Readers' Views

Contents:

• THE CAPITALIST WORLD IN CRISIS

• SUPPORT ZOLO AGONA AZANIA!

• WHAT HAPPENS AFTER?

• THE ANGRY ELECTORATE

• FROM THE ARCHIVES

• VANGUARDISM

• N&L AND 'THE LEFT'

• AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL, AGAIN

• CAMPAIGN VIOLENCE

• THE OLYMPICS AND 'POLITICS'

• A WAR RESISTER VICTORY?

• REMEMBERING PAUL NEWMAN

• REMEMBERING HIROSHIMA

• 'FACTIONALISM'

THE CAPITALIST WORLD IN CRISIS

You can put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig. It follows then that you can put lipstick on a Capitalist Pig and it remains a Capitalist Pig. In the excellent Aug.-Sept. N&L Lead on the criminalization of undocumented workers in a meat processing plant, you can see there is plenty of sugarcoating going on to protect the bottom line. The workers are getting roasted.

--N&L Fan, Chicago

Bush, surrounded by the neo-conservatives who represent the rich class, pushed for the lifting of tariffs between nations, calling it globalization, despite the fact that globalization has been prevalent since Karl Marx, in his economic analysis, said that the capitalist has the whole world as his market. It was to win over and reduce the resistance of the masses that the neo-conservative economists called the lifting of tariffs "globalization."

As a result, the blue collar workers--from the U.S. to Spain--are gutted out of what have been converted to service economies. The capitalists need production expansion to save themselves from a decelerated rate of profit, as shown by Raya Dunayevskaya in Philosophy and Revolution. The bubble of the real estate speculations burst in Spain as in the U.S. Unemployment rates jumped to 11.2% in Spain and over 7% in the U.S. It has all resulted in a class of workers with salaries that do not reach to the end of the month either in Spain or in the U.S. The laid off workers of the giant marketing firm Quatel, which laid off 120 employees in Salamonica alone, were chanting in Plaza Mayor, "No more salary that reaches only to the 20th of the month! No more hunger." The conservative think tankers failed Marx 101 where they should have learned that it is production that drives the market, not the reverse. The economic crisis is a production crisis. The average man in the street understands the problems much better than the economists.

--Correspondent, Spain/Los Angeles

Calling the bailout of Wall Street "socialist" is outrageous. There is nothing socialistic about government intervention to save private capitalism. It is known as state-capitalism. Marx was quite clear that to move to socialist or authentic communism it is necessary to break the power of capital. The power of capital resides in the fact that under its rule labor is first of all a commodity, and only secondarily a creative human activity. Changing the way we work is the key to a socialist or humanist society. Property forms--private or state--are not the key of liberating social transformation.

--Journalist, Latin America

I work at an accounting firm and the reality of this financial crisis is sinking in for me. There's been concern since the credit crunch hit last year but in the past few days I've had to prepare detailed financial statements for many clients at the request of their banks. The lenders are desperate to know about the debts that are out there. It isn't a pretty picture. What I've found means one construction firm will be going out of business. At least one person will be losing her home. I can imagine the whole economy getting out of control, which is scary. One "funny" thing is that the bank that holds my mortgage bought up the bank that holds my credit card debt. It's like watching dinosaurs eat each other. It's a dangerous situation.

--Hardworking CPA, Chicago

While the press has extensively covered the Wall Street meltdown they pay little attention to what it means to the American worker. The working people are being hung out to dry. And neither of the candidates seems to give a damn. Obama's financial advisers are those who maneuvered bailouts during the Clinton years. The real question for me is where does it leave labor, the unions? I haven't seen much movement and protest. We can't manufacture it but we have to discuss the fact that organized labor won't find any solutions posed by Congress or the candidates. The only road needs to be an alternative to the capitalist speculative game-playing with the lives of working people. Only a re-created labor movement can begin to deal with this crisis. It has to begin to discuss the total bankruptcy of this system.

--Revolutionary, West Coast

SUPPORT ZOLO AGONA AZANIA!

Zolo Agona Azania is facing the death penalty after 25 years on death row. Now a prolific writer and accomplished artist, at the time of his arrest for the shooting death of a policeman, Zolo was a well-known activist in his hometown of Gary, Indiana. Since his arrest Zolo has fought the charges against him, often from death row. Indiana Circuit Court Judge Steve David wrote in a May 2005 decision: "fundamental principles of fairness, due process, and speedy justice" were violated in Zolo's case. Zolo's victories, overturning his death sentence twice, have set precedents cited by other prisoners.

The jury on Oct. 20 will be presented with the stark choice of the death penalty or Zolo's release.

Support Zolo by writing to Lake County Prosecutor Bernard A. Carter at Building 'B' 1st Floor, 2239 Main St., Crown Point, IN 46307.

--Hondo, No Death Penalty for Zolo Committee

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER?

Dunayevskaya is unique in linking the question of what happens after revolution to what she calls two kinds of subjectivity. What others reject as belonging to a pre-technological age, she sees as concrete for our time, when counter-revolution weighs so heavily on revolution that, to many even on the Left, no alternative to capitalism seems viable. A pathetic example is Barbara Ehrenreich's piece for The Nation on the 160th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto. Her conclusion? "I'm hoping that capitalism survives this one, if only because there's no alternative ready at hand." Seeing no alternative is just the other side of the coin of not hearing the second kind of subjectivity coming from below, and therefore being unable to work it out in theory either.

--Environmentalist, Memphis

--Women's Liberationist, Chicago

Gerry Emmett's article in the last issue on "War in Georgia: dangerous new world," was excellent, and the kind of analysis that reveals the meaning of events. I especially appreciated where he went back to look at the "real lesson of Kosova," and showed that what is at issue is a "crisis of vision" of the Left. That the idea of freedom is always involved is revealed by the fact that Russia's support of a national liberation movement in Georgia has given new hope to Russia's own oppressed minorities, including the Bashkirs and the Tatars. Russia, by raising the question of freedom, may just get more than they bargained for.

--Marxist-Humanist, Chicago

THE ANGRY ELECTORATE

I've seen a palpable anger expressed by my non-political friends towards Bush, McCain and Palin this election. Some were doing research, looking into other than mainstream media--editorials from lesser known magazines, papers from other countries, internet blogs. The most explosive discussion was at the salon where I was getting a haircut and someone brought out an email she received that urged women to vote against Palin with a subject line that read, "Do you know what women went through to win the right to vote?" There were pictures of women who were jailed, beaten, sent to insane asylums. It was passed from one to another and men getting their hair cut in another area came back to see what all the noise was. Many complained they had never learned any of this history from school. When I offered a more radical perspective nobody asked "how do I join?" but everyone was really listening this time. It was an amazing discussion. What I am wondering is whether such enormous discontent will stop, or grow, with the declaration of a winner after the election.

--School teacher, Illiinois

FROM THE ARCHIVES

It was fascinating that the talk that Dunayevskaya wanted to give to students and activists in Japan in 1966 was on Hegel, and Hegel straight (see "Hegel's summons: Grasp revolutionary spirit of the age".) She was in Japan at a time when the Left there was booming. The almost revolution in France 1968 was yet to happen, and the incredible student movement and women's liberation movement both flowing out of the Black struggle for freedom in the U.S. were just beginning. It is as if she knew that the revolutionary year, 1968, would not lead to actual revolution, but to retrogression. She was warning us all of the need to work out the new unity of theory and practice and pointing to the fact that that can't be done without delving into philosophy.

--Feminist, Memphis

At the News and Letters "Silence the Violence" forum in Oakland, a young Black woman said one way she stays connected to her community is by going to church every week. She also said that there was no point in waiting for God or the government to stop the violence in Oakland or anywhere else. She told the audience that people would have to come together and do something about it.

I was reminded of Raya Dunayevskaya's archives column in the Aug.-Sept. N&L where she pointed out that even though Hegel was a Christian he found that Spirit could not stop at Religion to achieve its fullest development--it has to go to Philosophy. Christianity had articulated that "man as man is free." Thus Hegel, just as the young woman, understood that God may very well exist but humanity is not thereby absolved of the responsibility to shape and carry out its own destiny.

--Participant, Oakland

VANGUARDISM

I would have preferred reforms within the Communist Party in the former Soviet Union rather than have it fall apart the way it did. One of the major "turning points" in its downfall centered around the Kronstadt Rebellion. As many have said, it seemed to have lost its way soon after the end of the civil war.

Let me know a good place to buy some of Raya Dunayevskaya's books.

--Student of the Left, Mississippi

***

Editor's Note: All of Dunayevskaya's major works are available from News and Letters. See especially From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Capitalist Production / Alienated Labor this issue for information on The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism.

N&L AND 'THE LEFT'

Thank you for the sample copy of N&L. What I find particularly noteworthy is the combination of worker-news- based and intellectual-theory-based contributions. This provides quite an original contrast with many left papers that either function as mere "advertising sheets" for their own organizations, or keep theory out of their mainstream papers altogether and reserve it for internal bulletins or specialist magazines.

One criticism is that I found little mention in regards to the rest of the Left. As you can see from looking at the Weekly Worker, the CPGB has its primary focus on the rest of the workers movement as a view towards reconstituting a mass party. It can give the appearance of approaching the issue from the "top down" or of attempting to articulate theory outside of practice. However, I feel it is simply a reaction to the dire straits we find ourselves in and the need to keep our own house in order before we can really view ourselves as a party as opposed to just another sect. Unfortunately, I did not see this in N&L, which makes me curious as to your approach to the rest of the Left.

That criticism aside, I would like to see the Weekly Worker adapt more of N&L's style in regards to grassroots news articles and concise theory.

--New Subscriber, Britain

AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL, AGAIN

The Lead in the Aug.-Sept. N&L "U.S. criminalizes undocumented" called the ICE raid in Postville "near police-state actions." What was "near" about it? What shocked people as new was the scale and preparations for it, converting a cattle fairground into a detention center. Have we forgotten the notorious examples of using cattle railroad cars for prisoners condemned en masse? The legal framework for a police state is there already with the PATRIOT Act and FISA. What might hold it back is the power of popular opinion. They need to demonize the victims as "illegal" to prevent support for them. This drumbeat from the Right is a response to the May Day 2006 general strike.

--Former Polish Citizen, California

The New York Times has noted the similarity of immigrants' stories to stories Marx quoted in Capital. What Marx did, however, was not just tell the workers' stories, but "transform historic narrative into historic reason."

--Marxist, California

Raya Dunayevskaya described our age as an age of absolutes--either absolute destruction or absolute liberation. I used to think that was overly dramatic but now I see it as the simple truth. One young Latina at the immigrant rights march in Oakland this year said, "We need a system not based on money but on human dignity. These are human beings, families torn apart and we want to make them whole." Her subjective ideas are objective.

--March supporter, Oakland

The "police-state actions" the Aug.-Sept. Lead points to are not the actions of a Maoist or a Stalinist state but more along the lines of Milosevic's specific singling out the Bosnian Muslims and the Kosova Albanians, the Hutus against Tutsis, or the Zulu tribal districts singling out Malawian and Chadian undocumented laborers. They are all part of the phenomenon of demonization of an Other.

--One of the Others, California

CAMPAIGN VIOLENCE

During the Republican Party Convention the police were determined to smash both the protests and any independent press coverage. Both Amy Goodman, one of the most incisive journalists in the U.S., and an AP photographer were among the first arrested. In addition, police with firearms drawn raided a meeting of the video journalists' group I-Witness and arrested independent media, bloggers and videomakers. As protests arose Goodman and others were quickly released.

--Watchdog, New York

I went to Denver to challenge the Democratic Party convention because I don't believe they are much better than the Republicans. The most they offer is a reform here and there and there is no reforming this system.

--Youth, San Francisco

THE OLYMPICS AND 'POLITICS'

The Black/Red column on "Olympics and capitalist crises" (Aug.-Sept. N&L) reminded us about the horrific events in the 1972 Munich Olympics where a seven gold medal record was set by Mark Spitz. The 2008 Olympics is characterized by the attempt to shut "politics" completely out of the picture. While lip service is paid about the ideals of the Olympics, the event is carefully controlled by the IOC and the various world governments to be about national image, status, commercial leverage and ultimate assigning of rank among various nations. Sort of like a class system among nations. The old men in the IOC decide the Olympic order and condemn any political statements by the young athletes, while the entire event is about politics and power. (As it happened, another horror started while the opening ceremony was going on in Beijing--a war between Georgia and Russia.) I wonder if the Olympics form of competition would be viable in a world where domination on either an individual or a national level would no longer be tolerated.

--Michael, California

A WAR RESISTER VICTORY?

The Federal Court of Canada granted a stay of deportation to Jeremy Hinzman, the U.S. war resister described in my article on the resisters in the Aug.-Sept. N&L. No date was set for a decision on whether the court will hear the appeal, but it is very good news and somewhat unexpected. What is heartening is the support being given by resisters from the Vietnam War.

Much now rests on the Oct. 14 federal election. Both the Liberals and the NDP are firmly on record in support of the resisters staying in Canada. While the polls have shown a possible Tory majority, the numbers are volatile. The growing strength of the Green Party has created a new variable, and there has been talk of a Liberal/NDP coalition government.

--Veteran Anti-War Activist

REMEMBERING PAUL NEWMAN

Besides being a wonderful actor and beautiful human being who quietly and creatively donated millions to those in need, what I honor Newman for was how high he ranked on Richard Nixon's "enemies list." In fact, his name was on the original list of enemies produced by Nixon aide Charles Colson in 1971.

Colson's notes on the memorandum read: "Paul Newman, California: Radic-lib causes. Heavy [Eugene] McCarthy involvement '68. Used effectively in nationwide T.V. commercials. '72 involvement certain." According to internal memos, circulated in the White House prior to the 1972 election, the list was made up of "liberal politicians, labor leaders, business titans, academics, activists and an actor" who might be a threat to Nixon's re-election. Happily, Newman survived and Nixon was driven from office.

--Newman Fan, Chicago

REMEMBERING HIROSHIMA

I appreciated the articles on "Remembering Hiroshima" and "No new Nukes" in the Aug.-Sept. N&L. The Bush administration's recent move to install a Missile Defense system in Poland, as a threat to Russia and others in the area, brought to mind the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought the world close to a nuclear holocaust and a probable Nuclear Winter.

Maurine Doerken's book One Bomb Away makes a convincing argument for the abolition of the nuclear industry and against the drive of both President Bush and Senator McCain to build 125 new nuclear bombs each year as well as a new generation of nuclear power plants. The book is available through www.onebombaway.com or by calling AWOL.INK 1-310-238-0304.

--Japanese-American reader, Los Angeles

'FACTIONALISM'

To my Comrades at the Bellows:

To paraphrase William Shakespeare, from Julius Caesar, Act IV:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men and women,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries."

--Your Comrade, Battle Creek, Mich.

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