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Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2011-2012Revolution and counter-revolution take world stageThis special issue carries our Draft Perspectives Thesis, part of our preparation for the national gathering of News and Letters Committees. We publish it because our age is in such total crisis, facing a choice between absolute terror or absolute freedom, that a revolutionary organization can no longer allow any separation between theory and practice, philosophy and revolution, workers and intellectuals, "inside" and "outside." Join us in discussing these Perspectives. Contents:I. The Arab SpringRevolution and counter-revolution have forced their way back to the center stage of history. First in Tunisia, then in Egypt, revolutions have opened up tremendous new possibilities and spread the fire of their passion from Libya and across the Arab world to Iran, Europe, the U.S. and China. Counter-revolution has reared its head in many forms, from devious maneuvers aimed at co-opting the initiative of the masses to the bloody orgy of brutality unleashed by Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya. While the U.S. has not attained the heights of revolution, battles have spread across the land to resist the far Right's program to roll back the gains made by labor, women, African Americans and all freedom movements in the past century. Such a moment in history tests revolutionaries and all who oppose the exploitation and violence of this globalized capitalist world--and the test sharpened when the U.S. and its NATO allies were drawn into the armed conflict in Libya. A. High points of revolution Our coverage has detailed the world ramifications of those revolutions and what was achieved by masses in motion. Women, workers and youth opened new struggles at work, in the streets and in ideas. In the process, as we reported, "something new was being created in Tahrir Square [in Cairo]. It was a form of direct democracy, that reached beyond merely formal freedom to genuinely new human relationships."[1] Many voices of people in Tahrir Square made note of this deeper freedom. "You feel like this is the society you want to live in," declared one youth. Another said after Hosni Mubarak's fall, "Everything is now possible. Horizons have opened up. We must now care for the revolution we have made." Protesters' pride at their "leaderlessness" reflected a rejection of old forms of representation and an appreciation of the direct democracy they were building. Women reported that, for the first time, they were able to be in a public place free of sexual harassment. From neighborhood defense committees to cleanup committees, from medical clinics in Tahrir Square to the form of decision-making practiced there, people discovered through their own self-organization new ways of acting together, before which bourgeois democracy pales. Revolution became the determinant, so that, as we put it in our Feb. 3 statement, "What is decisive is not oil, not religion, but masses in motion fighting for self-determination and freedom...."[2] In weeks, the conceivability of revolution and a new society shook off the dead weight of years of ideological assaults.
With the fall of Mubarak and Ben Ali, the battles in Egypt and Tunisia have not ended but widened. Women are fighting to end discrimination and harassment; in Tunisia, they are contending with fundamentalists yelling, "Women back to the kitchen," and in Egypt women condemned the Army's all-male constitutional reform panel and the amendments it pushed through. What must be faced squarely is the counter-revolution coming from within the revolution, as women experienced in their demonstrations on March 8, International Women's Day. As one demonstrator, Jumanah Younis, described it: "The women chanted slogans that had been used in the revolution itself, calling for freedom, justice and equality." But the women's chants "were drowned out by retaliations [yelled by the mob of men] such as 'No to freedom!'...The men charged the female protestors...and shouted 'Get out of here.' "Many women were dragged away by small groups of men who attacked them. I remained on the platform with five other women. A small circle of sympathetic men held hands around us to protect us from the crowd, which swelled on all sides.... "As I struggled to stay upright, a hand grabbed my behind and others pulled at my clothes."[3] Like the women in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, what the Egyptian women demonstrators wanted was a continuation and deepening of the new human relations established in Tahrir Square, where women lived for the first time in their lives, those 18 days, without fear of the streets, without harassment, rape, or degradation. They participated equally in the revolutionary events and were treated as comrades. Labor struggles continued too, and the strikes of the last several years greatly increased its political dimension while demanding better pay and conditions and opposing the neoliberal program of privatization. Nagaa Hamady Aluminum Factory workers held a sit-in demanding the replacement of corrupt managers linked to the Mubarak regime. Workers occupied the Shebin El-Kom Textiles factory to roll back layoffs and increase wages and job security. Employees of Al Azhar University and Cairo University protested working conditions and called for the institutions' independence from the state. Power station employees struck to oust corrupt managers. Thousands of Suez Canal workers began striking and occupying headquarters. Teachers in Alexandria protested to demand permanent contracts. 'WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR REVOLUTION?' In both Egypt and Tunisia, strikes and demonstrations challenged the military-economic-political elite's domination of "democratic reforms." As the Egyptian Army continued to detain and torture protesters and the cabinet passed a law to ban strikes and protests, some youth began asking, "What happened to our revolution?" They demanded the release of political prisoners, repeal of repressive laws, and an investigation into killings during the protests. The Army's claims to be the champion of revolution and democracy could not hide their efforts to seize the historical initiative from the masses. They managed to end the occupation of Tahrir Square, and, with support from the Muslim Brotherhood, to force through a referendum on limited constitutional changes opposed by the revolutionary forces. But their February slogan of "The army and the people are one hand" has been turned into "The army and the people are not one hand....The revolution has so far managed to get rid of the dictator (Mubarak), but the dictatorship still exists."[4] On April 8, tens of thousands of people once again packed Tahrir Square, this time calling for prosecution of Mubarak and his top henchmen, some saying that the Field Marshal "dictator Tantawi" is "next." Several military officers in uniform defied a threat of summary court martial to join the protest. Hundreds of troops and riot police stormed the Square at 3:00 AM, arresting eight of the dissident officers and killing two people. The Army had lost its halo. And yet, with barriers to revolution's continuation coming right from within it as well as from the military, the question arises: Will the Arab Spring be one more series of revolutions unfinished, aborted? Will the high points be lost as the movement stops at first negativity, that is, the destruction of the old and not the creation of the new society with fully human relationships? The philosophic void is seen in the talk of the need to build democracy, oppose imperialism, build a party, without a banner of total uprooting raised as the concrete need for developing the self-activity of masses achieved by the revolution. In short, what is needed to fight retrogression is unity of philosophy and revolution. B. Libya's counter-revolution Libya's civil war began as nonviolent protests, as in Tunisia and Egypt. In mid-January hundreds of poor families demonstrated and occupied vacant housing in the east and west of Libya. After an internet call for "Uprising on Feb. 17," Qaddafi's government stepped up repression, detaining activists. On Feb. 15, days after Hosni Mubarak was toppled, large protests broke out in several cities. In the eastern city of Benghazi, the flashpoint was Abu Salim prison, where weekly protests had been held for two years by families of 1,200 prisoners massacred there in 1996. In the western town of Az Zintan, hundreds of marchers set fire to police and security buildings and set up tents to occupy the town center. Police violence increased the protests. Qaddafi lost control of many areas across the country. His regime struck back, shelling demonstrations from tanks and bombing rebel-held cities. Libya's army contains many mercenaries from other countries, paid with oil money. Since February, thousands of African migrant workers have been coerced into Qaddafi's forces as front-line fighters or human shields. Much better armed and organized than the rebels, the Army retook several cities, at the cost of probably thousands of lives. Qaddafi's son Saif al-Islam threatened the masses in revolt with "hundreds of thousands of casualties." UN/NATO INTERVENTION In the face of this "declaration of war" against the Libyan people, Ibrahim Dabbashi of Libya's UN delegation--which had entirely gone over to the side of the rebels--called on the UN to impose a no-fly zone and cut off supplies of arms and mercenaries to the regime.[5] Even the rulers of the Arab League, none of whom want their own masses to get any help overthrowing them, submitted to the pressure from below and endorsed a no-fly zone. The Obama administration had to give up its resistance, and a resolution for somewhat more than a no-fly zone was passed by the UN Security Council, and NATO became its enforcer. By the time France started bombing Qaddafi's forces, they had already entered Benghazi, one of the last rebel strongholds. They were on the verge of a massacre that would have been a grave setback not only for the revolution in Libya but for the revolutionary wave echoing across the world. The U.S.-NATO entry into Libya's civil war disoriented much of the Left. While some groups bowed to Qaddafi as "anti-imperialist,"[6] many other groups and individuals adopted a more sophisticated line of opposing both Qaddafi and intervention, as if that did not mean Qaddafi's victory and a defeat of revolution with global ramifications. DISORIENTATION ON THE LEFT This disorientation reflected the Left's longstanding philosophic void. How is it that revolutionaries are so in awe of state powers, especially the superpower U.S., that revolution itself becomes a secondary consideration, and the real determinant is the urge to oppose the U.S.? Nothing could make clearer the pitfalls of being stuck at first negativity. While many participants dissented, speakers at Chicago's March 19 anti-war protest presented the view that the "core principle" is "anti-intervention." Libyan state television used footage of the march with calls for "Hands off Libya," as if that were the whole point of the march. Many such calls did not even mention Qaddafi or the revolutionary mass uprising against him! The U.S., France, Italy and Britain will try to take advantage of the intervention for their own imperialist purposes. But facile comparisons with Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq disregard the existence of an uprising calling for aid. That does not mean that our position is to "support the intervention"; it is to support the revolution.[7] The subordination of revolution once state powers intervene reflects how the activist and intellectual Left is permeated with the capitalistic concept of the backwardness of the masses. That includes those who have broken with the vanguard party-to-lead. Those who cannot grasp "the relationship of theory to history as a historical relationship made by masses in motion"[8] cannot fill the philosophic void. It is impos-sible to confront this morass of disorientation without challenging what Raya Dunayevskaya, founder of Marxist-Humanism and of News and Letters Committees, called post-Marx Marxism--not as a chronological category but as the way Marxism has truncated Karl Marx's total philosophy of revolution in permanence. For "without a philosophy of revolution activism spends itself in mere anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, without ever revealing what it is for."[9] C. Revolts across the Arab world
The fire unleashed by the revolution in Tunisia has encouraged revolts also outside the Arab world, as in Azerbaijan and Iran, and even spooked China's rulers after calls for a "Jasmine Revolution" there. All of North Africa and the Middle East is feeling the heat.
At this very time, Judge Richard Goldstone retracted one assertion from his UN report on the 2008-09 Gaza War, in which hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed and tremendous destruction was wrought in Gaza. The Israeli government and its ideologues tried to use that to discredit the whole report. Goldstone, however, backed off only from the one assertion that Israel had a policy of targeting civilians. He did not retract the other findings: Israel had a policy of collective punishment, targeting the civilian infrastructure; war crimes had been committed by both sides; Israel had tortured detainees and used Palestinians, including children, as human shields.[11] The other three authors of the UN report indicated they had been pressured to sanitize their conclusions but that they stood by them in the interests of justice "to the hundreds of innocent civilians killed during the Gaza conflict, the thousands injured, and the hundreds of thousands whose lives continue to be deeply affected by the conflict and the blockade." Matters were further complicated by the outrageous U.S. veto of a UN resolution demanding a halt to Israel's construction of illegal settlements in Palestine. In the face of Israel's intransigence--most concretely measured by the steady construction of West Bank settlements--the Palestinian Authority has had to admit the fruitlessness of peace talks and turned to a campaign for admission as a member state of the UN. But what both Fatah and Hamas appear to fear most is revolt from the Palestinian masses. (See "Counter-revolution targets Palestine.") When revolutions struggle under counter-revolution, what becomes clear is the need to work out the philosophy of revolution in permanence as an integral part of revolution and solidarity. This makes urgent a new edition of a Marxist-Humanist pamphlet on the Middle East. That pamphlet highlights the need for philosophy to prevent revolution stopping halfway--a pull that comes from within revolution itself and not only from the rulers. The Marxist-Humanist analyses of the 1979 Iranian Revolution show how philosophy can be a force of revolution, as Marxist-Humanism fought to help women, workers, youth and oppressed nationalities open a second chapter of revolution as against the seizure of power by Ayatollah Khomeini. Learning the lessons of history cannot mean only avoiding the same political mistakes but rather being philosophically prepared for the new and unexpected. II. The wars at homeA. U.S. class war The revolutionary struggle in Egypt became a part of the consciousness of the massive Wisconsin fightback against Tea Party Gov. Scott Walker's assault on labor. Day after day, thousands and tens of thousands came out to demonstrate in Madison in opposition to Walker's bill and, as signs put it, "Walk like an Egyptian." The viciousness of the Right's assault on women, minorities and the working class cannot be overestimated. It includes denial of collective bargaining rights for state employees--the majority are women--the last sector of U.S. workers to be unionized in large numbers. It includes cuts in pay, longer hours and the loss of unemployment benefits and pensions. Draconian anti-labor laws have been passed or proposed in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana among other states. Those who assault labor dream of erasing the very memory of past struggles. In Maine the governor dismantled a mural by Judy Taylor at the Department of Labor, which he deems "offensive to business" because it reflects actual labor history. The budget presented in the House of Representatives by Republican Paul Ryan (Wis.) represents the far Right's vision of state power that won't stop at undoing the New Deal and reforms won after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire 100 years ago. It aims to erode labor relations to the time when strikes for the eight-hour day were punctuated by the Haymarket and Bay View massacres 125 years ago. The whole tenor of the discussion in Congress is not of holding the line, but of severe financial attacks including the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare. This viciousness has roots in anti-working-class policies pursued by Republican and Democratic administrations since the 1970s. These policies, in turn, have been a response by the ruling class to capitalism's endemic crisis. The demonization of people on welfare led up to its destruction in the 1990s. That was exacerbated by today's higher unemployment and new restrictions on food stamps. Food banks and soup kitchens can't keep up with increasing demand and more and more Americans, especially children, go to bed hungry. The current attacks might seem to come as a shock only if the deep racism of U.S. society is ignored. They bear the character of anti-humanism that has already been manifest in U.S. capitalism's response to its decades-long crisis by the building of the prison-industrial complex.[12] This has borne a racist, neofascist enclave in the heart of U.S. civilization that is spreading further into the mainstream in the guise of anti-labor, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-Muslim and racist rhetoric and legislation. The resulting contradictions were evident in one aspect of the Wisconsin demonstrations. The presence of the prison guards' union raised the question of the role of the state, itself, beside the question of the rights of public workers. The current assault by the Right will not be turned back without coming to terms with the last 40 years of U.S. capitalism's assault upon the Black and Latino working class. In this respect, the mass prisoner strike in a dozen Georgia prisons in December should be seen as the cutting edge of fightback against the Tea Party's ascendancy.[13] It was not only the first mass response, but in many ways the most profound. The prison strike was multiracial, and represented the voices of the most dispossessed workers. It was hugely significant that the Georgia prisoners used classic language of the labor movement, adopting the IWW slogan "An injury to one is an injury to all." Only when the fightback in the U.S. takes account of this country's racist history, including the Abolitionist roots of Marxism, and makes a point of supporting current efforts like this one, could it open the door to revolutionary stirrings as in Tunisia and Egypt. B. Women in the crosshairs Egypt showed, once again, that a crucial way the face of counter-revolution makes its appearance is by attacking women. In Egypt, it was women in Tahrir Square on International Women's Day who were told that the revolution was not for them. In the U.S. too, the attack on women by Tea Partyers and the Republican Party--often tolerated by the Democrats--reveals the retrogressionism taking deep root in the U.S. What was new about the attempt to destroy women's right and access to abortion, was how completely ruthless it has become with no regard for a woman's integrity, her health, her ability and right to decide whether to carry a fetus to term, or even for her very life!
That the most extreme anti-abortion ideology is being imposed on women is most clearly seen now in Idaho. The Idaho House of Representatives passed legislation banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape, incest, fetal abnormality, or the mental or emotional health of the woman. The thoughts, wishes and needs of raped women were completely disregarded as State Rep. Shannon McMillan decided that, since a fetus was blameless, the woman should be forced to be its vessel; and State Rep. Brent Crane pontificated that women are raped because of God's will, preaching that "He has the ability to take difficult, tragic, horrific circumstances and then turn them into wonderful examples." It seems Crane has the ability to take tragic events and make them even worse. New legislation would force a sonogram on a woman and make her view it; report miscarriages to authorities and have them investigated as if they were crimes; and make doctors read women blatant lies as medical "fact." The attempt to savage Planned Parenthood, which uses no federal money for abortions, reveals a purely ideological mindset as Planned Parenthood prevents more than 620,000 unintended pregnancies and 220,000 abortions a year. While the attack on women's right to control their own bodies is the most blatant, it is no exaggeration to call what is transpiring a "war on women"--especially poor and working-class. Many have noted the irony that at the same time women are enduring forced childbirth, the Republicans want to cut 10% from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, a program that serves 9.6 million each month. Their bill guts $50 million from the block grant for prenatal healthcare to 2.5 million poor women and healthcare to 31 million children each year. What's more:
It is not only that women's human rights are under siege by the U.S. Congress and state legislators, it is that the barriers put up, the requirements women face, are themselves so grievous, that the entire Left should be up in arms. Given this level of attack, where is the solidarity with women's struggles? In all the demonstrations against Scott Walker's attempt to destroy the bargaining rights of unionized state workers, there was hardly a peep from the unions or the Left about his horrendous stand on the right of women to control their own bodies. He voted to gut $4 million from the Wisconsin budget for family planning resources and end all funding for Planned Parenthood, among other fanatical proposals. When abortion is illegal, women die. They die and are maimed from back-alley butcher abortions because, legal or not, women are desperate to control what happens in their own bodies. The point is that women's struggle for abortion rights is not a diversion from revolution, but a freedom demand without which real liberation is impossible. That women are fighting back is clear in the tremendous outcry against the Republicans' plan to crucify Planned Parenthood. "We stand with Planned Parenthood" signs became ubiquitous, and meant as well: We stand for women's right to abortion. In Indiana, hundreds of protesters rallied at the statehouse in March in opposition to a proposed law that would require doctors to lie to women about a non-existent relationship between abortion and breast cancer, and would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy unless there is a threat to the woman's life or health. Perhaps the most exciting development is the nationwide Walk For Choice (WFC) movement that has, like the revolts in the Middle East and North Africa, erupted off of social networking sites like Facebook and Tumblr. WFC demonstrations are taking place across the country. Organizers and participants are mostly women in their early 20s, who, if Chicago is any example, are fed up with established women's rights groups that refuse to use the word "abortion" publicly and with pride. They forgo march permits, and "walk for choice" with signs, chants and banners, through downtowns, campuses and neighborhoods. That they are strident and unashamed is a shot in the arm to the movement. That they are young proves that the unintended result of the right wing's assault on women's right to abortion is a renewal of the Women's Liberation Movement. That movement will be needed more than ever as the fight over the U.S. budget is just warming up. Republicans and their fanatical Tea Party supporters held the nation hostage to get their way on budget cuts in April. Democratic leaders vowed that they would “not throw women under the bus,” yet women in D.C. got run over. To get the budget passed, Democrats agreed to forbid the District of Columbia, poorer and Blacker than almost any state in the nation, from using its own tax dollars to pay for poor women's abortions. That makes it clear that Obama and the Democrats are so steeped in pragmatism that all long-fought-for human rights in the U.S. are in jeopardy. Nothing is safe, even rights that Blacks won in the bloody struggle for civil rights, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides this year, along with the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War. Wisconsin proved that U.S. labor rights are fragile and the class war against workers is so retrograde that it aims at youth too, as several states contemplate overriding child labor laws. C. The U.S. wars and nuclear peril Unseparated from the drive to roll back all the gains made by freedom movements since the Civil War is the stench of war as a permanent element of rotting globalized capitalism. Even in Iraq, 47,000 U.S. troops are still deployed, months after President Obama declared, "The American combat mission in Iraq has ended." The Pentagon is angling to keep them there in spite of the Dec. 31 deadline for their removal. Even if they are withdrawn, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad--the largest embassy in the world--is projected to have over 16,000 people on its staff next year, including an unknown number of spies and military personnel and 5,500 private security contractors, that is, mercenaries a la Blackwater. And, while at a lower level than the height of sectarian violence in 2006-07, mass killings are still common. What is all too hidden from the public eye is the ongoing resistance within the military. The state's determination to crush it is just as much a point of continuity between the Obama administration and the Bush administration as is the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Bradley Manning, a 23-year-old intelligence analyst who was stationed in Iraq, languished for months in solitary confinement in the Marine prison at Quantico, Va. He is accused of leaking a classified video that showed American troops shooting Iraqi civilians from an Apache helicopter in 2007, as well as involvement in the WikiLeaks exposure of thousands of secret documents from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and of secret diplomatic cables. Those who perpetrated the crimes, from Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the 2007 shootings in the video, are not likely to be punished, but for revealing the truth Manning is facing life imprisonment.[14] Without having been convicted, he has been held in conditions criticized by Amnesty International and denounced as "degrading and inhumane" in a letter signed by 295 U.S. legal scholars. A senior United Nations representative on torture, Juan Mendez, protested the military's refusal to allow him access to Manning. In Afghanistan the U.S.-led war rages on, now after nearly ten years the longest war in U.S. history. The July 2011 date for "beginning" to withdraw troops seems to have less and less meaning as the occupation drags on. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is pushing "reconciliation" with the Taliban, holding a meeting April 16 with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani together with many other military and civilian leaders from the two countries. At the same time, Karzai's government is competing with the Taliban's oppression of women, by, for example, undermining women's shelters. About half the women in the country's prisons are there for fleeing domestic violence. The Taliban are even worse, destroying girls' schools, using stoning to punish "vice," and attacking women in myriad ways. But no real participation by women is foreseen if negotiations with the Taliban come to pass. In Pakistan, U.S. drones and special forces are aimed attack areas where the Taliban takes refuge. However, since a CIA agent was arrested after killing two Pakistanis--in self-defense, he says--there is a "fundamental rift" in relations, as Pakistan demands an end to drone attacks and a reduction in the presence of U.S. intelligence agents.[15] Pakistani fundamentalists are increasingly able to harass and even murder secularists with impunity. Looming over this tense situation is Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, growing at a rate that may soon make it the fifth-largest in the world, exceeding Britain's, while divided Kashmir remains a flashpoint with nuclear-armed India. North Korea's recent shelling of a disputed island, killing South Koreans, reminded the world of the threat of war once again. North Korea's gradually accumulating nuclear arsenal greatly compounds the ramifications. Kim Jong-il's regime is often described as "socialist," but in reality it is characterized by harsh exploitation of workers and militaristic nationalism. A well-fed army and an elite wallowing in luxury hold down masses living in deprivation, with perhaps millions facing the prospect of starvation. As shown in our Jan.-Feb. 2011 editorial, "Back to the Nuclear Brink," the nuclear buildup and aggressive moves from various sides not only raised the specter of World War III but underscored the urgency of the Marxist-Humanist perspective: the opposite of war is not peace, but revolution. The constant recurrence of wars and threats of wars demonstrates the insufficiency of opposing war without raising a banner of a society on new human foundations that would abolish the roots of war in social relations--a banner of revolution in permanence. III. Japan: earthquake, tsunami and meltdownNuclear power--which came into being to mask the genocidal nature of the nuclear arsenal first used by the U.S. to decimate Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan--is a key dimension of the tragedy tormenting Japan since the March 11 magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. By mid-April, close to 14,000 were counted dead and 14,000 missing. Survivors came together in the best human spirit to help each other in dire conditions. However, the already gargantuan toil of rescue, relief and reconstruction has been infinitely complicated by the hazards presented by the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Radioactive materials released by its damaged reactors disrupted fishing, agriculture and even emergency operations at the plant itself. The one-two punch of the earthquake and tsunami caused what Japanese had been told "can't happen here": the emergency cooling systems failed. A series of explosions, fires and partial meltdowns hit the plant's six reactors and their storage ponds for highly radioactive, hot and toxic spent fuel. Pieces of the dangerous fuel rods were scattered up to a mile away. In the weeks since--with no end in sight--the plant has spewed radioactive steam and water into the air, ocean, groundwater and soil. Regulators have found vegetables, milk and meat--and drinking water as far away as Tokyo--exceeding legal limits for radiation. Concentrations of radioactive iodine up to 7.5 million times the legal limit were measured in nearby seawater. The task of trying to keep the reactors and spent fuel ponds from exploding in a much worse way--like Chernobyl in 1986--will continue for months. What little can be done to clean up the area and contain the materials will take even longer. The contamination goes well beyond the government's official evacuation zone, which has been criticized as much too small by the nuclear-friendly International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.S. government, and a coalition of 168 Japanese citizens' groups. Both the government and the plant's owner, TEPCO, were totally unprepared for the situation, as is evident from their bumbling efforts in trying to prevent further explosions and meltdowns and stem the leak of radioactive water. The failure of one improvisation after another, together with the stream of misinformation, were reminiscent of BP's panicky response to its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico one year earlier. However, in the midst of the confusion, TEPCO did manage to submit to regulators its plans to build two more reactors at the devastated plant! The situation would be far worse if not for the heroic efforts of the nuclear workers--many of whom are low-paid, temporary laborers who perform the most dangerous jobs. They are thrown into unknown radiation levels, because so many measurement instruments were knocked out by the explosions or by levels of radiation they are not designed to withstand. Documents obtained from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission contradicted its public reassurances that this country's nuclear plants are better prepared for catastrophic events like earthquakes, hurricanes and bombings than Japan's. Moreover, last year U.S. nukes had 14 "near-miss" events--including some emergency cooling system failures, a key factor in Japan's current troubles. Meanwhile, the discovery of radioactive contamination of water in South Dakota, including in a number of Native American reservations, highlights the long-lasting threat from abandoned uranium mines, which are but one step in the nuclear cycle.[16] Yet President Obama is still pushing a "nuclear renaissance"! After each industrial disaster, capitalism seems to take more steps to repeat than to prevent that type of disaster. One year after BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, two protests called attention to how it is still harming people and the environment, while deep-water oil drilling permits are again being issued with only minor changes in protective measures: 1) an April 14 protest by Louisiana victims of the oil spill, together with locked-out construction workers, at BP's annual shareholder meeting in London, England; 2) an April 18 sit-in by 50 young activists at the U.S. Department of the Interior, with 300 more protesting outside, demanding a clean energy future, and denouncing the Department's routine approval of deep-water oil drilling and massive coal mining, including the destruction of Appalachian mountains. The disasters wrought by state-capitalism keep pointing to the truth of what Marx wrote long before human beings had learned to split the atom: "To have one basis for life and another for science is a priori a lie." Like the BP spill, each nuclear accident reveals that lie manifested as the fetishism of science. The glorification of "infallible" science, as opposed to the human being, as the repository of all truth and creativity, is the natural outgrowth of a society where living labor is dominated by dead labor (capital) incorporating science within itself. Science appears to have appropriated all the attributes of life, and human beings must serve its dictates. The ideology is perpetuated not just for its own sake but because it serves to hide capitalism's total dependence on exploitation of labor. Opposition to nuclear power has surged once again since the Fukushima Daiichi accident, with demonstrations in several countries. That includes Germany, where the government quickly reversed its policy, now promising to close all nuclear reactors by 2020; and India, where one protester was killed during an attack on a police station close to a proposed plant site in an earthquake-prone area. In Japan itself, not only have there been weekly demonstrations calling for all the country's nuclear reactors to be shut down, the same call has for the first time come from the National Japan Fisheries Union, while activists appealed to stop schools in contaminated zones from opening. The truth is that state-capitalism's drive for ever greater production compels production of ever more energy from whatever source, flouting all scientific findings on the threat posed to humanity, whether from radiation or from climate change. Truly, the only solution can come, not from a new energy technology but from what Karl Marx called "human power which is its own end." That can become the real principle of society only when it is no longer ruled by the law of value, the domination of dead over living labor--when revolution succeeds not only in overthrowing the old but in creating the new, truly human society. IV. Revolution, organization and philosophy"The question of 'What happens after?' gains crucial importance because of what it signals in self-development and self-flowering--'revolution in permanence.' No one knows what it is, or can touch it, or decide upon it before it appears. It is not the task that can be fulfilled in just one generation. That is why it remains so elusive, and why the abolition of the division between mental and manual labor sounds utopian. It has the future written all over it.... "In a word, as opposed to the Party, we put forth a body of ideas that spells out the second negativity which continues the revolution in permanence after victory....Full self-development of Man/Woman that leads to truly new human relationships remains the goal." --Raya Dunayevskaya, The Year of Only 8 Months The way the world's crises and struggles call out for revolution in permanence makes it imperative to dig into the dialectics of organization and philosophy. History shows that organization bereft of philosophy of revolution leads at best to yet another revolution stopped halfway--and once the forward motion is stopped, the backward motion takes over. The crises wracking the U.S. and Japan make it abundantly clear that the new society struggling to be born out of the Arab revolutions cannot be achieved by copying the "advanced" industrial lands' democracy and science, shackled and perverted by capitalism.[17] The pressure to halt halfway to liberation does not come only from the rulers. Even some of the Egyptian movement's leaders called for it to halt after Mubarak's fall. Amr Ezz of the April 6 Youth Movement said, "Now, the role of the regular people has ended and the role of the politicians begins. Now, we can begin negotiations with the military in order to plan the coming phase."[18] It is not that Ezz is one to settle for bourgeois democracy out of disregard for the struggles and demands of workers. The April 6 Youth Movement began in support of textile workers in Muhalla al-Kubra who had called for a national general strike in 2008. Nevertheless, the pull to stop short makes itself felt, whether from fear of provoking the counter-revolution or from fear of the totality of change that revolution reaches for--or from ideological obfuscation that portrays counter-revolution as revolution, whether that is Stalin's state-capitalism or Khomeini's Islamic Republic. Ezz and others had to modify their position after the Army's treachery culminated in the April 9-10 attacks on protesters in Tahrir Square. It is this situation that led the youth to ask, "What has happened to our revolution?" On April 10 the Revolutionary Youth Coalition, including Amr Ezz, condemned the military's violence, suspended talks with its Supreme Council, the junta running the state, and threatened more sit-ins. At the same time the military, hand in hand with the Muslim Brotherhood, has been working to funnel everything into the "normal" channels of the bourgeois state: negotiations with the junta and preparations for elections. In this situation the revolution's "leaderless" character was called into question. "Leaderlessness" did make clear that masses of people in motion are not seeking yet another leadership, and are reaching for self-determination in their own lives. And yet, leaderlessness could not substitute for theory. As long as the movement's meaning is not grasped and made explicit as a category on whose basis the revolution acts, it is in danger of being lost. The passage of the Army's constitutional referendum by more than 75% shows how little a new parliament will represent the revolution. History long ago showed that elections within the old state form, even if it has been reformed, are the road to the destruction of the forms of power the masses were beginning to build for themselves. New parties being organized are not "leaderless," and are in great danger of being incorporated into the state system. Some Marxist groups, in Egypt and elsewhere, think they have the answer: build a revolutionary socialist vanguard party. History has also shown how vanguard parties that take power are prone to transform into opposite. The problem is not, as these parties believe, finding the right leaders. What is needed is not an individual or a party to be leader, but philosophy as the key--the philosophy of revolution in permanence, functioning as an integral part of revolution. RESISTING HALFWAY REVOLUTIONS The pull to stop short was also expressed in the desire to make the revolution "non-ideological." That is supposedly the only way to unite all the forces of revolt, and at the same time it is an effort to avoid a takeover by Islamists. Confusing ideology with philosophy, the "non-ideological" approach was a manifestation of the longstanding theoretical void, which robs the revolution of any banner of total transformation. Without such a vision of new human relations, it is left entirely up to the spontaneous actions of the masses to resist the pull to stop halfway. That means settling for some concrete gains but giving up the real achievements of the revolution: the self-activity and self-development of the Subject, the new relations established, and the forms of organization the masses created spontaneously. It is that self-activity that creates the basis for workers' control of production, for breaking the law of value, for establishing a new society in which the division between mental and manual labor can be broken down. Without it, a new democracy cannot break out of the serious crises plaguing the world. With it, a banner of freedom can encourage the rest of the world to move to break away from capitalism and its crises. The dialectic of revolts and counter-revolutions shows that a banner of total freedom that roots itself in the self-activity of the masses demands an organizational expression. Dialectics of organization and philosophy is not only about mass associations arising from the struggle, nor the elitist party, but about the kind of group that is with the masses and is organized around the movement from theory.[19] Without organizational responsibility for the philosophy of liberation, the high points of revolution can be lost, rather than being expanded, deepened, and raised as a banner to engage the strongest solidarity from the masses around the world. To address this historic problem, we are completing a new edition of selected writings by Dunayevskaya on Karl Marx. Key in this is the significance of Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program, and how that significance was lost on post-Marx Marxists. The 1875 Gotha Program was the basis for unity between two organizations, one Marxist and one Lassallean, to form a new socialist party. It is not the specific doctrines so much as the approach to organization and to revolution that makes it so revealing of the fundamental flaws of today's organizations as well. Marx's critique exposed the limitations, not only of the Lassallean theory underlying the Gotha Program, but of the way principles were compromised to achieve unity. He raised a concept of organization as inseparable from theory, from a vision of the new society, from revolution in permanence--as opposed to the Lassallean conception of organization that became accepted by Marx's followers. The fact that Marx's concept did not become the basis for post-Marx Marxist organizing--even by the greatest revolutionaries such as Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky--impelled Dunayevskaya to work on dialectics of organization and philosophy. It began with digging into the meaning of the Critique of the Gotha Program with her "Philosopher of Permanent Revolution and Organization Man," which will be one of the key writings in our new edition of selected writings by Dunayevskaya on Marx. In contrast to the way post-Marx Marxists had separated their concept of organization from Marx's concept of revolution, this writing grasps his Critique of the Gotha Program as a return to the dialectic of negativity, worked out as revolution in permanence; what is crucial is the perspective of a totally classless society, which "concretely...arose from the critique of the supposedly socialist program," and "what would be required to make that real." The Critique does not provide a formula, but rather holds up a vision of second negativity: what is achieved by revolution necessarily begins as an incomplete transcendence of capitalism and existing society's many alienations. It must continue the transformations until the antithesis between mental and manual labor breaks down, and labor becomes no longer a mere means of life but its prime necessity. No post-Marx Marxist had grasped this as showing the principles on which revolutionary organization needs to be based. This year's moment of revolution and counter-revolution intiated by the Arab Spring raises a crucial aspect of Dunayevskaya's work on dialectics of organization and philosophy: what happens to the new forms of self-organization that spring from spontaneous mass actions. These forms "are correct, as against the elitism and ossification of the Party," yet they are not the absolute opposite of the Party-to-Lead.[20] One way this is seen is when these forms get "taken over" by political organizations such as vanguard parties. Dunayevskaya's examination found that there is more to it. The history of revolutions shows that masses are not satisfied with spontaneous action but "look to be taken over" in the sense of searching for an organization to bring together theory and practice against the tendency to stop dead with the conquest of state power. But the kinds of organization of thought that are ready to offer themselves to take over the movement fall short of a unity of theory and practice measuring up to the altogether new beginnings sought from below. The concept of revolution in permanence, and what happens after the conquest of power--which has not yet come to pass in any of this year's revolutions--actually impinges on questions of organization and struggle now. The vision of liberation and what is needed to make it real are a concrete challenge to tendencies in thought and organization who would have the movement stop halfway and are ready to take over the forms of organization that issued from spontaneity. WHAT HAPPENS AFTER? The revolutions and counter-revolutions of 2011 bring new urgency to the questions that begin another of the writings that will be in the new collection of Dunayevskaya on Marx, "A Post-World War II View of Marx's Humanism, 1843-83; Marxist-Humanism in the 1950s and 1980s": "The two-fold problematic of our age is: 1) What happens after the conquest of power? 2) Are there ways for new beginnings when there is so much reaction, so many aborted revolutions, such turning of the clock backward in the most technologically advanced lands?"[21] What is developed in this essay, and in the context of the whole collection, is the dialectic of human development, on what kind of labor human beings should do, on the Man/Woman relationship as well as "the relationship of party to spontaneity, of mass to leadership, of philosophy to reality," on Marx's multilinear approach, which allowed no blueprints for the future, as against the unilinearism of post-Marx Marxism. Thus, new illumination is cast, not only on the Humanism of Marx, but on the world today. Therefore, at the forefront of our tasks for 2011-2012 is publishing this collection. Both in itself and as a new vantage point on the whole body of Marxist-Humanist writings, it gives us a fresh start toward working out dialectics of organization and philosophy, which is of the essence for the current moment of world development, and yet no one, including us, has worked it out. V. Marxist-Humanist Tasks
--The Resident Editorial Board, April 20, 2011
____________ Notes: 1.See especially "Revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya shake world order," by Gerry Emmett, March-April 2011 N&L. 2. "Support the revolutions of Egypt and Tunisia!" 3. Jumanah Younis, "Egypt's revolution means nothing if its women are not free," The Guardian, 3/9/11. 4. So wrote blogger Maikel Nabil, sentenced by a military court to three years in prison for his criticisms of the Army. http://www.maikelnabil.com/2011/03/blog-post_07.html 5. Jihad Taki, "Libyan Ambassador to UN urges international community to stop genocide," Global Arab Network, 2/21/11. 6. Some who adulate Qaddafi's defenders Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez were able to spin fantasies about Libya's revolution having been planned by the U.S. and at the same time linked to Al Qaeda. From the Right, Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam defended "my brother" Qaddafi, the source of millions of dollars in past aid for Farrakhan. 7. Not all of the Left made abstract "anti-intervention" their ground of their position. For instance, Richard Greeman, "Libya: Whose Side Are We On?" Z Net (http://zcommunications.org/libya-who-s-side-are-we-on-by-richard-greeman); Juan Cole, "An Open Letter to the Left on Libya" (http://www.juancole.com/2011/03/an-open-letter-to-the-left-on-libya.html). The socialist group Solidarity could not agree, so they released statements by two subgroups of their National Committee, one of which, "The Right to Demand Assistance," is one of the best to come from a U.S. Left group. 8. Raya Dunayevskaya, Philosophy and Revolution, p. 288. 9. Raya Dunayevskaya, Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution, p. 194. 10. See "Gaza youth shout out," Jan.-Feb. 2011 N&L. 11. See "On the so-called Goldstone 'Retraction,'"by Omar Baddar. 12. "We as a society are witnessing the debasement of humanist respect toward fellow human beings with ever-increasing intensity....The criminal has become the dart board at which we throw our frustrations....It has given the ruling class, under a burgeoning 'law and order' climate, full permission to hold jurisdiction over an increasingly revolutionary-minded proletariat." --D.A. Sheldon, Voices from within the Prison Walls, p. 6 (News and Letters Committees, 1998). 13. See "Prisoners STRIKE!" Jan.-Feb. 2011 N&L. 14. See http://www.bradleymanning.org/. 15. Jane Perlez, "U.S. Rift With Pakistan Grows Over Drone Strikes," New York Times, 4/17/11. 16. See "NRC's Record in 2010: A UCS Assessment," report by David Wright for the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Talli Naumann, "Radiation high on South Dakota reservations," Native Sun News, 3/31/11. 17. On Europe, which is stumbling from one national bailout/austerity program to another as it fails to emerge from the Great Recession and wallows in anti-immigrant hysteria no less toxic than the North American variety, see "European revolts confront economic and political crises," by Ron Kelch, Jan.-Feb. 2011 N&L 18. Outside Egypt, many on the Left held that the masses "need to acquire the kind of political education that can be achieved only through a long-term practise of democracy." Quoted from "Whither Egypt?" by Gilbert Achcar and Farooq Sulehria, Feb. 5, 2011, http://www.zcommunications.org/whither-egypt-by-gilbert-achcar 19. See The Philosophic Moment of Marxist-Humanism, pp. 9-10, 23-40, 42-43. 20. See The Year of Only 8 Months, p. 11; The Philosophic Moment of Marxist-Humanism, pp. 14-15. 21."A Post-World War II View of Marx's Humanism, 1843-83; Marxist-Humanism in the 1950s and 1980s," Bosnia-Herzegovina: Achilles Heel of Western 'Civilization' (News and Letters, 1996), p. 93. |
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