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NEWS & LETTERS, June -July 2007

Readers' Views

Contents:

CORPORATE CAPITALISM'S AGENDA FOR TODAY

Coal companies as they existed 50 years ago are a thing of the past. Virtually all of them are now a part of huge energy corporations, and they are salivating about new legislation being proposed to produce gasoline from coal. The technology to do this has long been known, and a few such facilities exist, but they can't compete with low-cost oil. High-cost oil, however, does make it feasible to compete. But because such coal-to-liquid facilities are very expensive, the coal interests are demanding guarantees, and among them is that the Department of Defense commit itself to a 25-year contract to buy it. We're talking here about staggering amounts of billions of dollars. During World War II, corporations had their cost-plus contracts, and in Russia, Stalin had his five-year plans, but those guys were pikers compared to these coal consortiums.

--Ex-coal miner, Detroit

* * *

I'm sick and tired of hearing complaints about how "Chinese" goods are flooding the world market, taking away jobs and destroying local businesses. How come almost no one tells us that the companies making these "Chinese" goods are transnational corporations, most of whose profits end up in the U.S.? There is a lot of racism in this talk of the "invasions" of cheap Chinese goods that fits the agenda of corporate capitalism.

--Angry worker, Chicago

* * *

When it was first reported that Cerebrus Equity would buy Chrysler Corporation from Diamler-Benz, both Canadian Auto Workers union President Buzz Hargrove and United Auto Workers president Ron Gettlefinger said they were assured that Chrysler would not be gutted, and repeated those assurances to their rank-and-file workers. It reminded me of the time several years ago when Diamler-Benz merged with Chrysler and everyone was assured that it was a merger of co-equals and that Diamler-Benz did not control. Rank-and-file workers knew better and said the German company was their new boss--and they were right, of course. They are skeptical about the most recent assurances about not gutting Chrysler, and hoping they are wrong about their doubts.

--Auto observer, Detroit

* * *

Everyone at work talks about how awful it is that the corporate execs are making these huge bonuses while we are struggling to get by. Everyone is sick of the Iraq war and sees Bush as a total imbecile. No one argues with me that this system stinks. But then nothing happens. It's because nobody ever talks about what's the alternative. You have to start doing that, otherwise people will stop listening to you.

--Employee, Rosemont, Illinois

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UPROOT LAW OF VALUE

To this day, some Marxist theoreticians act on the basis of Stalin's order to break from the structure of Marx's CAPITAL. In her column in the last issue, Raya Dunayevskaya shows it is done to get away from Marx's analysis of the commodity and thereby hide "social relations behind the fetishism of commodities." The Stalinists could retain the theory of labor as the source of value by acting as if it is a quantitative matter -- as long as they can hide the qualitative determination of value and abstract labor as alienating and exploitative. So today any perspective of uprooting the capitalist law of value has to revolve around how a new human society can break down that alienation of labor.

Those who want to change Marx's theory to begin from something other than the commodity end up far from this perspective.

--Revolutionary, Memphis

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GLOBAL WARMING OR REVOLUTION?

The editorial last issue on climate change was good but I think too general to be controversial. It rightly points out that the debate is no longer a fight for recognition of the problem. Theorizing a solution requires getting more specific and asking difficult questions with no easily forthcoming answers. The fundamental issue seems to revolve around discovering an abundant renewable source of energy to rival energy-intensive fossil fuels. Is it possible to solve the problem of climate change within capitalism? Capital's relentless drive for accumulation has created the problem and often been an obstacle to a solution, but could accumulation not continue with different sources of fuel? I can imagine a three-fold increase in the price of oil necessarily breeding invention. Nor can we simply assume socialism will provide a solution. If socialism means more productivity, will the problem persist? If we continue to rely on oil, I don't see why it wouldn't. This is why so many eco-activists turn away from socialism and look to small-scale economies of the past for a "solution."

Marxist-Humanism is uniquely poised to contribute to this battle of ideas. We won't know what opportunities socialism may open up unless we continue to theorize an alternative to capitalism. Could it be that the solutions to the ecological problems of this current mode of production are the same as those for a new mode of production? We should think about it more.

--J. Skolnik, Brooklyn, New York

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END OF WELFARE

Some "Readers' Views" in the February-March issue implied that my analysis of "the end of welfare" as part and parcel of the capitalist system excludes or neglects the forces of sexism, racism and ideology. They do not see that those factors do not comprise separate systems in the world but are aspects of a totalizing capitalist system which incorporates into itself all the "isms" that help it to divide and conquer the working class. People who avoid theorizing capitalism today in favor of abstract denunciations of various oppressions have little chance of contributing to Marx's or Dunayevskaya's ideas, which center on the need to transcend capitalism as vital to women and everyone else striving to build a new society.

--Anne Jaclard, New York

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ANTI-ABORTION LUNACY

There are many things that show how lunatic the anti-abortion crowd is. The latest is their effective protest against the new vaccine, Gardasil, that protects women from the virus that causes most cervical cancer. To be effective, it should be given to girls entering the sixth grade. The fanatics insist that giving girls this life-saving vaccination would promote promiscuity! Forget the actual facts that it doesn't; and that even if a woman or girl has only one sexual partner the virus is so pervasive in our society that she could still get the disease. Forget further that one in four women age 14 to 59 is already infected with HPV. While we know those protesting are lunatics, what of the governors and others who cave in to their ludicrous demands?

--Women's liberationist, Memphis

* * *

RECLAIMING MARX'S CAPITAL

The excerpts in the April-May issue from Andrew Kliman's RECLAIMING MARX'S 'CAPITAL' show that the standards of interpretation, argumentation, and reasoning, which no one any longer seems to think necessary, are in fact vital for revolutionary thought. Too many radicals don't realize that more than hope and propaganda is needed in the battle of ideas. If Marx's theories of value, price, profit and crisis don't hang together in a coherent way, we might as well throw out all of CAPITAL because it would be worthless as anything more than a book of inspiration. This is the most important point the excerpts made.

--Joshua Howard, New Space, New York City

* * *

I found the excerpts from RECLAIMING MARX'S 'CAPITAL' very thought provoking. The debate surrounding Marx’s trenchant analysis and practical theorizing on the destabilizing effects of the fundamental mechanisms of the capitalist mode of production is, it appears, ongoing. The labor theory of value and its complement, the theory of the falling rate of profit, are central, even today, to a correct modern analysis of political economy. Yet capitalist propaganda has employed a subtle sleight of hand coupled with smoke and mirrors to obscure their assured validity.

--Christopher Thomas, Florence, Arizona

* * *

MALALAI JOYA NEEDS YOUR URGENT HELP!

After Malalai Joya's return from a successful international tour and interview with a local TV station in Kabul, the warlords and criminals in the Afghan Parliament and Senate tried hard to silence Joya and kick her out of the Parliament.

They have used one of her recent comments during an interview as a justification for their move. In the interview, she expressed that the Afghan Parliament is worse than an animal stable whose many members are the murderers and enemies of Afghan people. On May 21, 2007, the Parliament, dominated by warlords and drug-lords, suspended Joya for three years and ordered the High Court to file a case against her. They also directed the Interior Ministry to restrict her movements to within the country.

In a press conference in Kabul, Joya announced that she will continue her fight against the warlords and drug lords. She is ready to face an independent court and will use the opportunity to expose the enemies of the Afghan people. The majority of ordinary Afghan people strongly support Joya and she is receiving many phone calls, letters and emails of solidarity. We urge all her supporters and well-wishers to help Joya by filing your protest with Afghan officials for expelling Joya while the terrorists and human rights violators in the parliament were provided immunity before any court for their past crimes.

Write to mi@malalaijoya.com for addresses to send your letters of protest.

--Defense Committee for Malalai Joya

* * *

IMMIGRATION REFORM  

The proposed immigration reform bill is wrong because no people are illegal. The guest worker program is just exploiting the immigrants who would be doing the work at sub-minimum wage. After 8 to 10 years they would have to go back in line and pay a fine of $5000, another form of exploiting them. It would bog down the process of getting here legally. This is another example of how wrong our foreign policy is. But there is no way to get a good foreign policy out of capitalism; we need a complete change of our system. It would be better if there were a cross-border program like Doctors without Borders, to help people instead of exploiting them as our government does. 

--Dan P., Michigan

* * *

WHAT'S IMPEACHABLE? 

Why were the Republicans able to so easily impeach Bill Clinton, yet a Democratic Congress cannot even pass a veto-proof Iraq funding bill that includes a date for troop withdrawal? Disgusting as the Monica Lewinsky scandal was, how could that be considered worse (an impeachable offense) than a four years-and-counting unconscionable war that has killed so many thousands of people on both sides that we don't even know the exact number. How can a president with barely a 30% approval rating have the upper hand? And we have more than a year and half to an election that could give us something even worse.

--Mary Jo Grey, Chicago

* * *

ANTI-WAR STRUGGLES

Our counter-recruitment group had our first experience with an information table at a Memphis High School. We set up in the cafeteria and it went great. The kids were really interested, took our literature and talked with us. Mike always has a piece of duct tape with the number of U.S. military women and men who have been killed in Iraq stuck to his shirt. The students asked about it and several of them started pinning the numbers to their shirts and blouses as well. As of May 27 that number was 3,454. 

--Counter-recruitment activist, Memphis

* * *

Htun Lin's column, "Iraq war follows wounded vets home" in the April-May N&L exposes the oft-repeated lie of Bush-Cheney and the Right that it is the Left that does not support the troops, implying that they do. Since it is the right wing, because they have been in control, who have allowed the returning wounded to be abused and neglected, their deceit is laid nakedly bare. Since so many Louisianans have expressed their disgust with the situation, as I have, Republican Congressman Charles Boustiani gestured his concurrence by visiting regional facilities for the hospitalized vets. According to correspondence I received from his office, he, too, was "outraged." But total indifference to the veterans has been the rule throughout the history of the U.S. Have we so easily forgotten the veterans of the Vietnam War? Do we not realize millions of them number among the homeless?

Letters and petitions are OK as long as nothing else can be done, in the short term. But in the longer term revolutionary change is in order concerning the ways our leaders find to engage us in the wars that create the torn veterans.

Thanks are owed to N&L for printing the real news. I'm enclosing a small donation to help you keep going.

--Supporter, Louisiana

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THE BRITISH SCENE 

What do the recent UK local elections mean? For the ruling class, nothing. The show goes on. There is a fragmentation of the national political groups, the growth of nationalism and racism and the absence of sense. The anti-war party of the liberals appears to have collapsed. The Labour Party is claiming a victory as their organization shrinks. The Conservatives are claiming a victory and indeed gained an extra 800 councillors. Local politics has historically been seen as dominated by corruption and opportunism. The lack of interest and control has not changed despite local government reforms. The growth of postal voting has helped speed up the opportunity for fraud and rigging.

--Patrick, London

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NORTHERN IRELAND: IS THE CONFLICT OVER? 

Is the conflict in Northern Ireland over at last? Two parties that historically represent opposite extremes of the national question -- the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein -- have become unlikely partners in the province's devolved government. The divide between Protestants/Unionists and Catholics/Republicans has been contained and institutionalized rather than overcome in this new political settlement. The society remains very divided, with the two communities often living in separate neighborhoods and going to separate schools. However, the desire for peace is strong in both communities. Now that the national question has reached a weary compromise, social issues may come to the fore. The economic context has been transformed as the Republic of Ireland has undergone such rapid economic growth that it has overtaken the United Kingdom in GDP per head. 

--Richard Bunting, Oxford

* * *

VOICES FROM WITHIN PRISON WALLS 

I am an aspiring writer/composer. Enclosed are a few words I wrote down for your review:

It's a death threat being anti-oppression.

Battling disfranchise and abuse with strong speculations.

Generating knowledge and strength into a useful weapon.

Articulate and bear arms for legitimate reasons.

Allegiance and stoned hearts against foul agony.

The stronger, more aggrandized.

Can't stop, nor can the enemy keep a warrior down.

It's strife until death or victory.

Equality as a whole in all human life is demanded.

Irregardless of geographical or affiliation differences.

For all who recognize oppression against them, delete criminal mindset and rebirth with the revolution.

--Prisoner, Corcoran, California

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