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NEWS & LETTERS, May 2004Readers' ViewsU.S. DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR ON IRAQ In her public testimony, Condoleezza Rice said that the Iraqi people are not ready for democracy and that the process of learning it will be slow, since that region of the world has nothing like a democracy in their history. This is arrogance and ignorance. She imagines there is only one kind of "democracy," the kind practiced in the U.S. If she reads Janet Afary’s book on THE IRANIAN CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION OF 1906-1911 she will find described at least five different kinds of democracies during the Iranian Revolution alone, all of them more democratic than the U.S. had at the time, when it was overrun by robber barons and lynchings were common occurrence. --Iranian exile, California Like many others, I have been wondering why George Bush is pressing ahead with the June 30 handover of sovereignty in Iraq. One suggestion I heard that sounds plausible is that it’s because the U.S. corporations have billions at stake. As I understand it, international contract law prevents their contracts for oil production, public utilities, telecommunications and the like from being signed by anyone except a "sovereign" government. It’s why I think Bush wants to have a puppet government in place before the U.S. elections. I’m willing to bet that the contracts will be signed in the first 14 days if he wins in November. --Any takers? Chicago I just learned that the U.S. Department of Commerce is offering a series of "Doing Business in Iraq" seminars to U.S. companies in 12 U.S. cities to teach companies how they can get in on the profit-making in Iraq. At the same time that Halliburton, Bechtel, and other U.S. companies with close ties to the Bush administration are taking in billions in reconstruction contracts, the Iraqi schools are in disrepair, the phones don’t work, electricity is intermittent, and the water isn’t safe to drink. Meanwhile, qualified Iraqi businesses say they are shut out of the reconstruction of their own country, some 70% of Iraqi workers are unemployed, and workers in state-owned enterprises, where the majority of Iraqis work, are forbidden from forming unions. --Correspondent, Illinois Why is Bush not demanding OPEC cut oil prices? The Bush family has huge investments in oil in Bahrain and high prices mean high bonuses for the Bush family. Cheney and Halliburton got their piece of our flesh. Now Bush will get his. --Harold, Illinois The deep crises developing in Iraq are a signal that this is the time to recall not only Parliament but the troops that Prime Minister Blair has sent over there. The anti-war demonstrations are limited in what they can achieve. Other means of civic courage and resistance are now called for. --Patrick, Britain After the grizzly murder of the four Americans in Falluja we were told that we were going to punish the people who killed them and the whole town was bombed. Haven’t the Iraqi people been punished enough? Not just by the U.S. but by the 35 years of Saddam’s reign? The U.S. people know what it is to be punished. We have all been punished by the Bush administration in dozens of ways since 9/11. --One of the punished, California BLACK FREEEDOM STRUGGLES I have just read John Alan’s book on DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES and there is only one word to describe it: masterpiece. Those who have not read it are missing out on a brilliant dialectical work that itself is part of the Black struggle. --Voice from Within, California John Alan’s column on Haiti in the March 2004 N&L showed how the Black man "reconciliated" with the white man on the Island but how the master came back and killed him. In my study of American history, I saw a similar thing happened in the U.S. after the Civil War when Blacks forgave the masters, who then came back to take over again. --Exile from Middle East, California In his book on Black freedom struggles, John Alan quotes Martin Luther King’s "I have a dream" speech to show that while political struggle is important it does not bring true human emancipation. You see the difference in the way Marx wanted the Civil War to be transformed into a war to end slavery and proposed that a Black regiment, motivated by the desire for freedom, could change the whole course of that war. But the Civil War didn’t even provide political emancipation for Black people. That required the ongoing freedom struggles of the '60s. What is clear is that more freedom struggles are needed as a basis for overthrowing capitalism and achieving true emancipation. --Radical lawyer, Michigan CRITICAL SUPPORT As Peter Hudis implies in his Reader’s View (N&L, April 2004), I should have mentioned Dunayevskaya’s call for support of Bani-Sadr along with her critical judgment of Bani-Sadr. As for the phrase to which he takes exception, however, my saying that Dunayevskaya "takes the measure of bourgeois democratic intellectuals like Bani-Sadr" hardly implies an "ultra-leftist" position of not critically supporting him when he came under attack from Khomeini’s murderous IRP. Marx repeated exactly that phrase "taken his measure" in his quote from the Abolitionist Wendell Phillips, in relation to another bourgeois democratic politician, Lincoln, as a "first-rate second-rate man" for his legalistic approach to the Civil War. Lincoln tried to encase that struggle within the question of saving the Union instead of seeing its deeper reality as an unfolding war of liberation. At the same time, Marx aggressively supported the North and Lincoln against the Southern Slavocracy. --Ron Brokmeyer, Oakland CRITIQUING BEN WATSON’S CRITIQUE Thanks to Dave Black for casting a critical light on Ben Watson’s review of THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY (N&L April 2004). Aside from factual, interpretive and philosophic mistakes, Watson’s review is unsuccessful because it amounts to little more than a smartly written shopping list of his favorite reading. He makes it plain that his tastes run in the general direction of a psychoanalytic, rhapsodic-poetic, Sadean-sexual-fantasist "Marxism." That Dunayevskaya would not have allied herself with a "surrealist Hegel" hardly amounts to a criticism, unless you make it do some heavy lifting. Watson’s taste for psychoanalytic cultural criticism is at best tangential to the themes of THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY. Ironically, he applauds Marx for "uncovering surplus value," thereby introducing "the measure of truth and consciousness into politics and economics" at the same time that he displaces the critique of political economy "into a revolutionary interpretation of dreams, fantasy and the unconscious." Whatever else it is, a cultural criticism ungrounded in the critique of political economy is not Marxist. Although psychoanalysis is fascinating and important, simply laying one’s preference for it alongside the text of THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY cannot count as a criticism worth taking seriously. --Tom More, Washington In Watson’s review, his use of words like "bitterness," "crackpot," and "cult," is an unfair attack. A cult is usually based on uncritical (and therefore blind) faith. What he calls "condemnation" by "harsh words" I see as critique in the interest of helping to transcend today’s many alienation-creating governments towards a new humanistic social order. Without dialogue, valid criticisms are lost. Totalitarian organizations allow no criticisms or dialogue. I completely agree with Dave Black’s response: "But to choose between the practical and theoretical fails to realize that both tend to fall apart in separation." --Basho, Los Angeles While I welcome discussion of THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY, Ben Watson’s review contained numerous errors of fact. That News and Letters Committees is opposed to the vanguard party does not mean that Dunayevskaya worked "without the usual Marxist mediations of party, votes, leadership, theoretical journal, internal bulletins, newspaper and propaganda." Nor is it meaningful to draw theoretical conclusions based on impressions of a few meetings attended in one locality. One would be more impressed if it were more of a review and less a springboard for pushing his home-cooked Freudian agenda. --Dmitryev, Memphis WOMEN’S LIVES AT STAKE Complaining about a watering down of the April 25 women’s march from a march for choice to a march for women’s lives (see Lead, April N&L) misses the point. The numerous liberal and left groups that make up the women’s movement include one that complains it is too focused on abortion rights. Whereas I take it as both a plus and a minus that we on the Left are multi-issued, multi-ethnic, and multi-religions, I am also frustrated by the lack of support we give to each other’s causes and by the continuous arguments about which group is purer than the others. We don’t find such bickering from the Right. While questioning actions is necessary I think it is time for us to unite to defeat the right wing in this country. --Sue, Chicago March for Women’s Lives is a fine name that conveys the seriousness of the attack women face. Yet the authors of "Fight the Christian Right’s attacks on women’s lives" have a point that deleting the words "abortion" and now even "choice" is a sign of retreat. It’s seen not only in the women’s movement but across the board from labor to environmentalism that movements are afraid to articulate what they are for beyond the immediate defensive battles. We may face our "own ideological roadblocks" as the article so aptly puts it. --Another man for choice, Tennessee Three things stood out for me in the April front page Lead. First, that "sanctity of marriage" as only "man and woman" denies the existence of a whole class of people as human beings. Second, it’s not just the Christian Right but liberals like Clinton and Kerry who insist on recognizing only "man" and "woman." The scapegoating of gays is out of fear, ignorance and political expediency. Finally, what is at stake is not merely an issue of "marriage" but the fundamental question of the right to freely associate with anyone in truly human relations. --Health worker, California AMINA LAWAL Thanks to millions of emails, letters, faxes, and actions from people all over the world, Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman who had been sentenced in March 2002 to death by stoning, saw her sentence overturned. Amnesty International had carried out an especially intensive campaign and is glad to tell you that Amina’s daughter, Wasila, is now two and a half years old and a healthy little girl. Amina has asked that everyone be thanked who participated in the campaign to save them. --Amnesty International, USA VOICES FROM THE INSIDE I am not surprised that our hunger strike did not receive the media attention it should. I agree with the prisoner who wrote to you that he regards his cell as a classroom. But I also view prison as Plato’s cave, where we are asked to imagine a group chained inside a cave since birth, who can see only shadows cast on the wall in front of them, which they take as reality. The prison world is like that cave where we are shackled by our ignorance of the nature of true reality. To see it as it really is we must struggle out of the cave and into the sunlight. I was once lost in illusions. I was always rebellious but it was blind rage when I didn’t know what I should be fighting against. I now know it’s the whole capitalist system, and that I have to fight to end all oppression. I don’t believe in half-way liberation. As a man, I see that it has to start with the liberation of women. In today’s traditional marriage, which is propagated by the system as so sacred it should not be broken, the woman loses her identity while papers are signed to establish the ownership relationship. It’s time to break the chains of tradition and all walk out of Plato’s cave. --Prisoner, Pontiac, Illinois My nephew just came back from the war in Iraq after four years of duty in the Marines. I’m thankful we were able to persuade him not to re-enlist. Before he joined he was the gentlest child imaginable. Now he wants to be a policeman. There is not much difference between a policeman and a prison guard. How could my nephew want to be on the other side? I blame Bush’s lies for changing him so. Bush’s lies have destroyed thousands of families, lives that cannot be put back together again. --Woman prisoner, California When the news carried a story announcing compulsory drug testing of children in school, most of my cell mates were for it, but I am opposed. Drugs in school is a serious problem, but even if you are a single parent, your have responsibility for your kids. Society should put the resources into helping parents do a better job, rather than having the state take over the responsibility for raising our children. The schools should spend more time on educating kids about drugs. If kids are shown what drug abuse looks like, what smoking does to you, what VD will do to your body, they will be able to decide on their own to stay away. --Woman prisoner, Chowchilla, Cal. TODAY'S LABOR STRUGGLES While Bush and his Secretary of Labor are working to take away overtime pay from millions of America’s workers, more than 10 million people are out of work. Meanwhile, Bush’s economic report to Congress calls the avalanche of U.S. jobs being sent overseas a "good thing"! How out of touch are the people who applaud that? You can bet they’re not among the unemployed! --Alarmed, Detroit Since April 4, workers at Casino Windsor have been on strike for better working conditions. The owners promptly closed the casino, to the delight of the owners of Detroit’s three casinos located just across the river from the Canadian establishment. Unlike Detroit casino employees, Casino Windsor staff are members of the Canadian Autoworkers Union and state that the owners are refusing to bargain. They plan to ask the Ontario government to intervene. Hopefully, a spirit of union organizing will cross the Detroit River to influence the casino workers here. --Pro-union, Detroit I have noticed that even the language of the capitalists is creeping into everyday speech. People now talk about "downsizing" their family budgets! We really need a total uprooting of capitalism--and soon. --Anti-capitalist activist, Michigan 50 YEARS AFTER BROWN VS. BOARD OF EDUCATION The Supreme Court decision known as Brown vs. Board of Education was a significant breakthrough 50 years ago. It sparked the movement for civil rights and for the liberation of people of African descent. It also opened up the opportunity for some people of color to enter the predominantly white better schools. Many schools, however, still remain segregated--some through the white flight from public schools and integrated neighborhoods. The quality of education in public schools dwindled after the 1960s, because of a lack of resources, of new books, of facilities, and because of a decline in the decent maintenance of the buildings themselves. The powers that be no longer feel it necessary to educate poor youth into the workplace because of what an advanced technology has brought about. The schools today place far more emphasis on discipline and security than on expanding the minds of our youth. Brown vs. Board of Education was an important milestone in the struggle against Jim Crow--but what is urgently needed today is a fight for a competent education for all people. Darrell Gordon --African-American Queer activist, Chicago CANADA’S PATRIOT ACT We have a pending bill here similar to the US PATRIOT ACT, which is not quite as heinous as the U.S.’s but comes close. Bill C7 is a frightening prospect, which could essentially strip away civil liberties to a shocking degree. The media seems to have ignored it completely, which leads one to believe that the powers that be want to pass it through by stealth. For three years the Canadian government has tried and failed to pass legislation to abridge political rights and institute the apparatus of a police state. The current pending C7 bill would succeed, including authorizing the seating of military judges to prepare for a declaration of martial law. We still have a chance to stop this horrific legislation and are trying to alert as many as possible to its dangers. --Worried Canadian, British Columbia WHY N&L? WHY NOW? I used to get N&L and would like to start receiving it again. In this age of media mediocrity, it will be refreshing to re-acquaint myself with a voice of reason. Historically, working people have struggled with rampant job loss. Now, with the off-shore outsourcing of high-tech jobs, the demonic face of capitalism has taken another inhuman turn. I’d like to read anything you suggest that grapples with this trend. --N&L reader again, Philadelphia N&L is a wonderful example of free speech. I also listen extensively to KPFK, a listener sponsored radio station. But N&L lets me hear the comments of people from anywhere in the world, including from inside prison, that would be impossible for me to hear without such a forum. It gives me a first-hand perspective from people who are living the issues, and whose lives are significantly different from mine. N&L is a treasure. I’m enclosing an extra donation with my sub renewal to help you continue your work. --Long time reader, Los Angeles |
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