every leftist ,communist,socialist,whatever term you want to use,who is over the age of fifty,join a socialist party,where a majority of the members are under thirty.It will certainly change your perspective.It isn't so much disillusionment with voting,but with the electoral system itself.How it is rigged against independent parties and candidates,the rampant vote fraud,the antiquated electoral college,that was designed 230+ years ago,for the slave owning class.Not to mention Citizen's Unitied,and everything else that has led to our corrupt way of campaign financing.Many of these younger people would lose their cynicism about voting,if the whole system was taken out,root and all,and replaced with a more eqitable one.The momentum behind Bernie has proven this.Regardless of what you think about Bernie,and whether you beieve he was a "real" socialist,or not,the reaction of younger voters to the Sanders campaign proved younger voters could get excited about voting,and working for a candidate.Who could say where Bernie would have gotten,in 2016,had he run as an independent in a truly level playing field,without the interference from the DNC revealed by Wikileaks.Those younger voters who stuck with Bernie through 2020,saw the interference of President Obama,to essentially rig the primary process against Bernie.Is it any wonder people under 40 don't trust the electoral system.
On Oct 6, 2020, at 10:44 AM, Roger Kulp <leucovorinsaves@...> wrote:
I would suggest that every leftist ,communist,socialist,whatever term you want to use,who is over the age of fifty,join a socialist party,where a majority of the members are under thirty.It will certainly change your perspective.It isn't so much disillusionment with voting,but with the electoral system itself.How it is rigged against independent parties and candidates,the rampant vote fraud,the antiquated electoral college,that was designed 230+ years ago,for the slave owning class.Not to mention Citizen's Unitied,and everything else that has led to our corrupt way of campaign financing.Many of these younger people would lose their cynicism about voting,if the whole system was taken out,root and all,and replaced with a more eqitable one.The momentum behind Bernie has proven this.Regardless of what you think about Bernie,and whether you beieve he was a "real" socialist,or not,the reaction of younger voters to the Sanders campaign proved younger voters could get excited about voting,and working for a candidate.Who could say where Bernie would have gotten,in 2016,had he run as an independent in a truly level playing field,without the interference from the DNC revealed by Wikileaks.Those younger voters who stuck with Bernie through 2020,saw the interference of President Obama,to essentially rig the primary process against Bernie.Is it any wonder people under 40 don't trust the electoral system.
The Guardian expired, suddenly without explanation. One
would have thought that the publisher would have at least sent
notice to subscribers stating the reasons for the ceasing of
publication, but they didn't.
I was very close to these developments but never
wrote about it. I got to know the editor Bill Ryan and some of
the writers in the 1980s when I was still in touch with Peter
Camejo. They were dealing with a declining readership and
financial problems that all print publications were dealing
with. Peter had developed close ties to Guardian reporter John
Trinkl who was sympathetic to the North Star Network. Later on,
he connected with some of the ex-Guardian people who had joined
Line of March, an ill-fated semi-Maoist group that Max Elbaum
belonged to. After they came to the conclusion that Leninism was
a dead-end, they started a magazine called CrossRoads that was a
bid to coalesce around a non-sectarian approach, an approach
that the Guardian was for as well. After CrossRoads folded, I
wrote about the ramifications:
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/organization/crossroads.htm
Jeffrey Masko may I suggest you become more familiar with the history of discrimination against
Southern and East European immigrant laborers, that was especially rampant in the USA.
Those
of Italian ancestry were viewed as "lessers" (non-white)
in the U. S. by the WASPS.
Australia banned immigration of Chinese and Italian laborers up to recent times.
My parents were both Irish ancestry, but my Catholic godfather was a good Italian laborer
Tony Metro, who as my parents had voted for another Italian, by the name Vito Marcantonio,
a U. S. Congressman elected, as the American Labor Party candidate.
Italian ancestry radicals and oppressed laborers in many of
the most historic U. S. labor struggles.
Joe Ettor & Arturo Giovanitti in the historic
Lawrence MA and Patterson NJ textile strikes and the
martyrs Anna LoPizzo in Lawrence shot by the police, and
Sacco & Vanzetti who were murdered
by the state government - because of their being in part:
Italian.
On 10/6/20 10:59 AM, Jeffrey Masko wrote:
Ok, I got it.......... but.
None of this is acceptable. As I've said repeatedly, this is not social media. We need to aspire to a higher standard. As a rule of thumb, posts should be dispassionate and high-minded even when I fail to meet those standards myself.
I agree. During the 1980s and early 1990s the Guardian was quite valuable especially for those of us outside the main Metropolitan areas, given that those were the days before the internet.
It was New York centered. That proved useful in some respects - its coverage of the split of the anti-Gulf War movement on a national level was good but it gave scant coverage to the state of that movement on the West Coast which - especially in Los Angeles - involved different dynamics. This was disappointing as the Guardian had many readers out here. But it had limited resources, so the limitations can be explained in that respect.
The Guardian expired, suddenly without explanation. One would have thought that the publisher would have at least sent notice to subscribers stating the reasons for the ceasing of publication, but they didn't.
Yeah, toward the end the Guardian tried to be non sectarian but there was always an undercurrent of soft Maoism if you will. Many of their writers - John Trinkel for one - seemed to have a visceral hatred for Trots, ex Trots and semi Trots.
On 10/06/2020 8:23 AM Erik Toren <ectoren@...> wrote:
I really miss it. I was a freshman at my regional university in 1987 where I discovered it at my university's library. I kept reading it up until it folded. Aside from the Left news pov, it is how I came into contact with the Socialist Party USA, Solidarity, DSA, etc. Great rag! We need it more than ever.
I really miss it. I was a freshman at my regional university in 1987 where I discovered it at my university's library. I kept reading it up until it folded. Aside from the Left news pov, it is how I came into contact with the Socialist Party USA, Solidarity, DSA, etc. Great rag! We need it more than ever.
On Tue, Oct 6, 2020 at 10:08 AM Louis Proyect <lnp3@...> wrote:
During the early 1980s
the publication's ideological line shifted once again, this time
towards an independent non-communist radicalism.The
Guardianwas terminated in 1992 owing to
declining circulation and financial difficulties.
Look into Church history and you will see that institutional attachment to feudal forms and medieval thinking is present and straightforward. In fact even the Office of the Pontifex Maximus of Rome maintains its ancient political rights rooted in ancient history and was partially affirmed by Mussolini.
Of course, for most of Church History the Church Hierarchs were on the side of the landlords of the world.
That in itself is not the end of the discussion. Pope John XXIII dragged the Catholic Church kicking and screaming into the 19th century. If he had lived longer he may have dragged it into the 20th.
But after the death of Pope John a civil war occurred in the Church which left hundreds of thousands of dead, mostly poor people and intellectuals, in Central and South America. Penny Lernoux, before her untimely death in 1989, chronicled this civil war and U.S. involvement in this slaughter of innocents if you are interested in reading about it.
Our current Pope was at best wish-washy during this period. At worse he made those priests, nuns, and lay people who committed themselves to the preferential option to serve the poor, more vulnerable by attacking them in print.
I believe Pope Francis is doing penance for not speaking out in his time. He has said that he should have been open in his opposition to the Argentine Generals during the Dirty War and Operation Condor. But their is also another political calculation in this stance. The Church Hierarchy’s betrayal of the poor in Central and South America from 1965 to 1992 has led to a great loss of parishioners to evangelical Protestant groups in the subsequent period.
On Mon, Oct 5, 2020 at 2:03 PM Ken Hiebert <knhiebert@...> wrote:
Jerry Monaco said, "The Papacy, the Last Bastion of Anti-Capitalist Feudal Socialism. And yet our current Pontifex Maximus is as much a rationalist as Gaius Julius Caesar when he occupied the office in the bygone Res Publica. That is saying something given the times. “
Whatever attachment the Catholic Church may have to political views from past centuries, I am inclined to think that they arrive at their political stance today based on contemporary political considerations. Their constituency is in the hundreds of millions and includes many poor people and many in countries dominated by imperialist powers.
