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NEWS & LETTERS, February-March 2006

Readers' Views

Contents:

TARGETING THE LAW OF VALUE: ON MARX AND MARXIST HUMANISM

Thanks for sharing the outline of the new book you are planning as a combination of Marx's and Dunayevskaya's works. What a great idea! I am particularly interested in the proposed chapter about how the USSR was a capitalist society. I have always been puzzled by the contradiction of considering the USSR socialist. I am often called a "communist" for my idealism or concern for community. Depending on who is calling me a communist, I am offended or honored. If someone means the communism Marx referred to in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO I am honored. Most people use the swear word and I am offended because they don't know what it means. My question is how the difference between communism and socialism is played out in the real world.

--Reader and supporter, Massachusetts

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In Dunayevskaya's column on "The law of value in capitalist society" (November-December N&L) her critique of "Marxist" economists in the U.S. who accepted that Marx's law of value can exist in a socialist country, reminded me of how some U.S. and Canadian governments have dealt today with the problem of regulating the levels of various contaminants to the environment. She showed that when the Soviet economists were faced with the economic reality of extracting surplus value from Russian workers as a matter of state policy, they had the choice of revising the notion that the USSR was a socialist state or revising Marx's notion that the law of value is specific to capitalism. As she pointed out, they took, not surprisingly, the more convenient option of revising Marx. 

In certain jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada, when it was determined that deadly contaminants in the air are a product of the incineration of solid waste, such as furans and dioxins, had risen beyond what was considered safe levels, it put them in the uncomfortable position of having to take costly measures in order to comply with their own environmental regulations. However, a less onerous path was available to them. They simply lowered the standards so that the existing levels were no longer "considered" to be unsafe. Problem solved--and the politicians, although not the population, could breathe easier.

--Roger, Ecuador

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Your periodical is the best source of information of a political nature in circulation today. Your writers demonstrate not only the practicality of the concept Marxist-Humanism, but its underlining relevance to social relations beyond capitalism. I have to underscore the importance of the writings of Dunayevskaya. Her unyielding resolve to not compromise or misrepresent Marx's Marxism distinguishes N&L from all other so-called Marxist publications.

--Strong supporter, Crescent City, California

* * *

As one who has been trying to generate discussions on the importance of Marx at my college, I found Andrew Kliman's essay on "A new look at the Russian revision of Marx's concept of 'directly social labor'" very helpful. Whenever I discuss Marx students keep raising the objection that the USSR was in some way "socialist" and so Marx is a thing of the past. Kliman's discussion of how the USSR could not have been socalist because the law of value and indirectly social labor prevailed in it undercuts the central objection many have to accepting the relevance of Marx's ideas.

--Carlos, Purdue University

* * *

I want to thank Andrew Kliman for pointing out the fallacy of the Stalinist claim that the USSR was "socialist" because in it labor was directly social. Kliman's discussion of how labor was not directly social in the USSR helps us see why the USSR was state-capitalist. Marx often argued that directly social labor does not exist in capitalism. So did Dunayevskaya. She wrote: "If goods were produced by labor in direct social relations there would be no two-fold character of labor and the reason for the social division of classes and the realization of surplus value would vanish...that is preliminary to full communism."

--Student of Marxist-Humanism, Chicago

* * *

Although the debate in the 1940s over whether the law of value operated in the Soviet economy may seem distant to today, Oskar Lange and Paul Baran's response to Dunayevskaya's "A New Revision of Marxian Economics"  foreshadowed the positions that defined radical theory in the decades afterward. Lange's argument that the law of value is compatible with "socialism" anticipated today's "market socialists," whereas Baran's discomfort with the idea that the law of value operates under socialism anticipated the views of Mao and Pol Pot, who thought the total supression of the market equals "socialism." We have a lot to learn for today from both Dunayevskaya's critics and her response to them.

--Sociologist, Illinois

THE BLACK WORLD

The domestic terrorism laws in Los Angeles that Georgiana William's wrote about in the November-December issue are not new. The most aggressive one was passed in 2000, called Proposition 21. The war on Black youth in the U.S.--especially Black males--is a universal constant, and the Black community is losing what clout it used to have, now that Democrats and Republicans are courting the Hispanic and Asian communities. When crack cocaine was first being introduced into the country, especially into the Black communities, the leadership should have been screaming about where the stuff was coming from and who was bringing it in for the youth to use or sell.

As Williams noted, Black kids don't have planes or the resources to fly that stuff from Colombia or Panama. It wasn't seen as a real problem until middle-class white kids started getting cracked out, until the hood came downtown with the guns. Had it stayed in the ghetto with just the money coming downtown, no one would have cared except the communities of color. The Black leadership disenfranchised itself by feeding into the hype of "law and order" that was being sold to them like a sordid bill of goods that really didn't pertain to them at all.

--Prison rights activist, Wisconsin

* * *

I'm annoyed at the way everyone is getting on the bandwagon about Rosa Parks. If my memory doesn't fail me, Parks worked in the office of the Pullman Porters Union Hall. Contact with A. Philip Randolph certainly had some influence on her determination. Randolph forced FDR to integrate the military by threatening to march on Washington! He resisted all kinds of pressure to call off the march, even by some union "leaders." I appreciated your material on Rosa. Keep up the good work.

--Former member, UAW-UE-Teamsters, Philadelphia

LABOR DIMENSION TODAY

During the Sago mine disaster there was a TV interview with Wilbur Ross Jr., CEO of the International Coal conglomerate that owns the mine. He said he had not taken over the mine until November 2004, so his company wasn't responsible for the many safety violations of the last year. Now the truth has come out that he had owned the company that owned the mine since at least 2001, which he conveniently did not mention.

--Retired worker, Michigan

* * *

I went to the TWU rally for the transit strikers in midtown during the negotiations. There were thousands of workers there, many from other unions in support: hotel workers, retail clerks, nurses, teachers, janitors, and more. The transit workers I talked with were concerned about their health benefits. One said the MTA proposal would reduce sick days from 12 to seven a year. Another complained that their health insurance co-payments are too high: $45 per doctor's visit. It is clear that the bourgeois press saying that the workers are well off and that the strike is only about a two-tiered future is dead wrong.

--Strike supporter, New York City

* * *

About 500 members of "Soldiers of Solidarity"--UAW members from threatened companies like Delphi, Ford and GM--picketed the press opening of the Detroit International Auto Show on Jan.  8. Although they hoped to attract national and international coverage, the local reporting was minimal. Ramifications, however, of the corporate scramble for profits played out in corporate mergers and downsizing which are moves to break unions and get rid of underfunded pension and health care costs, will be major, both locally and internationally.

I finally unearthed a statistic for unemployment in the City of Detroit: 15%. It is probably double or triple for young people. As people are laid off, taxes decline and Detroit has cut services like buses, which are at best very unreliable for taking city residents to the jobs further and further out in the suburbs.

--Teacher, Detroit

* * *

The Living Wage movement is building toward a victory for working people in Memphis. A rally on International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, in Church Park on Beale Street brought 150 community, church and labor activists together. The rally was organized to mobilize support for a local ordinance that will require that a living wage be paid to all employees of the city, of all companies that receive tax deferrals, and those that directly contract with the city. The ordinance defines living wage as $10 with benefits, or $12 without benefits.

There will be a swift and strong corporate backlash to the living wage law, if the ordinance is passed. But in light of the stirring transportation strike and victory in New York, maybe the tide is turning for workers. The success of the Living Wage Movement may be a major turning point for organized labor.  Making wages not a workplace issue but a community issue would be a groundbreaking transition for all workers.

--Rally participant, Memphis

* * *

The major issue here is the restructuring of union contracts and job losses that will be affecting Detroit. Jobs will grow scarcer and harder to get for city residents. For example, nursing home jobs like nurses aides are in the suburbs, and bus service is worse than ever. Those jobs pay up to $9 an hour. In the city, my friend who works at a fast food place makes $5.25 an hour and often gets no lunch break. The vision of collective action doesn't seem to be around any longer.

--Still employed, Detroit

THE OKLAHOMA SCENE

Hurricane Katrina created thousands of "displaced" people who have relocated to states like Oklahoma and Texas. Aside from looking for new jobs, housing and means of transportation, those with chronic illnesses are having trouble finding health care and facilities. Also, accusations of price-gouging on the part of oil companies have been skeptically dismissed as empty rhetoric by many here.

It is hard to justify the recent federal energy bill which gives generous subsidies to the energy industry, including nuclear power. The priority of "energy policy" seems to be a hodgepodge of giveaways unlikely to achieve its stated goals of ensuring energy and limiting consumption. We have often criticized excessive farm subsidies as harming farmers in developing countries, such as cotton farmers in Africa. A recent attempt to close local Farm Service offices funded by the Agricultural Department was widely criticized by local officials. The Agriculture Department backed down from the local-office closing plan. Programs such as soil and wetlands conservation require registration and sign-up, which usually occur at the local FSA office. I am less sure that agricultural subsidies are harmful to developing countries as a whole, but some products, such as tobacco and sugar, should not be subsidized at all.

--Allan Mui, Seminole, OK

* * *

A CORRECTION

Readers of N&L should know that a sentence appearing in last month's lead article was garbled through the author's haste. Anyone who has followed the actions of the Bush administration recognizes that the sentence "The rhetoric of democracy and humanitarianism was now wedded to strong military action, with the former taking dramatic precedence over the latter in practice" should read "with the latter taking precedence over the former."

--Kevin Michaels, Chicago

* * *

REMEMBERING DIXON COLLEY

"If what one is saying is right and one strongly believes it is, one should go on saying it up to one's grave." --D. Colley

Jan. 17 marks the fifth commemoration of the demise of William Charles Dixon Colley--a seasoned and principled journalist who was the doyen of the Gambia press. Uncle Dixon, as he was called, attended Wesley Primary and Boy's High School in Banjul, and when he completed his formal education, became a school teacher at his alma mater. His career as a media practitioner started during his school days. He was on the staff of the SUNDAY OBSERVER and a freelance journalist for the GUARDIAN in Port Harcourt, Nigeria in 1939. After becoming editor of AFRICAN OUTLOOK, an independent quarterly forum for Africans published in London in 1962, he became editor of AFRICA NYAATO and later of THE NATION, a newspaper in Banjul. He was a freelance correspondent for the GAMBIA ECHO, and in 1974 served as correspondent for BBC, Reuters, and SUNDAY EXPRESS in England.

He was the editor and proprietor of The Gambia's oldest newspaper, THE NATION from 1963 to 1993 and secretary general of The Gambia Press Union from 1983 to 1993. That year he was nominated as the Veteran Journalist in The Gambia for the International Organization of Journalists prize in Prague, Czechoslovakia in recognition of his long and dignified career. He stood for the principles of freedom of the press throughout his life and was known for his uncompromising stance. In spite of all the harassments in the course of his career, he remained unequivocally committed to the freedom of expression of the press and in general.

As part of celebrations marking the day, the new office of THE NATION newspaper--situated at Brikama kabafita, Brikama Town, P.O.Box 334, Banjul--was officially opened. The office also houses the William Dixon Colley Memorial Library for Newspapers, which gives Gambians and researchers the opportunity to have access to old and present newspapers published not only in The Gambia but elsewhere in the world as well.

--Fabakary Taal, The Gambia

WOMEN'S LIBERATION AND REVOLUTION

In her article in the November-December issue, Terry Moon addressed the category "Absolute Negativity as New Beginning" specifically for women by revisiting Raya Dunayevskaya's writings in WOMEN'S LIBERATION AND THE DIALECTICS OF REVOLUTION. I saw the crux of her argument as seeing Absolute Negativity as a new view of totality. One way I think of Absolute Negativity is as a process of the Universal particularizing itself in the Individual and the Individual cancelling its particularity. When Dunayevskaya named four forces for the American revolution, she was not adding to Marx something he omitted; she was pointing to several particulars specific to the American experience, one of which is women's liberation. From within a revolution women are a particular subjectivity that drives the idea of freedom for everyone.

The prevailing discourse among Marxists makes revolution into an abstract negation, as though the struggles for freedom in all its dimensions isn't absolutely integral to overcoming value production. When women recognize their struggle to be human in this process of the universal particularizing itself, there would be, to paraphrase Hegel, nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength.

--Urszula Wislanka, California

* * *

In 1984 Marxist-Humanists undertook a series of classes on Dunayevskaya's archives in order to relate those documents ranging from the 1920s to the 1980s to our current challenges and perspectives. When I prepared a report on women's liberation in those archives I took up the documents chronologically, finding that many of Dunayevskaya's writings presaged development in the new Women's Liberation Movement of the 1970s. Dunayevskaya, however, developed the chronological summation of her work philosophically. She arranged her writings into categories which brought out the women's dimension of revolution, past and present, all over the world. Her section "Women, Labor and the Black Dimension" revealed not only a hidden revolutionary history of action and thought, but its integrality with all revolutionary developments.

"Revolutionaries All" focused on revolutionary contributions of women revolutionaries. "Sexism, Politics and Revolution--is there an organizational answer?" showed the political distortions of the freedom movement which so quickly derailed revolutionary beginnings, answering the question in the negative and pointing toward Dunayevskaya's conclusion: "The missing link--philosophy--in the relationship of revolution to organization." As we confront today's increasingly conservative atmosphere (why have we allowed a TV program called "Wife Swap" to exist?) in which we still battle for reproductive freedom and economic security for women worldwide, Dunayevskaya's message is even more relevant if we are to achieve a new society based on human needs and freedom.

--Susan Stellar, Detroit

* * *

Editor's Note: To mark the 20th anniversary of Dunayevskaya's classic work, we have made it available at a special price to N&L readers for only $10 including postage. To order, click here

* * *

I am appreciative of the information and knowledge illustrated throughout the pages of N&L. I particularly appreciate brother John Alan's articles and those concerning women's liberation. I believe that without the woman, liberation and independence for any oppressed and disenfranchised people will not blossom into reality. It's important that we see to it that her humanity and rights are protected. Your paper emboldens brothers like me to take a stance against injustice and fight for something greater than our individual selves.

--Prisoner, Wisconsin

THE BRITISH SCENE

The system is wracked by crises with no alternative presented. The Conservative Party is rearming to reclaim center ground from both Labour and the Liberal party, which has cracked into left and right wings. The leader, Charles Kennedy, has been offered as a scapegoat under the pretext of his addiction to drink. No such impediment existed to the war-time leader, Winston Churchill. Indeed, the most successful reformed drunk is the leader of the western democratic movement, George W. Bush.

The focus on Kennedy's addictive or mental health problems shows the flaws in the British health service, where deaths due to alcohol addiction have doubled. Over 30 years ago, it was possible to access addictive disorder units and specialists. Many of those clinics have closed. Services are still possible at clinics where entrance may cost $20,000 or more. The penalty of non-treatment has recently been played out with the death of the football icon George Best. Kennedy may be deemed lucky to be able to afford private medical treatment. The irony is that the medical establishment has the highest incidence of drug and drink addiction and rates of suicide. The rising drink, drug and crime among the very young is the saddest part of the story.

--Pat Duffy, Britain

FIGHTING BUSH'S WAR

The bourgeois press is useless. Bush told a grotesque lie when he said that the number of Iraqis killed since the U.S. invasion was abut 30,000. In November 2004, THE LANCET, a prestigious British medical journal, concluded that 100,000 civilians had been killed in Iraq by then. Even when it was first announced, the press buried the story. This was no politicalized figure. The paper was written by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Baghdad's Al-Mustansiriya University and was based on a door-to-door survey of 8,000 people in 33 randomly selected locations in Iraq. The study showed that the risk of violent death had increased 58-fold since the war began. As is the norm in a war situation, more than half of those who died from violence and its aftermath since the invasion began were women and children. Where was just one reporter who could ask Bush about the study and expose his obscene lie?

--Sickened by the lies, Memphis

* * *

I liked the article in the November-December issue by Fernando Suarez del Sola, whose son's death inspired his Guerrero Azteca Peace Project--with one exception. I am a former soldier who volunteered in time of war and I remember vividly how soldiers were treated, even if they did not go to Vietnam. I supported the men and women serving around the world 100% because even though I do not agree with the politics of why we are there, I know the realities of being scared witless while someone is trying to kill you --regardless of whether it is for the right or wrong reasons. I remember how Taps sounds in real life when you are standing at attention, helping to fold a flag, and having to salute the mom, dad, sisters and brothers of a kid that you grew up with, trying to get them to believe that he died bravely and all that b.s. Remembering all that is why it bothers me when wanting to end this war so other troops don't get killed is equated to being a traitor and not supportive of the troops. Hell, what better way to support them than to want them out of harm's way?

--Robert Taliaferro, Wisconsin

* * *

The words of former Senator Eugene McCarthy bear remembering. In an interview a month before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he compared the Bush administration with the characters in the William Golding novel, LORD OF THE FLIES, in which a group of boys stranded on an island turn to savagery. "The bullies are running it," McCarthy said. "Bush is bullying everybody."

--Former postal worker, Battle Creek, Mich.

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