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NEWS & LETTERS, January-February 2004Readers' ViewsIRAQ, GRENADA & QUESTIONS FOR THE LEFT TODAY The unique discussion, in the December issue of N&L, of the struggle for women's freedom and workers' rights in Iraq--juxtaposed in the same issue with Dunayevskaya's analysis of the U.S. invasion of Grenada--raises some serious questions for the anti-war movement today. Just as opposition to the lies, invasion and occupation of Grenada in 1983 had to include rejection of both the American and Soviet regimes as two sides of the same state-capitalist coin, opposition today has to confront both an unrestrained U.S. permanent war as well as the permanent terrorism and religious repression which are its flipside. Now as then, the need for a total uprooting of society compels us to ask, "Are you with the people struggling for a totally new way of life?" Theory must be an integral part of the world it critiques--not isolated from the forces of revolution, but a force in itself, inseparable from revolutionary activity. A relentless critique of everything existing must simultaneously take the form of revolutionary activity and a philosophy of revolution for it to be absolute negativity. As difficult as it is to demonstrate to the Left today the need to oppose both the occupation and other reactionary forces in Iraq, the Grenadian revolution shows the necessity of making even finer distinctions. Unlike today, there was then more solidarity with an ongoing revolution--but not enough attention was paid to the counter-revolution within the revolution. Twenty years later, what shows the further depths of the retrogression we face is how few efforts the Left has made to solidarize with progressive groups in Iraq, so that we don't even have the opportunity to address the kind of complex questions that arose in Grenada. It makes it all the more necessary for Marxist-Humanism to distinguish its critique from the insufficient, unfinished critiques of others on the Left who fall so easily into tail-ending reactionary forces. Today there are many against the war and occupation, for the most diverse reasons. A simple unity, no matter how large the numbers, will not bring about a total negation of this society and the movement towards a new one. The juxtaposed articles in the December issue show the need for a philosophy of revolution, now not later. Supporter New York The essay on Grenada that was excerpted for the Marxist-Humanist Archives column in the December N&L was a tremendously important piece in Dunayevskaya's development of the dialectics of organization and philosophy. She made it clear in that essay that the need for dialogue is not just people talking to each other, but the relationship between theory and practice and the refusal to allow debates to be limited to leadership only. I am glad to see that this important essay has been made available in its entirety in the new book DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES. Computer programmer, Memphis WOMEN'S LIBERATION The article in the December issue by Yanar Muhammed, the founder of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, was very important for understanding what's wrong with much of the Left. It was especially important to have a critique of postmodernism from someone like this. At the National Women's Studies Association conference I attended last year, one woman said she couldn't talk about women's oppression in Iraq because she was a postmodernist. It made me appreciate the way Yanar critiques leftist cultural relativism. She says non-state and state terrorism are equally bad, and comes out strongly against political Islam, which many in the Left here are reluctant to do. Women's Liberationist, Memphis Yanar's description of the situation for women in Iraq demonstrates that nothing can compare to someone speaking for herself and proves the value of N&L to provide the space for this. Longtime N&L supporter, Detroit The meddling that the U.S. has been doing for a long time has certainly been the proximate cause of a lot of human suffering, as evidenced by the stories in N&L about and by the women in Afghanistan and more recently Iraq. I grew up being proud of being an American, but Bush's arrogant attacks on the world have taken away my bragging rights. Correspondent, Nebraska ABORTION RIGHTS? I liked the way Terry Moon's article on "What late term abortion ban means" (December N&L) pointed out that the right to abortion was not won in the Supreme Court and that we didn't win it on the right to control our own bodies but the narrow right of privacy. That makes it easy to get around it and the anti-abortion people are trying hard, with the Religious Right saying there's no right to privacy in the constitution. Artemis, Tennessee The article on abortion was excellent in how it argued the question. Most arguments on the issue that I've read have been written for a pro-choice audience and take that position for granted without ever trying to really argue the issue. This "Woman as Reason" column presented the issues involved clearly. Steve, Illinois FIGHT SCHWARZENEGGER! The evening that Arnold Schwarzenegger was inaugurated as governor in Sacramento, over 250 spirited young people--both immigrants and U.S. born--demonstrated at the California State Building for undocumented immigrants' rights to driver's licenses. Korean drummers accompanied the shouts and signs that declared: "Stop state violence against immigrants," " Terminate racism," and "Aquí estamos y no nos vamos." Supporters, who made it clear that they "were here and were not going away," included garment workers organizers, Korean immigrant workers advocates, the multiethnic immigrant workers organization network, ACORN, and many Latino workers. They were making loud and clear their opposition to the way, in his campaign to recall Gov. Davis, Schwarzenegger was appealing to right-wing conservative Republicans and their fear of immigrants, mostly of color and different cultures, who do the hard labor at poverty rates that they themselves would never do. Basho, California I see an uncanny resemblance between the right-wing populism of Schwarzenegger and what I have seen in many Latin American countries over the years that I have lived there. Massive amounts of money are invested in creating a celebrity image of a "man of the people" who will step in and clean up the mess made by career politicians. Under this smoke screen of propaganda, the neo-liberal corporate agenda is pushed forward with a vengeance. Schwarzenegger has just unveiled his budget, which doesn't begin to touch the outrageous tax advantages of the wealthy and instead proposes Draconian cuts in health, education, municipal services and recreation that will impact drastically on the most vulnerable in California. Add to this his playing of the racist card in repealing the legislation that would have allowed undocumented immigrants the right to driver's licenses. The Democratic leadership has been pathetic in tail-ending and allowing themselves to be goggle-eyed with his celebrity and snookered at every turn. Current Californian, Los Angeles NEW LABOR STRUGGLES The fact that management was finally willing to negotiate a contract to end the seven-week strike against Borders Book and Music store in Ann Arbor, Mich., that began on Nov. 8 was due not only to the perseverance of the strikers, but also to the tremendous support from local community members and supporters nationwide. Borders has 436 stores nationwide and only one other store in the chain is unionized, but has not yet negotiated a contract. Under the contract workers will get a 25¢ hourly raise in April--from $6.50 to $6.75 for cashiers and from $7 to $7.25 for booksellers. While a number of workers said the contract was a sell-out by the union leadership, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 675--inasmuch as the strikers had demanded $7.95 for entry starting pay, and there is a question about whether the present health benefits will be continued--most of the workers at the store feel it is a victory. The gains barely put the workers above the minimum wage scale, but to have any union contract at all is better than being at the complete mercy of management. Strike Supporter, Detroit The Union of Radical Workers and Writers (URWW) has called for a conference to be held in Minneapolis dedicated to organizing bookstore workers across the country. They want it to coincide with the World Social Forum gathering in Mumbai, India. Called to "Resist Retail Nihilism: A Bookstore Workers Organizing Forum," it will gather bookstore workers from across the continent, including those on strike at the Borders store in Ann Arbor, Mich., as well as workers from Minneapolis, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Local and regional bookstore workers, retail workers, and the general public are invited to attend any or all of the proposed day-long event. The agenda includes roundtable discussions on the history of bookstore organizing, how to organize and how to build community coalitions. More information is available from their website at http://www.urww.org or by contacting URWW via email at manowak@stkate.edu. Union supporter, Chicago ISSUES OF WAR & PEACE I appreciated the discussion about the mistaken analogy between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq that some are making today. All they see is a Third World country, the killing of civilians, imperial legacy--so they think Iraq must be like Vietnam. The Editorial in the December issue shows the Left is fooling itself with that dead-end comparison. Now the capture of Hussein is catching some in the Left off guard. They never discuss how he oppressed the Iraqi masses. At the same time, they don't see that this supposed victory over Hussein is not going to let imperialism off the hook. Brown, Tennessee Bush has condemned Saddam Hussein for using chemical weapons on his own people. That the chemicals were obtained from the U.S. is omitted from the rhetoric. At the same time, using chemical weapons on its citizens is a common occurrence here in the U.S. The police use them all the time in arrests and in their jails. So do State and Federal prisons. I'd like to see more people call this use of pepper spray, mace and tear gas exactly what it is--the use of dangerous chemical weapons on the people. M.C., Nebraska President Bush is projecting a new American empire similar to the Roman. The Republicans and Democrats both agree on this basic point. Although they now complain that the U.S. is bogged down in Iraq, the Democrats almost all supported the war. And to this day, Republicans and Democrats alike express no difference over the basic idea of an American empire. It is why I so much appreciate John Alan's point in the new book on DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES about Powell and Rice as the Black faces that were placed over U.S. imperialism. Alan proves in that book that it was the Black masses who first opposed U.S. imperialism in 1898 and who remain the most consistent opposition to it today. Revolutionary lawyer, Michigan Your readers might be interested in knowing that the Housmans Peace Diary and World Peace Directory is now off the press and can be ordered (and paid for) on the War Resisters International webshop at http://wri-irg.org/shop/shop-uk.htm. It lists close to 2,000 peace and human rights related addresses world-wide and is a useful tool for international networking. War Resisters' International, London DISPELLING THE DARK I always knew something wasn't right, but never took the time to find out what it was until I came to prison. For the last 23 months I've been on lockdown in a cell for 23 hours a day. During this time I've had the opportunity to clear my mind of all the consumerism b.s. that was polluting my mind in society. Reading N&L has opened my eyes to how the system works and why things are the way they are. I know it's not all I need to know, but it's enough to see that something needs to change. Thank you for helping me gain a better understanding of the world around me. It's surprising how big a difference one newspaper can make. Voice from the Inside, Iowa Many times the stories in N&L cover people and events I don't see published anywhere else. It reminds me of a quote from Bertolt Brecht. Translated from the German, it reads: Some there are who live in darkness I feel that N&L brings those in darkness into the daylight. Ex-postal worker, Battle Creek, Mich. Here is a poem I wrote that I call: "You don't Hear Me Though!" A mind is a terrible thing to waste Greg Brown, California RACE, PHILOSOPHY AND THE NEEDED AMERICAN REVOLUTION This message is for John Alan: I am a Marxist-Humanist and a long-time fighter for freedom. I want to congratulate you for your book on DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES, which is not for NEWS & LETTERS only, nor only for the Black people, but for all the people who are fighting for freedom. It is a powerful book. I do not know how you have been able to cover so much history in so few pages. It shows that it is not the quantity of one's ideas that is valuable. It is their quality. When I was reading your book, I read some of your sentences to my wife to share the power of the dialectic in the way you were able to express in one sentence what another historian might express in more than 300 pages. You were able to do that because you chose to bring out the ideas that have been hidden by the rulers with the sole purpose of covering up the contributions made by Black people to history. By reading your book we can also see the beauty of Marx and Marxist-Humanism and how different that is from the mockery made by the post-Marx Marxists. It was like beginning to study Marx all over again. We used to study Marx with the passion of youth, but as soon as we joined one or another of the old organizations we learned the pre-fabricated concepts of the vanguard parties. It didn't leave room in our brains to develop our own ideas. It took a continuator of Marx like Raya Dunayevskaya to dig deeply enough into philosophy to remove all that dust and bring us back to Marx's Marxism. John Alan, you have now removed the dust from the distorted concepts of Black history and brought its beauty back to us. Longtime radical writer, California What made Susan Van Gelder's essay in the December issue of N&L about Charles Denby so powerful for me was that she rooted it in his book, INDIGNANT HEART: A BLACK WORKER'S JOURNAL and in Dunayevskaya's "In Memoriam" to him, as well as in what John Alan wrote in the new book on DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES. It was so different from the way some have made it seem as though his relationship to the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism was only through reading Dunayevskaya's books. That totally misses their day to day working relationship that gave meaning to what Marxist-Humanism calls having a "new relationship between workers and intellectuals." Longtime reader, Memphis THE IMPORTANCE OF HAITI The short piece in "Our Life and Times" (December N&L) reminding us of the 200th anniversary of the world's first Black republic, born out of an anti-slavery revolution, was very important to have in N&L. Even today, it is rare to learn in school that the first revolution to achieve independence was a Black nation. It inspired Hegel to articulate the abstract impetus to freedom. It was important to have it in that issue because the whole issue showed masses striving for something new. Retired worker, Detroit What's in a name? Shakespeare wrote that a rose called by any other name will still smell as sweet, but what does it mean that the Chicago Public School system, under Mayor Richard M. Daley decided to name a high school after one of the main persons responsible for bringing the enslavement of Africans to this hemisphere? The school I'm talking about is called Las Casas Occupational High School, for the Spanish priest, Barthelemy de Las Casas. It is true that this priest worked to free the indigenous people in the Americas from slave conditions, but what he was advocating was bringing the Africans here for that role instead. If the Chicago Public School system wanted to name a school after an Adolph Hitler, there would not be a Chicago Public School system. But this is a city ruled by the son of the mayor who had no trouble giving orders to "shoot to maim, shoot to kill." The question I'm asking isn't why the high school in question has the name it was given. The question is can it be changed? George Wilfrid Smith Jr., Chicago MARX’S CONCEPT OF INTRINSIC VALUE It is a challenge to follow Andrew Kliman's arguments in his pamphlet on MARX’S CONCEPT OF INTRINSIC VALUE--especially the third section that stresses that Marx's object is not value or exchange-value but the question of what is a commodity. The pamphlet draws the reader away from all the misconceptions about Marx that exist today. Reader, San Francisco Andrew Kliman's important pamphlet ended before it should have. He left it as "the point of it is subject-object relation between labor and product." I assumed he was going somewhere else with that, like how the workers would go on. Work experience does not prove or disprove Marx's theory. The theoretical part cannot be deduced from personal experience. That's what makes the story of how former N&L Labor Editor Felix Martin read PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION while on the line in his factory so important. That's how be became a revolutionary. It wasn't just his experience on the line, but exposure to ideas. I hope Andrew will produce another edition of his pamphlet in a different form. David, California Studying the pamphlet on MARX’S CONCEPT OF INTRINSIC VALUE made me want to see it come alive. I'd like to see NEWS & LETTERS conduct some classes on the subject along with the theory of state-capitalism and Chapter I of Capital. Marxist-Humanist, Flint, Mich. BRINGING DOWN THE WALL There was an emotional gathering here in Los Angeles to protest against the building of the wall between Israel and Palestine that annexes nearly half of the West Bank and makes the Palestinians live on 12% of what was historic Palestine. The wall is one more proof that the "road map" policy of Bush's government is a faulty peace plan. The event was sponsored by Women in Black and Palestine Aid Society while another group with loudspeakers and flags of U.S. and Israel in hand harassed people coming to the event. One woman speaker said that both of her Jewish parents disappeared in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, and that we should come together, Jews and Palestinians, to oppose this wall and establish peace between these two war-torn states. The demonstration ended with one speaker saying "another wall is the virtual wall that is being built in Washington where our freedom is constrained in a land which came about by freedom." She was confronted by another woman in the audience who pointed out that the U.S. was not built on the foundation of freedom but slavery. That contradiction is what grips the Palestinian and Israeli people as well, who oppose the wall but do not see the contradiction within their own thinking. They do not see that war is the natural outcome of capitalism, with its bag full of racism, exploitation and inhumanity whether they’re in the Middle East or here at home. Manel, California |
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