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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2007Readers' ViewsContents
I admire the principled stance of Lt. Ehren K. Watada. In his court martial, held in February, he agreed to the stipulation of the fact that he did miss troop movement. His legal defense was that the order to go to Iraq was an illegal order and that as an officer he was obliged not to follow an illegal order. Lt. Watada risked his freedom, if found guilty, in order to have a hearing in a military court about the legality of the orders to go to Iraq. The judge claimed that Lt. Watada was "confused" about his stipulation and ordered a mistrial. A new court martial is set for June. To see more about his case, go to http://www.thankyoult.org and express your support for Lt. Watada. --Anti-war activist, Oakland * * * Bush is losing this war on two fronts, one in Iraq and one here in the streets of America. I think the persistent marches for a just society in the U.S. and other nations may result in a tilt of power. The next step is to re-write the Constitution so that any president who lies and carries out war plans against the will of the majority will be recalled so that future presidents would not be allowed to unleash the barbarism Bush did just because by the Constitution he was allowed to do so. We deserve the right to recall corrupt leaders. --Manel, Los Angeles * * * Whereas your wider peace in Iraq movement appears to be just emerging, our peace movement in Britain emerged with a bang in 1953 and appears to have declined ever since. Largely no doubt because the SWP has so ardently tail-ended old hard-line Stalinists and new right-wing Islamists. But because the Stop the War Coalition they dominate has managed to maintain a grip on anyone who remains active on the issue, the more principled Left isn't managing to grow. It's not all bad; there is a lot of internet interest and every year a little over a thousand people visit the London Anarchist Bookfair. And there are others like it around the country. --Laurens Otter, England * * * Yanar Mohammed asks (February/March N&L) "if the U.S. troops were not there, why would these terrorists, fundamentalists be heading to Iraq and why would they stay?" Answer: for the same reasons they remained in Afghanistan after Russian forces left. To impose theocracy on the country and use it as a base for operations elsewhere. Also if Sunni and Shia fundamentalists fight each other to decide who will fill the power vacuum, militants from other countries will enter the fray on both sides. It is difficult to foresee whether an immediate American and British withdrawal would make the situation better or worse for the workers movement and secular and democratic Iraqis. I wish I could be more optimistic. --Richard Bunting, Oxford * * * We are faced today with the most arrogant and most criminal president ever to occupy the White House. George W. Bush's policies are unprecedented among all the administrations before him. He poses both an immediate and a long term threat to the safety and welfare of the people of this country and the world. Unfortunately, some seem to feel that getting rid of him is a peripheral issue and that he will be out of office soon anyway. What they seem to forget is that the dynamics his policies have set in motion will live long after his term in office. How long can the spirit endure before it either asserts itself or perishes in the face of its impotence? --Angry and worried, Springfield, IL * * * The front page article in the February/March 2007 N&L by an Iranian feminist on "Restive Currents below Iran's theocratic rule" points to the Iranian freedom movement as a beacon for the Middle East and the world. You don't get that anywhere else. It was important that she ended with ways we can express our solidarity and communicate with the student activists, the feminists and the Bus Drivers Union. --Mitch Weerth, California * * * The Lead about the dissident movements in Iran contains a wealth of information on recent protests by students, women and workers. Even more important is the discussion of the ideas being debated by Iran's secular movements and Islamic reformers. Apparently, the generation that grew up under theocratic repression following the 1979 revolution's transformation into un-freedom is not turned off from revolutionary theory, but on the contrary is thinking hard about what ideas are needed to propel the next revolution into a new society. What makes the article uniquely Marxist-Humanist is its attention to the power or ideas to determine what happens after the revolution. --Supporter of Iranian feminists, New York * * * The Iranian feminist writer did something that is very hard to accomplish. She showed the unfolding of concrete events in an explicit theoretical framework. One article can't say everything. An Iranian friend told me he really liked the article but wanted more in it about other non-Islamic opposition in Iran. But the theoretical framework presented resonates with situations in many places. Why were fundamentalists able to take over the revolution when most of those in the movement were Marxists? Are we sure that won't happen again? --Feminist lecturer, San Francisco * * * When we took N&L to the anti-war marches several were surprised we were talking about Iran when Iraq was what was on everyone's mind. They said we want to deal with the situation now, not examine the history. This kind of amnesia is to avoid any discussions based on the ideas. --Revolutionary, Oakland * * * Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach asserted in March that the rumored 30% cut in the Office of Women's Health annual budget would not have a negative impact on the office. "It's not to be viewed as a reduction of our commitment to women's health," he insisted. Is he kidding? --Women's liberationist, Illinois * * * MADRE, which bills itself as "demanding human rights for women and families around the world," hides some disgusting politics behind their rhetoric. In a press release and interview about their report, "Gender-based Violence and the U.S. War on Iraq," Yifat Susskind, communications director of MADRE, described how the report "documents the use of gender-based violence by Iraqi Islamists, brought to power by the U.S. overthrow of Iraq's secular Ba'ath regime." The only reason to mischaracterize the Ba'ath regime as "secular" is to paint the U.S. as the only enemy and say that if only the U.S. hadn't overthrown the "secular Ba'ath regime," things would be great for women. But in the interview, Iraqi feminist and member of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, Houzan Mahmoud, said, "I don't agree with this term, a 'secular Ba'athist,' because Saddam relied on religion in his latest years...he was trying to use Islam and become a Muslim leader among Arab countries." Yes, the U.S. is a powerful and dangerous enemy of freedom, but we don't do women any favors when we paint a monster like Hussein as "good" because he's an enemy of the U.S.! --Feminist, Tennessee * * * It turns out that Jean-Francois Plante was too far right even for the right-wing Canadian party, Action democratique du Quebec (ADQ). Revealing a stunning insensitivity wedded to inhumanity, Plante, who was running in the Montreal and Quebec City area, put on his website that he refused to wear a white ribbon in commemoration of the 14 women gunned down in 1989 at Ecole polytechnique. He was talking of when Marc Lepine took a gun and knife to the university, separated the women from the men, called them a "bunch of f------ feminists" and opened fire. Plante opined in his internet podcast, "We keep hearing this song every year about violence against women. What about violence against men?" Originally the leader of the ADQ defended Plante but eventually the outcry was so great that Plante had to go. --Terry Moon, Memphis * * * N&L celebrated IWD in Chicago by showing "Bread and Roses," Ken Loach’s 2000 film about the rebellion of Los Angeles women janitors, seeing it a precursor to today's immigration struggles. The opening scene is of illegal immigrants crossing the border between Mexico and the U.S. in a truck racing to the designation where they are to get off, exchange money, and reunite with their families. Anti-union activities, racism, threats of deportation, working to get a college education, desperate measures to get money, all are touched upon. One of the most powerful scenes to me was when one of the cleaning ladies, who happens to be Russian, when confronted with the selling out of those who want a union, expresses her concern that it would not be worth it. It highlights how one gets stereotyped. Of course there were the must-have love scenes and cultural conflicts, but its realism made it a very good film and appropriate for celebrating IWD. --Sue, Chicago * * * There were a number of memorials for Tillie Olsen (1912-2007) in the Bay Area. I attended the one organized by her family on Feb. 17. Several hundred family and friends as well as admirers of her work, especially teachers, librarians, and writers she inspired, came to celebrate her life and accomplishments. Many aspects of her life were brought forth: that as a daughter of an immigrant Jewish family she felt voices of people of her class/sex/background were not there in the books she lived to read; how much she loved music—several of her favorite songs from the Spanish Civil War were performed; how much she loved being a mother and the energy she put into making a community around every place she lived; and how, when she wrote, it was of her experiences from her heart. Far from appealing only to people in circumstances similar to hers, her writing carried a universal message of immigrants coming to a new land, as well as to all ordinary hard-working people. Those speaking at the Memorial brought out Tillie Olsen's multi-dimensional legacy, the impact teaching her writings had on students, her inspiring many ordinary people to tell their story. It was clear from the outpouring that her spirit will live on in those whose lives she touched. --Urszula Wislanka, Oakland * * * The United Mine Workers union's investigation of the Sego mine disaster that killed 12 miners last year gives a far different conclusion than the company. The company claims that a lightning strike that somehow traveled underground set off the methane explosion that resulted in the deaths, obviously to claim in the expected court action that it was an act of God. The UMW report implicates a faulty block stopping seal and a possible roof fall that created a spark to set off the methane gas accumulated due to the deficient seal. --Ex-miner, Detroit * * * I made it to New Orleans in December for 12 days to help stop the war on the poor. They sure need help. In the lower and upper ninth ward most homes are still empty. Some 77,000 homeowners applied for and are eligible for federal funds to rebuild but FEMA has been stonewalling. Only 632 families have received funds as of Feb. 15. Over 250,000 former New Orleans residents are still displaced persons. They are in Houston, Atlanta and elsewhere, unable to return because: 1) no funds to rebuild; 2) impossible to find affordable housing—rents have doubled in poor neighborhoods; 3) few buses are running in poor neighborhoods; 4) housing projects are closed and slated for bulldozing; 5) 30% of jobs are gone; 6) the only free hospital is being demolished. I hooked up with Commonground Collective, founded by Malik Rahim a few days after Katrina. While I was there, they asked for volunteers to gut houses. By day I gutted houses and by night I roamed the city taking photos. The collective provided us with three hot meals each day. We worked in teams of seven or eight women and men. After gutting the houses another crew treated them with a natural bacterial emulsion to wipe out at least 85% of the mold. New Orleans is waiting for your help. No more house gutting, but lots of other work is waiting for you. To check out groups who need your help, contact us at Welfare Warriors, 2711 W. Michigan St., Milwaukee, WI 53208 or e-mail us at wmvoice@execpc.com. --Pat Gowens, Director, Milwaukee, Wisconsin * * * COOPERATIVE LABOR: A CONTINUING DEBATE Two critiques of my response to Htun Lin, published in your last issue, seriously misreprent what I wrote. Ron Kelch claims that I “question[ed] the way Htun draws a relationship between workers striving to take control of their cooperation...and the reach for a non-value producing future." What I actually questioned were his claims that Marx held that “workers guide and direct themselves" in capitalist production (the very opposite of Marx’s actual view); and that "[e]very worker knows firsthand" that they guide and direct themselves. "David, California" claims that I critiqued the column for not being explicit about the need for revolution. Actually, I critiqued the concept of revolution it put forward for failing to include "breaking with the enslaving laws of capitalist production." --Andrew Kliman, New York * * * THEORY, REVOLUTION AND THE YOUNG MARX Eli Messinger's essay on Michael Löwy's "The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx" (February-March N&L) intriguingly highlights the dialectical interplay between working class activity and thought, and Marx's development of his concept of revolution. Yet he surpasses Löwy by singling out Marx's appropriation of Hegel's dialectic of negativity as integral to that development. As a result, Marx's concept of revolution goes beyond communism as goal, and thus lays ground for our day, when we are trying to make revolution real again, without letting it be equated to the "Communism" that spelled out exploitative state-capitalism in life. This deepens the meaning of the social revolution that Löwy insists is far more than political change. --Subscriber, Tennessee * * * Messinger's essay was a very well thought-out perspective on crucial moments of Marx's development between 1842-48. He exposed a prevailing misconception that Marx, in his so-called Feuerbachian period, wholly rejected Hegelian philosophy, which doesn't jibe at all with Marx's 1844 criticism of Feuerbach for rejecting Hegel's negation of the negation as merely an affirmation of theology. Reading Marx's 1842 "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" as I'm doing with a group here, I see it is easy to project, as some do, that Marx is totally burying the dead dog of Hegel in that work. At this point Marx is most closely associated with Feuerbach's criticism that Hegel's whole philosophy is an inversion that makes the subject into a mere attribute of the idea. Even at this early phase, Marx criticizes Feuerbach for bothering too much with nature while ignoring politics because, for Marx, "the only way to transform contemporary philosophy into reality is through an alliance with politics." Far from Marx rejecting Hegel's method, he says it is the "correct method" once the idea is an attribute of the subject (instead of the other way around). The way forward is through engaging political alienation in the "real" subject, which at this point for Marx is the family and civil society, out of which the state arose. What shapes Marx's whole critique is Hegel's posing of the state as a Kantian "ought" which ignores the necessary development through ideas which are an attribute of the "real" subject. Marx is holding Hegel to account for his dialectic which is about capturing the immanent and necessary development of the idea in contrast to Kant's stopping dead with a halfway dialectic. --Ron Kelch, California * * * I hope this year will be better than last year was, after former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega takes office as president. I'm hoping he will lower the interest rates on bank loans. Right now I'm working; I don't make much money, but it gives me a chance to apply for credit. Now we're getting a new government with Daniel and they say he will regulate various things. It will be a government of austerity that doesn't spend too much. I was very active in his campaign because I wanted to see a change. Many people supported him; his main support came from the youth. My children voted for him. People have hope that they will have more opportunities now. He is a person who wants to accomplish what he promised in the campaign. --Working woman, Nicaragua * * * I especially appreciated Htun Lin's reference, in his "Workshop Talks" column last issue, to Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" in commenting on the demonizing of undocumented workers. It brought his point home clearly and with grace. Political writing works better when it is not bombastic. From a psychological as well as a political point of view, I agree with his statement that for the worker a central concern "is how not to be forgotten as a human being." Indeed, the kinds of work we hope to see in the new society will further human growth in all its dimensions. His last paragraph posed two distinct paths for political development. The first referred to the struggle against the "rule of capital" to extract the most unpaid labor but did not explain that framework. The second referred to the extension of human solidarity which I find nebulous. I look forward to his future columns in which these paths can be further developed, including their relation to one another. --Psychiatrist, New York * * * The ongoing discussion in N&L on health care is important to read. At this time here in Britain the National Health Service has invested $40 billion on a system that will not work. It spends $14 billion on management consultants, 10% of its total NHS expenditure on private care, undisclosed wages for top brass and hospital consultants. At the same time young children are having limb amputations due to poor diabetic control. This seems to illustrate the importance of N&L in reaching for the truth and the facts. --Nurse, England * * * I've taken a lot of history courses but what Raya Dunayevskaya does for history in her essay on the "Black dimension and women's liberation" is to make history live and to show us how to look at what is happening today. The "language of freedom" she talks about is what we must try to hear today in all the struggles around International Women's Day, in all the struggles against male chauvinism. What you hear in those struggles is not always the language of freedom. You have to look hard for that double negation she mentions, especially the second negation, "the creation of the new." She gives a hint of that when she talks of Doris Wright wanting to know what comes after revolution and poses it as something we have "to answer before, in the practice of our own organizations, our own thought and our own activity." The Left—and indeed the world—would be a whole different, more liberated place if these words of hers were taken seriously and worked out. --Anti-war activist and feminist, Memphis * * * VOICES OF REASON FROM WITHIN THE WALLS I'm a Buddhist prisoner who was transferred to another prison for writing grievances in an attempt to obtain religious rights and to try to shut me up. It won't work because I just picked up the struggle here. Please wish me luck. Texas is hard to bear, especially for a passive Buddhist. --Buddhist Prisoner, Texas * * * Your paper is explosive. I was a drug addict and ran my family and friends away when I was free. My solace and company comes now from the prison library where I met Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, Mao and many others. I want to keep learning as much as I can about the world, which is why I want to thank the donor who provided a subscription for me to keep me reading and learning. --Prisoner, Cameron, Missouri * * * I have a question I hope you can answer. Are there any groups or individuals who are actually making solid plans for an alternative system by which I mean an alternative to capitalism? There seem to be many yelling about how terrible it is, and how something else must be created, but I have yet to read of any plans or attempts to actually do so. I really appreciate your paper. I hope you continue to spread alternative views. --Prisoner, Florida |
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