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Readers' ViewsON THE 2010-2011 MARXIST-HUMANIST PERSPECTIVES Globalization will continue and proceed to do its worst until workers, women, Blacks, Latinos and Indigenous peoples organize globally. Only a global resistance movement can check global capitalism, but this need not mean a monolithic, centralized organization. Instead think of mosquitoes. A bite here, another there, keeping the ruling class off balance, and being creative in the process; not worrying about taking power, but creating power from below in different contexts. Today it may be the battleground of the university, tomorrow a community of homeless who want to take over land that is not being used so that they can build their houses. --Teofilo, Puerto Rico The reality is that totalitarian state capitalism has spread throughout the advanced capitalist societies. The overwhelming material and psychological power of these states, and their control of the mass psychology by 24/7 media brainwashing, makes it extremely difficult to mount any kind of effective opposition. The answer to this, as Trotsky suggested in 1939 in commenting on a similar situation, is a basic program of defending the wage slaves (that includes almost all of us) in all possible ways both within the electoral and judicial system, and by mass pressure outside the system directly against the state. No defeatism. Let us fight however we can! --Steve, New York City It is important to point out the danger among some sectors of the Left that entertain the notion, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Hence excuses are made for Mr. Chavez in Venezuela, Mr. Ahmadinejad in Iran, and even the "new" Taliban. Deja vu: the same excuses were used for Stalin, even after the Hitler-Stalin Pact. It is a vulgar anti-imperialism. --Activist and writer, Puerto Rico I think it is the 30-odd years of retrogression this nation has suffered through that makes it difficult for the Left to grow as fast as it should. Unfortunately, retrogression seems to be what the 21st Century feels like. But then I just look at Iran and that fills me with hope. --Woman's Liberationist, Illinois When you see what has happened with the oil spill and the failure of the climate summit, it brings to the fore what Marx said about capitalism destroying both the worker and the land. It has reached such an intensity that it is no longer just concentration and centralization of capital, but that capitalism is reaching its absolute limit in terms of its relationship to nature. It is beyond mere exploitation, nature is being completely destroyed and capitalism has no solution to that. I remember Raya Dunayevskaya writing about this, when there was great concern about the nuclear power plants, and she said that even if capitalism uses sun power, it will destroy us. Climate change and the oil explosion show it. --Eugene Walker, Mexico I am interested in the discussion in N&LC about the importance of posting things on the web as well as continuing the more traditional newspaper. It is not an either-or question. Putting more of Dunayevskaya's work on the web is essential. There is nothing like a printed paper to take to a shop or a school to engage in one-to-one conversation. But it's not exclusive to communicating via the web. It's important not just to look up further information but to respond at the time you're reading it. --Healthcare Worker, California This is one of two poems I wrote to express my feeling at the loss of Mary Jo: Intellect and Heart Mary Jo; you had intellect! --George Wilfrid Smith, Jr., Chicago At the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit I went to the last hour of the workshop on "Marx vs. Keynes: What is a way out of today's economic crisis? Is it possible to break with capitalist value production?" My 101 knowledge of "inelasticity relative to forces of production and forces of exchange" left me thinking "what am I doing here?" But the room was filled to overflowing, with most of the audience young and alert and participating in the workshop. At a couple of the rallies the young marchers were eagerly tending to their banners and stick-signs and it would have caught people's attention on TV, but I never saw it on any news programs I watched. When these youth get back home maybe they will have a better understanding of media news-shaping and opinion-making: you see only what major news sources want you to see and hear! --Ray Robeson, Detroit I am struck, in going to events like the Left Forum in New York and the May Day Conference here in Chicago, how grey the crowd is, myself included. There are some youth there, but what is lacking are people in the middle. We have the baby boomers who got active in the 1960s and then some youth who are active now. I worry that the youth lack our staying power. I know many who, because they don't think we will have a revolution in their lifetime, don't want to spend their lives in the freedom movement. It shows an appalling non-understanding of history. --Feminist, Chicago There is something terribly wrong with this country when so many school districts are forced to make draconian cuts, such as total elimination of music programs and school bus service, forcing kids to walk to school, while we hear of investment bankers flying to Washington on private jets, asking for a handout of a trillion or so. There's something even worse going on when media attention to the outrage in response to this injustice is given only to the Teabaggers. A well-liked neoliberal President who chides "low-performance teachers," supports mass firings, while handing out that trillion to bankers, doesn't help matters. --Thom, California I was recently back home to Mississippi, to where the floods, and now the oil spill, are devastating people's lives. My relatives, and all the people, are facing really hard times. The government is saying they can't rebuild where the floods came. And if they do, they won't get any government support, and no insurance against floods. But what are people to do? Who is going to help them to have a decent life? The government is doing very little, and the people need to protest and demonstrate if something is going to get done. --Georgiana Stewart, Los Angeles I'm concerned that Israel is the country that is always protested against with such passion. I know Israel is hostile towards Palestinians. I also know that Egypt is building a wall to keep Palestinians out, but you don't hear about that. You don't hear about Jordan treating Palestinians as second-class people, or see protest over the treatment of the Kurdish population in Turkey. We need to protest any anti-humane practices regardless of where they happen, whether in Iran, Israel or the U.S. My issue is with the focus and fervor against Israel. I feel an anti-Jewish element is the main reason for the focus and not that Israel is the only country that is guilty of mistreating citizens, residents or visitors within its borders. Look at the anti-immigration law in Arizona, for example. --Sue, Chicago FROM A YOUNG HONDURAN WOMAN ACTIVIST I live in the countryside, 20 kilometers from a small town where there is internet, and only three businesses. I work on human rights for a church organization. "Conflict resolution processes and peace building" are a palliative, bringing even more disadvantages to those already deprived, and giving more advantage to the already privileged. Things are even more serious when the imperialists, together with the corrupt and rich, talk about social justice, equity. "Christian Humanism" is the discourse that Lobo, the "President" of Honduras, uses. The politicians, the entrepreneurs, the churches are uniting as the hegemonic power of the country. The most dangerous thing is that they are cunning, proclaiming consultation processes from below. But what about the people living in poverty? It is one thing to have an idea of reality, and another to be living it every day. We have to perform miracles in order to survive. But there are signs that motivate us to continue working for utopia. Our work is very valuable. It is that which gives us dignity. --Laura, Honduras The unconscionable playing of politics by Republicans and Democrats over unemployment compensation, which they failed to extend before Congress' summer break, will throw millions of workers and their families into desperation, frustration and anger. Unemployment compensation does provide subsistence, even if at the poverty level, and even this will be gone due to the failure of Congress to extend benefits. This is certain to have huge consequences, and not only at the ballot box. Revolutionary rumblings that have emerged as the economic crisis has continued, and now deepens drastically for the unemployed, can very easily move from the wings of society to center stage. --Retiree, Michigan A concerted drive is underway in Michigan to unionize non-tenured faculty members in colleges and universities. Success has already been achieved at Ferris State College, where a unionization vote was approved by an overwhelming number. An intense drive is underway at Central Michigan University, as well as at other schools. Non-tenured faculty members, who teach about half the incoming students, have no protection against administrators who can fire them for any reason, leaving their futures uncertain, since their contracts are negotiated each year. --Observer, Detroit July 11 was the International Day against Stoning--a day we would do well to mark especially given that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani faces death by stoning for adultery (see "STOP Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani's execution!"). With daily reports of such brutality, some will still not stop asserting that Sharia law is misunderstood. A new report, "Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights," reveals the shocking effects of Sharia law on women and children in particular. For further information contact: Maryam Namazie, One Law for All REMEMBERING HIROSHIMA, AUGUST 6, 1945 At the Hiroshima memorial service I attended in August 1983, I could not understand fully the countless speakers of Japanese. But the atmosphere was solemn 30-plus years after the atomic bomb. It was an annual memorial. My mind's eye surveyed the entire city in ruins and flattened. Descriptions of the destruction were numerous but the full impact of the human pain did not hit me until I read Charles Pellegrino's book, Last Train from Hiroshima, where a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts became the central figure. Pellegrino's descriptions were lucid to the point of being felt almost viscerally. He writes from a scientific point of view in describing people who disintegrated in mini-seconds at ground zero. A little farther away from the blast were those burned so as to make their blackened skin hang from their bodies: "The flash burn victims did not seem human. There was no face, only a swollen mass of charcoal above its shoulders that displayed an alligator-skin pattern." Pellegrino writes that there were lines of these burned people going to the hills to escape the ravages of the city, only to be rained upon by the deadly black rain that sickened them for life, and promised an early death. It was almost a blessing to have been at ground zero and to have perished instantly. Mr. Pellegrino draws these and many other pictures that grip the emotions and make one wonder, Why? Why? Why? Surnames of survivors and witnesses Pellegrino interviewed were names that kept panning through my mind as I read. The faces of people within my tight little California community kept coming back to me. It was difficult reading this book about my neighbors with the same surnames. I couldn't put Last Train from Hiroshima down. It was absorbing, compelling and emotional to the point of welling up tears. At the end of the service I attended, I had a chance to view the children's sumi-e (ink paintings) at the Hiroshima museum. Children have a way of bringing out the direct truth in situations and events. The paintings shouted out to the world, "Don't let this happen again!" --Nobu, Los Angeles Cal. In the article on "Marxist-Humanism's Original Contribution: the Absolute Idea as New Beginning" (May-June N&L), Raya Dunayevskaya writes, "It is not enough to say, 'We agree with you on the question of welfare or whatever.' The question of welfare or whatever becomes a way not only of you learning something from them, but of them having an awful lot to learn from you, because they get an entirely new interpretation of the problem that had been bothering them." I've yet to arrive to the point where I can have the above admonishment from the founder of the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism. Nonetheless, I think it reflects a self-evident truth. The immediate need for an active engagement with the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism isn't rooted just in subjectivism on my part. My position is a result of having an objective experience with Marxist-Humanism. One cannot be dismissive of the subjective experience, because there is a way that it is transformed in an objective relational experience. As Dunayevskaya stated in another writing: even bourgeois economists admit that Marx's abstractions are grounded in historical reality. When one is able to grasp the content of Marx's abstractions and see that content materialized in the real world, the subject becomes objective. It is a new development of cognition. --Faruq, Pelican Bay, Cal. I started attending N&LC meetings in the late 1990s and continued on and off for ten years. I have read almost all of Dunayevskaya that has been published, but I always see new things when I reread her. --Supporter, New York At the U.S. Social Forum I was struck with how many anarchists were there. Of course not all anarchists have the same ideas, but I felt that with many, both their anti-capitalism and their humanism would be stronger if it were rooted in Marx's dialectical humanistic analysis of capitalism. If we avoid developing human power, there will be many alternatives, ready to assume anti-human power, perhaps with outcomes worse than we now experience. At its best, anarchism emphasizes the self-development of the individual human being. But it does not address the need for humans to organize, to cooperate, to function as what Marx called "species-beings." --Susan Van Gelder, Detroit One of the best things about the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit was that it was a place for many activists to meet each other and exchange ideas. That spirit must continue. The continuation will take many forms. For example, there will be a Southern Human Rights Organizers' Conference (SHROC VII) held in Birmingham, Ala., on Dec. 10-12, 2010. For more information, see http://southernhumanrights.org/ --Ron, West Coast ISSUES OF LIBERATION FOR WOMEN AND THE LGBT COMMUNITY Right-thinking women are deeply engaged against anti-abortion fanatics outside or inside government in the form of Obama's executive order--the outlawing of any funding for abortions in the recent so-called healthcare legislation. Terry Moon's "Billboards vs. Reproductive Justice" (N&L, March-April 2010) clearly highlights the fact as to why we should recognize women as reason. Billboards depicting New Afrikan children as an endangered species, allegedly due to a higher rate of abortions by New Afrikan women, is a complete and utter distortion of the historical reality. The fact is that New Afrikans are endangered by the despotic plan of capital that today has New Afrikan unemployment at 19%, which is an attack on the nuclear family. Thus, parents lack a viable source of income and that is why increasing numbers of children in the U.S. are endangered. --Prisoner, Texas I have been at a loss as to where I belong for what seems a lifetime. What made matters difficult in Kindergarten was that during the year, I began to have warm feelings for both of my gender classmates. The questioning of why me, has followed me through endless moments of terror. I have lived with self-hatred, because I was not completely socially accepted. And I lived a double life with addictions to find a cure for both my opposite and same-gender attractions. After 17 years of sobriety, I found there is no cure like born truth. What I found to be more interesting than myself is simple. In Genesis 1:27, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." I am now more than ever aware that Sacred is genderless. We all sit at the same table. We all sit at one "fluid, spiritual" table. However, what separate us are our internal phobias. To live in my own shoes happens to be a miracle within itself. --Br. Michael C. Oboza, Eastern Rite monastic, Chicago The Manhattan Declaration drafted on Nov. 20, 2009, was signed by Orthodox, Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant leaders who have been outspoken in their opposition to gay rights, same-sex marriage, and abortion rights for women. It is dangerous because it attempts to legitimize and enshrine bigotry and needs to be vigorously confronted and refuted. What is needed is a reaffirmation of the separation of church and state and a reclaiming of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. We ask those who want to advance equality and justice for all to go to http://stopmanhattanhate.org/signup.html and add your signature to our statement. --Gay Liberation Network, Chicago Yours is a great newspaper! I share it with the 80 other prisoners in my housing unit after I have read it. It is refreshing to read something that is not controlled by the interests of the mass media. Prisoner, Ontario, Oregon You are truly a voice for the oppressed by printing their voices. But philosophically, I have a problem in that I do not disagree with anything I've read in N&L, but I don't understand a lot of it, either. I have never studied Hegel, Marx or Lenin and have no access to any library or internet source, so I remain ignorant of all the basics I need to know. In the March-April issue Ruben Dri states: "…for the comprehension of the dialectic, what is absolutely necessary is the journey through Hegel." Just this last year I have come to understand what is meant by the phrase "alienation of labor" but I have a long way to go to understand all I need to know. You are all I have to enlighten myself. Thank you for all you do. --Prisoner, Texas Editor's note: Can you contribute the cost of a subscription ($5 for one year) for prisoners who cannot pay for one themselves? 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