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Contents: "Challenging the dominance of capital in theory and practice" (N&L, August-September 2007) provided an excellent overview of where we stand in relation to the globalized capitalist order that is taking form. As you have said so often, theory must be hammered out from practice, rather than practice standing apart from theory. Theory must be shaped from revolutionary action adjusting to history as it unfolds. Otherwise, history will out-run theory every time, leaving it in the dust, so to speak, as it rushes forth towards its own destination. The ultimate objectives of revolutionary action must be focused on overthrowing the present order and replacing it with a new one that itself is shaped out of the ashes of the former. Keep up the good work. It is so necessary in a time of massive delusion politically.
* * * Sections I and II of your Perspectives Thesis are very clear. They give a good description of what confronts us as revolutionaries: economic developments in capitalism and phenomenal state forms since the 1930s within capitalist society. Hugo Chavez and the movement around him is interesting and at the same time alarming, considering his flirting with the rulers in Iran because of his course against the U.S. This got remarkably little attention of those who are propagating and defending his line of thinking. Many on the Left are following Chavez uncritically because they are still trapped in traditional "left" thinking which sees socialism only as collective ownership of the means of production and as nationalization by the state. They do not take seriously the lessons of history. They do not grasp Marx's "Human power is its own end." Section III has to do with Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program as a philosophy of revolution, and tries to develop a perspective for socialism, an alternative to capitalism. The crux is the transcending of capitalist production relations, the ending of labor power as a commodity, and the production of commodities. In other words: the ending of capitalist value production and the capitalist logic of value. What does that mean? Above all, we have to look, to study, how value production determines the capitalist society in which we live. Marx says there is a specific way of knowing the totality and that way is not artistic, not religious, not practical-mental, but philosophical. Marx's specific way of analyzing society is in the context of capitalist society which is determined by value and surplus production. Raya Dunayevskaya emphasized, "it was Marx's concept of Alienated Labor which broke through all criticism. That discovery changed all else. That self-clarification disclosed the inner connection between philosophy and economics, philosophy and politics, subjective and objective; it created a new beginning, a new totality of theory and practice." I quote this from Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution (p. 125). Later on she adds: "Philosophy pervades the whole: not only is the critique of philosophy 'philosophical,' but so is the analysis of the political economy."
* * * Palestine in crisis revealed what happens when there is no attention to a viable secular nationalism; thus the ascension of Hamas. There is a similar crisis here in America, with ever-growing numbers of people embracing some kind of religious belief. In the New Afrikan community there is the growth of mega-churches that are attended by thousands on Sundays. In the wholesale adherence to religious beliefs there is suspension of the needed discussion and search for an alternative vision of a future. Instead of attempting to address the root causes of self-alienation and poverty, the tendency is to place faith in the metaphysical realm as a source of salvation. The failure to comprehend the exact nature of capitalistic social relations entails the tendency to absolve capitalism of its crimes against humanity.
* * * While the Perspectives focused well on world events and struggles, it lightly touched upon the issues of women, both at home and abroad, as well as prison issues that have affected every state and every community in the country. Neither of those factors can be ignored.
* * * I've received N&L for nearly four years and found Dunayevskaya's writings direct, clear, and, if not easy, at least jargon-free. That's not been true of your other theoretical articles. Thus I was happy to find the Draft Perspectives in the August-September issue set out its ideas in clear, forceful, jargon-free language. A very strong and helpful document. I appreciate the work that must have gone into creating it.
* * * I found lots of meaning and agreement in the Perspectives Thesis, which I read online. Focusing on working out theories and "specifications" for the new society is objective, since so many movements know what they oppose but lack concrete ideas about how to get free from capitalism. However, News and Letters Committees faces an urgent task: to find new energy and membership to carry the philosophic labor in theory and practice. We need to focus on advocating our philosophy concretely.
* * * I first made contact with News and Letters Committees 20 years ago. It has been a difficult time as the world seems to be moving backwards. You have been correct on the need for a total uprooting and to pose the question of what happens after the revolution. Over the years I have argued for more arts and poetry in N&L. Marx was clear about capitalism not having much truck with arts and poetry. It's for that reason that we must make time to laugh and sing. Hippocrates was right that Art is long, and Life is short.
* * * Editor's Note: The Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2007-2008, published in our August-September issue, was approved as the Perspectives of News and Letters Committes at our recently concluded national plenum. For a copy of the bulletin that contains the Perspectives Thesis as well as the reports and sub-reports given at our national gathering, send $5 to N&L.
Several hundred Burmese Americans and supporters came to the Chinese embassy on Sept. 28 to protest against the violent crackdown on a resurgent democracy movement in Burma, this time led by Burmese monks who have inspired the general population that came out to support them. The demonstration was held at the Chinese embassy to register opposition to Chinese imperialism that underwrites the brutal regime. "China: Stop Arming Burmese Terror" read one of the typical mostly handmade signs. Most had a personal connection to the events in Burma. One woman, an exile from Burma, said she spent three years of hard labor at the infamous Insein prison after the huge demonstrations in 1988. She was imprisoned for delivering a letter from Aung San Suu Kyi to the students imploring them to not carry weapons in their struggle for freedom. Another demonstrator said the current crackdowns reminded him of the brutality against students during the 1988 protests when more than 3000 were massacred. He had been a student back in 1962 when the first movement of students challenged the then Ne Win government, which proclaimed itself to be "Socialism the Burmese Way." Forty five years later miseries caused by repression and deprivation have so intensified that even the normally ascetic monks have become involved.
* * * I found a copy of N&L at a coffee shop near my home. I had a vague idea of what N&L was but I was excited upon reading the August-September issue and researching Marxism-Humanism. I ordered a one-year subscription after reading that first issue and am eager for more. I feel N&L has a great approach to Marxism that not many people share. Many of the ways I have viewed Marx's writings are shown in your issues. I enjoy both your articles about things happening as well as actual real analysis absent from many publications. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Readers: Can you help place N&L in a coffee shop in your location? Ask for a small bundle to try it out.
The Chicago area contains one of the largest concentrations of immigrants from the Balkans in the U.S. They represent numerous ethnic groups, including Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian people. In a city that has a long history of ethnic challenges and civil rights demands I am dismayed that the victims of the 1992-95 holocaust in Bosnia-Herzogovina rarely have their history and culture presented in the media. It is as if the mass killing and torture, the death camps never happened. Unfortunately for the Bosnian community, the Serbian and Croatian crimes did occur in massive numbers. The Bosnian people suffer from a similar fate that the African Americans, American Indians, and other ethnic minorities suffered from in our nation. If you can't get proper treatment in the land of the free, and since you can't go back to your own destroyed nations where discrimination is even worse, where can you go?
* * * What is occurring in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is a subtle type of ethnic cleansing. The ruling class white people have denied poor Blacks from New Orleans the means of returning to the city. They are attempting to make the diasphora permanent. All of us who believe in the equality of those of all ethnic and racial backgrounds should let it be known that the right of Black Katrina survivors to return to New Orleans, along with the white survivors who are doing much better, shall be absolute. The systematic denial of the means of re-establishing doctors, nurses, hospitals and clinics, mental health facilities, schools and teachers, roads and water and sewage and all other necessary elements of social and physical infrastructure is a crime against humanity.
Thank you for your message to the 45th International Antiwar Assembly in Japan. In the midst of their antiwar activities, Japanese workers, students and citizens held the Assembly on August 5, when 1200 people gathered at the central meeting in Tokyo and hundreds at each of the regional meetings in Hokkaido, Hokuriku, Tokai, Kansai, Kyushu and Okinawa. We received 16 messages from 9 countries this year. Each was read to the assembly one after another. Imagining colleagues struggling in other countries against war and oppression confirmed our international solidarity.
The Labour Party will be meeting in the in Seaside town of Bournemouth. Taking the air and strolling along the sandy beach, participants will be making up a fairly tale of life under Brown. Things could never be better—save the first run on a bank in over a hundred years, which we have just seen here. The reality will be ignored—the removal of all barriers to the advancement and free flow of capital. The concentration of substantial wealth into fewer hands. The deterioration in the conditions of workers. The slashing of social benefits and public services. The use of union busting companies and anti-labour laws. The incorporation of the unions and their pockets have enabled the Labour Party to maintain its dominance. The main political groups of Conservative and Liberal seem to be fragmenting further. It might be said to be the best and the worst of times. The good thing about the shambles might be to show very clearly that there is no parliamentary road to socialism. As Rosa Luxemburg put it, the choice was socialism or barbarism. We have had plenty of the barbarism. A little socialism is long overdue.
Hearing Soudabeh Ardavan was an inspiring event when she spoke in Chicago on Sept. 15 and exhibited some of the drawings she had produced during her eight years of imprisonment in Iran from 1981 to 1989. She said she had been studying architecture and design at Tehran's Polytechnic Institute during the Cultural Revolution when she was charged with participating in demonstrations against the Islamic Republic and thrown into prison. For eight years she was transferred from one prison to another, spending time in between in solitary. She tried to write her story through the pictures she drew of her cellmates, the guards, the conditions of the prison. The faces she drew are unforgettable. She said she hoped people would see her paintings and remember the many innocent lives that had been lost during what she called the darkest history of her country. One picture was of a blue sky with white birds hoping to see freedom one day. You could not help but think of other prisoners who told their stories of defiance and human resilience in many ways, as Rosa Luxemburg did in her prison letters. Readers can get more information about her through YADNEGAREHA@YAHOO.SE. N&L is to be thanked for helping to sponsor the event in Chicago.
Reed Walters, the LaSalle Parish District Attorney. who has consistently used his authority and short-fused racism to guide unjust outcomes, stated at his conference on Sept. 20, "This is not about race." But when a Black youngster was beaten up at an all-white party, was it about race that no charges were brought against the assailants? When two Black youth took a gun away from a white person who threatened them with it, was it about race when they were charged with stealing the gun? And to whom was Walters referring when he took the podium at an earlier protest about "the tree," became irate at unruly students and waved his pen declaring, "I can ruin your lives with one stroke of my pen!" The entire Jena 6 case bears close examination by all who are interested in justice. Walters' history can be repeated among prosecutors throughout the U.S.
* * * A demonstration of several thousand mostly high school students was held at the UC Berkeley campus in solidarity with the marchers in Jena. Most pointed out that what happened in Jena is an everyday occurrence in Berkeley. One Black woman recounted standing on the same Sproul Hall steps in 1995 when she was a student and spoke out against infamous Proposition 209 that sought to end affirmative action in admitting students to the UC system. Many participants wore green and black clothes, green for growth, black for mourning.
* * * While 300 people traveled from here to Jena, the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center held a demonstration of 50 on a busy Memphis street corner on Sept. 20. Mostly African American, there were a few whites. Many drivers honked their horns in support, cheered and held up their fists. A grade school student said they discussed the Jena 6 in class; a high school student said her class had a moment of silence for them.
* * * Our cowardly politicians, especially Democrats voted to condemn MoveOn.org for their ad criticizing General Petraeus. Yet every objective analysis showed that his claim that the surge has lessened sectarian violence in Iraq is a total fabrication. That MoveOn.org is on target is shown by the fact that an African-American spinoff from it, Color of Change in San Francisco, investigated what happened in Jena a year ago. Color of Change spread the story, including the mostly unpunished white attacks on Blacks, over the internet, which Black radio stations picked up. The ensuing outrage, reflected in the thousands who went down to Jena, showed that it is the U.S. justice system that needs to be put on trial. What the bourgeois politicians lack is the courage of African Americans who continue to expose the hollowness of U.S. capitalism's claims of equality and democracy.
The PBS documentary on Malalai Joya's struggles as an outspoken Afghan women's rights activist brought home forcefully the Appeal from her that you published in the June-July issue, after she was expelled from the seat she had won in Parliament. In following in detail the courageous campaign she had fought to gain that seat, the documentary "A Woman among Warlords" exposed not only the state of politics in Afghanistan but the global issues of women's human rights. The scenes with the 100 year old woman who had walked miles to support Malalai, and the joy on both their faces when she succeeded in casting her vote, could not help but bring joy to anyone watching. I urge all your readers to watch for it.
* * * "A Woman Among Warlords" was important because, along with telling the story of Malalai Joya's struggles, it told other stories as well. One was about how she had been asked to mediate against the forced marriage of a young girl to a man her grandfather's age. In refusing to stop pursuing this child bride, the man revealed not only his brutishness but the devaluation of women's lives and hopes. Another was the story of a woman married to an opium addict who beat her and neglected the children. Together with the story of Joya's campaign, they reveal real contradictions for all the world to see.
As an Iranian feminist opposed to imperialist war and committed to the democratic opposition movement in Iran, I am disappointed that the Columbia University Anti-War Coalition refused to take a stand against Iranian President Ahmadinejad for fear of being equated with the Bush administration and its call for war. The logic of this position is that instead of supporting democratic freedom movements within Iran, we should be supporting their “anti-imperialist” and repressive rulers. How does the anti-war movement expect to stop wars with this logic? It stands against the very principle of self-determination of nations and human beings. If the anti-war movement wants to be effective in stopping a U.S. war on Iran, it needs to establish genuine solidarity with the democratic opposition movement in Iran which consists of the following forces: A women’s rights movement which opposes women’s second class status; a student movement demanding freedom of expression and assembly; a labor movement which represents starving and unpaid workers, and demands the right to form independent trade unions; provincial movements in Kurdistan, Azarbaijan and Khuzistan which demand greater regional autonomy and recognition for Iran’s minorities; Islamic reformists as well as secular intellectuals who are interested in rationalist branches of Western and Islamic philosophy, and call for the separation of religion and state. Here are some ways in which U.S. anti-war activists can express their solidarity with the Iranian people: • Read new books on Iran such as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Shirin Ebadi’s Iran Awakening, Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Afary and Anderson’s Foucault and the Iranian Revolution. • Support the Tehran Bus Drivers’ Union and their jailed leader Mansour Ossanloo. Send statements of support to the Bus Drivers' Union at http://www.syndicavahed.com. • Start a campaign to support jailed student activists Ahmad Ghasaban, Ehsan Mansouri, Majid Tavakkoli from Amir Kabir University. • Contact the women’s equality campaign at www.wechange.info/english and online feminist magazines at info@iftribune.com or info@herlandmag.com.
It's so easy to blame the Republicans for everything. I would probably agree with the emotional statement by Kanye West that Bush hates Black people after the horror that was New Orleans was revealed. But is that solely restricted to Bush and the Republicans? Or do we have to spread the blame around to several hundred years of racist repression and social disdain on all levels?
* * * N&L has been too lax on the Democrats who are responsible for where we are now. I expect that many readers are ahead of N&L in expressing anger at them for not ending the war or taking up an impeachment of Bush. I also don't think there is a real commitment to a two-party system. In contrast to 30 or 40 years ago, when they talked of "plutralism," right-wing commentators now want to eliminate the opposition.
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