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NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2005

Readers' Views

Does Marx's value theory matter?

A lot of Marxists say that you can be a Marxist and drop Marx's value theory, since no reputable economist believes in it. Left economists, like Okishio, say they are "correcting" Marx. But it is important not to drop value theory because it goes into what happens to the humanity of workers. Everyone sees that capitalism has reduced workers to counting the time they put in at work. But that doesn't make visible how labor is separated from the laborer. In his review of THE NEW VALUE CONTROVERSY AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMICS (March-April N&L), Tom More says that to develop an alternative we have to know what capitalism is. It is not "money making money." It is how you become bifurcated as a person. Marx is the only one who explains why that is and how that happens.

--David Mizuno'Oto, Oakland, Cal.

I enjoyed the article on "Why Marx's theory of value matters" in the last issue. It is great to read that the claims of internal inconsistency in Marx's value theory have been refuted and it has been found sound. I never thought it could be anything but sound. What are all those "Marxologists" talking about? Does anyone really have to read thick books with miles of complex figures to understand surplus value? Can anyone say workers do not produce values that are greater than their wages? If most of the world's proletariat can't read these complex books does it mean they will never be able to understand the "transformation problem"? Marxism is the poor man's philosophy, right? In your paper it says that N&L stands for the abolition of capitalism. I agree with your goals. But do the Marxologists agree and should we care what they think?

--Sid Rasmussen, Iowa

The common opinion I run into is that we need only a little bit of Marx sprinkled in along with a pinch from Frankfurt School as well as Habermas. But Marx's value theory is needed to get to universality and necessity. I had a professor who would point out that Marx had not predicted such-and-such a phenomenon. It is a category error because Marx was working out a critique of political economy, not predicting the future.

--Still studying, New York

Ideas matter because we are engaged in a battle of ideas. A lot of thought has gone into the suppression of Marxism. Tom More stated why this is so: "But in their totality (the papers in this collection under review) they make it plain that the return to the text of Marx is charged with explosive potential in the academy and beyond it."

--Teacher, New York

It's not a matter of whether Marx is always right, but of getting right what Marx had to say.

--Student, New York

Celebrating May Day in 2005

We of Lalit--in collaboration with members of the national women's liberation movement and the organized workers of many different trade unions--will be holding a celebration on Labour Day, which falls on May 1 here in Mauritius.

The date for general elections here are announced that same day. The election comes at the time Free Zone workers are being retrenched continuously, as factories close in Mauritius and re-open in China, Madagascar, and India. Thousands of sugar industry workers are being pensioned off and their very jobs destroyed, as the sugar estates with the backing of the government plan to build luxury villas for millionaires, destroying the little fertile land that remains and "creating" a handful of jobs in colonial-type domestic work.

The theme of our Labour Day celebration this year will be "Labour against Capital in 2005." We would welcome having a message from you to translate into Kreol and read out to the meeting.

--Ragini Kistnasamy, Mauritius

Papacy regime change

The regime change in the papacy came a month after the city Catholic school where I teach was shut down by Cardinal Adam Maida, along with 15 other city and inner-ring suburban schools. The Archdiocese claims to have tried to work with those schools to get them "financially correct." The school was founded in 1967 in the wake of the Detroit Rebellion explicitly to realize the "urban mission" of the Detroit Archdiocese. It has used sit-ins and picket lines in the past in order to remain open in times of financial crisis. Now it is rumored that the Archdiocese is negotiating a business proposition to reopen the closed schools as charter schools. But they won't talk to a group of alumni, the campus priest and parents who are trying to open the school under its own charter. The campus priest summed it up when he said, "Never let your Catholicism interfere with your spirituality."

--Teacher, Detroit

The day before the male leaders of the Catholic Church reaffirmed their determination to keep women in their place by selecting one of the most reactionary of their own as the new Pope, a group of Catholic women demonstrated at Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral for more decision-making power in the church. Citing an estimated 500 million Catholic women worldwide, the demonstrators set off pink smoke (as a male passerby shouted "heresy") to symbolize the absence of women in this important selection process. "Every country, every race, every ethnic origin is welcome and represented in the Sistine Chapel--provided you are male," said the executive director of the national Coalition of American Nuns. As the pink smoke billowed skyward, a 90-year-old grandmother cheered.

--Mary Jo Grey, Chicago

The new Pope Benedict XVI is credited as being opposed to the death penalty and to war. But in 2004, in a memorandum he sent to U.S. Catholic bishops he made it clear that "not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.... While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals...there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not, however, with regard to abortion and euthanasia." Isn't that what they call "religious grocery shopping" when they criticize Catholic women for practicing birth control?

--Just wondering, Illinois

Human needs

In "A look at the young Marx's humanism" on the Youth Page of the March-April issue, Carlos Saracino says that "Marx does not merely confine his view of human need to scientific and economic development, but also to all sorts of creative activity, from art to poetry." I really liked where he was going with that. But in his conclusion, where he is looking at the real value of exploring those non-material dimensions of being human he says theory acquires its merit "insofar as it is practical theory, that is insofar as it has the power to influence and direct action." But do poetry and art need to lead to directing action if "human power is its own end"?

--David, Oakland, Cal.

Torture and human rights

The ACLU and Human Rights First have sued Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for having responsibility for U.S. torture policies. The lead counsel in the lawsuit said he bears direct and ultimate responsibility "by personally authorizing unlawful interrogation techniques and abdicating his legal duty to stop torture." Rumsfeld is charged with violating the U.S. Constitution and international law in the lawsuit. Earlier he was named in an indictment in Germany alleging war crimes. Things are looking up for those who believe in the rule of law. Eventually perhaps Bush can be prosecuted, along with his stooges for invading Iraq under false pretenses and causing the deaths of 1,500 U.S. service persons as well as over 100,000 Iraqis.

--Anti-war activist, Louisiana

For the first time in Chicago history, a Cook County Court Judge has granted a hearing on the issue of police torture. A packed court room of students and family members was on hand to hear Judge Nicholas Ford dismiss Attorney General Lisa Madigan's petition to deny a new hearing for police torture victim Robert Omelas. It opens the door for his attorney to argue for a new trial because his confession was extracted through torture. The next court date for Omelas is June 21. The Attorney General's office has been trying to shut down each torture case as it comes up and this decision opens the door for potential new hearings for all the torture victims.

--Human Rights activist, Chicago

Helen Macfarlane and Rosa Luxemburg

David Black is to be thanked greatly for letting us hear the thoughts of Helen Macfarlane in his book on this "feminist, revolutionary journalist, and philosopher in mid-19th century England." That history really seemed very "todayish" to me, especially when I read how she had responded to being asked to venerate the "wisdom of our ancestors." After asking "which ones?" and going through a long list, she described how she shuddered to think of the "wisdom of Dutch William, and the treacherous, mean, sneaking, rascally aristocrats who placed him on the throne." Reading that, don't names like Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and George Bush come to your mind?

--Educator, Illinois

There are two seemingly opposite ways to eviscerate a revolutionary legacy. One is to make the revolutionary an icon, as is done with M.L. King and Che Guevara, among others. The other is to forget about them altogether. The latter seemed to be the fate of Rosa Luxemburg. But as recent issues of N&L have been proving, Luxemburg is being rescued from history's dustbin. Terry Moon's column in the March-April N&L helps ensure that her legacy does not go from one form of forgetting into the other form of seeing her only as a martyr and a symbol, rather than the real life and ideas that need an active engagement.

--Feminist lecturer, California

In Black's book one gets a sense of Macfarlane as a theorist and activist. Just as Dunayevskaya showed with her study of Luxemburg, it is a story that is a challenge to the Women's Liberation Movement not to leave theory to others.

--Male women's liberationist, New York

Dialectics of Black Freedom Struggles

What was so important to me in the article by Khalfani Malik Khaldun published as a "philosophic dialog" in the January-February N&L, was the way he saw American Civilization on Trial, a document written in the early 1960s, as what actually points the way to the future in that it "arms the new activist with the tools of empowerment, especially for anyone who seems to be feeling that the struggle is dead."

I found his comments on the way our "much praised institutions of representative government, voting and constitutional laws have never proved adequate for providing universal human rights" especially relevant to the recent class series N&LC have been holding on "Beyond Capitalism" where we are examining what "democracy" means concretely. Anyone trying to analyze the recent elections in Iraq would benefit greatly from reading this essay.

--Committee member, Chicago

50 years of NEWS & LETTERS

As News and Letters Committees celebrates its first 50 years of existence we have to look back to see all that has happened in those 50 years: the Civil Rights Movement, the continuing struggle for the rights of women. and a newfound understanding for all relating issues of sexual preference. We have witnessed the fall of Communism and the reaffirmation of the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism. We have seen the tragedies of Kosova, Rwanda, and September 11, 2001. And we have seen youth rise up and be heard.

Throughout those 50 years N&L has reported the stories of the masses, often the only forum where those voices were shared with the rest of the world. When genocide reared its ugly head, N&L voices were often the first or only voices to speak out. In Memphis, California, Chicago, New York, Detroit, and around the world, for the last 50 years N&LC has been at the forefront of every historical (people-oriented) event of history and has reported it diligently.

I was surprised at the decision in this landmark year to change the publishing run of the publication. At a time when people are finding themselves in the midst of unparalleled change even greater than the fall of the Soviet Union and its distorted views of Marxism, we should be moving forward, providing more fuel for the revolutionary fires.

One of the first things I do after reading each issue of the paper is to read the section called "Who we are and what we stand for" or the Constitution of N&LC which states: "It is our aim...to promote the firmest unity among workers, Blacks and other minorities, Women, youth, and those intellectuals who have broken with the ruling bureaucracy of both capital and labor." We do not separate mass activities from the activity of thinking, it states. It is necessary to be careful, then, to have a balance of theory and philosophy, and to define how that relates to practice as N&L reaches out to the men and women of the Mississippi Delta and the Appalachians, to the scholar at Columbia as well as to the worker in Detroit or Gary, as well as to the young Asians or Hispanics working in sweatshops or in the fields.

"The whole movement of history," wrote Marx in 1844, "is, on the one hand, the actual act of creation--the act by which its empirical being was born; on the other hand, for its thinking consciousness, it is the realized and recognized process of development." Let N&LC grow and develop so that 50 years from now we can see true and permanent revolutionary change.

--Robert Taliaferro, Wisconsin

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Mumia Abu-Jamal

Several hundred people turned out to demand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal on April 23, the day before his 51st birthday. He has been on Pennsylvania's death row for the past 22 years, following an unfair trial for murder by a racist judge. With widespread U.S. and international support, he has galvanized opposition to the death penalty and the criminal injustice system, but the movement to win a new trial and to actually free Mumia has dwindled over the past several years.

He still faces the possibility of execution and remains in jail for a crime he denies committing. This "birthday celebration" was the first major rally on his behalf in New York for some time. It was sponsored by an unlikely coalition of formerly competing Mumia support organizations, including the ubiquitous Workers World Party front groups, anti-prison groups, Maoist groups, and such "respectable" people as former Mayor David Dinkins and the head of the Westchester County NAACP.

At the rally, Mumia called for a demonstration in Philadelphia May 14 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the massacre there of 11 men, women and children from the MOVE organization. That African-American organization had been protesting the unfair incarceration of its members when the government bombed and destroyed two Philadelphia city blocks in order to dislodge MOVE members from their homes. Nine members remain in jail today, and Mumia has repeatedly called for their release and for justice for the survivors of the massacre.

--Mumia defense activist, Harlem, New York

Social security and race

Julian Bond and other NAACP leaders hit it on the head when they accused Bush of "playing the race card" in his attempt to sell his Social Security proposals. What is needed is looking at why Black people have a shorter life span--instead of just citing it or saying that relatives of people who die before retiring sometimes don't receive benefits under the present system. The average span for a newborn Black male is 69, compared with 75 for a newborn white male. I haven't seen any response from Bush to this sharp critique.

--Octogenarian, Chicago

The Black/Red column on "What is freedom?" (March-April N&L) was an educational in seeing the origins of the 14th amendment. Bourgeois truth always hides the truth of history in mercenary, cold, hard, anti-human language about settling debts. Reading this column made me want to hear more about Social Security because so much of our discussion of civil society issues have been oriented around balance sheet, fiduciary language instead of what is freedom. In the Civil Rights Movement we could see the descendents of free slaves still demanding to be recognized as human and they are still doing so.

--Asian American, California

I thought of John Alan's column on "What is freedom?" where he took up the beginning of public debt, when the news showed Bush going to West Virginia, holding up the U.S. securities that comprise the Social Security fund and saying "These are just IOUs" as though that meant they are worthless. Those securities belong to workers. If he did that to securities held by Chinese or Japanese capitalists the world economy would collapse in a flash. The debt owed to capitalists is "sacrosanct." Bush is all for "using up" workers, whether on the battlefield, at work or in retirement.

--Retiree, California

Capitalist health care

It is hard to stay well under capitalism. Because ill health is a reflection of the living conditions and the environment, it is those issues that need attention. Looking at the richest countries in the world we find extremes in the delivery of care. For America, popular culture would have it that the main cause of death would be gunshot wounds. But the greatest cause of death among young Black Americans is asthma. A section of the population are dying because they cannot breathe. 

For the rest of the population the greatest killers are obesity, smoking and heart disease. The other great killer is auto accidents. But the sad part is depression and self-inflicted deaths. Anyone who has tried to swat a fly knows the organism will struggle to survive. If the human will to live can become self-destructive shouldn't we question not the victims but the society?

--Nurse, Britain

Future of movements against capital

In his report on the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (March-April N&L), Peter Hudis writes that many speakers "virtually equated 'neo-liberalism' and even capitalist globalization with the U.S." and that "the 'Iraqi resistance' was uncritically heralded...on the grounds that opposing the U.S. as the enemy of humanity trumps all other concerns." Do I sense a note of offended patriotism in his text? When Bush talks about democracy he means capitalism and markets at any cost. "Neo-liberalism" is a perfectly good characterization of the "laissez-faire" that assures the subordination of the Third World to the interests of U.S. business and their minor partners in Europe and Japan. If we shouldn't be uncritical about the war in Iraq we should have the same care about "democracy" at home.

--Carlos Silva, Internet inhabitant

Hudis' report on Porto Alegre was fascinating in bringing out the breadth of discussions that took place in Porto Alegre. His critique of those who uncritically hail the armed resistance in Iraq pinpoints the main problem facing the anti-war movement in the U.S. It has failed to understand that most Iraqis hate the fundamentalist militias as much as they hate the U.S. It has a lot to do with why so many Iraqis came out to vote in January--much to the surprise of many anti-war activists in the U.S.

--Iranian exile, Los Angeles

The World Social Forum was by no means a socialist grouping. It is a big tent. It represents a critique of domination. They believe that the most important thing is the WSF itself.

Sociology Professor

New York

China's worries

It is curious that the Chinese government permitted rallies to protest Japan's atrocities against China in WW II, only to soon demand that they cease. Since the Chinese Communists murdered far more Chinese since 1949 than the Japanese did during WWII, I wonder if the regime is worried that the Chinese people are not so selective in their memories as the regime may wish.

--Observer, Chicago

Slave labor in 2005

I share every issue of N&L with others on my tier. Many of us consider ourselves Marxist. It is important to see the truth of everyday life in our right-wing country, to show the world how the blue collar laborer is exploited so the wealthy can continue to grow in this country. As I live in the concentration camp called prison and have to deal with the storm troopers here I am learning the meaning of slave labor. We work to make money for the prison and we see none of it. Even the few rights we have are being taken away. It's not just the political prisoners who are harassed. It is all of us. Please continue to make public the abuses unleashed behind these walls.

--Prisoner, California

Learn more about Marx's value theory of labor

Marx's Capital and Today's Global Crises by Raya Dunayevskaya

"Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power."

--Karl Marx (1875)

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