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NEWS & LETTERS, July 2004Readers' ViewsEPITAPH FOR REAGAN After his death, they sang Reagan’s praises as if he were a saint. He was another guy going to heaven non-stop. I couldn’t help wondering, with all these so-called angels with reputations like his heading to heaven, who is in hell? Maybe the people who asked for a transfer when they saw who was coming there? --Robert Taliaferro, Wisconsin When the federal government closed down all their offices for Reagan’s funeral on Friday, June 11, one post office in Marin posted signs everywhere telling patrons they were closing in memory of Ray Charles. In Oakland, a memorial was held "for the victims of Reaganism." --Correspondent, Bay Area, California ABU GHRAIB AT HOME What is clear about the recent “revelations” regarding the torture of prisoners in Iraq is that nothing is new. The government has always tortured, murdered and abused its enemies. The media has also always whitewashed or excused it. Not only have foreign peoples been abused, but inmates of domestic prisons, jails and mental institutions as well. In the U.S. a small privileged number of owning-class individuals live well off of the labor of the majority. Their agents carry out the abuse of those who disturb or threaten their continued accumulation of increasing wealth. The world belongs to them--and that is the problem. But it does not have to be--and that is the solution. --Subscriber, Louisiana All the abuses now being spotlighted in Iraqi prisons are endemic and rampant in U.S. prisons on a daily basis. The mainstream media has consistently downplayed it or refused to report it at all. The Iraqi abuses were widely reported by freelance internet reporters as well as the Red Cross, Justice Watch, and Amnesty International months before it was reported by the U.S. corporate media. Our government openly scorns the U.S. Constitution and ignores the rule of law. We see the police shooting and/or beating civilians on a daily basis and the courts do nothing. N&L has been one of the few voices in the wilderness that speaks out against injustice and spotlights the truth. --Incarcerated, Brooklyn, Connecticut CAPITALISM AT WORK For the past two years here, and I would guess in every city in the U.S., construction has been booming, partly due to the present low interest rates. From government buildings to retail outlets to huge shopping malls and homes and apartments, construction is taking place in many empty lots (often preceded by demolition of still usable old buildings), as well as encroaching on or destroying wilderness areas outside the city. At the same time there is a tremendous shortage of low cost housing which is not being met. This adds to the skyrocketing rents and costs of private homes, out of reach for most people. Under our capitalist society the primary interest of capital, which finances these projects, is to self-expand at its greatest possible rate of profit. Meeting people’s human needs is a secondary issue, at best. --Reader, Los Angeles THE CONCRETENESS OF MARXIST-HUMANISM The common theme of beleaguered “progressives” is deep hostility towards the Bush administration but beyond this negative unity not much else binds us together. Most stunning is that many recognize that capitalism is the root of our problem, but have virtually nothing to say about the laws of motion of capital per se, and absolutely nothing to say about alternatives. The serialization of Dunayevskaya’s “Marx’s Humanism today” in the May and June issues of N&L can help us understand the pathological inability of the Left to conceive a third alternative to Bush’s dangerous doctrine and the reactionary forces of fundamentalist Islam. But pointing this out does not relieve us of the difficult obligation to project what the third could be. In “The Concreteness of Marxist-Humanism” (N&L June 2004) Anne Jaclard quotes Dunayevskaya about thinking an idea through to the end. There is a widespread view that even if we don't like capitalism, complaining about it is like complaining about the winter in Duluth. If our task is to show that another world is possible, our first thought should be that this is not going to be an easy struggle. --Tom More, Washington I hope you print more pieces like “The Concreteness of Marxist-Humanism.” We need more discussion of an alternative to the system instead of just criticizing it. People aren’t going to keep working to change the system unless there's an idea of what can replace it. That’s clearly the case in this part of the country. --Subscriber, Arizona The essay on Rosa Luxemburg by Peter Hudis in the May issue of N&L was especially interesting regarding the administration of post-seizure of power in a revolutionary society. At times I have contemplated the positions, in view of a number of situations and crises (e.g., the Bolshevik occupation of lands in the Transcaucasus, Stalin’s iron rule, Mao’s “democratic dictatorship,” North Korea, Cuba), and the discussion you presented is fresh to me and inspires further consideration of the forces at play. It seems that so many dynamics are involved and each case can so sharply contrast that a single blueprint seems improbable. I would like to hear more on all this. --New subscriber, Corcoran, California Having Dunayevskaya's archives available in N&L is important because her ideas are relevant to today’s world. Her column on “Marx’s Humanism Today” showed how different theoreticians related to chapter one of Marx’s CAPITAL on fetishism, especially the contrast between Althusser and Marxist-Humanism. In our classes here on “Alternatives to Capitalism” we ran into “Marxists” who want to get rid of chapter one of CAPITAL. I always criticized Althusser but I didn’t know how much of his ideas came from Stalin. --Iranian friend, Bay Area I am encouraged to know about N&L after finding the article in the December issue on the life of Charles Denby, who was an African American. My indoctrination up to now has been one of relating Marxism to the horrors of Stalin or Russian history. Alas, I can now say that U.S. history is no less atrocious. --New reader, Indiana The death of both Ronald Reagan and the Polish activist Jacek Kuron in the same week made me think of the importance of Jaclard's essay on the “Concreteness of Marxist-Humanism.” Reagan said “there is no alternative” to existing capitalism. Kuron started out as a left-wing activist who wanted to replace Stalinism with a self-managed society run by workers, but by the late 1980s he ended up agreeing with the basic ideas of Reagan. The "self-limiting revolution” turned into “instead of revolution.” That pretty much set the tone of everything we've confronted since then. As I see it, Jaclard’s essay is telling us that the role of News and Letters Committees is to try to take the discussion in the opposite direction. --Supporter, Los Angeles WOMEN’S LIBERATION Professional basketball player Kobe Bryant was charged with raping a 19-year-old hotel employee in Vail, Colo. a full year ago, but the tone of favoritism for the defendant was clear when he was allowed to play the entire basketball season. Only now has the court set a trial date. His fans, including young women, cheered him at every game, while his defense team, including a woman lawyer, Pamela Mackey, used the time to mount a vicious attack against the victim, forcing a court ruling banning reference to her as a victim and trying to get every aspect of her sexual, medical and mental history opened up to court scrutiny. The fact that a woman is leading this charge reminds us of a lesson learned early by the Women’s Liberation Movement--all women are not my sisters. --Women's liberationist, Chicago STRUGGLE FOR GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS The general credibility of the Lead article “Fight the Christian Right’s attacks on women’s lives” (April 2004 N&L) is undermined by the hyperbole of some of the claims made. The point-blank dismissal of the possibility of reform--“sexist, racist, homophobic capitalism cannot be reformed”--struck me as ultra-left. Reforms can be won, and are won, when people struggle for them, and gay rights is a good example. In my lifetime, Britain has changed from a society where sex between men was a criminal offense, to one where it is unlawful for an employer to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation. Gay marriage is an idea whose time has only just arrived, an idea of the 21st century. Rosa Luxemburg was surely correct when she wrote of “an indissoluble tie between social reforms and revolution,” although her description of the struggle for reforms as means and the social revolution as goal is not yet the full story, as social revolution is also a means--to a world where oppression will be something people learn about in history books. --Richard Bunting, England I am in total agreement with T.D. Coleman on the question of gay marriage assimilation and glad to see someone write about the issue this way (May 2004 N&L). Many people here in the GLBT community have a false sense of security now thinking that things will get better if they can marry. Some say it is a blow against Bush. I am not against gay marriage but feel we should be concentrating on the increase in violence in the community, as well as against women in the U.S. and in other countries. I’d like to see us working on anti-war efforts and against capitalism along with the issues that directly relate to sexuality. --Suzanne Rose, Washington THE COURT OF HISTORY Now that even the Serb "Republic" has admitted that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 7,000 Muslims took place, those on the Left who denied it ever happened--not just Stalinists but also anarchists like Peter Staudenmeier--need to apologize for their gross errors. --Bosnian support activist, Chicago MUSIC AND POLITICS The story of what happened after Daniel Barenboim won the Wolf Prize in Jerusalem is of more than only musical interest. The award was established to honor outstanding artists and scientists who have worked “in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among people” and he had certainly demonstrated that, including the way he founded with Edward Said a workshop for young musicians from all the countries of the Middle East, Jews and Arabs alike. In his acceptance speech, where he sharply criticized Israel's policies toward Palestinians, he said: “Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence, an art of sounds that crosses all borders. As such, music can take the feelings and imagination of Israelis and Palestinians to new, unimaginable spheres.” He then donated the moneys of the prize to music education projects in Israel and in Ramallah. Israeli politicians, of course, denounced his criticism of their policies, but nobody could deny the power of his words and his acts. --Music lovers, Los Angeles and Chicago JACEK KURON I had the opportunity to interview Jacek Kuron when I visited Poland at the end of 1980, just when Solidarity was at the height of its power and was inspiring the whole population. The energy and vision of the ordinary people seemed to transform everything. I was especially interested in his position on Marxism, since I knew about the letter he had co-authored with Karol Modzelewski analyzing Poland as state-capitalist, and Raya Dunayevskaya had asked me to find out if he had read her MARXISM AND FREEDOM. It turned out that he had never heard of it--a book like that would never get past the state censors. But what was shocking was when he completely disavowed Marxism, saying that trying to use Marxism to understand present-day economics is the same as looking at a Neanderthal man to try to understand today’s man. --Andy Phillips, Detroit THE OKLAHOMA SCENE The recent WTO finding against the U.S. cotton subsidies was criticized by the congressman from eastern Oklahoma, which is an agricultural state that produces cotton. I believe that, in this case, the WTO is basically correct because the subsidies unfairly hurt farmers in Africa. As regards exporting manufacturing jobs, in my local community a Wrangler (VF Jeanswear) plant was closed in order to move production to Mexico, even though the labor force is non-unionized and Oklahoma became a “Right-to-Work” state in 2002. A large number of the former workers are women who have sewed for much of their working life. This has elicited anti-Mexico sentiment while being disastrous for a small community, which had upgraded its water and sewer system to accommodate the jeans and western clothing factory. It seems unlikely that the former Wrangler employees will find employment locally, so they will either have to move or remain unemployed/early retired. Some have accused Wrangler of being “unpatriotic” and demanded that they remove the American flag in front of their distribution center located in town, which still remains in operation. --Allen Mui, Seminole, OK Thanks to all our friends and readers for their contributions to help keep NEWS & LETTERS alive |
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