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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2004

Readers' Views

THREE YEARS AFTER ‘NINE ELEVEN’

This is for the third anniversary of 9/11:

When Hell came knocking, where the Heaven were you?

When Hell came knocking, were you driving your car? All of a sudden did a blue light surround your car? Officers in blue approach your car, officers yell "Turn down your sound!" But just then the music was stopped. This is breaking news coming across your speakers. America (i.e. the United States) is under attack! Officers stating we are all American.

Hurry up and pay your ticket, the government needs all the money you’ve got. For we are at war. Try to have a nice day while you read your ticket saying you are driving too slow in an all white area. Welcome to America. We still have to make that money.

--George Wilfrid Smith Jr., Chicago

HUMAN RIGHTS

Guantanamo prison was illegally constructed, but many allowed the emotional impact of the 9/11 events to determine how they felt about the detainees there, rather than uphold the concept of "human rights" even for alleged terrorists. That greater idealism was negated, and as a result we are surprised once again with the photos of Abu Ghraib. In Gitmo, the interrogations are not photographed or videotaped because of concerns that if those items got out to the public, people in authority could be prosecuted for war crimes in the U.S.

--From the Gulag, Green Bay, Wisconsin

The women grinning in photographs of lynching of Blacks in the U.S. are similar to Lindie England in Abu Ghraib. It raises a question of what it means to be human. When you can grin at a lynching it’s a lot more than wanting to be one of the guys. It is a choice of what you want to be as a human being.

--Japanese American, California

I would like to answer your question in the July issue of N&L, "Did the Chicago police murder May Molina Ortiz?" Yes, they did it with full knowledge--they were murdering a queen for justice. They would not let her speak at the police board meeting on April 22. Was the purpose of her murder on May 26 to deny her speaking at the meeting on May 27? Those of us who care for May know she is no longer with us physically, but spiritually she is still a strength to her family and friends.

--Nouveau Toussaint, Chicago

BILL COSBY'S CLASS BIAS

Bill Cosby could have presented any number of success stories from the scholarships he created for education of African Americans. He could have challenged all other wealthy African Americans to match his contributions and to be as responsible to the community. John Alan hit it right on the head in his column "Desegregated schools are U.S. reality" (July N&L) when he said that Cosby’s remarks, instead, showed his separation from the masses and "expressed a class division among African Americans." 

--Black activist and teacher, California

BRITISH WORKERS

More than a third of workers here in Britain say they are so exhausted when they get home that they can only slump on a sofa. The ineffective unions and crony-capitalism have much to answer for. But is anyone going to question it? We work the longest hours in Europe and have the shortest holidays. It means British workers put in eight weeks more a year than those in France or Germany. One of the results is that the extension of the working life of males to age 70 will ensure that a third will not live to pick up their retirement pension.

--Pat Duffy, Britain

VICTORY FOR WOMEN

The article in the July N&L on women in Peru winning an over-the-counter morning-after pill is an amazing victory for a conservative Catholic country. Just contrast that victory to the recent disapproval by Bush’s FDA of the morning-after pill here in the USA.

--Women’s Liberationist, New York City

UNEARNED INCOME?

What they call "unearned income"--that is, what you receive from invested money, the extra amount of cash that makes the whole thing worthwhile--is really stolen wealth. Some worker in South America may produce thousands of dollars a day for some company like Ford Motor Co. but, if he is lucky, will make $2 or $3 an hour. You may want part of that action and will invest money in Ford Motor Co. for one of the best returns on your dollar. The fact is that it’s all theft. When you’re waiting for your 401K plan to pay for your retirement, in reality some Third World worker is really paying for it. Most Americans think the extra interest they get off their stocks appears by magic. They don’t see that someone has to do the work to create the surplus value for the capitalist to pay for it all.

--S.R., Iowa

JACEK KURON

Possibly because of editing for space an impression was created (in the article about Jacek Kuron in the July issue) that he was a great revolutionary when he was a Marxist and was not when he repudiated Marxism.

In fact, Kuron’s greatest activity, as a member of KOR (Committee to Defend Workers), his most consequential in developing the mass movement that became Solidarity, came when he no longer considered himself a Marxist.

The critical question is not whether he called himself a Marxist. It is "what is" Marxism? Kuron’s Marxism was good enough as an analytical tool to expose the nature of the Polish society, but that is not enough to re-create a philosophy to sustain a new movement.

As the article says: the tragedy of Kuron’s life is that "the tremendous revolutionary promise for a new social human reconstruction that Solidarity had inspired in 1980, had been transformed into its opposite--an oppressive capitalist regime."

--Urszula Wislanka, California

CORRECTION

We regret an editing error in the memorial for Jacek Kuron last month. It recounted that the Soviet Union fell in 1989 and that Solidarity was swept into power. In fact, the Soviet Union fell in the Fall of 1991 and Solidarity was on its way to a negotiated role in governing Poland before then.

On Marxist-Humanist Perspectives: WORLD CRISES AND THE SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVES

The question that begins the Draft Perspectives printed in the July issue of N&L--whether it will be the freedom movements or imperialist war that defines the 21st century--is really a question for today’s youth. What also spoke especially to youth was pointing to the danger of thinking that the old Left failed because it was attached to ideas, when the truth is the very opposite--that it relied on leaders and power politics instead of ideas. That’s related to the way some young activists here don’t see any ideas coming out of people like the Immokalee workers, but only out of the heads of college graduates. It’s not a question of just showing what’s implicit in these movements but seeing what is sometimes explicit and begging to be talked about and developed.

--Brown Douglas, Memphis

The connections made in the draft were good as it went around the whole globe. The discussion about capital investments and exportation of capital would be important to elaborate on. What I differ about is the question of the vanguard party. I don’t see any other way for revolution to be brought forward realistically. Control and organization is one thing the bourgeoisie has down. There’s tremendous suffering, blood and terrorism around the world. Part of it has come from big mistakes the Marxist movement has made.

--Gabriel, Oakland, California

The quote from Marx on religion was misused in the Draft for Perspectives. Marx was talking about turning critique from religion to law, from theology to politics, but we live in a world in which religion itself is totally politicized. It is politics and totalitarian politics as in the counter-revolution that came from within the 1979 revolution in Iran. Dunayevskaya was not afraid to go directly against religion in this form, calling it an even deeper form of false consciousness than bourgeois ideology. We may prefer a bourgeois republic to a theocracy, but is choosing a lesser evil really an option when everything is in the balance? We have to face how capitalism and fundamentalism reinforce each other, how they are the same and yet different.

--Ron Brokmeyer, Oakland, California

I saw a bumper sticker last week with a prominent U.S. flag and the words "God Bless Our Overseas Troops." How sad that there are so many stuck with this religious-patriotic illusion. Our only hope is the unchaining of our illusions and facing up to ruthless realism. It is within our collective power to develop a truly human civilization, one of true freedom. Some people are like those in "Waiting for Godot"--they are waiting for a God to come and make things right. Consider our present election farce, as if one man will make a difference or a real change, when it is the system that needs changing.

--Longtime socialist, Wisconsin

What is needed in the Perspectives is not more "debunking" of Reagan but a positive declaration of our vision, which implicitly debunks Reagan and explicitly lays out the map of the journey and the destination at the end. What is needed is more development of the concept that a revolutionary philosophy "cannot be built on what it is against, it has to be built on the basis of what it is for."

--Anti-war activist, Tennessee

There is no use in pretending that the U.S. project in Iraq has anything to do with either democracy or human rights or that either the U.S. or the Iraqi puppet’s state has the best interests of the common people in Iraq at heart. We should concentrate on ending the war in Iraq while building support for other "people over profits" projects. Neither John Kerry nor George W. Bush represents the interests of the working people or the poor of this nation, or plans on ending the war soon. We are on our own.

--Longtime reader, Louisiana

When the Draft mentions that the U.S. is trying to keep control of natural resources, from oil to water, it is very true. That is one way of exerting its power. One thing it didn’t mention is that there are 20,000 black market water mercenaries in Iraq making thousands of dollars per day. It brings to mind what Marx said about the relation of British to Irish workers which translates today into a relation between U.S. and Iraqi workers: that for U.S. workers to be free, the Iraqi workers have to be free.

--Iranian exile, Hayward, California

The discussion about the emergence of a new Iraqi labor movement will be exciting news to many N&L readers. It includes a Union of the Unemployed (UUI) that has enrolled 300,000 members over the last year and is demanding the hundreds of thousands of reconstruction jobs that need to be filled. Many in this country do not know that before Saddam came to power (with U.S. help) in 1979, there had been a strong labor movement in Iraq. The truth you are shedding about the labor and women’s organizations there today, and the importance of building solidarity with and between all these forces of liberation is one of the most important parts of the Perspectives draft.

--Strong supporter, Detroit

There could usefully be discussion of movements among soldiers in the Draft. To me, they seem key at this time. There was also very little about movements in the U.S. working class. Seems strange to omit it.

--Supporter, New York

In the section of the draft on "The matrix of global politics and economics" you have a phrase that reads: "since 1998, a period in which global industrial production rose by more than 20% ...." I think the word to use is "productivity" not "production." All the data I have seen is that world output has been static for years in every major category (oil, cars, steel, rubber, chips, etc.). That is, the ratio of costs to output (major cost decrease is labor). The output has not changed much but the cost of labor has declined to create the increase of productivity. But the overall spirit of the draft is right on. 

--A. L., Memphis

In your Draft you refer to Raya Dunayevskaya as the one who worked out the N&L philosophy and as the founder thereof. It has been 50 years; if the perspectives on N&L as philosophy center for movement, based on democratic and creative interaction of workers and other intellectuals is correct, then the statements about her should be anachronistic. If not, that suggests a deep problem of approach. In fact, I think that in the last few or so years you have been making some progress on this--but I’m not sure how much worker involvement there is in that process now.

--Sam Friedman, New York

It seems to me that one of the major questions of this moment is not only how our organizations will vertically organize in a non-vanguardist way but also how organizations can work together horizontally. No one organization can evolve to encompass the whole. The whole by definition will always be an issue of inter-organizational relations. We need to start talking about what and how we organize across organizations that way.

--Anti-war activist, California

REAGAN’S DAMAGE

The Workshop Talks column in the July N&L on "Reagan’s Damage" showed that giving credit to Reagan for the downfall of Russian Communism is like giving credit to the rooster for the sunrise. I’d like to ask if the rooster is also responsible for the sunset?

--Observer, Hayward, California

Reagan started the "Star Wars" program and George W. Bush promotes the Strategic Defense Initiatives--both mean the proliferation of nuclear production. As we mark another anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this August we had better not forget that nuclear weapons can be made from nuclear power plants.

--Basho, Los Angeles

MARX’S HUMANISM TODAY

In her essay on "Marx’s Humanism Today" (see May, June and July issues of N&L), Raya Dunayevskaya has a special way of presenting theory, which is very scholarly but uses language that any worker could sit down and have an intelligent conversation about with her. The liberation of the intellectuals from dogmatism can proceed only when they go to the concrete truths. The word revision is not strong enough to describe the academic debates about Marx. They are outright distortions of Marx’s ideas. Workers can understand alienated labor and its relation to expropriating our surplus labor. At the forefront of the debates about Marx stands the worker who has to see himself as a new form of theory. 

--Hospital worker, California

In her essay, Dunayevskaya also says that it was on account of the dialectic of Hegel that Marx was able to work out the dialectic of his own time. But she says CAPITAL’s discussion of alienation is more concrete and worked out than any stage in Hegel’s PHENOMENOLOGY. Marx examined the point of production as where value was created not by machinery but by the worker. It is that human activity that can change it all wherever the point of production happens to be, the factory floor, the hospital, the docks.

--Still studying, California

HELP ACHEH FREEDOM FIGHTERS!

Acheh Human Rights Online has received disturbing reports that since July 20 the Indonesian military air force, using two U.S.-made Bronco OC-10 warplanes, has been attacking villages along the edge of hilly areas, targeting Free Acheh Movement strongholds.  Many people are now leaving their homes and fleeing further into the mountainous jungles to avoid the sudden air strikes. It is expected that food supplies will soon be severely short and many people, especially children, will go hungry, while the elderly will suffer from multiple complications from the food shortages.  It is imperative for the international community to intervene immediately. Call 717-343-1598 or email achehcenter@yahoo.com

--Free Acheh supporter, New York

HIDING THE TRUTH

It was stunning to see how the virulent racism against Muslims who are Black was revealed in the way state television in countries like Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and networks like Al Jazira reported on the genocide in Darfur. Far from dwelling on the mass murder of women, children and men taking place there now, their emphasis was all on how the U.S. (which itself is refusing to call it genocide) is supposedly using the situation in Darfur to invade and dominate Muslim countries. Not one word was mentioned that the Black non-Arab people being massacred are Muslims!

--Anti-war activist, Tennessee

At the recent international AIDS conference in Bangkok, the major thrust was on drugs to cure AIDS instead of on efforts to prevent it. All the drug companies were showcasing their wares. There was little emphasis on the social factors that cause AIDS, which are especially poverty and gender discrimination. No wonder there were demonstrations by AIDS activists outside the conference.

--African participant, Kenya

PRISON VOICES

The reality of the prison-industrial complex has come to haunt me personally. First, if you don’t have property you can’t get bail. Next, if you don’t have money you can’t get proper legal representation. Without legal representation you go to prison. The massive numbers in California who receive the maximum sentence are responsible for deflating the unemployment figures and increasing the welfare rolls. The worst part of the entire system is the complete disregard for human rights. At one point I requested access to a veterinarian to provide my health care, as someone who would show compassion and professionalism. Racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and every other form of ism is rampant. How can we justify 33 state prisons, countless more city and country jails, and an unknown number of military and federal lock ups in a state of 36 million people? Worst of all is that there is absolutely no attempt to rehabilitate offenders. The system is broken and there is no attempt to fix it in sight.

--Prison-industrial complex victim, California

My whole life’s philosophy has been modified due to incarceration. I am not as material as I used to be and can take pleasure in the simplest things like seeing people smile. I don’t regret ever putting my children first. But I also need to never again lose my self-worth, to know that I am an independent, strong, capable, loving, kind, fierce woman and that I love myself and others with eyes open in a healthy way. The loss of the life I had has been like hitting a brick wall head on at 100 mph. I’ve learned to communicate and that my one single voice is important and needs to be heard. With others I can make little differences to improve life as a whole. There aren’t real differences between those incarcerated and free world people; our poor choices were just caught. We laugh, love, cry, get angry, have needs and wants, goals and dreams alike. We all have basic rights.

--Woman Prisoner, Chowchilla, California

I have read 1984 by Orwell and FARENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury and both books make an accurate prediction of the American situation today. It reminded me a little of so-called Communist Russia. It’s only a matter of time, I fear, before people who speak against the government start disappearing in prisons with no right to an attorney, trial, or habeas corpus, just like the U.S. is doing with all those suspected terrorists in Guantanamo.

--Incarcerated, Mississippi

N&L is a great paper which I read to advance myself in the history of the U.S. and other countries. I always read the Black/Red View first and then the Readers’ Views inside. You really get a view of what open minds can show us. Please thank the donor who made my subscription possible. Every issue I get is read by at least 20 others here who send their thanks too.

--A voice from inside, Florida

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