As for me haven't been doing that much reading lately. Found that I hardly read any more as well. Have to say do have times like this and others don't. Guess it depends on the book itself as well.

To the End of the Land, David Grossman and Jessica Cohen (Translator)

A Midwife's Tale : The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Already viewed the dvd part of it and it was worth the watch. Now, I can't wait the book to learn even more about Ms Ballard.

Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far, Bristol Palin and Nancy French

This is taken from another thread and/response that I have done regarding Bristol's mother and Tripp's grandmother.

What is/are Sarah Palin stance/s on family leave act (maternity, paternity, etc)? The reason why I'm asking this here because she didn't bring up in neither of her books. In my opinion this should be a paid one. It should also nation and worldwide as well.

Is there anyone else on here besides whom are getting beyond tired of her still being in the spotlight? That also goes her putting her husband, kids, rest of her family, and friends being in the spotlight and etc. Even though I'm still like her as a person then a politician.

She should just go back to her husband and kids. Instead being in the spotlight. Do feel sorry for her kids and the rest of family and everyone whom is associated with her. Because politics have truly ruined her and her husband for sure. Yeah I could be wrong about this.

Finished reading these few books almost half a mo to 2 mo back now.

The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents.: One Unconventional Detour Around the World, Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett, Amanda Pressner.It was worth the read. Especially, returning the hardcover because found it was little worn. Had to wait until the paperback was released to read it.

Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir, Elena Gorokhova a week ago. It was worth read. Especially, since found I learned more about the former Soviet Union then what I already knew about before reading your memoir. Can't wait to read more of Ms Gorokhova's life and/or her mothers life now.

A Father's Love: One Man's Unrelenting Battle to Bring His Abducted Son Home, David Goldman. WOW what a memoir this was and thank you, Mr. Goldman for writing about your ordeal to get Sean back home.

I am reading "The ABC of Communism", by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky. Also, "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense", by Freddy Nietzsche. And I just started "Star Rangers", by Andre Norton...

i'm in the middle of reading clausewitz's "on war" right now. it is very good but slow-going and not the sort of "rosetta stone" i was hoping for. and i just picked up "memoirs of my nervous illness" by daniel paul schreber.

I'm finishing The Foundations of Leninism by Stalin

I'm in the middle of book one of Rebel Girl, by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

I'm trying to finish Carl Hiassen's latest, which wasn't as good as all the others by him that I've enjoyed, but I bought it for an airline flight and don't want to just leave it unfinished now that I'm home.

I finished The Help, which is all the rage, but I disliked it.

I have a smallish stack of books to read this summer on labor and history.

I'm reading G.V. Plekhanov's Anarchism and Socialism right now, and the ABC's that Dhalgren mentioned above is likely next. I also read a lot of essays online.

There is a lot of great stuff to read online here: http://marxists.org/

This is a great place to start:

http://marxists.org/archive/Marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm

Welcome to the forum!

i'm in the middle of reading clausewitz's "on war" right now. it is very good but slow-going and not the sort of "rosetta stone" i was hoping for.
I read On War cover-to-cover about six years ago. Try focusing on studying book one (titled, On the Nature of War), composed of eight small chapters, which has all of Clausewitz's major insights nicely summed up in it. Here are a few quotes:

"In short, absolute, so-called mathematical, factors never find a firm basis in military calculations. From the very start there is an interplay of possibilities, probabilities, good luck and bad that weaves its way throughout the length and breadth of the tapestry. In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards."

"We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means. [...] The political object is the goal, war is the means of achieving it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose."

"...war should never be thought of as something autonomous but always as an instrument of policy..."

"With its mass of vivid impressions and the doubts which characterize all information and opinion, there is no activity like war to rob men of confidence in themselves and in others, and to divert them from their original course of action."

"Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war."

"Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper."

"This tremendous friction, which cannot, as in mechanics, be reduced to a few points, is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance."

"The good general must know friction in order to overcome it whenever possible, and in order not to expect a standard of achievement in his operations which this very friction makes impossible."

"Friction, as we choose to call it, is the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult."

"We have identified danger, physical exertion, intelligence, and friction as the elements that coalesce to form the atmosphere of war, and turn it into a medium that impedes activity. In their restrictive effects they can be grouped into a single concept of general friction. Is there any lubricant that will reduce this abrasion? Only one, and a commander and his army will not always have it readily available: combat experience."

Yet the Prussian military took all the wrong lessons from Clausewitz, elevating war to the purpose of the state. Capital still ran the show but with a particularly deranged attack dog.

Lenin in Siberian Exile, Records, Documents and Recollections, Compiled by Anatoly Ivansky.

If the OP is spam, this reading list will short-circuit the programming...

Heh, heh...

Confessions of an Economic Hitman, by John Perkins (reads like a spy novel?); Three men in a room by Seymour Lachman about the Albany senate, Their eyes were on God by Zora Neal Hurston...and still ploughing through you should know what...

"From Resistance to Revolution-Manifesto for a Fifth International". I recently finished the Deutcher trilogy (again), "Wolfsangel" by MD Lachlan (fiction) and "The Complete Wing Chun" by Robert Chu, Rene Ritchie, and Y. Wu. Along with some other fiction.

I found this book review interesting:

Either We Do Away with Capitalism, or Capitalism Will Do Away with Us
by: Iroel Sánchez
July 12 2011

tags: Cuba, books, capitalism, philosophy, interviews
FotoCFL

The following is an interview with Spanish philosopher Carlos Fernandez Liria and his colleague Luis Alegre Zahonero recently won the international Liberator Prize for Critical Thinking for their book, El Orden de El Capital (The Order of Capital).

This is one of the highest honors offered at the international level for a published work, but as Fernández Liria says, “news of the prize has not been carried on any of the Spanish news media, in spite of the fact that it is an international essay prize (with a cash award that is double what our own redoubtable Prince of Asturias gives for his famous prizes) a price which, after all, has been awarded to two Spanish university professors.” In this interview, Carlos speculates about this silence, the contents and purposes of his intellectual work, and its relationship to current crucial events.

----

In Venezuela you just won, together with Luis Alegre, the Liberator Prize for Critical Thinking, perhaps the most important prize for Spanish-language Left intellectual production, a prize that has been won by such renowned thinkers as István Mészároz. What is your reading on this fact, and how do you think this will help spread the thesis that you defend throughout your written work?

Luis and I are very grateful. Of course, we thank the Venezuelan government, the Ministry of Culture, and President Chávez, who created this prize which allows left and critical thinking to be recognized, breaking with the cultural hegemony of neoliberalism. We also want very much to recognize Atilio Borón, who we’ve never met, but a person whom we admire very much, plus all the other members of the jury. We want to give special thanks to Farruco Sesto and Carmen Bohorquez, who for the last few years have honored us with their confidence.

As you say, the best part of the prize is that the book will now have a broader distribution. Our hope is that it will serve as one more little grain of sand in the struggles that we must soon confront, which I think will be very hard. What we are facing at a worldwide level is a head-on battle with capitalism itself. In the next twenty years we will have no other option.

This stuff about “socialism or death” is about to gain a whole new meaning, because either we put an end to capitalism or capitalism will put an end to us. Look at what is happening in Japan, for example. If the tsunami wave had been ten meters taller or the earthquake one point stronger (and who says it could not have been!), a dozen nuclear reactors would have melted down and that would have been curtains for tens of thousands of people. It might have become necessary to evacuate Japan. We are sitting on a powder-keg controlled by madmen and criminals. Who, really, are those who we call “the markets?” No matter how you put it, they’re madmen playing Russian roulette with the planet, sacrificing whole peoples, changing their minds every minute, sinking or saving countries like kids playing with toy boats. There have never been dictators who were any deafer or any more demented than these. Not even Caligula or Nero were as spoiled as they, or had anywhere near this much power...

(full article here: http://www.politicalaffairs.net/either-we-do-away-with-capitalism-or-capitalism-will-do-away-with-us/)

Has anyone heard of this scholar? It looks like it may only be available in Spanish, but thought I'd post the review anyway since we have a wide audience on this site.

Hmmm. Sounds like what we've been preaching on that other board for a couple of years now.

Socialism or death. If it sounds dire, that's because it IS.

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166334196l/10842.jpg COMPANERO, The Life and Death of Che Guevara, By Jorge G. Castañeda

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10842.Compa_ero

"'I knew you were going to shoot me; I should never have been taken alive. Tell Fidel that this failure does not mean the end of the revolution, that it will triumph elsewhere. Tell Aleida to forget this, remarry and be happy, and keep the children studying. Ask the soldiers to aim well.'"

Light reading and very interesting -

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51-457aG2KL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? --Tom Nissley

FEAR AT WORK: JOB BLACKMAIL, LABOR,. AND THE ENVIRONMENT by Richard Kazis and. Richard L. Grossman. Oldie but goody, still sadly applies...

Embassytown by China Mieville

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/08/embassytown-china-mieville-review

It's damn hard to find intelligent science fiction, this is the real deal.

Embassytown by China Mieville

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/08/embassytown-china-mieville-review

It's damn hard to find intelligent science fiction, this is the real deal.

Love sci-fi, and need some form of escape...

I am not known for reading books, but I have started to read Edmund Blunden's Undertones of War, University of Chicago Press 2007. Blunden was a British poet. In Undertones he describes his horrible experiences during the trench warfare of World War I.

So I was cruising the new books section at the library and I see 'Love and Capital'. It is an account of the family life of Karl and Jenny Marx. This is not the sort of thing I'm usually interested in but I had to look. It appears to be a rather sympathetic treatment although we do get the 'great analysis/poor perscription' crap. But that is not the book's purpose, for which it seems to do a good job, there is perhaps more detail than one would want. When I read that Marx had to pawn his coat it was a punch in the gut.

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Capital-Jenny-Birth-Revolution/dp/0316066117/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324070597&sr=1-1

Not a recommendation, just wanted ya to know it's out there.

So I was cruising the new books section at the library and I see 'Love and Capital'. It is an account of the family life of Karl and Jenny Marx. This is not the sort of thing I'm usually interested in but I had to look. It appears to be a rather sympathetic treatment although we do get the 'great analysis/poor perscription' crap. But that is not the book's purpose, for which it seems to do a good job, there is perhaps more detail than one would want. When I read that Marx had to pawn his coat it was a punch in the gut.

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Capital-Jenny-Birth-Revolution/dp/0316066117/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324070597&sr=1-1

Not a recommendation, just wanted ya to know it's out there.


I've read a few things like this for flavor..they normally try to depict Marx in the worst light. I always end up liking him more every time.

I've read a few things like this for flavor..they normally try to depict Marx in the worst light. I always end up liking him more every time.

I keep looking for something to hate about it but have yet to find it. I'm reading the early London years now, I had no idea he had been sunk so deep in poverty. Ya know, we read his magisterial writing, look at the typical photo portrait, stern and brooding, it is easy to forget that he was just a man. A guy who doted on his children, worried about making ends meet, who could misjudge his colleagues, make mistakes, liked to tie one on and carry on. Through it all he was a revolutionary, constantly sharpening his tools, working himself ragged to develop theory and organization. He was profoundly HUMAN and by being so splendidly displayed human potential.

Thanks BP - that is something I would read. Looks like a good book for January.

Murdered By Capitalism - A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death on the American Left
by John Ross

Anyone heard of this book, or familiar with this writer? A search of the site found a book review for one of his other books posted by Chlamor in 2007 about the Zapatistas.

I was at the public library the other day and came across it. It's hilarious and awesome so far, I'm only on page 30 or so. I keep waiting for it to turn to crap but I love it so far. And even if it does get flaky, it's got my juices flowing and is dropping names and events left and right (or left and left, I should say) that I can do further reading on later. Just wondering if anyone has heard of it.

Never heard of it, thanks.

I think the word 'irreverent' applies. This link has a good chunk of the intro chapter.

http://www.amazon.com/Murdered-Capitalism-Memoir-American-Nation/dp/1560255781#reader_1560255781

Looks like fun but I wouldn't use it as a study guide.

Yeah, I am about halfway through. There is something brilliant about it, but you are right, it's not a study guide.

The author is basically having drunken conversations with dead radicals (commies and anarchists). Starting with Schnaubelt and then moving on to the cemetery south of Chicago where the Haymarket memorial is. Obviously fictionalized, and sometimes hilarious, but with a lot of historical accuracy and some decent perspective. Lucy Parsons' 'opinions' of Emma Goldman are funny as hell.

It definitely shows the conflicts between anarchists and communists, gives a lot of thought to the propaganda of the deed and some other stuff about various factions and parties and things.

The funniest part, to me, is listening to the author argue with himself through the voice of the dead. He is telling his own story for several chapters, from beat poet-era to hiding out in Mexico to doing tons of drugs, tweaking and tripping, to his experience in the 60s, and the dead guy Schnaubelt is calling him out on how there is nothing political about it, how he is confusing 'his story' for 'history', that the 60s were nothing new and not all that important, etc.

I have laughed out loud many times. I actually recommend this book, if you can put up with the self-indulgent 60s stuff, at least it is also self-effacing and critical, and there are some great semi-fictionalized accounts of dead leftists.

the 60s were nothing new and not all that important

This is true and is made clearer every day. The only way that the 60s have any import beyond the physical, historical continuity and all that implies is via idealism - which is what this current culture and society is steeped in.

Damn, now I will have to read this book - I need more eyes...

This is true and is made clearer every day. The only way that the 60s have any import beyond the physical, historical continuity and all that implies is via idealism - which is what this current culture and society is steeped in.

Damn, now I will have to read this book - I need more eyes...

Well, if you come across a copy, go for it. It is easy, fun reading. I've had a hard time getting through any serious reading for a while. It's been ages since I have read a book cover to cover in a timely manner. But I am just flying through this one. It is as much entertainment as it is history. Actually, moreso.

Monkeyman picked up Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis at the library so I am reading that next.

And of course, Capital, once we get that going :)

Well, if you come across a copy, go for it. It is easy, fun reading. I've had a hard time getting through any serious reading for a while. It's been ages since I have read a book cover to cover in a timely manner. But I am just flying through this one. It is as much entertainment as it is history. Actually, moreso.

Monkeyman picked up Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis at the library so I am reading that next.

And of course, Capital, once we get that going :)

I'm in the same boat when it comes to not doing serious reading, except for some recommended work. Fucking thing is the 'serious' has been pursuing me through the realms of fiction, without my intent. First I read the latest Neal Stephenson and it's his worst to date replete with cardboard 'Islamists', the dude has gone totally Tom Clancy. Then I get this book, 'Deathless', which blends an interesting treatment of Russian folklore with the Russian Revolution and the Siege of Leningrad. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it, there is no hard core red baiting but rather an uneasy "the more things change the more they remain the same", which is not true. But it has it's moments, house elves gone commie and Baba Yaga addressed as 'commissar'. There is also an idealized village where the Lenins live with their boys Josef and Leon in primitive communist bliss. Our heroine is a daughter of the bourgeoisie, wife of Kolchie, a sniper in Leningrad and a Soviet general at various times. Mileage will vary. Then a goddamn cyberpunk so full of red baiting that I threw it down in disgust last night and can't even remember the title.

Older I get the harder I am to please.

This is true and is made clearer every day. The only way that the 60s have any import beyond the physical, historical continuity and all that implies is via idealism - which is what this current culture and society is steeped in.

Damn, now I will have to read this book - I need more eyes...

I'm nearing the end of the book. Just want to mention that he is sort of an 'end of ideology guy' and some of his 'testimonies' of certain commies is irritating/questionable so it's not like he is fully on point or anything, but I still think the book is worth a read. And entertaining.

have any of you guys read Andrew Kliman's FAILURE OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION yet? i'm just starting it myself.

have any of you guys read Andrew Kliman's FAILURE OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION yet? i'm just starting it myself.

I am looking for it (I thought I had it, but it was the wrong one) *sigh*

have any of you guys read Andrew Kliman's FAILURE OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION yet? i'm just starting it myself.

I read the multipart review on the critique of crisis theory blog. I personally thought that Sam had earlier written a much better critique of the Transformation Problem than what he reiterated in his review. I am not sure how precisely this related to Klinman's book. If you have not read it, you might check out Michael Roberts blog for a review as well. It generated a large discussion and actually drew a few replies by Klinman himself.

As for Sam's critique, I think that he did best to emphasize that a. labor produces surplus value and not commodities and that b. Say's Law is demonstrably wrong.

I just re-read Pisarev's "Bees". Man, that is a masterpiece, pure and simple. And then, I have started "What Is To Be Done". It doesn't get much better than this...

I haven't read this but with a review this long I doubt much has been missed.


The Quest for the Truth About Stalin: Review of Yuri Zukhov’s “Different Stalin”

http://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/the-quest-for-the-truth-about-stalin-review-of-yuri-zukhovs-different-stalin/#more-6717

Interesting and it seems something over-corrective. Some of the views of author and reviewer, particularly concerning electoral reform in 1936-37 are disputed by the KKE analysis.

have any of you guys read Andrew Kliman's FAILURE OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION yet? i'm just starting it myself.

Hey BC, I've been digging into Kliman just a little bit. The title of his book seriously reflects his thesis -- that capitalist crisis is a failure of production. He walks to the roulette table and bets his entire life savings on "falling rate of profit". Its a bet hes going to lose.

I read Kliman's response to Sam at http://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/responses-to-readers-austrian-economics-versus-marxism/the-failure-of-capitalist-production-by-andrew-kliman-part-3/

I think Kliman found some holes in Sam's case against him, but that they are diversionary (although I think for Sam some of his errors are startlingly lax)

I don't particularly even see how Kliman's case is consistent with Marx personally

So I'm reading Moby Dick. That fucker's been stalking me for decades, time to finish high school.

No spoilers!

http://boldlymocking.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/moby-dick.jpg

Just finished 'Massacre, The Life and Death of the Paris Commune', by John Merriman. It is no substitute for Marx's 'The Civil War in France' in that it does not provide a sharp historical analysis, but it is a useful companion piece. The book relies upon eye witness accounts from all sides, providing some 'feel' for events in real time.

Merriman is a Yale guy so we do not expect materialists analysis and his criticisms of the shortfalls of the Commune in matters of organization and the military is a bit idealists. However, the author never disparges the rightness of the cause nor the bravery of the Communards, especially in defeat. Where his bile does rise is in depiction of the bourgeois, and in this book this includes the petty bourgeois.

The class hatred of the well off is evident from the get go and decends into bloody savagery by the end of May, continuing from then as mass incarceration and deportation to colonial hellholes. A few quotes will suffice:

"As the executions preceeded, the Englishman changed his tune: "It sounds like trifling for M, Thhiers to be denouncing the Insurgents for having shot a captive officer 'without respectfor the laws of war.' The laws of war! They are mild and Christian compared with the inhuman laws of revenge under which the Versailles troopshave been shooting, bayoneting, ripping up prisoners, women and children, during the lastsix days....So far as we can recollect there has never been nothing like this im history."

"Some old men and wounded prisonerswere shot, and more volleys in the distance signaled that men in the convoy had fallen and could not go on. The Englishman and the others reached Versialles and then Satory at 8PM. There, elegantly dressed crowds called for their execution: "Ah ha! We have some of those pertol bombs that you know so well resrved for you. There are [also] machine guns, miserable scoundrels{sacres coquins]." The young foreigner got lucky and was released. What he had seen had changed his view of the Communards, for whom he now felt sympathy."

"...Augustine Blanchecotte castigated "these wild beast, savages, raging....These are monsters who should be classified by zoologists. These are not men" According to Figaro "One cannot have any illusions. More than 50,000 insurgents remain in Paris...What is republican? A wild animal."

"The capital must be purged. Paris needs a good bleeding. we have to get rid of 50,000 men. ... There are some who say 100,000." A policeman in Auteuil did not mince words either, "The soldiers of Versailles are saying...that they will spare no one, not women, not children, not old people, given that they are nothing more than Parisan scum and that France must get rid of them."

Of course these soldiers were provincials, whipped into a bloody frenzy by booj propaganda(think about NG troops from rural locales sent to Ferguson, Baltimore...).

Such will be the shouts and curses of the indignados when you are being lead to the wall......

http://www.amazon.com/Massacre-Life-Death-Paris-Commune/dp/0465020178

Such will be the shouts and curses of the indignados when you are being lead to the wall......

They won't even have to switch sides to condemn us, the indigs are already bourgeoisie (of the petite sort) - and hatred is just under the surface. Not hatred for the bosses, hatred for workers.

I'm about to start on a book titled Death in the Congo about the assassination of Lamumba

I've not read these books but perhaps I should. Suggested by Red Kahina at Twitter

********************************************************

Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital (World Social Change)
by Amiya Kumar Bagchi (Author)

In this innovative and ambitious global history, distinguished economic historian Amiya Kumar Bagchi critically analyzes the processes leading to the rise of the West since the sixteenth century to its current position as the most prosperous and powerful group of nations in the world. Integrating the history of armed conflict with the history of competition for trade, investment, and markets, Bagchi explores the human consequences for people both within and outside the region. He characterizes the emergence and operation of capitalism as a system driven by wars over resources and markets rather than one that genuinely operates on the principle of free markets. In tracing this history, he also charts what happened to the people who came under its sway during the last five centuries.

Bagchi thus broadens our understanding of the nature and history of capitalism and challenges the fetishism of commodities that limits the perspective of most economic historians. The book also challenges the Eurocentrism that still underlies the conceptual framework of many mainstream historians, joining earlier narratives that chronicle the history of human beings as living persons rather than as puppets serving the abstract cause of "economic growth."

His unflinching examination of the human costs of development—not only in the colonial periphery but in the core nations—includes not only economic processes and issues of inequality within and among nations but also the intertwining of economics and war-making on a world scale. The book also contributes to our knowledge of how and in what sequence human health has been shaped by public health care, sanitation, modern medicine, income levels and nutrition. Written with extraordinary range and depth, Perilous Passage will change the ways in which we think about many of the largest issues in world history and development.

http://www.amazon.com/Perilous-Passage-Mankind-Ascendancy-Capital/dp/0742539210

**************************************************

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation Paperback – September 15, 2004

Literary Nonfiction. CALIBAN AND THE WITCH is a history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici investigates the capitalist rationalization of social reproduction. She shows how the battle against the rebel body and the conflict between body and mind are essential conditions for the development of labor power and self-ownership, two central principles of modern social organization.

"It is both a passionate work of memory recovered and a hammer of humanity's agenda."—Peter Linebaugh, author of The London Hanged

http://www.amazon.com/Caliban-Witch-Women-Primitive-Accumulation/dp/1570270597

I did not read Caliban and the Witch but I did read a goodly helping of other material from Frederici. I mulled it over for a while a few years ago and what I decided was this: what is missing most from a left discourse is CLARITY (anax echoed this, at a time when I felt that urgency and anger were the more pressing concerns). Depth of analysis -- especially when it naturally lends itself to offshoots or tangents -- functions almost entirely as sophism without first establishing an underlying clarity (and the requisite agreement and ethic that go hand in hand with such clarity OF PURPOSE).

By not addressing the fundamental need for BUILDING BLOCKS one consigns virtually all undertakings to the status of "pet project". In this case, that is a shame. Maybe one day we can do something about that (ie integrating "radical feminism" into the communist left..even though I think this is a red herring because it will never be palatable to the "radical feminists" anyway)

tl;dr no matter how stimulating or insightful it is, it can't help but be a mind fuck. (Don't forget that we consider it a compliment of the highest order when they slander us as "reductionists").

PS read it and let us know BP. Like I say, its been a few years for me.

Semi-related and you guys may have seen this already but

http://mltoday.com/article/2390-ellen-meiksins-wood-against-the-tide/90-frontpage-stories

That is one helluva eulogy.

I did not read Caliban and the Witch but I did read a goodly helping of other material from Frederici. I mulled it over for a while a few years ago and what I decided was this: what is missing most from a left discourse is CLARITY (anax echoed this, at a time when I felt that urgency and anger were the more pressing concerns). Depth of analysis -- especially when it naturally lends itself to offshoots or tangents -- functions almost entirely as sophism without first establishing an underlying clarity (and the requisite agreement and ethic that go hand in hand with such clarity OF PURPOSE).

By not addressing the fundamental need for BUILDING BLOCKS one consigns virtually all undertakings to the status of "pet project". In this case, that is a shame. Maybe one day we can do something about that (ie integrating "radical feminism" into the communist left..even though I think this is a red herring because it will never be palatable to the "radical feminists" anyway)

tl;dr no matter how stimulating or insightful it is, it can't help but be a mind fuck. (Don't forget that we consider it a compliment of the highest order when they slander us as "reductionists").

PS read it and let us know BP. Like I say, its been a few years for me.

I've been more interested in 'Perilous Passage', it seems to be something that Dhal asked about a while ago, a history of capitalism. Of course the rub might be that it is more than that. In any case I'm being a real cheapskate of late & won't pay more than $10 for about any book, amazing what falls in that category, but not that one, not yet. Will keep my eye on it.

Had some experience with Rad/Fems and it hasn't been pleasant. One tries to approach with respect and understand I'm behind the eightball from the gitgo but didn't seem to matter, I was shit and had nothing to say. Perhaps just bad luck on my part.

All of the various 'interests' are on the communist agenda, anything pertaining to 'human'. Our efforts and their experience should bring them to us, in clear understanding and alliance if not more directly.

I've been more interested in 'Perilous Passage', it seems to be something that Dhal asked about a while ago, a history of capitalism. Of course the rub might be that it is more than that. In any case I'm being a real cheapskate of late & won't pay more than $10 for about any book, amazing what falls in that category, but not that one, not yet. Will keep my eye on it.

Had some experience with Rad/Fems and it hasn't been pleasant. One tries to approach with respect and understand I'm behind the eightball from the gitgo but didn't seem to matter, I was shit and had nothing to say. Perhaps just bad luck on my part.

All of the various 'interests' are on the communist agenda, anything pertaining to 'human'. Our efforts and their experience should bring them to us, in clear understanding and alliance if not more directly.

The main problem I have with rad-fems is that they are so exclusively reactionary. When I try to point out that in the Soviet Union mothers were paid a state salary for raising kids, the response is that the state wanted to keep them pregnant and in the kitchen - no thank you! When I point out that Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space way back in 1963, and therefore the "pregnant-in-the-kitchen" meme doesn't stand, they say what they want is the same "freedom" as men, "to whatever they desire" or some such shit. What you do and what you desire are predetermined, honey, if the two don't match you need a different social structure...

Semi-related and you guys may have seen this already but

http://mltoday.com/article/2390-ellen-meiksins-wood-against-the-tide/90-frontpage-stories

That is one helluva eulogy.

I did see this and have done a little research on Ellen Meiksins Wood. She was some dame. I have ordered her book, The origins of Capitalism. I will report on it when I receive it and get it read. Wish I had known about her before.

A while back I was reading a blurb about Chernyshevsky and it said that Turgenev's Fathers and Sons inspired What Is To Be Done?; so I reread Turgenev. A phrase that is repeated all the time in the book is "What's to be done?" This is a throw away line having the same meaning as, "What ya' gonna' do?" that Americans use when some complaint is about something that cannot be helped. The problem with Turgenev is that he had very little sympathy for almost any of his characters - especially the young nihilists. Arkady Kirsanov is simply a "fan-boy" who thinks nihilism is "cool" and Bazarov, the quintessential 'nihilist' comes off as not much more than a poser. I am not saying that it isn't a good book, it is, the problem is that Turgenev is writing about these young men in opposition.

Chernyshevsky, on the other hand, seems to really understand and admire the characters in his book. When he has them speak it, is as honest, genuine proponents of their views and not caricatures as in Turgenev's work. Chernyshevsky believes that young people can genuinely hold and believe the progressive ideas and forward-looking attitudes that his characters portray. Turgenev views his young people characters as confused, insincere, and pretending. Chernyshevsky's Rakhmetov is the real thing, strong in his beliefs and steadfast in his dedication to changing Russian society. Turgenev's Bazarov is a pretender, confused and filled with doubt, dying at the end of the book in his conservative parents home.

In my opinion, What Is To Be Done? buries Fathers and Sons. And it does so well.

I have been reading Ellen Meiksins Wood's The Origins of Capitalism and I'm about halfway through it. It is very good. I will submit a book report when I (eventually) finish it.

I just want to say, on a personal note, that reading her book has made me understand the liberal bullshit we received on PI. I had simply (or simple-mindedly) thought that all of the capitalism defenders on PI were just pulling their ideas about capitalism out of their asses. But in Ms. Meiksins Wood's book, she goes into some detail explaining how modern historians and economists explain the advent of capitalism. The "it has always been present"; "it is just an expansion of trade"; "it is part and parcel to human nature". These are the official bourgeois creeds and these are exactly what we heard on PI when the liberals shit their britches. It had just not occurred to me that they were repeating a real litany of bourgeois excuses. I don't know, I guess I was not very well schooled in capitalist apologia. The thing that is remarkable (I think) is that they were. The bullshit we had thrown at us, was not just some seat-of-the-pants, pull-it-from-your-ass comebacks and ill-conceived assertions, the arguments those liberals gave were official arguments, their arguments are official history for bourgeois society. That is what I had not known and it changes my interpretation of the PI blowup. It was more than just confused liberals, who couldn't grasp what the commies were trying to say - they were liberals schooled in "bourgeois truth", fighting for what they considered their lives. Before, I felt contempt and pity toward those deluded liberals, now, I feel more pity and slightly less contempt for those deluded liberals.

I have been reading Ellen Meiksins Wood's The Origins of Capitalism and I'm about halfway through it. It is very good. I will submit a book report when I (eventually) finish it.

I just want to say, on a personal note, that reading her book has made me understand the liberal bullshit we received on PI. I had simply (or simple-mindedly) thought that all of the capitalism defenders on PI were just pulling their ideas about capitalism out of their asses. But in Ms. Meiksins Wood's book, she goes into some detail explaining how modern historians and economists explain the advent of capitalism. The "it has always been present"; "it is just an expansion of trade"; "it is part and parcel to human nature". These are the official bourgeois creeds and these are exactly what we heard on PI when the liberals shit their britches. It had just not occurred to me that they were repeating a real litany of bourgeois excuses. I don't know, I guess I was not very well schooled in capitalist apologia. The thing that is remarkable (I think) is that they were. The bullshit we had thrown at us, was not just some seat-of-the-pants, pull-it-from-your-ass comebacks and ill-conceived assertions, the arguments those liberals gave were official arguments, their arguments are official history for bourgeois society. That is what I had not known and it changes my interpretation of the PI blowup. It was more than just confused liberals, who couldn't grasp what the commies were trying to say - they were liberals schooled in "bourgeois truth", fighting for what they considered their lives. Before, I felt contempt and pity toward those deluded liberals, now, I feel more pity and slightly less contempt for those deluded liberals.

It is the same with their ideas about government and the structure of society. I well remember the middle school 'civics' class, it was all explained. We have rich people because they concentrated wealth so that big things could be done. If not for them nothing would get done, wealth would be frittered away and we'd all be poorer for it. That there might be an alternative method is not mentioned.

Two party government is best, one party was dictatorship, multi-party was chaos. They came right out and said that the Senate was there to insure that the masses did not get too democratic, that the minority(the wealthy) might be protected. And so on, the crown of creation.

And as it was Catholic school we were told that communists killed priests and nuns.(That was anarchists, you idiots!)

I have received Marxist Philosophy, it is not casual reading but i'll start on it soon.

They came right out and said that the Senate was there to insure that the masses did not get too democratic

I heard that one too, followed immediately by the teary-eyed declaration that the US Senate is the most democratic body on earth..

No wonder they hate dissidents so much. Even reality gets in on the act to dissent from them.

I have been reading Ellen Meiksins Wood's The Origins of Capitalism and I'm about halfway through it. It is very good. I will submit a book report when I (eventually) finish it.

I just want to say, on a personal note, that reading her book has made me understand the liberal bullshit we received on PI. I had simply (or simple-mindedly) thought that all of the capitalism defenders on PI were just pulling their ideas about capitalism out of their asses. But in Ms. Meiksins Wood's book, she goes into some detail explaining how modern historians and economists explain the advent of capitalism. The "it has always been present"; "it is just an expansion of trade"; "it is part and parcel to human nature". These are the official bourgeois creeds and these are exactly what we heard on PI when the liberals shit their britches. It had just not occurred to me that they were repeating a real litany of bourgeois excuses. I don't know, I guess I was not very well schooled in capitalist apologia. The thing that is remarkable (I think) is that they were. The bullshit we had thrown at us, was not just some seat-of-the-pants, pull-it-from-your-ass comebacks and ill-conceived assertions, the arguments those liberals gave were official arguments, their arguments are official history for bourgeois society. That is what I had not known and it changes my interpretation of the PI blowup. It was more than just confused liberals, who couldn't grasp what the commies were trying to say - they were liberals schooled in "bourgeois truth", fighting for what they considered their lives. Before, I felt contempt and pity toward those deluded liberals, now, I feel more pity and slightly less contempt for those deluded liberals.

This is true but not necessarily so one-sided. No mistake that the Chinese still talk about the denunciation of Stalin as a watershed moment undermining the ideological foundations of the SU and, more broadly, world communism. Same reason Lenin was rightly elevated despite his personal wishes on the matter. Not an accident that they had to tear him down (literally and figuratively) before they could tear down his handiwork.

You know what Marx says about the ideas of the ruling class..

Chernyshevsky's Rakhmetov is the real thing, strong in his beliefs and steadfast in his dedication to changing Russian society.

Ever try and compare Lenin to Rakhmetov? Sometimes I think the parallel is complex and sometimes I think it is virtually direct. Lenin was no ascetic, although he did tend that way at times and of course he suffered dire privations, especially in exile.

Even in exile Lenin was no boulevardier but he possessed an overwhelming vigor for living, matched in the character of Rakhmetov -- although Lenin's was all encompassing and less martial. I suppose the vulgar bourgeoisie would call both monomaniacs -- but who knows when they're being sincere vs self-serving/obsequous. They certainly don't.

Ever try and compare Lenin to Rakhmetov? Sometimes I think the parallel is complex and sometimes I think it is virtually direct. Lenin was no ascetic, although he did tend that way at times and of course he suffered dire privations, especially in exile.

Even in exile Lenin was no boulevardier but he possessed an overwhelming vigor for living, matched in the character of Rakhmetov -- although Lenin's was all encompassing and less martial. I suppose the vulgar bourgeoisie would call both monomaniacs -- but who knows when they're being sincere vs self-serving/obsequous. They certainly don't.

Walks in the countryside were his means of rejuvenation.

Mostly unrelated to political reading, I've been reading The Conquest of New Spain, by Bernal Diaz. It is a eye witness account of Cortez's conquest of Mexico. Like any such writing it is taken with quantities of salt. I had read it once before, during my brief flirtation with higher education in the late 70's. The reason I mention this is that, based upon my admittedly iffy memory, there are significant factual difference between the two readings. Such as the death of Montezuma, the current read has him dying of stikes from Aztec slingers but I distinctly recall him being murdered by Cortez's lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado. And so on. Turns out Senor Diaz produced two, possibly three versions. I believe what I have now is the final, 'politically correct' version. Besides the aforementioned I have noticed a great attention to legal forms, Conquistador CYA. Theft, mayhem, rapine and enslavement must be done legally. As long as the Royal Fifth is set aside. Something the USA doesn't bother itself with anymore.

Just glad it wasn't my memory screwing up.

Mostly unrelated to political reading, I've been reading The Conquest of New Spain, by Bernal Diaz. It is a eye witness account of Cortez's conquest of Mexico. Like any such writing it is taken with quantities of salt. I had read it once before, during my brief flirtation with higher education in the late 70's. The reason I mention this is that, based upon my admittedly iffy memory, there are significant factual difference between the two readings. Such as the death of Montezuma, the current read has him dying of stikes from Aztec slingers but I distinctly recall him being murdered by Cortez's lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado. And so on. Turns out Senor Diaz produced two, possibly three versions. I believe what I have now is the final, 'politically correct' version. Besides the aforementioned I have noticed a great attention to legal forms, Conquistador CYA. Theft, mayhem, rapine and enslavement must be done legally. As long as the Royal Fifth is set aside. Something the USA doesn't bother itself with anymore.

Just glad it wasn't my memory screwing up.

I think you just penned an entire john steppling commentary in a single paragraph.


during my brief flirtation with higher education in the late 70's

You too? She gets around I guess. Bit formal for my tastes. (PS everyone always calls her Higher Ed. What kinda honorific is "higher" anyway? And whaddya 'spose her full first name is? Edna?)

PS I was looking through my notes and something distinct came back to me.

Federici assails Foucault (no, Fook you!) for locating this phenomenon too late in history (he zeroes in on the 1700s) by a couple centuries. It can't be lost on her that Engels in turn considered her to be a couple or several MILLENIA behind the times can it? Maybe she considers herself a fashionable latecomer.

I think you just penned an entire john steppling commentary in a single paragraph.

Not sure how to take that but suspect i won't like it.


You too? She gets around I guess. Bit formal for my tastes.

She kept me broke.

Not sure how to take that but suspect i won't like it.

I was thinking you could give lessons. Its one thing to focus on art instead of economy, but he doesn't need to forswear economy of words entirely..(yeah, yeah, the pun is terrible)

I was thinking you could give lessons. Its one thing to focus on art instead of economy, but he doesn't need to forswear economy of words entirely..(yeah, yeah, the pun is terrible)




It's one part laziness and two parts fear of putting my foot in my mouth if I natter on. I cross the street diagonally too, Pythagoras really impressed me.

It's one part laziness and two parts fear of putting my foot in my mouth if I natter on. I cross the street diagonally too, Pythagoras really impressed me.

You put the pith in Pythagoras

You put the pith in Pythagoras

I never "got" Pythagoras....

I never "got" Pythagoras....

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Pythag_anim.gif

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Pythag_anim.gif

Cool graphic - don't get it...

Cool graphic - don't get it...

Not much to get. Beyond the famous Theorem, 'Thag (as some of the guys call him) is larger than life..ridiculously so -- like a Woody Woodpecker balloon. Just as easy to pop too..

A-ha-a-haha

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1530856.1448479334!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/gallery_1200/macy-thanksgiving-day-parade-1995.jpg

One of my old friends is trying to get me to read 'Godel, Escher, Bach' by Hofstadter. Anyone know anything about this?

One of my old friends is trying to get me to read 'Godel, Escher, Bach' by Hofstadter. Anyone know anything about this?

Looks to be something Stepping would like. I probably wouldn't "get" it, but that would include a whole lot of things...

This Marxist Reading list got some problems.....

https://padlet.com/andreas_bieler/MRGtexts

I can see Hayek, 'know your enemy'...but what value is there in Bookchin? At least there wasn't any Zizek...

Not a book but we streamed Michael Moore's latest documentary, Where to Invade Next?

Moore has been trolling us ever since his last film, Capitalism: A Love Story.

What he neglected to mention was that that it was a story in two acts and that the Love Story would be a standalone to come later.

And WTIN? finally delivers that song of..amore. Mike has found the succubus of Social Democracy -- and he is never one to curb his appetites. Early on he crows over the onscreen whitewashing he is about to deliver ("I'm only going to caucasian countries whose names I can mostly pronounce").

When he went to Tunisia to celebrate women's rights all I could think was "you find love in the strangest places"

So months later I'm bout done with 'The Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy', Progress Publishers, 1974. It ain't hard, I just been slacking. In fact, it was pretty light on the Hegelian nightmare that I expected. The '101' stuff was a little queasy, and sometimes the belaboring of the obvious gets trying. But after a couple hundred pages of that the chapters get real practical. What we got here is the philosophy of revolutionary tactics. Heavy emphasis on the relation of the objective to the subjective, examples and variations. Marxism is not some sort of scholasticism, it is a problem solving tool.

There is another aspect to this book which I think is the reason that I've not seen it promoted as a 'must read'. It is dated, and the opinions and perspectives of that time cannot help but give rise to bittersweet emotion. Here's an example:

Today imperialism can neither regain its lost historical initiative nor reverse world development. The main direction of mankind's development is determined by the world socialist system, the international working class, all revolutionary forces. (This from International Meeting of Communist and Worker's Parties, Moscow, 1969)

So near, and now so fucking far...

Oh well, only one thing to be done...


http://youtu.be/AGUsRGuZb6k

Review

The Internet and Monopoly Capitalism

by Daniel Auerbach and Brett Clark

https://monthlyreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/digital-disconnect.jpeg

Robert W. McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet against Democracy (New York: New Press, 2013), 299 pages, $27.95, hardcover.
Without question, the Internet has had a profound influence on the world. As with most technologies, debates rage over whether this development has been positive or negative. Celebrants proclaim with utopian fervor that a new age of democracy has arrived, allowing for decentralized communication, challenges to corporate control, and mass public participation in the most important decisions confronting humanity.1 Skeptics point to the ways the Internet has spread ignorance and misinformation instead of knowledge, undermined the ability of artists to earn a living, and exacerbated isolation, unhappiness, and alienation.2 While these arguments illuminate the potential benefits and drawbacks of the Internet, they tend to ignore or disregard the larger political economy within which the Internet exists. In Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet against Democracy, Robert W. McChesney transcends these one-sided engagements, offering a nuanced analysis of the development of the Internet within the context of monopoly capitalism, revealing both the limitations of this technology in its current state and its massive potential.

McChesney focuses on the tensions and contradictions arising from the Internet’s place within the larger political economy. Capitalism shapes the development of technology, while the latter also influences social relations and interactions within society. The Internet, while presenting some challenges to the capital accumulation process, has become—on the whole—subsumed under its dictates. The Internet’s potential to add to public wealth has been largely directed to increase private riches.3 Through his historical analysis, McChesney traces the commercialization of the Internet, the ongoing degradation of journalism, and the threat to democracy. These trends follow the long-term dynamics of monopoly capital. Nevertheless, he argues, the present moment is a critical juncture, where the conditions exist for revolutionary change, which would by necessity involve transforming the political-economic system and the Internet.

The Internet, McChesney writes, is the culmination of “government-subsidized-and-directed research during the post-World War II decades, often by the military and leading research universities” (99). The decentralized and open technology of ARPAnet, a key predecessor to the Internet, was largely the creation of researchers and scientists on the fringes of corporate and military institutions. According to McChesney, it was because of this very openness that ARPAnet initially held little interest for large monopoly telecommunications corporations such as AT&T. They found such pursuits, at that point, to be unprofitable (100). It was not until the mid-1990s that the Internet was transformed from a public service (as NSFNet) into a private good, subject to the dictates of exchange value and market forces. This transformation has had a decisive impact on who has access to information, what information is most accessible, and the content of the Internet.

Corporate control over the Internet, according to McChesney, was the result of four pivotal factors: corporate-dominated policy-making in the 1990s; unclear policies regarding the regulation of the Internet; the neoliberal political culture of the ’90s; and the Internet bubble of the late ’90s, which made it seem as if the Internet was ripe for further privatization (104–08). By allowing private interests to take control of the development and design of the Internet, the optimism of a once anti-commercial endeavor turned into a juggernaut for capital accumulation, with substantial social consequences. The Internet was turned into a means to satisfy the needs of capital, rather than the public. With the aid of existing government-sponsored monopolies, the telephone and cable industries were in sole control of the cables and other infrastructure necessary for Internet access. Changes in the legal designation of cable modems as “information services” instead of “telecommunication services” allowed monopolistic cable and telephone companies to dominate the Internet Service Providers (ISP) market. Further consolidation of monopoly control followed. In the 1990s, the ISP market was much more competitive, with a large number of providers. By the mid-2000s, this landscape had changed. McChesney notes that approximately “20 percent of U.S. households have access to no more than a single broadband provider,” and “all but 4 percent of remaining households has, at most, two choices for wired broadband access” (112). Thus, the majority of households effectively do not have a choice when it comes to accessing the Internet.

The subsumption of the Internet under the dictates of capital accumulation has generated a number of contradictory social consequences. For example, even as access to online information and entertainment becomes more widely available, and theoretically open to everyone, actual access remains deeply unequal. As of December 2010, in the United States, 40 percent of households did not have access to broadband connections in their homes. When disaggregated, the divisions become starker: 80 to 100 percent of houses in wealthier neighborhoods had broadband connections, while households in impoverished sections of the same city, had connection rates roughly half that of their rich neighbors (117). Broadband connections are becoming a necessity, as more content turns toward data-intense formats, such as video streaming, that require faster Internet connections. In regard to an international digital divide, we see contrasting results. By 2019, it is estimated that approximately 51 percent of the global population will be online. While this gap remains vast, it pales in comparison to the divide associated with connected devices (which includes such things as cell phones, tablets, and “smart appliances”). In 2014, in North America, there were, on average, 6.1 connected devices per capita. In Latin America, this number is as low as two connected devices per person, while the Middle East and Africa remain at around one device per person. As the “Internet of things” grows, those who are able to access the web through various devices are able more effectively to utilize the advantages of the Internet compared to those who have fewer gadgets.4

Another consequence is that the monopolization of ISPs has a tendency to limit and slow innovations in the quality, speed, and accessibility of broadband access, due to lack of competition. Companies like AT&T and Verizon enjoy exclusive license to large swaths of the electromagnetic spectrum that they allow to lie fallow, so that other ISPs cannot use them (115). As noted above, most areas in the United States have only two real choices for their ISPs; consequently, the United States has one of the most expensive broadband systems in the world, compared to other wealthy nations (114).

There are two other major effects of monopolies on the trajectory of the Internet: the patent grab and the mass proliferation of advertising. Both of these are necessary requirements for accumulating capital in a realm where information is, potentially, freely available. In Internet telecommunications as in other industries, owning patents is quickly becoming a primary means for protecting monopoly power. In a sentence that echoes Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s argument in Monopoly Capital, McChesney writes that “patents halt the [innovation] process, but they are fantastic for protecting entrenched monopoly power, litigation costs notwithstanding” (134). Large companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon have tens of billions of dollars available to purchase patents and build further barriers to entry (137). In 2011, Google spent $12.5 billion on buying Motorola Mobility, not for its existing technology, but primarily to take ownership over the company’s 17,000 patents (134). This proprietary control allows companies to lock consumers into using only their products while transferring power over future development from the intellectual commons to the realm of private wealth.

Capitalism, of course, requires continuous accumulation and growth, and freely available services, such as most websites, represent a barrier to this process. Advertising—which U.S. companies may write off on their taxes as a business expense—has accordingly become a necessary tool for monetizing and commercializing the Internet. To access free online services, users enter into an often unspoken deal in which they must surrender their personal information. As Bruce Schneier has put it, “If something is free, you’re not the customer; you’re the product.”5 Websites serve as sources of information and entertainment, but also a means to collect massive amounts of data. As McChesney notes, all of our online habits are recorded through our various devices to generate more targeted advertisements (157). One particularly damaging consequence of this process is the severe narrowing of the range of information and ideas available to Internet users. The data collected on each individual is used to create specific filters that limit exposure to the variety of information potentially available online, while “personalizing” everything from sales pitches to videos to news stories as part of the hyper-commercialization of the Internet for the sake of capital accumulation (157–58).

Monopoly capitalism in general, and advertising in particular, have important implications for journalism, as the Internet becomes the predominant medium of journalism. McChesney consistently argues that rigorous, independent journalism is a public good necessary for a “democratic society wherein individual liberties are meaningful” (174–75). Here the paradox of the Internet’s potential as a public source of knowledge and its actual development as a vehicle for capital accumulation comes to the fore. Journalism, in the age of the Internet, could remove barriers to entry, allowing for more diverse and critical voices to be heard and to collaborate with one another. Furthermore, as the cost of digital distribution declines, so too could the cost of running a news website. However, the profit motive of capitalism tends to undermine these conditions, as attempts to monetize journalism become paramount and as advertising revenue and social media visibility take precedence over challenging writing and reporting.

According to McChesney, the decline of journalism predates the Internet and can be traced in large part to the broader monopolization of media, and particularly newspapers. In the 1970s and 1980s, as media corporations merged and consolidated, they found that an effective way to increase the bottom line was to decrease editorial budgets, which was in turn accomplished by eliminating journalists and closing news bureaus. Journalism was transformed from a craft dedicated to informing citizens to another means of satisfying corporate investors. With the movement of journalism to the Internet, this problem has worsened and taken on a distinct form. Successful journalism, in the age of monopolization and the Internet, has been reduced to “producing an immense amount of material inexpensively” (188). Online news sources are compelled to collect vast amounts of information about their readers in order to determine what content to display and promote. Based on this information, freelance writers hastily assemble articles tailored to these “popular” search terms. Media companies, equipped with detailed knowledge of their readers, then sell advertising placed next to or within each article.

In an age of “sponsored content” and “promoted posts,” the line between news and advertising is increasingly blurred. Additionally, journalists are expected to write more while earning less, as more content brings in more traffic, which generates increased advertising revenue. This system of exploitation tends to inhibit journalists from adequately investigating and reporting important issues. Instead, they turn to the same sources of established information to produce what amounts to a rehashing of other news sources. The profit motive of monopoly capital has intensified in the digital realm, creating a journalism that remains relatively impotent in the face of corporate greed and government ineptitude, helping reinforce the status quo.

Monopoly control over the development of the Internet has serious implications for the future of democracy around the world. What could be a means of uniting people, a venue for alternative viewpoints, and critically engaged journalism has instead become a site of hyper-commercialization—a tool to facilitate capital accumulation. Monopoly capital, with its tendencies toward privatization of public goods, has narrowed innovation to suit the demands of profit. Such constraints only exacerbate pre-existing inequalities, creating ever wider gaps between classes and social groups. Meanwhile, a select handful of large monopolistic firms have become gatekeepers to information. Online experiences are increasingly funneled to a select few websites: in 2010, the top ten websites accounted for 75 percent of page views in the United States (190). Finally, the problems of journalism are magnified under the advertising-driven profit model of online news.

It is important to note that McChesney does not argue that technology itself is driving this undemocratic process. Rather, it is the general tendencies of monopoly-finance capital, which take on historically distinct forms, mediated through technology. McChesney shows the dialectical tension between the social relations of monopoly capitalism and the technology through which it develops, helping us see the Internet in its material and economic reality, unclouded by either utopian optimism or obstinate pessimism. Furthermore, by virtue of this dialectical analysis, McChesney’s examination avoids the trap of technological or economic determinism, allowing him—and us—to keep sight of the Internet’s liberatory potential. He insists that “battles over the Internet are of central importance for all seeking to build a better society” (232).

We reside at a critical juncture, where new communications technology could be used to challenge established systems; where advertising-driven content is increasingly questioned; where social movements are fighting for radical change; and where political, economic, and social crises are rife. For the digital revolution to be more than a rhetorical flourish, a social revolution must triumph over capitalism, unleashing the potential of democracy.

Notes

↩See Yochai Benkler,The Penguin and the Leviathan (New York: Crown, 2011); Clay Shirky,Cognitive Surplus (New York: Penguin, 2010).
↩See Shaheed Nick Mohammed,The (Dis)information Age (New York: Peter Lang, 2012); Clifford Stoll,High-Tech Heretic (New York: Anchor, 1999); Sherry Turkle,Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic, 2011).
↩See John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, “The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism,”Monthly Review 62, no. 10 (March 2011): 1–30.
↩Broadband Commission for Digital Development,Broadband 2015: Broadband as a Foundation for Sustainable Development (Geneva, Switzerland: UNESCO, September 2015), 26, http://broadbandcommission.org.
↩Bruce Schneier,Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (New York: Norton, 2015), 53.

http://monthlyreview.org/2016/10/01/the-internet-and-monopoly-capitalism/

Reflections on Jack Rasmus’s book Looting Greece, by Kostas Pateras, member of the International Relations Secton of the leadeship of the Communist Party of Greece, (KKE).


Looting Greece: A New Financial Imperialism Emerges by Jack Rasmus. Atlanta, Georgia: Clarity Press, 2016. $24.95. 312 pp.

The prolonged capitalist crisis in Greece, the intense labour-people's struggles, the dramatic negotiations and contradictions around the Greek debt (for which the Greek people are not responsible), the rise of SYRIZA have all attracted the interest, and this is only natural, of analysts, commentators, journalists, and, of course, ordinary workers from all over the world.

In the last two years in particular, a plethora of books have been published that attempt to analyze these developments and draw conclusions. One such effort is Looting Greece: A New Financial Imperialism Emerges, a recent book by Jack Rasmus, a professor of economics and politics at St. Mary’s College in California, and a writer for Z Magazine and Counterpunch.

Through a study of the Greek experience, Rasmus argues that what we are dealing with a new kind of "imperialism," significantly different from the imperialism of the past. The book undoubtedly contains a great deal interesting information about the banking and financial systems of the USA and the EU and also about the course of the negotiations over the Greek debt.

But on closer study and taking into account the first-hand experience from Greece and the plethora of evidence, it becomes clear that this book fails to penetrate the essence of the developments. A careful reading from a Marxist perspective identifies serious methodological problems that can, regardless of intentions, lead to the exoneration of the capitalist system as a whole. So, we will try to contribute to the more general discussion on Greece, by focusing on and discussing some of the most serious problems that in our opinion are contained in this book.

To begin with, we should note that the despite the fact that the book is teeming with statistics and information, there are relatively few references and footnotes/endnotes. The references that do exist tend to be to English language sources. This is of significance as there are unfortunately some serious inaccuracies contained in the book as regards the political situation inside Greece. We should highlight some examples. The writer on pages 108, 115 and 116 refers to the Stavros Dimas affair, but in such a way as to present Dimas as being proposed for election in parliament by ND as the successor of A. Samaras (i.e. as Prime Minister).

In fact, ND proposed that Dimas should be elected by parliament as the next President of the Republic. And we should bear in mind that this is a significant inaccuracy as the Prime Minister is the head of government in Greece and the President has a more symbolic institutional role according to the Constitution. In addition, at various points (pages 133,146) it is suggested that the SYRIZA-ANEL government had increased, amongst other things, the minimum wage in its first days in office. But this has no basis in reality. What was actually the case was that they made some vague promises that this would happen in 2016, if the conditions allowed it.

However it is the methodological problems in Dr. Rasmus's approach that are more serious and can be divided into the following categories: character of the crisis, the international environs, the role of classes in Greek society, the reformation of the political scene and SYRIZA, issues related to imperialism/sovereignty. We would like to initiate a more general discussion of these issues below, as we believe they are crucial to understanding both the trajectory of developments in Greece and indeed globally.

Character of the crisis

The author of the book focuses on Greece's state debt and especially the various approaches to dealing with it, codified in the three memoranda, as being the main factors that led to the prolonged crisis. However, is this really the case? In reality, this position gives primacy to what are secondary issues related to the reproduction of capital and identifies the results of the crisis as being its causes. It sees the symptoms but not the illness.

The economic crisis in Greece manifested itself in the framework of the global synchronized economic crisis, which began in 2007-2008 in the USA and then later embraced the EU, Russia, Japan etc. which came about after a long period of capitalist growth that led to a sharpening of all the contradictions of the exploitative system. This resulted in disturbances in the system's functioning, the inability to manage the contradictions, which was expressed by the outbreak of an economic crisis. A crisis, which objectively leads to the destruction of productive forces (labour power and capital in the form of money, commodities and fixed installations).

It is important to note that there had been high levels of capitalist growth in Greece, well above the eurozone average, for nearly 20 years before the outbreak of the crisis. GDP had been increasing by an average of 3% every year.

The wealth produced by the workers multiplied in this period. But it was the plutocracy that profited from this process, increasing its profits 28 times over and accumulating a great deal of capital through the intensification of the rate of exploitation of the working class, the increase of surplus value and unpaid labour.

On the other hand, harsh anti-people measures have been implemented since the beginning of the 1990s, the general conditions of the working class and the popular strata deteriorated and unemployment remained at high levels even in the period of capitalist growth.

Of course, a way out of the crisis that would benefit capital requires the destruction of productive forces, above all of labour. Unavoidably, a section of capital will be destroyed, either through the closure of companies or through their merger with other companies (centralization) in order for the cycle of expanded reproduction to begin again.

The feature of the economic crisis particular to Greece is the combination of great depth with a prolonged duration (in the last 20 years Argentina and Brazil experienced similarly deep crises, but of a shorter duration, while Japan witnessed an economic crisis that led to prolonged stagnation, which it has not yet emerged from).

In essence, the crisis phase in the capitalist economy of Greece, something inevitable in the cycle of expanded capitalist reproduction, was complicated by problems related to uneven development in the context of the single currency/Eurozone, problems that manifested themselves through the sharpening of preexisting fiscal problems (large state debt as a percentage of GDP).

It was also connected to already existent problems of the capitalist economy in Greece, problems that are not related to some mistaken "productive model" that was implemented, but to issues of asymmetry in terms of the development of the capitalist economy (e.g. a very large and powerful shipping sector, a relatively small manufacturing sector, especially in the sector of machinery production). Such unevenness also characterizes other capitalist economies, on the basis of their position in the imperialist pyramid. Monopoly capitalism in Greece has developed significantly in Greece over the last 30 years, irrespective of the setbacks due to the recent crisis phase.

All this resulted in the deterioration of Greece's borrowing conditions inside the "capital market" and also of its negotiating position with the institutions of the Eurozone, EU and IMF (Greece's direct lenders). It resulted in the need for the recapitalization of the banks. The debt is the outcome of the intervention of the capitalist state in the economic cycle, an intervention that aims to facilitate the expanded reproduction of social capital, by using state funds in a variety of ways to reinforce capital and its ability to invest.

The various Greek bourgeois governments sought to resolve the problems related to the crisis through an acceleration of the “reforms” (i.e. the 3 memoranda and the related application laws) that aim at the more rapid concentration and centralization of capital, the liberalization of markets, the depreciation of labour power as a commodity, through a major reduction of salaries and the dissolution of collective labour agreements, the reduction of state spending that led to serious cuts in the salaries and pensions of a large section of state employees and the deterioration of their working conditions.

International Dimensions

In our view, the author underestimates and overlooks some important features of the international dimension to the developments in Greece.

Firstly, we should understand the EU as an inter-state imperialist alliance that advances the interests of the European monopolies. An alliance defined by uneven development and intra-bourgeois, inter-capitalist contradictions. If this clear, so it follows that the Eurozone is not just a run-of-the-mill monetary union but is part and parcel of this specific framework and consequently its problems cannot be mitigated through some form of banking union at a European level or mechanisms to encourage the closer cooperation of European banks.

It should also be understood that the measures being taken in Greece are largely EU directions for all its member-states, regardless of whether they have signed a memorandum or not. Such measures have been taken and are being taken in the EU as a whole. The crisis in Greece simply provided the opportunity for these pro-capital measures to be taken (i.e. the measures codified in the 3 memoranda) in a shorter time frame.

Any negotiations carried out by a Greek government (of whatever stripe) for a relative relaxation of the current strict restrictive policies would be integrally connected to and dependent on the overall struggle between sections of capital over the future of the Eurozone and EU. A struggle that intensified after the international synchronized crisis of 2009. The bases for the intensification of this struggle are the difficulties related to the stabilization (safeguarding) of the Eurozone's recovery, as well as the significant unevenness that can be witnessed at its centre (i.e. between Germany that is strengthening the advantageous position it has in relation to France and Italy).

It is on this objective terrain that France and Italy are pressing for the relaxation of monetary and fiscal policy and for Germany to undertake more burdens related to managing the problems of indebted Eurozone states (through the ECB).The US government supports this direction, as it is concerned about the danger of the destabilization of the international capitalist economy and also desires to restrict German hegemony in the EU.

However, the inter-imperialist competition is not limited to the narrow question of changing the economic management of the Eurozone. Two important contradictions of the international imperialist system and the relationship between them must be taken into account in order for the trajectory of the confrontations inside the EU today to be understood.

a) The contradiction of the Euro-Atlantic camp with the China-Russia axis, which is expressed in an intense way in the regions adjacent to Greece (see Ukraine, Syria etc.).

b) The struggle between the USA and Germany over hegemony in Europe.

Having said that, it should not be overlooked that all the capitalist states agree, irrespective of their differences concerning the management of the capitalist crisis, on the political imperative to restrict the rights and gains of the working class, to restrict wages and attack stable labour relations.

Classes in Greek society

Despite various references by the writer to the working class, ship owners etc; Greece is not approached as being a capitalist country like any other i.e. as having a specific class structure. This is particularly apparent from the underestimation of the position and role of the Greek bourgeois class, something that has obvious consequences in terms of the analysis of the policies of the Greek governments. The Greek bourgeoisie exists and has a strategy, makes clear class choices and is not just prey to the ambitions of some foreign imperialist powers (e.g. the German government).

We should also note that while there has been a reduction of capitalist production in Greece as a whole, there are sectors that have remained stable and also others that have strengthened their position (tourism, shipping). It is characteristic that the "resistance" of the SYRIZA-ANEL government to the 3rd memorandum was largely related to the taxation of the three most dynamic sectors of Greek capital: the pharmaceutical industry, tourism, shipping. In particular, one must not overlook the strength Greek shipowning capital (the Greek-owned maritime fleet is the largest in the world[i]), which has supremacy in its competition with the relevant sections of capital from the Netherlands, Germany etc.[ii] It also must not be forgotten that significant amount of Greek capitals are concentrated in foreign banks and offshore companies, waiting for the right conditions to reinvest with the maximum possible profitability.

The domestic bourgeoisie has a strategy and, based on the objective situation, adjusts/prioritizes basic goals that the negotiating line and economic policies of the new government attempts to serve. These priorities are:

a) The acquisition of foreign funding and state finances in order to ensure that the Greek economy can leave the phase of the capitalist crisis in a rapid and stable way. The Hellenic Federation of Enterprises, for example, supports Greece's continued membership of the Eurozone and stresses the importance of EU funding (the new European Structural and Investment Funds etc.)

b) The realization of major investments that will contribute to promoting the country as a transport hub for energy and commodities from the wider region.

c) The capitalist productive reconstruction that will also change the current sectoral structure of the economy in order to strengthen the orientation towards exports and the production of innovative competitive commodities and services.

In this framework, emphasis is placed on attracting investments for hydrocarbon extraction, logistics, renewable energy, specialized tourism, the food/beverage sector (with an export orientation). Sectors of the economy that could function as new powerhouses for capitalist growth are being prioritized together with the more measures to strengthen oceangoing shipping.

d) The promotion of “restructuring” measures to ensure cheap labour power and new profitable areas of investment for capital (e.g. flexible labour relations, the abolition of the social character of insurance, liberalization of markets, privatizations).

e) The modernization of the structure, functioning and infrastructure of the bourgeois state so that it can more effectively contribute to advancing the goals of the ruling class (e.g. the improvement of the tax collection capacity of the state).

The comprehensive promotion of these goals in order to enhance the competitiveness of the domestic monopoly groups requires that the country remain in the Euro-Atlantic framework of imperialist alliances.

The negotiating approach related to the relaxation of the restrictive monetary and fiscal policies of the Eurozone, the enhancement of bilateral relations with Russia and China, the active participation in the plans of the USA and Israel (see the various initiatives of the SYRIZA-ANEL government) do not dispute the basic commitments that flow from the country's (and indeed any country's) participation in the EU and NATO.

On the contrary, Greece's participation in the EU is to a large extent a precondition for the implementation of the specific investment plans of China and Russia regarding the transport of commodities and energy into the EU market.

Of course, agreement on the aforementioned strategic framework does not negate competition and differences that exist amongst sections of domestic monopoly capital as regards the prioritization of the country's relations with the various imperialist alliances.

The reformation of the political scene and SYRIZA

In our opinion, the book fails to interpret the political developments in Greece in their entirety and complexity. For example, despite the various criticisms of SYRIZA, especially as regards the course of the negotiations, it does not illuminate its real character. This is because Dr. Rasmus does not fully and objectively appreciate the way in which the capitalist crisis led to the reformation of the bourgeois political system and that SYRIZA's rise was a part of this process.

Indeed, this reformation occurred at the height of the economic crisis and its consequences. This process took on two basic features in 2012 (specifically during the two elections): a) The regroupment of social-democracy (whose prestige amongst the popular strata had been badly damaged due to its long participation in anti-worker governments) through a new political vehicle, SYRIZA and b) the emergence of Golden Dawn, a Nazi-fascist party, as a parliamentary force. SYRIZA, in these conditions, was transformed from being a small opportunist party into a vehicle for the new social-democracy-a process that was accelerated by the "defection" of sections of PASOK in the summer of 2012. It is indicative that 1/3 of SYRIZA's high level officials have a direct background in PASOK.

There is an attempt underway today to co-opt the people into the anti-people plans of the bourgeoisie, especially after the emergence of SYRIZA as the largest parliamentary party and its formation of a coalition government with ANEL (a small rightwing party with populist, nationalist positions).They aimed to utilize people’s hopes (or at least toleration) regarding the "first left government", which claims to be carrying out tough negotiations inside the Eurozone. Even after the anti-people terms and conditions of 3rd memorandum, SYRIZA presents itself as struggling for pro-people compensatory measures.

In addition, efforts are being made to foster the view that this party is allegedly different from the bourgeois neoliberal current because it does not leave everything to the arbitrariness of the markets, but supports the role of the state that supposedly can combine the promotion of competitiveness, health entrepreneurship, productive reconstruction with the management of the consequences of the "humanitarian crisis", i.e. extreme poverty and destitution.

This is the framework in which the policies, maneuvers and retreats of SYRIZA must be evaluated-not as mistakes, but as class choices.

Indeed, it is apparent that in this phase a social-democratic party can do capital's dirty work more effectively than other bourgeois parties. We could add here that it needs to be better understood abroad that SYRIZA in essence continues the anti-people political policies of the previous governments of the liberal ND party and social-democratic PASOK e.g the negative changes to labour relations and collective labour agreements, low wages, dramatic reductions in pensions, cuts in spending on health and education, the use of repression against workers’ mobilizations, the further assimilation of the country into the imperialist plans of NATO in the region, deepening military-political-economic relations with Israel etc. And this was true before the signing of the third memorandum.

Issues of imperialism/sovereignty

In the last chapters of the book, Dr. Rasmus develops a theoretical approach that refers to economic "protectorates", problems related to sovereignty, a new imperialism that uses financial mechanisms in order to loot entire nations. But in doing so he does not place the necessary importance on Lenin's groundbreaking analysis i.e. that imperialism is capitalism in the historical era that began at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century and can be summarized in a nutshell as the monopoly stage of capitalism, with five basic economic features (which are described in his work of the same name).

Clearly, in every historical period, some more powerful, leading capitalist states stand out. However, there are constant changes in the relations and correlation of forces between states due to uneven development and this intensifies the antagonisms in the imperialist system.

Today, there are nearly 200 separate state entities. A web of unequal relations of interdependence amongst all the capitalist states has been formed in the contemporary imperialist system. This correlation of forces between the capitalist states is in constant state of flux. Powerful creditor-states from the 20th century have been transformed into debtor-states (e.g. the larger state debts of the USA, France and Italy today), while China is now a creditor-state. The change of Britain's strength in relation to India from the 20th to the 21st century is the most characteristic example.

Correspondingly, the formation of a "labour aristocracy" is not restricted to just a handful of powerful capitalist states. The expansion and deepening of capitalist relations of production in the contemporary imperialist system creates the potential for the emergence of the "labour aristocracy" in the majority of capitalist states.


Consequently, the splitting of the unity of the working class and the penetration of petty bourgeois views and ideology into the labour movement acquires a more general character in our era. Moreover, the bourgeois class itself chooses the path of ceding sovereign rights etc. in the framework of an imperialist alliance, for example, the EU or NATO, or even in the context of inter-state relations in order to safeguard its more general class interests, to find pillars of support and to perpetuate its hold on power. So it follows that the problems related to "sovereignty" have a class basis and their resolution is connected to the elimination of their causes i.e. the overthrow of bourgeois power.

The complexity of the functioning of the capitalist economy today cannot be interpreted in a comprehensive and correct way, if it is limited to the role and importance of states at the top of the imperialist pyramid.

Indeed, talk of "colonies," "protectorates," "centre-periphery" and a mechanistically one-sided understanding of the issue of dependency tends to lead to the whitewashing of the bourgeoisies of many countries and to the quest for a utopian just capitalist development, allegedly outside the framework of imperialism. By taking a non class approach to the issue of development, the writer, in essence, proposes withdrawal from the Eurozone, and even the EU, in order to ensure a return to economic "growth”. But what kind of growth are we talking about and who will benefit? As we mentioned previously, the tourist and shipping sectors have seen significant growth in recent years, despite the crisis. But this has been growth for the capitalists and not the workers in these sectors, who are experiencing at first hand all the results of all the anti-worker measures: cuts in salaries, abolition of basic rights, flexible labour relations, intensification of work, underemployment-unemployment.

The author also downplaysthe importance of the labour-people's struggles in recent years, which, despite their weaknesses and shortcomings, were able to impede and delay the implementation of the measures. We are talking about multifaceted struggles that have not stopped: dozens of general strikes and hundreds of other strikes in sectors and workplaces, demonstrations, roadblocks by farmers, occupations of company and government buildings, demonstrations, with communists in the front line.

The establishment and activity of PAME, the emergence of new and militant formations of the small and medium farmers and self-employed and the formation of a joint framework of demands are a significant source of strength for the people’s movement.

The economic crisis very clearly demonstrated that depth of the contradictions and difficulties of capitalism. It clarified the fact that capitalist growth itself prepares the ground for crises, i.e. the destruction of productive forces and the major increase of unemployment levels, as well as the mass expansion of the phenomena of destitution and poverty, the continuous degradation of the people’s needs, prostitution, drugs etc. This is also leads to the renewed intensification of employer and state intimidation, the sharpening of uneven developments and the outbreak of wars.

The developments and also the significant experience from the fierce class struggles in this period even more intensely highlighted the issue of the regroupment of the labour movement, the need to strengthen the anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist line of struggle and combined with this the increase of the level of organization and struggles, to reinforce the joint struggle and alliance with, the poor and medium farmers and urban self-employed against the monopolies, to form the People’s Alliance on a social basis, which will have the struggle for workers’-people’s power as its political proposal.

From this standpoint, the lack of references in the book to this accumulated experience raises, at the very least, some questions and is a cause for concern.

Last but not least, in this framework, anyone who wants to study the Greek reality cannot ignore regardless of the possible extent of their agreement of disagreement with the KKE, the activity and also serious scientific theoretical work[iii] carried out by the communist party over the past few years, which is widely accepted as being one of the basic factors that inspired, lent impetus and organized the struggles of the working class and popular strata.

Of course many other interesting and controversial issues are touched on this book, but we have limited ourselves to the discussion of some issues that we believe are of more general significance for the struggle of workers in Greece and internationally.

The discussion, of course, will continue and from this standpoint we hope to contribute to the clarification of questions and approaches, to the development of a methodological framework that can assist the labour movement of other countries in understanding and utilizing the useful experience and lessons which emerge from the Greek developments.

Kostas Pateras is a member of the International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE

[i] http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/hellas-shipping-fleets-tonnage-up-by-22-as-greeks-share-of-worlds-fleet-rises-to-19-63/

[ii] PETROFIN RESEARCH © – Greek fleet statistics October 2015 based on data as of September 2015

DWT, Average Vessel DWT, and Number of Greek vessels figures are shown on an index scale using year 2001 as 100. The actual figures are also marked for each year.

The overall number of Greek vessels has gone up by 202 to 4909 from 4707.
II. Tonnage is also up by 24,675,319. Overall tonnage: 328,254,495 tons DWT, an increase of 7.52%
III. Age is also down again, to 12.73 from 13.26 in 2014 and 14.05 in 2013 and 14.7 in 2012.
IV. Using a 20,000 DWT cut-off, the average age of the Greek fleet has fallen to 8.71 from 9.14 years in 2014 and 9.83 in 2013.
V. The large Bulker fleet (over 20,000 tons DWT) has gained an impressive 163 vessels, its age is down to 8.6 years, its tonnage is up by 19.5m tons DWT and it has lost 6 companies.
VI. The large Tanker fleet (vessels over 20,000 tons DWT) shows a small increase in tonnage 220,751 tons DWT and a very small increase in unit numbers by 1. Its companies are down by one but age wise there was a drop, which shows a fleet renewal effort.
VII. The large Container fleet (vessels over 20,000 tons DWT) is a bit younger still, despite the fact that this is a sector that shows a slow rate of renewal. It has gained an impressive 2.9m tons DWT and it still is one of the very few sectors which show an increase in the companies that run them, up by 4.
VIII. Regarding the LPG sector, large LPGs (over 20,000 tons DWT), the number has gone up by 3 units, the fleet DWT is slightly up by 128,813 tons DWT and their age is also up to 13.7.
IX. The LNG fleet has expanded significantly with the addition of 24 vessels to last year’s 50 strong fleet.
X. The Greek fleet continues to expand in an ever more consolidated manner, as Greek companies are reducing

TABLE 1 Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Number of vessels in the Greek-based, Greek-owned fleet 4110 4142 4085 4184 3970 4164 4346 4545 4763 4655 4714 4577 4573 4707 4909
Change from previous year 32 -57 99 -214 194 182 199 218 -108 59 -137 -4 134 202
Petrofin Research © October 2015

TABLE 2 YEAR DWT AVERAGE AGE AVERAGE VESSEL DWT
2001 150,978,565 21.41 36,734
2002 166,931,748 20.58 40,302
2003 171,448,133 20.51 41,970
2004 184,288,917 20.12 44,046
2005 176,411,750 19.9 44,436
2006 194,486,455 19.14 46,707
2007 208,001,159 18.7 47,860
2008 222,368,331 18.4 48,926
2009 237,288,216 17.6 49,820
2010 242,802,092 16.4 52,160
2011 256,174,041 15.92 54,343
2012 263,635,420 14.7 57,600
2013 281,467,983 14.055 61,550
2014 303,579,176 13.252 64,495
2015 328,254,495 12.729 66,868
[iii] The Theses of the party’s 19th Congress provide a characteristic example of the detailed analyses of the KKE both regarding the economy, social structure and political trends of Greece and also wider international developments. http://interold.kke.gr/News/news2013/2013-03-05-thesis.html

http://mltoday.com/article/2572-review-of-looting-greece/91

John Reed- Ten Days That Shook the World (1919) Preface & Chapter I “The Background”
https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2016/11/john-reed-ten-days-that-shook-world.html

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pMETaVjQeNk/WDC6Ehve_YI/AAAAAAAAB3Y/v_5rCPtS8jAVGdDjVLFk0IPdposD1kufgCLcB/s320/John%2BReed%2BTen%2BDays.jpg

Ten Days That Shook the World.
By John Reed.
PREFACE.
This book is a slice of intensified history—history as I saw it. It does not pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the November Revolution, when the Bolsheviki, at the head of the workers and soldiers, seized the state power of Russia and placed it in the hands of the Soviets.
Naturally most of it deals with “Red Petrograd,” the capital and heart of the insurrection. But the reader must realize that what took place in Petrograd was almost exactly duplicated, with greater or lesser intensity, at different intervals of time, all over Russia.
In this book, the first of several which I am writing, I must confine myself to a chronicle of those events which I myself observed and experienced, and those supported by reliable evidence; preceded by two chapters briefly outlining the background and causes of the November Revolution. I am aware that these two chapters make difficult reading, but they are essential to an understanding of what follows.
Many questions will suggest themselves to the mind of the reader. What is Bolshevism? What kind of a governmental structure did the Bolsheviki set up? If the Bolsheviki championed the Constituent Assembly before the November Revolution, why did they disperse it by force of arms afterward? And if the bourgeoisie opposed the Constituent Assembly until the danger of Bolshevism became apparent, why did they champion it afterward?
These and many other questions cannot be answered here. In another volume, “Kornilov to Brest-Litovsk,” I trace the course of the Revolution up to and including the German peace. There I explain the origin and functions of the Revolutionary organisations, the evolution of popular sentiment, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the structure of the Soviet state, and the course and outcome of the Brest- Litovsk negotiations….
In considering the rise of the Bolsheviki it is necessary to understand that Russian economic life and the Russian army were not disorganised on November 7th, 1917, but many months before, as the logical result of a process which began as far back as 1915. The corrupt reactionaries in control of the Tsar’s Court deliberately undertook to wreck Russia in order to make a separate peace with Germany. The lack of arms on the front, which had caused the great retreat of the summer of 1915, the lack of food in the army and in the great cities, the break-down of manufactures and transportation in 1916—all these we know now were part of a gigantic campaign of sabotage. This was halted just in time by the March Revolution.
For the first few months of the new régime, in spite of the confusion incident upon a great Revolution, when one hundred and sixty millions of the world’s most oppressed peoples suddenly achieved liberty, both the internal situation and the combative power of the army actually improved.
But the “honeymoon” was short. The propertied classes wanted merely a political revolution, which would take the power from the Tsar and give it to them. They wanted Russia to be a constitutional Republic, like France or the United States; or a constitutional Monarchy, like England. On the other hand, the masses of the people wanted real industrial and agrarian democracy.
William English Walling, in his book, “Russia’s Message,” an account of the Revolution of 1905, describes very well the state of mind of the Russian workers, who were later to support Bolshevism almost unanimously:
They (the working people) saw it was possible that even under a free Government, if it fell into the hands of other social classes, they might still continue to starve….
The Russian workman is revolutionary, but he is neither violent, dogmatic, nor unintelligent. He is ready for barricades, but he has studied them, and alone of the workers of the world he has learned about them from actual experience. He is ready and willing to fight his oppressor, the capitalist class, to a finish. But he does not ignore the existence of other classes. He merely asks that the other classes take one side or the other in the bitter conflict that draws near….
They (the workers) were all agreed that our (American) political institutions were preferable to their own, but they were not very anxious to exchange one despot for another (i.e., the capitalist class)….
The workingmen of Russia did not have themselves shot down, executed by hundreds in Moscow, Riga and Odessa, imprisoned by thousands in every Russian jail, and exiled to the deserts and the arctic regions, in exchange for the doubtful privileges of the workingmen of Goldfields and Cripple Creek….
And so developed in Russia, in the midst of a foreign war, the Social Revolution on top of the Political Revolution, culminating in the triumph of Bolshevism.
Mr. A. J. Sack, director in this country of the Russian Information Bureau, which opposes the Soviet Government, has this to say in his book, “The Birth of the Russian Democracy”: The Bolsheviks organised their own cabinet, with Nicholas Lenine as Premier and Leon Trotsky— Minister of Foreign Affairs. The inevitability of their coming into power became evident almost immediately after the March Revolution. The history of the Bolsheviki, after the Revolution, is a history of their steady growth….
Foreigners, and Americans especially, frequently emphasise the “ignorance” of the Russian workers. It is true they lacked the political experience of the peoples of the West, but they were very well trained in voluntary organisation. In 1917 there were more than twelve million members of the Russian consumers’ Cooperative societies; and the Soviets themselves are a wonderful demonstration of their organising genius. Moreover, there is probably not a people in the world so well educated in Socialist theory and its practical application.
William English Walling thus characterises them:
The Russian working people are for the most part able to read and write. For many years the country has been in such a disturbed condition that they have had the advantage of leadership not only of intelligent individuals in their midst, but of a large part of the equally revolutionary educated class, who have turned to the working people with their ideas for the political and social regeneration of Russia….
Many writers explain their hostility to the Soviet Government by arguing that the last phase of the Russian Revolution was simply a struggle of the “respectable” elements against the brutal attacks of Bolshevism. However, it was the propertied classes, who, when they realised the growth in power of the popular revolutionary organisations, undertook to destroy them and to halt the Revolution. To this end the propertied classes finally resorted to desperate measures. In order to wreck the Kerensky Ministry and the Soviets, transportation was disorganised and internal troubles provoked; to crush the Factory- Shop Committees, plants were shut down, and fuel and raw materials diverted; to break the Army Committees at the front, capital punishment was restored and military defeat connived at.
This was all excellent fuel for the Bolshevik fire. The Bolsheviki retorted by preaching the class war, and by asserting the supremacy of the Soviets.
Between these two extremes, with the other factions which whole- heartedly or half-heartedly supported them, were the so-called “moderate” Socialists, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries, and several smaller parties. These groups were also attacked by the propertied classes, but their power of resistance was crippled by their theories.
Roughly, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries believed that Russia was not economically ripe for a social revolution—that only a political revolution was possible. According to their interpretation, the Russian masses were not educated enough to take over the power; any attempt to do so would inevitably bring on a reaction, by means of which some ruthless opportunist might restore the old régime. And so it followed that when the “moderate” Socialists were forced to assume the power, they were afraid to use it.
They believed that Russia must pass through the stages of political and economic development known to Western Europe, and emerge at last, with the rest of the world, into full-fledged Socialism. Naturally, therefore, they agreed with the propertied classes that Russia must first be a parliamentary state—though with some improvements on the Western democracies. As a consequence, they insisted upon the collaboration of the propertied classes in the Government.
From this it was an easy step to supporting them. The “moderate” Socialists needed the bourgeoisie. But the bourgeoisie did not need the “moderate” Socialists. So it resulted in the Socialist Ministers being obliged to give way, little by little, on their entire program, while the propertied classes grew more and more insistent.
And at the end, when the Bolsheviki upset the whole hollow compromise, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries found themselves fighting on the side of the propertied classes…. In almost every country in the world to-day the same phenomenon is visible.
Instead of being a destructive force, it seems to me that the Bolsheviki were the only party in Russia with a constructive program and the power to impose it on the country. If they had not succeeded to the Government when they did, there is little doubt in my mind that the armies of Imperial Germany would have been in Petrograd and Moscow in December, and Russia would again be ridden by a Tsar….
It is still fashionable, after a whole year of the Soviet Government, to speak of the Bolshevik insurrection as an “adventure.” Adventure it was, and one of the most marvellous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history at the head of the toiling masses, and staking everything on their vast and simple desires. Already the machinery had been set up by which the land of the great estates could be distributed among the peasants. The Factory-Shop Committees and the Trade Unions were there to put into operation workers’ control of industry. In every village, town, city, district and province there were Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, prepared to assume the task of local administration.
No matter what one thinks of Bolshevism, it is undeniable that the Russian Revolution is one of the great events of human history, and the rise of the Bolsheviki a phenomenon of world-wide importance. Just as historians search the records for the minutest details of the story of the Paris Commune, so they will want to know what happened in Petrograd in November, 1917, the spirit which animated the people, and how the leaders looked, talked and acted. It is with this in view that I have written this book.
In the struggle my sympathies were not neutral. But in telling the story of those great days I have tried to see events with the eye of a conscientious reporter, interested in setting down the truth. J. R. New York, January 1st 1919.
Notes and Explanations[edit]

To the average reader the multiplicity of Russian organisations-political groups, Committees and Central Committees, Soviets, Dumas and Unions-will prove extremely confusing. For this reason I am giving here a few brief definitions and explanations.
Political Parties
In the elections to the Constituent Assembly, there were seventeen tickets in Petrograd, and in some of the provincial towns as many as forty; but the following summary of the aims and composition of political parties is limited to the groups and factions mentioned in this book. Only the essence of their programmes and the general character of their constituencies can be noticed….
1. Monarchists, of various shades, Octobrists, etc. These once-powerful factions no longer existed openly; they either worked underground, or their members joined the Cadets, as the Cadets came by degrees to stand for their political programme. Representatives in this book, Rodzianko, Shulgin.
2. Cadets. So-called from the initials of its name, Constitutional Democrats. Its official name is “Party of the People’s Freedom.” Under the Tsar composed of Liberals from the propertied classes, the Cadets were the great party of political reform, roughly corresponding to the Progressive Party in America. When the Revolution broke out in March, 1917, the Cadets formed the first Provisional Government. The Cadet Ministry was overthrown in April because it declared itself in favour of Allied imperialistic aims, including the imperialistic aims of the Tsar’s Government. As the Revolution became more and more a social economic Revolution, the Cadets grew more and more conservative. Its representatives in this book are: Miliukov, Vinaver, Shatsky.
2a. Group of Public Men. After the Cadets had become unpopular through their relations with the Kornilov counter-revolution, the Group of Public Men was formed in Moscow. Delegates from the Group of Public Men were given portfolios in the last Kerensky Cabinet. The Group declared itself non-partisan, although its intellectual leaders were men like Rodzianko and Shulgin. It was composed of the more “modern” bankers, merchants and manufacturers, who were intelligent enough to realise that the Soviets must be fought by their own weapon-economic organisation. Typical of the Group: Lianozov, Konovalov.
3. Populist Socialists, or Trudoviki (Labour Group). Numerically a small party, composed of cautious intellectuals, the leaders of the Cooperative societies, and conservative peasants. Professing to be Socialists, the Populists really supported the interests of the petty bourgeoisie-clerks, shopkeepers, etc. By direct descent, inheritors of the compromising tradition of the Labour Group in the Fourth Imperial Duma, which was composed largely of peasant representatives. Kerensky was the leader of the Trudoviki in the Imperial Duma when the Revolution of March, 1917, broke out. The Populist Socialists are a nationalistic party. Their representatives in this book are: Peshekhanov, Tchaikovsky.
4. Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Originally Marxian Socialists. At a party congress held in 1903, the party split, on the question of tactics, into two factions-the Majority (Bolshinstvo), and the Minority (Menshinstvo). From this sprang the names “Bolsheviki” and “Mensheviki”-“members of the majority” and “members of the minority.” These two wings became two separate parties, both calling themselves “Russian Social Democratic Labour Party,” and both professing to be Marxians. Since the Revolution of 1905 the Bolsheviki were really the minority, becoming again the majority in September, 1917.
a. Mensheviki. This party includes all shades of Socialists who believe that society must progress by natural evolution toward Socialism, and that the working-class must conquer political power first. Also a nationalistic party. This was the party of the Socialist intellectuals, which means: all the means of education having been in the hands of the propertied classes, the intellectuals instinctively reacted to their training, and took the side of the propertied classes. Among their representatives in this book are: Dan, Lieber, Tseretelli.
b. Mensheviki Internationalists. The radical wing of the Mensheviki, internationalists and opposed to all coalition with the propertied classes; yet unwilling to break loose from the conservative Mensheviki, and opposed to the dictatorship of the working-class advocated by the Bolsheviki. Trotzky was long a member of this group. Among their leaders: Martov, Martinov.
c. Bolsheviki. Now call themselves the Communist Party, in order to emphasise their complete separation from the tradition of “moderate” or “parliamentary” Socialism, which dominates the Mensheviki and the so-called Majority Socialists in all countries. The Bolsheviki proposed immediate proletarian insurrection, and seizure of the reins of Government, in order to hasten the coming of Socialism by forcibly taking over industry, land, natural resources and financial institutions. This party expresses the desires chiefly of the factory workers, but also of a large section of the poor peasants. The name “Bolshevik” can not be translated by “Maximalist.” The Maximalists are a separate group. (See paragraph 5b). Among the leaders: Lenin, Trotzky, Lunatcharsky.
d. United Social Democrats Internationalists. Also called the Novaya Zhizn (New Life) group, from the name of the very influential newspaper which was its organ. A little group of intellectuals with a very small following among the working-class, except the personal following of Maxim Gorky, its leader. Intellectuals, with almost the same programme as the Mensheviki Internationalists, except that the Novaya Zhizn group refused to be tied to either of the two great factions. Opposed the Bolshevik tactics, but remained in the Soviet Government. Other representatives in this book: Avilov, Kramarov.
e. Yedinstvo. A very small and dwindling group, composed almost entirely of the personal following of Plekhanov, one of the pioneers of the Russian Social Democratic movement in the 80’s, and its greatest theoretician. Now an old man, Plekhanov was extremely patriotic, too conservative even for the Mensheviki. After the Bolshevik coup d’etat, Yedinstvo disappeared.
5. Socialist Revolutionary party. Called Essaires from the initials of their name. Originally the revolutionary party of the peasants, the party of the Fighting Organisations-the Terrorists. After the March Revolution, it was joined by many who had never been Socialists. At that time it stood for the abolition of private property in land only, the owners to be compensated in some fashion. Finally the increasing revolutionary feeling of peasants forced the Essaires to abandon the “compensation” clause, and led to the younger and more fiery intellectuals breaking off from the main party in the fall of 1917 and forming a new party, the Left Socialist Revolutionary party. The Essaires, who were afterward always called by the radical groups “Right Socialist Revolutionaries,” adopted the political attitude of the Mensheviki, and worked together with them. They finally came to represent the wealthier peasants, the intellectuals, and the politically uneducated populations of remote rural districts. Among them there was, however, a wider difference of shades of political and economic opinion than among the Mensheviki. Among their leaders mentioned in these pages: Avksentiev, Gotz, Kerensky, Tchernov, “Babuschka” Breshkovskaya.
a. Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Although theoretically sharing the Bolshevik programme of dictatorship of the working-class, at first were reluctant to follow the ruthless Bolshevik tactics. However, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries remained in the Soviet Government, sharing the Cabinet portfolios, especially that of Agriculture. They withdrew from the Government several times, but always returned. As the peasants left the ranks of the Essaires in increasing numbers, they joined the Left Socialist Revolutionary party, which became the great peasant party supporting the Soviet Government, standing for confiscation without compensation of the great landed estates, and their disposition by the peasants themselves. Among the leaders: Spiridonova, Karelin, Kamkov, Kalagayev.
b. Maximalists. An off-shoot of the Socialist Revolutionary party in the Revolution of 1905, when it was a powerful peasant movement, demanding the immediate application of the maximum Socialist programme. Now an insignificant group of peasant anarchists.
Parliamentary Procedure
Russian meetings and conventions are organised after the continental model rather than our own. The first action is usually the election of officers and the presidium.
The presidium is a presiding committee, composed of representatives of the groups and political factions represented in the assembly, in proportion to their numbers. The presidium arranges the Order of Business, and its members can be called upon by the President to take the chair pro tem.
Each question (vopros) is stated in a general way and then debated, and at the close of the debate resolutions are submitted by the different factions, and each one voted on separately. The Order of Business can be, and usually is, smashed to pieces in the first half hour. On the plea of “emergency,” which the crowd almost always grants, anybody from the floor can get up and say anything on any subject. The crowd controls the meeting, practically the only functions of the speaker being to keep order by ringing a little bell, and to recognise speakers. Almost all the real work of the session is done in caucuses of the different groups and political factions, which almost always cast their votes in a body and are represented by floor-leaders. The result is, however, that at every important new point, or vote, the session takes a recess to enable the different groups and political factions to hold a caucus.
The crowd is extremely noisy, cheering or heckling speakers, over-riding the plans of the presidium. Among the customary cries are: “Prosim! Please! Go on!” “Pravilno!” or “Eto vierno! That’s true! Right!” “Do volno! Enough!” “Doloi! Down with him!” “Posor! Shame!” and “Teesche! Silence! Not so noisy!”
Popular Organisations
1. Soviet. The word soviet means “council.” Under the Tsar the Imperial Council of State was called Gosudarstvennyi Soviet. Since the Revolution, however, the term Soviet has come to be associated with a certain type of parliament elected by members of working-class economic organisations-the Soviet of Workers’, of Soldiers’, or of Peasants’ Deputies. I have therefore limited the word to these bodies, and wherever else it occurs I have translated it “Council.”
Besides the local Soviets, elected in every city, town and village of Russia-and in large cities, also Ward (Raionny) Soviets-there are also the oblastne or gubiernsky (district or provincial) Soviets, and the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Soviets in the capital, called from its initials Tsay-ee-kah. (See below, “Central Committees”).
Almost everywhere the Soviets of Workers’ and of Soldiers’ Deputies combined very soon after the March Revolution. In special matters concerning their peculiar interests, however, the Workers’ and the Soldiers’ Sections continued to meet separately. The Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies did not join the other two until after the Bolshevik coup d’etat. They, too, were organised like the workers and soldiers, with an Executive Committee of the All-Russian Peasants’ Soviets in the capital.
2. Trade Unions. Although mostly industrial in form, the Russian labour unions were still called Trade Unions, and at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution had from three to four million members. These Unions were also organised in an All-Russian body, a sort of Russian Federation of Labour, which had its Central Executive Committee in the capital.
3. Factory-Shop Committees. These were spontaneous organisations created in the factories by the workers in their attempt to control industry, taking advantage of the administrative break-down incident upon the Revolution. Their function was by revolutionary action to take over and run the factories. The Factory-Shop Committees also had their All-Russian organisation, with a Central Committee at Petrograd, which co-operated with the Trade Unions.
4. Dumas. The word duma means roughly “deliberative body.” The old Imperial Duma, which persisted six months after the Revolution, in a democratised form, died a natural death in September, 1917. The City Duma referred to in this book was the reorganised Municipal Council, often called “Municipal Self-Government.” It was elected by direct and secret ballot, and its only reason for failure to hold the masses during the Bolshevik Revolution was the general decline in influence of all purely political representation in the fact of the growing power of organisations based on economic groups.
5. Zemstvos. May be roughly translated “county councils.” Under the Tsar semi-political, semi-social bodies with very little administrative power, developed and controlled largely by intellectual Liberals among the land-owning classes. Their most important function was education and social service among the peasants. During the war the Zemstvos gradually took over the entire feeding and clothing of the Russian Army, as well as the buying from foreign countries, and work among the soldiers generally corresponding to the work of the American Y. M. C. A. at the Front. After the March Revolution the Zemstvos were democratized, with a view to making them the organs of local government in the rural districts. But like the City Dumas, they could not compete with the Soviets.
6. Cooperatives. These were the workers’ and peasants’ Consumers’ Cooperative societies, which had several million members all over Russia before the Revolution. Founded by Liberals and “moderate” Socialists, the Cooperative movement was not supported by the revolutionary Socialist groups, because it was a substitute for the complete transference of means of production and distribution into the hands of the workers. After the March Revolution the Cooperatives spread rapidly, and were dominated by Populist Socialists, Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries, and acted as a conservative political force until the Bolshevik Revolution. However, it was the Cooperatives which fed Russia when the old structure of commerce and transportation collapsed.
7. Army Committees. The Army Committees were formed by the soldiers at the front to combat the reactionary influence of the old regime officers. Every company, regiment, brigade, division and corps had its committee, over all of which was elected the Army Committee. The Central Army Committee cooperated with the General Staff. The administrative break-down in the army incident upon the Revolution threw upon the shoulders of the Army Committees most of the work of the Quartermaster’s Department, and in some cases, even the command of troops.
8. Fleet Committees. The corresponding organisations in the Navy.
Central Committees
In the spring and summer of 1917, All-Russian conventions of every sort of organisation were held at Petrograd. There were national congresses of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Soviets, Trade Unions, Factory-Shop Committees, Army and Fleet Committees-besides every branch of the military and naval service, Cooperatives, Nationalities, etc. Each of these conventions elected a Central Committee, or a Central Executive Committee, to guard its particular interests at the seat of Government. As the Provisional Government grew weaker, these Central Committees were forced to assume more and more administrative powers.
The most important Central Committees mentioned in this book are:
Union of Unions. During the Revolution of 1905, Professor Miliukov and other Liberals established unions of professional men-doctors, lawyers, physicians, etc. These were united under one central organisation, the Union of Unions. In 1905 the Union of Unionsacted with the revolutionary democracy; in 1917, however, the Union of Unions opposed the Bolshevik uprising, and united the Government employees who went on strike against the authority of the Soviets.
Tsay-ee-kah. All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. So called from the initials of its name.
Tsentroflot. “Centre-Fleet”-the Central Fleet Committee.
Vikzhel. All-Russian Central Committee of the Railway Workers’ Union. So called from the initials of its name.
Other Organisations
Red Guards. The armed factory workers of Russia. The Red Guards were first formed during the Revolution of 1905, and sprang into existence again in the days of March, 1917, when a force was needed to keep order in the city. At that time they were armed, and all efforts of the Provisional Government to disarm them were more or less unsuccessful. At every great crisis in the Revolution the Red Guards appeared on the streets, untrained and undisciplined, but full of Revolutionary zeal.
White Guards. Bourgeois volunteers, who emerged in the last stages of the Revolution, to defend private property from the Bolshevik attempt to abolish it. A great many of them were University students.
Tekhintsi. The so-called “Savage Division” in the army, made up of Mohametan tribesmen from Central Asia, and personally devoted to General Kornilov. The Tekhintsi were noted for their blind obedience and their savage cruelty in warfare.
Death Battalions. Or Shock Battalions. The Women’s Battalion is known to the world as the Death Battalion, but there were many Death Battalions composed of men. These were formed in the summer of 1917 by Kerensky, for the purpose of strengthening the discipline and combative fire of the army by heroic example. The Death Battalions were composed mostly of intense young patriots. These came for the most part from among the sons of the propertied classes.
Union of Officers. An organisation formed among the reactionary officers in the army to combat politically the growing power of the Army Committees.
Knights of St. George. The Cross of St. George was awarded for distinguished action in battle. Its holder automatically became a “Knight of St. George.” The predominant influence in the organisation was that of the supporters of the military idea.
Peasants’ Union. In 1905, the Peasants’ Union was a revolutionary peasants’ organisation. In 1917, however, it had become the political expression of the more prosperous peasants, to fight the growing power and revolutionary aims of the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies.
Chronology and Spelling
I have adopted in this book our Calendar throughout, instead of the former Russian Calendar, which was thirteen days earlier.
In the spelling of Russian names and words, I have made no attempt to follow any scientific rules for transliteration, but have tried to give the spelling which would lead the English-speaking reader to the simplest approximation of their pronunciation.
Sources
Much of the material in this book is from my own notes. I have also relied, however, upon a heterogeneous file of several hundred assorted Russian newspapers, covering almost every day of the time described, of files of the English paper, the Russian Daily News, and of the two French papers, Journal de Russie and Entente. But far more valuable than these is the Bulletin de la Presse issued daily by the French Information Bureau in Petrograd, which reports all important happenings, speeches and the comment of the Russian press. Of this I have an almost complete file from the spring of 1917 to the end of January, 1918.
Besides the foregoing, I have in my possession almost every proclamation, decree and announcement posted on the walls of Petrograd from the middle of September, 1917, to the end of January, 1918. Also the official publication of all Government decrees and orders, and the official Government publication of the secret treaties and other documents discovered in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when the Bolsheviki took it over.
CHAPTER I: THE BACKGROUND.
Toward the end of September, 1917, an alien Professor of Sociology visiting Russia came to see me in Petrograd. He had been informed by business men and intellectuals that the Revolution was slowing down. The Professor wrote an article about it, and then travelled around the country, visiting factory towns and peasant communities-where, to his astonishment, the Revolution seemed to be speeding up. Among the wage-earners and the land-working people it was common to hear talk of “all land to the peasants, all factories to the workers.” If the Professor had visited the front, he would have heard the whole Army talking Peace….
The Professor was puzzled, but he need not have been; both observations were correct. The property-owning classes were becoming more conservative, the masses of the people more radical.
There was a feeling among business men and the intelligentzia generally that the Revolution had gone quite far enough, and lasted too long; that things should settle down. This sentiment was shared by the dominant “moderate” Socialist groups, the oborontsi (See App. I, Sect. 1) Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries, who supported the Provisional Government of Kerensky.
On October 14th the official organ of the “moderate” Socialists said:
The drama of Revolution has two acts; the destruction of the old régime and the creation of the new one. The first act has lasted long enough. Now it is time to go on to the second, and to play it as rapidly as possible. As a great revolutionist put it, “Let us hasten, friends, to terminate the Revolution. He who makes it last too long will not gather the fruits….”
Among the worker, soldier and peasant masses, however, there was a stubborn feeling that the “first act” was not yet played out. On the front the Army Committees were always running foul of officers who could not get used to treating their men like human beings; in the rear the Land Committees elected by the peasants were being jailed for trying to carry out Government regulations concerning the land; and the workmen (See App. I, Sect. 2) in the factories were fighting black-lists and lockouts. Nay, furthermore, returning political exiles were being excluded from the country as “undesirable” citizens; and in some cases, men who returned from abroad to their villages were prosecuted and imprisoned for revolutionary acts committed in 1905.
To the multiform discontent of the people the “moderate” Socialists had one answer: Wait for the Constituent Assembly, which is to meet in December. But the masses were not satisfied with that. The Constituent Assembly was all well and good; but there were certain definite things for which the Russian Revolution had been made, and for which the revolutionary martyrs rotted in their stark Brotherhood Grave on Mars Field, that must be achieved Constituent Assembly or no Constituent Assembly: Peace, Land, and Workers’ Control of Industry. The Constituent Assembly had been postponed and postponed-would probably be postponed again, until the people were calm enough-perhaps to modify their demands! At any rate, here were eight months of the Revolution gone, and little enough to show for it….
Meanwhile the soldiers began to solve the peace question by simply deserting, the peasants burned manor-houses and took over the great estates, the workers sabotaged and struck…. Of course, as was natural, the manufacturers, land-owners and army officers exerted all their influence against any democratic compromise….
The policy of the Provisional Government alternated between ineffective reforms and stern repressive measures. An edict from the Socialist Minister of Labour ordered all the Workers’ Committees henceforth to meet only after working hours. Among the troops at the front, “agitators” of opposition political parties were arrested, radical newspapers closed down, and capital punishment applied-to revolutionary propagandists. Attempts were made to disarm the Red Guard. Cossacks were sent to keep order in the provinces….
These measures were supported by the “moderate” Socialists and their leaders in the Ministry, who considered it necessary to cooperate with the propertied classes. The people rapidly deserted them, and went over to the Bolsheviki, who stood for Peace, Land, and Workers’ Control of Industry, and a Government of the working-class. In September, 1917, matters reached a crisis. Against the overwhelming sentiment of the country, Kerensky and the “moderate” Socialists succeeded in establishing a Government of Coalition with the propertied classes; and as a result, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries lost the confidence of the people forever.
An article in Rabotchi Put (Workers’ Way) about the middle of October, entitled “The Socialist Ministers,” expressed the feeling of the masses of the people against the “moderate” Socialists:
Here is a list of their services.(See App. I, Sect. 3)
Tseretelli: disarmed the workmen with the assistance of General Polovtsev, checkmated the revolutionary soldiers, and approved of capital punishment in the army.
Skobeliev: commenced by trying to tax the capitalists 100% of their profits, and finished-and finished by an attempt to dissolve the Workers’ Committees in the shops and factories.
Avksentiev: put several hundred peasants in prison, members of the Land Committees, and suppressed dozens of workers’ and soldiers’ newspapers.
Tchernov: signed the “Imperial” manifest, ordering the dissolution of the Finnish Diet.
Savinkov: concluded an open alliance with General Kornilov. If this saviour of the country was not able to betray Petrograd, it was due to reasons over which he had no control.
Zarudny: with the sanction of Alexinsky and Kerensky, put some of the best workers of the Revolution, soldiers and sailors, in prison.
Nikitin: acted as a vulgar policeman against the Railway Workers.
Kerensky: it is better not to say anything about him. The list of his services is too long….
A Congress of delegates of the Baltic Fleet, at Helsingfors, passed a resolution which began as follows:
We demand the immediate removal from the ranks of the Provisional Government of the “Socialist,” the political adventurer-Kerensky, as one who is scandalising and ruining the great Revolution, and with it the revolutionary masses, by his shameless political blackmail on behalf of the bourgeoisie….
The direct result of all this was the rise of the Bolsheviki….
Since March, 1917, when the roaring torrents of workmen and soldiers beating upon the Tauride Palace compelled the reluctant Imperial Duma to assume the supreme power in Russia, it was the masses of the people, workers, soldiers and peasants, which forced every change in the course of the Revolution. They hurled the Miliukov Ministry down; it was their Soviet which proclaimed to the world the Russian peace terms-“No annexations, no indemnities, and the right of self-determination of peoples”; and again, in July, it was the spontaneous rising of the unorganised proletariat which once more stormed the Tauride Palace, to demand that the Soviets take over the Government of Russia.
The Bolsheviki, then a small political sect, put themselves at the head of the movement. As a result of the disastrous failure of the rising, public opinion turned against them, and their leaderless hordes slunk back into the Viborg Quarter, which is Petrograd’s St. Antoine. Then followed a savage hunt of the Bolsheviki; hundreds were imprisoned, among them Trotzky, Madame Kollontai and Kameniev; Lenin and Zinoviev went into hiding, fugitives from justice; the Bolshevik papers were suppressed. Provocators and reactionaries raised the cry that the Bolsheviki were German agents, until people all over the world believed it.
But the Provisional Government found itself unable to substantiate its accusations; the documents proving pro-German conspiracy were discovered to be forgeries; and one by one the Bolsheviki were released from prison without trial, on nominal or no bail-until only six remained. The impotence and indecision of the ever-changing Provisional Government was an argument nobody could refute. The Bolsheviki raised again the slogan so dear to the masses, “All Power to the Soviets!”-and they were not merely self-seeking, for at that time the majority of the Soviets was “moderate” Socialist, their bitter enemy.
[*Part of the famous “Sisson Documents”]
But more potent still, they took the crude, simple desires of the workers, soldiers and peasants, and from them built their immediate programme. And so, while the oborontsi Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries involved themselves in compromise with the bourgeoisie, the Bolsheviki rapidly captured the Russian masses. In July they were hunted and despised; by September the metropolitan workmen, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet, and the soldiers, had been won almost entirely to their cause. The September municipal elections in the large cities (See App. I, Sect. 4) were significant; only 18 per cent of the returns were Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary, against more than 70 per cent in June….
There remains a phenomenon which puzzled foreign observers: the fact that the Central Executive Committees of the Soviets, the Central Army and Fleet Committees, [*1] and the Central Committees of some of the Unions-notably, the Post and Telegraph Workers and the Railway Workers-opposed the Bolsheviki with the utmost violence. These Central Committees had all been elected in the middle of the summer, or even before, when the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries had an enormous following; and they delayed or prevented any new elections. Thus, according to the constitution of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the All-Russian Congress should have been called in September; but the Tsay-ee-kah [*2] would not call the meeting, on the ground that the Constituent Assembly was only two months away, at which time, they hinted, the Soviets would abdicate. Meanwhile, one by one, the Bolsheviki were winning in the local Soviets all over the country, in the Union branches and the ranks of the soldiers and sailors. The Peasants’ Soviets remained still conservative, because in the sluggish rural districts political consciousness developed slowly, and the Socialist Revolutionary party had been for a generation the party which had agitated among the peasants…. But even among the peasants a revolutionary wing was forming. It showed itself clearly in October, when the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries split off, and formed a new political faction, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.
[*1 See Notes and Explanations.]
[*2 See Notes and Explanations.]
At the same time there were signs everywhere that the forces of reaction were gaining confidence.(See App. I, Sect. 5) At the Troitsky Farce theatre in Petrograd, for example, a burlesque called Sins of the Tsar was interrupted by a group of Monarchists, who threatened to lynch the actors for “insulting the Emperor.” Certain newspapers began to sigh for a “Russian Napoleon.” It was the usual thing among bourgeois intelligentzia to refer to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies (Rabotchikh Deputatov) as SabatchikhDeputatov-Dogs’ Deputies.
On October 15th I had a conversation with a great Russian capitalist, Stepan Georgevitch Lianozov, known as the “Russian Rockefeller”-a Cadet by political faith.
“Revolution,” he said, “is a sickness. Sooner or later the foreign powers must intervene here-as one would intervene to cure a sick child, and teach it how to walk. Of course it would be more or less improper, but the nations must realise the danger of Bolshevism in their own countries-such contagious ideas as ‘proletarian dictatorship,’ and ‘world social revolution’… There is a chance that this intervention may not be necessary. Transportation is demoralised, the factories are closing down, and the Germans are advancing. Starvation and defeat may bring the Russian people to their senses….”
Mr. Lianozov was emphatic in his opinion that whatever happened, it would be impossible for merchants and manufacturers to permit the existence of the workers’ Shop Committees, or to allow the workers any share in the management of industry.
“As for the Bolsheviki, they will be done away with by one of two methods. The Government can evacuate Petrograd, then a state of siege declared, and the military commander of the district can deal with these gentlemen without legal formalities…. Or if, for example, the Constituent Assembly manifests any Utopian tendencies, it can be dispersed by force of arms….”
Winter was coming on-the terrible Russian winter. I heard business men speak of it so: “Winter was always Russia’s best friend. Perhaps now it will rid us of Revolution.” On the freezing front miserable armies continued to starve and die, without enthusiasm. The railways were breaking down, food lessening, factories closing. The desperate masses cried out that the bourgeoisie was sabotaging the life of the people, causing defeat on the Front. Riga had been surrendered just after General Kornilov said publicly, “Must we pay with Riga the price of bringing the country to a sense of its duty?”
[* See “Kornilov to Brest-Litvosk” by John Reed. Boni and Liveright N.Y., 1919]
To Americans it is incredible that the class war should develop to such a pitch. But I have personally met officers on the Northern Front who frankly preferred military disaster to cooperation with the Soldiers’ Committees. The secretary of the Petrograd branch of the Cadet party told me that the break-down of the country’s economic life was part of a campaign to discredit the Revolution. An Allied diplomat, whose name I promised not to mention, confirmed this from his own knowledge. I know of certain coal-mines near Kharkov which were fired and flooded by their owners, of textile factories at Moscow whose engineers put the machinery out of order when they left, of railroad officials caught by the workers in the act of crippling locomotives….
A large section of the propertied classes preferred the Germans to the Revolution-even to the Provisional Government-and didn’t hesitate to say so. In the Russian household where I lived, the subject of conversation at the dinner table was almost invariably the coming of the Germans, bringing “law and order.”… One evening I spent at the house of a Moscow merchant; during tea we asked the eleven people at the table whether they preferred “Wilhelm or the Bolsheviki.” The vote was ten to one for Wilhelm…
The speculators took advantage of the universal disorganisation to pile up fortunes, and to spend them in fantastic revelry or the corruption of Government officials. Foodstuffs and fuel were hoarded, or secretly sent out of the country to Sweden. In the first four months of the Revolution, for example, the reserve food-supplies were almost openly looted from the great Municipal warehouses of Petrograd, until the two-years’ provision of grain had fallen to less than enough to feed the city for one month…. According to the official report of the last Minister of Supplies in the Provisional Government, coffee was bought wholesale in Vladivostok for two rubles a pound, and the consumer in Petrograd paid thirteen. In all the stores of the large cities were tons of food and clothing; but only the rich could buy them.
In a provincial town I knew a merchant family turned speculator-maradior (bandit, ghoul) the Russians call it. The three sons had bribed their way out of military service. One gambled in foodstuffs. Another sold illegal gold from the Lena mines to mysterious parties in Finland. The third owned a controlling interest in a chocolate factory, which supplied the local Cooperative societies-on condition that the Cooperatives furnished him everything he needed. And so, while the masses of the people got a quarter pound of black bread on their bread cards, he had an abundance of white bread, sugar, tea, candy, cake and butter…. Yet when the soldiers at the front could no longer fight from cold, hunger and exhaustion, how indignantly did this family scream “Cowards!”-how “ashamed” they were “to be Russians”… When finally the Bolsheviki found and requisitioned vast hoarded stores of provisions, what “Robbers” they were.
Beneath all this external rottenness moved the old-time Dark Forces, unchanged since the fall of Nicholas the Second, secret still and very active. The agents of the notorious Okhrana still functioned, for and against the Tsar, for and against Kerensky-whoever would pay…. In the darkness, underground organisations of all sorts, such as the Black Hundreds, were busy attempting to restore reaction in some form or other.
In this atmosphere of corruption, of monstrous half-truths, one clear note sounded day after day, the deepening chorus of the Bolsheviki, “All Power to the Soviets! All power to the direct representatives of millions on millions of common workers, soldiers, peasants. Land, bread, an end to the senseless war, an end to secret diplomacy, speculation, treachery…. The Revolution is in danger, and with it the cause of the people all over the world!”
The struggle between the proletariat and the middle class, between the Soviets and the Government, which had begun in the first March days, was about to culminate. Having at one bound leaped from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century, Russia showed the startled world two systems of Revolution-the political and the social-in mortal combat.
What a revelation of the vitality of the Russian Revolution, after all these months of starvation and disillusionment! The bourgeoisie should have better known its Russia. Not for a long time in Russia will the “sickness” of Revolution have run its course….
Looking back, Russia before the November insurrection seems of another age, almost incredibly conservative. So quickly did we adapt ourselves to the newer, swifter life; just as Russian politics swung bodily to the Left-until the Cadets were outlawed as “enemies of the people,” Kerensky became a “counter-revolutionist,” the “middle” Socialist leaders, Tseretelli, Dan, Lieber, Gotz and Avksentiev, were too reactionary for their following, and men like Victor Tchernov, and even Maxim Gorky, belonged to the Right Wing….
About the middle of December, 1917, a group of Socialist Revolutionary leaders paid a private visit to Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador, and implored him not to mention the fact that they had been there, because they were “considered too far Right.”
“And to think,” said Sir George. “One year ago my Government instructed me not to receive Miliukov, because he was so dangerously Left!”
September and October are the worst months of the Russian year-especially the Petrograd year. Under dull grey skies, in the shortening days, the rain fell drenching, incessant. The mud underfoot was deep, slippery and clinging, tracked everywhere by heavy boots, and worse than usual because of the complete break-down of the Municipal administration. Bitter damp winds rushed in from the Gulf of Finland, and the chill fog rolled through the streets. At night, for motives of economy as well as fear of Zeppelins, the street-lights were few and far between; in private dwellings and apartment-houses the electricity was turned on from six o’clock until midnight, with candles forty cents apiece and little kerosene to be had. It was dark from three in the afternoon to ten in the morning. Robberies and housebreakings increased. In apartment houses the men took turns at all-night guard duty, armed with loaded rifles. This was under the Provisional Government.
Week by week food became scarcer. The daily allowance of bread fell from a pound and a half to a pound, then three quarters, half, and a quarter-pound. Toward the end there was a week without any bread at all. Sugar one was entitled to at the rate of two pounds a month-if one could get it at all, which was seldom. A bar of chocolate or a pound of tasteless candy cost anywhere from seven to ten rubles-at least a dollar. There was milk for about half the babies in the city; most hotels and private houses never saw it for months. In the fruit season apples and pears sold for a little less than a ruble apiece on the street-corner….
For milk and bread and sugar and tobacco one had to stand in queue long hours in the chill rain. Coming home from an all-night meeting I have seen the kvost (tail) beginning to form before dawn, mostly women, some with babies in their arms…. Carlyle, in his French Revolution, has described the French people as distinguished above all others by their faculty of standing in queue. Russia had accustomed herself to the practice, begun in the reign of Nicholas the Blessed as long ago as 1915, and from then continued intermittently until the summer of 1917, when it settled down as the regular order of things. Think of the poorly-clad people standing on the iron-white streets of Petrograd whole days in the Russian winter! I have listened in the bread-lines, hearing the bitter, acrid note of discontent which from time to time burst up through the miraculous goodnature of the Russian crowd….
Of course all the theatres were going every night, including Sundays. Karsavina appeared in a new Ballet at the Marinsky, all dance-loving Russia coming to see her. Shaliapin was singing. At the Alexandrinsky they were reviving Meyerhold’s production of Tolstoy’s “Death of Ivan the Terrible”; and at that performance I remember noticing a student of the Imperial School of Pages, in his dress uniform, who stood up correctly between the acts and faced the empty Imperial box, with its eagles all erased…. The Krivoye Zerkalostaged a sumptuous version of Schnitzler’s “Reigen.”
Although the Hermitage and other picture galleries had been evacuated to Moscow, there were weekly exhibitions of paintings. Hordes of the female intelligentzia went to hear lectures on Art, Literature and the Easy Philosophies. It was a particularly active season for Theosophists. And the Salvation Army, admitted to Russia for the first time in history, plastered the walls with announcements of gospel meetings, which amused and astounded Russian audiences….
As in all such times, the petty conventional life of the city went on, ignoring the Revolution as much as possible. The poets made verses-but not about the Revolution. The realistic painters painted scenes from mediæval Russian history-anything but the Revolution. Young ladies from the provinces came up to the capital to learn French and cultivate their voices, and the gay young beautiful officers wore their gold-trimmed crimson bashliki and their elaborate Caucasian swords around the hotel lobbies. The ladies of the minor bureaucratic set took tea with each other in the afternoon, carrying each her little gold or silver or jewelled sugar-box, and half a loaf of bread in her muff, and wished that the Tsar were back, or that the Germans would come, or anything that would solve the servant problem…. The daughter of a friend of mine came home one afternoon in hysterics because the woman street-car conductor had called her “Comrade!”
All around them great Russia was in travail, bearing a new world. The servants one used to treat like animals and pay next to nothing, were getting independent. A pair of shoes cost more than a hundred rubles, and as wages averaged about thirty-five rubles a month the servants refused to stand in queue and wear out their shoes. But more than that. In the new Russia every man and woman could vote; there were working-class newspapers, saying new and startling things; there were the Soviets; and there were the Unions. The izvoshtchiki (cab-drivers) had a Union; they were also represented in the Petrograd Soviet. The waiters and hotel servants were organised, and refused tips. On the walls of restaurants they put up signs which read, “No tips taken here-” or, “Just because a man has to make his living waiting on table is no reason to insult him by offering him a tip!”
At the Front the soldiers fought out their fight with the officers, and learned self-government through their committees. In the factories those unique Russian organisations, the Factory-Shop Committees, gained experience and strength and a realisation of their historical mission by combat with the old order. All Russia was learning to read, and reading-politics, economics, history-because the people wanted to know…. In every city, in most towns, along the Front, each political faction had its newspaper-sometimes several. Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets were distributed by thousands of organisations, and poured into the armies, the villages, the factories, the streets. The thirst for education, so long thwarted, burst with the Revolution into a frenzy of expression. From Smolny Institute alone, the first six months, went out every day tons, car-loads, train-loads of literature, saturating the land. Russia absorbed reading matter like hot sand drinks water, insatiable. And it was not fables, falsified history, diluted religion, and the cheap fiction that corrupts-but social and economic theories, philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol, and Gorky….
[* See Notes and Explanations]
Then the Talk, beside which Carlyle’s “flood of French speech” was a mere trickle. Lectures, debates, speeches-in theatres, circuses, school-houses, clubs, Soviet meeting-rooms, Union headquarters, barracks…. Meetings in the trenches at the Front, in village squares, factories…. What a marvellous sight to see Putilovsky Zavod (the Putilov factory) pour out its forty thousand to listen to Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists, anybody, whatever they had to say, as long as they would talk! For months in Petrograd, and all over Russia, every street-corner was a public tribune. In railway trains, street-cars, always the spurting up of impromptu debate, everywhere….
And the All-Russian Conferences and Congresses, drawing together the men of two continents-conventions of Soviets, of Cooperatives, Zemstvos, nationalities, priests, peasants, political parties; the Democratic Conference, the Moscow Conference, the Council of the Russian Republic. There were always three or four conventions going on in Petrograd. At every meeting, attempts to limit the time of speakers voted down, and every man free to express the thought that was in him….
[* See Notes and Explanations]
We came down to the front of the Twelfth Army, back of Riga, where gaunt and bootless men sickened in the mud of desperate trenches; and when they saw us they started up, with their pinched faces and the flesh showing blue through their torn clothing, demanding eagerly, “Did you bring anything to read?”
What though the outward and visible signs of change were many, what though the statue of Catharine the Great before the Alexandrinsky Theatre bore a little red flag in its hand, and others-somewhat faded-floated from all public buildings; and the Imperial monograms and eagles were either torn down or covered up; and in place of the fierce gorodovoye (city police) a mild-mannered and unarmed citizen militia patrolled the streets-still, there were many quaint anachronisms.
For example, Peter the Great’s Tabel o Rangov-Table of Ranks-which he rivetted upon Russia with an iron hand, still held sway. Almost everybody from the school-boy up wore his prescribed uniform, with the insignia of the Emperor on button and shoulder-strap. Along about five o’clock in the afternoon the streets were full of subdued old gentlemen in uniform, with portfolios, going home from work in the huge, barrack-like Ministries or Government institutions, calculating perhaps how great a mortality among their superiors would advance them to the coveted tchin (rank) of Collegiate Assessor, or Privy Councillor, with the prospect of retirement on a comfortable pension, and possibly the Cross of St. Anne….
There is the story of Senator Sokolov, who in full tide of Revolution came to a meeting of the Senate one day in civilian clothes, and was not admitted because he did not wear the prescribed livery of the Tsar’s service!
It was against this background of a whole nation in ferment and disintegration that the pageant of the Rising of the Russian Masses unrolled….

http://houstoncommunistparty.com/john-reed-ten-days-that-shook-the-world-1919-preface-chapter-i-the-background/

Its pretty great isn't it?

Its pretty great isn't it?

With those times any honest reporter can look pretty damn good, not belittling Reed. Even Trotsky did a good job. If it weren't about the working class triumphant there'd be more books on the subject than on the American Civil War.

In light of SP's call to self-criticism, I decided to read Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat. If anyone knows where I can read analysis or criticism of his points, that'd be tight.

In light of SP's call to self-criticism, I decided to read Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat. If anyone knows where I can read analysis or criticism of his points, that'd be tight.

Might start with the Engels quote I included in the 'Fidel' thread.))

A little amusing that my current 'sig line' is part of the quote in the front piece of 'Settlers'.

Big time out of print, went looking at amazon(I really dislike 'screens' but do what I gotta) and a used paperback was $47!

In light of SP's call to self-criticism, I decided to read Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat. If anyone knows where I can read analysis or criticism of his points, that'd be tight.

Well, here's a site that gives a review: http://kersplebedeb.com/posts/settlers-the-mythology-of-the-white-proletariat-from-mayflower-to-modern/
It is very much an anti-Lenin, anti-Bolshevik site. The guy at this site thinks that all working class whites are sell-outs and are to be distrusted. Race and color trump class with these folks. Anyway, that's the idea I get from reading some of the stuff there.

You can read it here:

https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2005/10/28/sakaisettlersocr.pdf

Well, here's a site that gives a review: http://kersplebedeb.com/posts/settlers-the-mythology-of-the-white-proletariat-from-mayflower-to-modern/
It is very much an anti-Lenin, anti-Bolshevik site. The guy at this site thinks that all working class whites are sell-outs and are to be distrusted. Race and color trump class with these folks. Anyway, that's the idea I get from reading some of the stuff there.

There are a bunch of review links at the bottom of the page at your url

There are a bunch of review links at the bottom of the page at your url

They all appear to be in the same general vein...

They all appear to be in the same general vein...


They're not. Check out the MLM Mayhem one for instance. They are part of a "dialogue", if you will. Was mostly calling attention to the links to draw solidgold's attention to them.

EC: In the early eighties you wrote Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat, a book which had a major impact on many North American anti-imperialists. How did this book come about, and what was so new about its way of looking at things?
JS: Settlers completely came about by accident, not design. And what was so "new" about it was that it wasn't "inspiring" propaganda, but took up the experience of colonial workers to question how class really worked. It wasn't about race, but about class. Although people still have a hard time getting used to that – it isn't race or sex that's the taboo subject in this culture, but class.[/I]

Like many radicals who struggle as organizers, i had wondered why our very logical "class unity" theories always seemed to get smashed up around the exit ramp of race? At the time i'd quit my fairly isolated job on the night shift as a mechanic on the railroad, and was running a cut-off lathe in an auto parts plant. The young white guys in our department were pretty good. In fact, rebellious counter-culture dope smoking Nam vets. After months of hanging & talking, one night one of them came up to me and said that all the guys were driving down to the Kentucky Derby together, to spend the weekend getting drunk and partying. They were inviting me, an Asian, as a way of my joining the crew. Only, he said, "You got to stop talking to those Blacks. You got to choose. White or Black."


It's no surprise Ervin found inspiration from Sakai, thus citing Settlers below his rant (as popularized by the Fidel thread). Ironically--at least in SP's case--Sakai's criticism of the white left in the United States is as literal and powerful as Stalin's most relatable works. A non-credible source leads me to believe he was an admirer of Stalin.

The U.S. has a unique expression of class, via race, unprecedented in other countries (which only furthers the argument for complex analysis, especially put in the perspective of "the working class has no country"). In 1996, Ervin was practicing a 45% success rate with correct semicolon usage and I was a toddler; meanwhile, the city I currently live in was in the shadow of a white supremacist working class. Whether Neo-Nazi skins or simple blue collar factory workers, the divide in Baltimore was/is stark. I live in a gentrified white/blue collar area, and you can still feel the anger from segregation. The sentiments felt by minority groups in the States cannot be ignored, because they're a genuine reaction to politics...but wait, where is the left in the U.S.? The U.S. working class has much to work on before they can find consciousness.

That said, understanding doesn't necessitate the alignment with reactionary politics. Economic/social conditions are so that the working class will or will not wake up, regardless of "academic" jargon.

In fact, rebellious counter-culture dope smoking Nam vets.

Everybody's got a dope smoking 'Nam vets story. Granted, most of the stories tread on the novelty of doper 'Nam vets without offering much substance (a la "I bet those guys are in heaven with all these new dope laws"..personally I bet if they're in heaven its from old age ;))


The U.S. has a unique expression of class, via race, unprecedented in other countries (which only furthers the argument for complex analysis, especially put in the perspective of "the working class has no country").

Ironically, I think you've hit on the key point even though (actually BECAUSE -- see below) much of this trend of thought seems to be localized in Canada rather than Los Estados Unidos. (aside: there are some living breathing Hoxhaists in Canada -- I wish I could find something ironic in that). The crowd that embraced Sakai (other than SP -- I think he is the one true Black Swan) tends to self-importantly think in terms of an inter-Left conflict and/or a split within Marxism. They trace this split back at least to Lenin's Imperialism (which they attribute directly back to Hobson) and its idea of the Periphery.

From there its a hop and a skip to some brand of Mao Thought and a defense of the world's oppressed and a highly suspicious eye towards the privileged/complicit left who are seen as keen to deny the Labor Aristocracy, Imperialist rents/super profits, and "oppression" as its own category (separate from Marx's exploitation). Ultimately at issue, perhaps, is Imperialism as the negation of democracy (although in preaching separatism the ML-Mers seem to miss the nuance: "self determination" and "voting with your feet" gives you jack in terms of a say in American/Imperial policy)

To relate this back to your point, this would all be much more convincing if they weren't from CANADA. They can certainly point to the New Left but a (temporary) black assimilation into the industrial working class bears analysis on its own merits, I think (not to say there was no Little Red Book waving going on). I think this is much more about North America than it is the Long March or the Cultural Revolution.

Therefore, the question is whether these groups honestly know or care to know the concrete realities that their theory coalesced from -- or if they are simply adopting second hand PTSD (I know this is a bit wacky) as a way to cope with insoluble dissonance (how can a left that is veritably opulent in comparison have any credibility while the rest of the world starves/burns BY THEIR HAND?). Worse, because they construe the matter at least partially in terms of identity, they feel that they are "branded" as part of the same group -- and go to great lengths (shy of asceticism, although sometimes just barely) to assuage their feelings of guilt (thus Fanon is kind of a catharsis -- leaving open his impact/influence on the Periphery itself).

That's a mouthful I know

As a lemma of the above, it becomes difficult to determine which "side" has created many of the caricatures that eventually come to be seen as the underlying tenets in dispute. What is certain is that the Periphery thinkers see a crass denial of the Core's incessant and pernicious theft, butchery, assimilation. The question is how to understand this phenomenon without resorting to canards such as property=theft and/or moralistic constructions (perniciousness)

Let me jot down a few preliminary thoughts

Labor Aristocracy -- yes, prosperity can buy complacency, but the upkeep cost of prosperity is high. More generally, what we are really talking about is the ideology of social democracy and who subscribes to it (and why).

Super Profits -- does the concept distance us from Marx, or reinforce his key ideas? Eventually things are spun in a cyclotron until both sides are "ceding" the low ground to their opponents (because lets not talk about high ground here).

Still, if super profits are problematic (except if theyere "exogenous" I guess), "theft" is even more so (full well acknowledging they they're ALL thieves). If profits flow as returns on investments -- of capital -- and the Core possesses almost all of the capital..an obvious vicious cycle, and not one that cares about the toiling masses. Although, again, conditions conditions..how did things get to where we they are? Why is labor worth ~$1.80 (total cost beyond only wages) in Bangladesh?

Neo-colonialism -- as elaborated by Nkrumah and others (including Hoxha: Dollar Hegemony) this is inseparable from so-called Financialization. Which ha to be a trap. I read a book recently, which I mean to write about sometime, that argues that an internal contradiction of capital itself is its separation from the means of production in the form of money capital. Marx certainly alludes to this (separation of purchase and sale..). The chief takeaway being that whoever *owns* the means of production also owns the associated (business) risks. At any rate, does it truly matter (to the capitalist) who owns the factory as opposed to who completes the cycle M-C-M'?


Economic/social conditions are so that the working class will or will not wake up

Marx embraced the Darwinian perspective as a parallel to his own materialist dialectics -- although it was arguably self-serving as he was well aware of the ambiguous connection between the strictures natural science and his own critical regime relating to society.

Still, what goes around comes around, no?

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-biologists-who-want-to-overhaul-evolution/508712/


Zeder argues that there’s a better way of thinking about this transition. Humans are not passive zombies trying to survive in a fixed environment. They are creative thinkers who can change the environment itself. And in the process, they can steer evolution in a new direction.Scientists call this process niche construction, and many species do it. The classic case is a beaver. It cuts down trees and makes a dam, creating a pond. In this new environment, some species of plants and animals will do better than others. And they will adapt to their environment in new ways. That’s true not just for the plants and animals that live around a beaver pond, but for the beaver itself.
When Zeder first learned about niche construction, she says, it was a revelation. “Little explosions were going off in my head,” she told me. The archaeological evidence she and others had gathered made sense as a record of how humans changed their own environment.
Early foragers show signs of having moved wild plants away from their native habitats to have them close at hand, for example. As they watered the plants and protected them from herbivores, the plants adapted to their new environment. Weedy species also moved in and became crops of their own. Certain animals adapted to the environment as well, becoming dogs, cats and other domesticated species.
Gradually, the environment changed from sparse patches of wild plants to dense farm fields. That environment didn’t just drive the evolution of the plants. It also began to drive the cultural evolution of the farmers, too. Instead of wandering as nomads, they settled down in villages so that they could work the land around them. Society became more stable because children received an ecological inheritance from their parents. And so civilization began.

It's no surprise Ervin found inspiration from Sakai, thus citing Settlers below his rant (as popularized by the Fidel thread). Ironically--at least in SP's case--Sakai's criticism of the white left in the United States is as literal and powerful as Stalin's most relatable works. A non-credible source leads me to believe he was an admirer of Stalin.

The U.S. has a unique expression of class, via race, unprecedented in other countries (which only furthers the argument for complex analysis, especially put in the perspective of "the working class has no country"). In 1996, Ervin was practicing a 45% success rate with correct semicolon usage and I was a toddler; meanwhile, the city I currently live in was in the shadow of a white supremacist working class. Whether Neo-Nazi skins or simple blue collar factory workers, the divide in Baltimore was/is stark. I live in a gentrified white/blue collar area, and you can still feel the anger from segregation. The sentiments felt by minority groups in the States cannot be ignored, because they're a genuine reaction to politics...but wait, where is the left in the U.S.? The U.S. working class has much to work on before they can find consciousness.

That said, understanding doesn't necessitate the alignment with reactionary politics. Economic/social conditions are so that the working class will or will not wake up, regardless of "academic" jargon.

As I mentioned to you earlier I'm from Baltimore myself, from Highlandtown in fact, though I understand they call it 'Brewers Hill' nowadays. Needless to say, I'm white. I have also recently stated that all white people are racists, to varying degrees. For the most part it is a matter of clinging to their white privilege, which is indeed 'white supremacy lite' relatively speaking.(Of course 90% of white folks will deny they are racists, cannot see it as a fish can't see water. Racism is a 'ruling idea' of the capitalist class.) And that, I think, is something that's just gonna have to die out, ya can't change people. My sister has got a black daughter-in-law whom she well likes yet she still talks that trash, makes me crazy.

What put a burr under my saddle is when I saw some shit where fucking Towsonites were claiming moral superiority over us neanderthals in my old hood. Really? The arrogance of those hypocrites... To be sure, there was an office of the National Socialist White Peoples Party on Eastern Ave, but I only saw it open twice in about a decade and I walked past it a million times. When they left that rather 'armored' location for a more user friendly spot they got serially trashed and folded. That sort of militant racism apparently held little interest for my neighbors but they cling to the privilege. But the suburbanites, secure in their enclaves, practice a more enlightened racism.

I've been back to visit annually in recent years, staying with a friend who lived a couple blocks off of Eastern Ave. The neighborhood is poorer, seems like the gentrification which drove my sister out much slowed after '08, but it was getting that way when I left in early 80's. Much, much more diverse, I walked down the street inwardly smiling, doing a mental grave dance on my father's and grandfather's generations. Fuck the yuppies, may all of their rooftop decks collapse.

Best that can be hoped for is that those white folks keep their bile to themselves until they die. I think this is doable, though every time that possibility has glimmered on the horizon it is destroyed by politicians and other tools of the ruling class for whom racism is an easy tool to grasp. Nazis and their ilk get no such indulgence, the camps for them. We'll finish sorting it out during the dictatorship of the proletariat.

My friend reports an uptick in racist behavior among white folks around B'more and I'm a little surprised, only because I now live on the buckle of the Bible Belt and such behavior has not been locally evident. But then, they're slow to get around to things in these parts.(But imagine my surprise when 5 years after moving to my current digs that there's a Klan rally only a mile from the house! Happily not heard a peep from that self-styled Grand Dragon since. White people...)

Everybody's got a dope smoking 'Nam vets story. Granted, most of the stories tread on the novelty of doper 'Nam vets without offering much substance (a la "I bet those guys are in heaven with all these new dope laws"..personally I bet if they're in heaven its from old age ;))



Ironically, I think you've hit on the key point even though (actually BECAUSE -- see below) much of this trend of thought seems to be localized in Canada rather than Los Estados Unidos. (aside: there are some living breathing Hoxhaists in Canada -- I wish I could find something ironic in that). The crowd that embraced Sakai (other than SP -- I think he is the one true Black Swan) tends to self-importantly think in terms of an inter-Left conflict and/or a split within Marxism. They trace this split back at least to Lenin's Imperialism (which they attribute directly back to Hobson) and its idea of the Periphery.

From there its a hop and a skip to some brand of Mao Thought and a defense of the world's oppressed and a highly suspicious eye towards the privileged/complicit left who are seen as keen to deny the Labor Aristocracy, Imperialist rents/super profits, and "oppression" as its own category (separate from Marx's exploitation). Ultimately at issue, perhaps, is Imperialism as the negation of democracy (although in preaching separatism the ML-Mers seem to miss the nuance: "self determination" and "voting with your feet" gives you jack in terms of a say in American/Imperial policy)

To relate this back to your point, this would all be much more convincing if they weren't from CANADA. They can certainly point to the New Left but a (temporary) black assimilation into the industrial working class bears analysis on its own merits, I think (not to say there was no Little Red Book waving going on). I think this is much more about North America than it is the Long March or the Cultural Revolution.

Therefore, the question is whether these groups honestly know or care to know the concrete realities that their theory coalesced from -- or if they are simply adopting second hand PTSD (I know this is a bit wacky) as a way to cope with insoluble dissonance (how can a left that is veritably opulent in comparison have any credibility while the rest of the world starves/burns BY THEIR HAND?). Worse, because they construe the matter at least partially in terms of identity, they feel that they are "branded" as part of the same group -- and go to great lengths (shy of asceticism, although sometimes just barely) to assuage their feelings of guilt (thus Fanon is kind of a catharsis -- leaving open his impact/influence on the Periphery itself).

That's a mouthful I know

As a lemma of the above, it becomes difficult to determine which "side" has created many of the caricatures that eventually come to be seen as the underlying tenets in dispute. What is certain is that the Periphery thinkers see a crass denial of the Core's incessant and pernicious theft, butchery, assimilation. The question is how to understand this phenomenon without resorting to canards such as property=theft and/or moralistic constructions (perniciousness)

Let me jot down a few preliminary thoughts

Labor Aristocracy -- yes, prosperity can buy complacency, but the upkeep cost of prosperity is high. More generally, what we are really talking about is the ideology of social democracy and who subscribes to it (and why).

Super Profits -- does the concept distance us from Marx, or reinforce his key ideas? Eventually things are spun in a cyclotron until both sides are "ceding" the low ground to their opponents (because lets not talk about high ground here).

Still, if super profits are problematic (except if theyere "exogenous" I guess), "theft" is even more so (full well acknowledging they they're ALL thieves). If profits flow as returns on investments -- of capital -- and the Core possesses almost all of the capital..an obvious vicious cycle, and not one that cares about the toiling masses. Although, again, conditions conditions..how did things get to where we they are? Why is labor worth ~$1.80 (total cost beyond only wages) in Bangladesh?

Neo-colonialism -- as elaborated by Nkrumah and others (including Hoxha: Dollar Hegemony) this is inseparable from so-called Financialization. Which ha to be a trap. I read a book recently, which I mean to write about sometime, that argues that an internal contradiction of capital itself is its separation from the means of production in the form of money capital. Marx certainly alludes to this (separation of purchase and sale..). The chief takeaway being that whoever *owns* the means of production also owns the associated (business) risks. At any rate, does it truly matter (to the capitalist) who owns the factory as opposed to who completes the cycle M-C-M'?



Marx embraced the Darwinian perspective as a parallel to his own materialist dialectics -- although it was arguably self-serving as he was well aware of the ambiguous connection between the strictures natural science and his own critical regime relating to society.

Still, what goes around comes around, no?

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-biologists-who-want-to-overhaul-evolution/508712/



Lot of my buds were those 'counter-culture dope smoking Nam vets' and yeah, most of those are dead now. But I gotta say that I cannot recall such overt racism among them or the people I hung with. Maybe my memory is at fault or maybe it was 'the water I breathed', or maybe something has changed. Which is not to say they were truly progressive, just that they didn't think about it much(privilege).

Yep, it is the Anthropocene, more work.

Too Many People?
Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
by Ian Angus and Simon Butler
Foreword by Betsy Hartmann and Joel Kovel

An evocative and well-documented refutation of the idea that overpopulation is at the root of our many environmental problems today.
Too Many People? provides a clear, well-documented, and popularly written refutation of the idea that "overpopulation" is a major cause of environmental destruction, arguing that a focus on human numbers not only misunderstands the causes of the crisis, it dangerously weakens the movement for real solutions.

No other book challenges modern overpopulation theory so clearly and comprehensively, providing invaluable insights for the layperson and environmental scholars alike.

Ian Angus is editor of the ecosocialist journal Climate and Capitalism, and Simon Butler is co-editor of Green Left Weekly.

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/386-too-many-people

Just finished this, it is useful, providing a lot of numbers to drive home that 'population' is being entirely scapegoated for the ruination which capitalism is. As per the MR types there is no 'revolution' here, just a lot more reasons for one.

Marxism and the Earth: A defence of the classical tradition

Issue: 153

Posted on 3rd January 2017
Martin Empson

A review of John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique (Brill/Haymarket, 2016), £21.99

Marxist analyses of the natural world have been the focus of intense debate recently, and the publication of any book that further explores what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels thought about the subject is something to be welcomed. John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett have proven track records of writing some of the clearest books on the subject, and while Marx and the Earth is not a specific response to some of their recent critics, it is an important defence of Marx’s and Engels’s original work.*

The authors call their work an “anti-critique”, in the vein of books such as Engels’s Anti-Dühring, as a way of reasserting and developing their core arguments in the context of a defence of the original work. As they write: “We have gradually come to see our own efforts to define a historical materialist ecology, in opposition to those ecosocialists who want to dump the greater part of the classical Marxist legacy, as taking on the overall character of an anti-critique” (pix). As such the book systematically examines the work of those who have critiqued (and in some cases tried to develop) the work of Marx and Engels on ecological questions.

The authors’ starting point is very clear. They argue that at the heart of classical Marxism is an “absolute general law of environmental degradation under capitalism” but that this is not simply an economic rule. The degradation of the natural world is a dialectical counterpart to the “general law of capital accumulation” but could not be reduced down “to the internal logic of capital accumulation”. While this allows capitalists to separate the environmental crises caused by capitalism from their economic system, some Marxists fell into the same trap.

The authors point to James O’Connor’s concept of “the second contradiction of capitalism”, where the ability of capitalism to accumulate wealth is itself undermined by environmental degradation. The problem with this approach is that it sees environmental problems only through the prism of the economic realities of capital. But the environmental crises caused by capitalism, from the sixth mass extinction and the biodiversity crisis to the problems of nuclear waste, oceanic dead zones and climate change, are issues that stretch far beyond the undermining of production under capitalism.

In contrast, the historical materialist approach puts the dialectical relationship between humans and nature at the heart of history. It sees environmental problems as arising out of that relationship, but under capitalism they are exacerbated because of the way that the system is driven by accumulation for the sake of accumulation. The outcome of this approach is that the only path to a sustainable society is one that transforms our relationship to nature, so that, as Marx said in Capital, volume 3, “private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men”.

This general approach has, in no small part due to the work of the authors of this book, become generally accepted by the Marxist left. However, there have been some important critiques of the ecological content of Marx’s and Engels’s work, with some arguing that they failed to develop an ecological approach. This book seeks to address these in order to strengthen classical Marxism’s analysis of environmental questions. These debates are, it must be said, of a highly specific nature which means the authors must delve deep both into the works of Marx and Engels and their critics. The key arguments taken up by Foster and Burkett are the distinction between organic and inorganic nature in some of Marx’s writings, the question of energy and the laws of thermodynamics and how they pertain to the question of production, the question of entropy and finally Marx’s reproduction schemes. Here I want to focus on one particular aspect of these debates as it illustrates the authors’ approach well in defending classical Marxism. This is the question of energy.

As a result of the invention of the steam engine, scientific interest in questions of heat and energy dramatically increased in the 19th century. Scores of scientists published books and papers on the subject, and Marx and Engels displayed a keen interest in these; both attended lectures and debated the latest scientific ideas. Despite this, a number of authors, such as James O’Connor and the Spanish economist Joan Martinez-Alier, have suggested that Marx neglected the energy question.

In his influential 1987 book Ecological Economics Martinez-Alier noted the pioneering work of the Ukrainian socialist Sergei Podolinsky, who attempted to link the labour theory of value to the laws of thermodynamics, and suggested that Marx and Engels had responded negatively and thence ignored Podolinsky’s work. For Martinez-Alier this was the origin of “the Marxist neglect of ecology” (p90).

Podolinsky was a fascinating activist whose early death likely robbed the socialist movement of many interesting writings. In a series of articles developing the themes of human labour, socialism and energy, “Podolinsky tried to use the new thermodynamic perspective to develop an agricultural energetics, combining elements from physics, physiology, and Marxian economics. His goal was to explore the centrality of human labour to the accumulation of energy on Earth” (p99).

Two of Podolinsky’s articles on this subject are helpfully reproduced as appendices to Marx and the Earth, and while they show an admirable attempt to link Marxism with the emerging theories of thermodynamics, they are limited in this by both a limited grasp of the science and a problematic approach which sees value in the Marxist sense as being reduced to energy. In contrast, as the authors point out, for Marx value is a material-social relation that arises out of human social relations in interaction with the natural world.

Foster and Burkett critically explore Podolinsky’s work to show that Marx and Engels had read it and discussed it and that Marx had made detailed notes on the material. By comparing published editions, they argue that Martinez-Alier’s criticisms of Marx don’t stand up. For instance, the version of Podolinsky’s manuscript read by Marx was missing the sections that are usually seen as most useful to value theory.

Foster and Burkett argue that Marx’s whole approach took questions of contemporary science very seriously:

Because Marx’s dialectical conception of value gives it from the very start a twofold character, both use value and exchange value, which together constitute commodity relations. Use value incorporates the conditions of production and in particular the natural-material properties embodied in production that are universal prerequisites. Exchange value, in contrast, is concerned with the enhancement of economic surplus value for the capitalist… Marx’s method is never to ignore either part of this dialectic but to analyse their developing relations and contradictions together. Hence, every chapter of Capital addresses conditions related to physics and economics (p138).

Marx and the Earth is a rigorous defence of Marx’s and Engels’s engagement with wider scientific ideas that are of importance to ecology. But because it also reasserts how Marx puts the dialectical interaction between society and the natural world at the heart of his ideas, the book highlights the strength of a Marxist approach for understanding modern environmental crises. As Marxism and ecology is once again a subject for debate on the left, this is an important defence of the core ideas of the classical tradition.

Martin Empson is the treasurer of the Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union group and the author of Land and Labour: Marxism, Ecology and Human History.

http://isj.org.uk/marxism-and-the-earth/

Just came out, looks like something needing reading. I've seen a bit on twitter but might wait a few months until I can get it dirt cheap used.

Yezhov Vs. Stalin: The Truth About Mass Repressions and the So-Called 'Great Terror' in the USSR Paperback – December 30, 2016
by Grover Furr (Author)

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51i4cmmHc0L._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Yezhov Vs. Stalin is the first accurate account of the so-called "Great Terror" in the Soviet Union in 1937-1938. In this book, Grover Furr answers the central questions concerning the mass repressions known as the "Ezhovshchina" or, by anticommunists, the "Great Terror": What caused it? Did hundreds of thousands of innocent victims meet their deaths? Was Joseph Stalin responsible for these murders, as is universally claimed? If - as the evidence demands that we conclude - Stalin was innocent and in fact put a stop to this massive crime, why were Ezhov and his men able to go on killing many innocent people for more than a year? The present study answers these questions. Grover Furr has studied all the available evidence, most of it from formerly-secret Soviet archives. He offers original translations of key historical documents and detailed analysis of their significance in an important synthesis that effectively reconsiders one of the pivotal events of Soviet history.

A few comments off a review of : "The Murder of Sergei Kirov: History, Scholarship and the Anti-Stalin Paradigm":

The demonization of Stalin is the very foundation of anti-communist propaganda. Many progressives push the view of Stalin as a monster. I think progressives, many of them, are reluctant to antagonize the capitalist class, fear to do so, and join the chorus against Stalin to reassure the capitalist class that they really have nothing to fear from them--oh, we wouldn't be communists, not to worry. Some progressives, while not such cowards, are just intellectually lazy and accept the propaganda smearing Stalin and comparing him to Hitler without inquiring into this important matter--for it is important to understand the great achievements of the Russian people under the leadership of Stalin. Their first achievement was creating an outstanding system of production (alas, later sold out, asset-stripped, by the Nomenklatura under Khruschev); their second achievement was winning the war against fascism in Europe.

....

If you look at evidence instead of rumors it was hundreds of thousands that were executed from 1921 to 1953 not millions. And let's keep in mind that a lot of these people were executed for the wonderful practice of hoarding grain to artificially increase prices and enrich themselves by starving others. (J. Getty, Gabor Rittersporn, and Victor Zemskov, "Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence".

...

https://www.amazon.com/review/R28BT517RWSH9G/ref=cm_cd_pg_pg2?ie=UTF8&asin=061580201X&cdForum=Fx2U1D3JB72Q3H7&cdPage=2&cdThread=Tx941IOH6QKO8D&store=books#wasThisHelpful

Just came out, looks like something needing reading. I've seen a bit on twitter but might wait a few months until I can get it dirt cheap used.

Yezhov Vs. Stalin: The Truth About Mass Repressions and the So-Called 'Great Terror' in the USSR Paperback – December 30, 2016
by Grover Furr (Author)

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51i4cmmHc0L._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Yezhov Vs. Stalin is the first accurate account of the so-called "Great Terror" in the Soviet Union in 1937-1938. In this book, Grover Furr answers the central questions concerning the mass repressions known as the "Ezhovshchina" or, by anticommunists, the "Great Terror": What caused it? Did hundreds of thousands of innocent victims meet their deaths? Was Joseph Stalin responsible for these murders, as is universally claimed? If - as the evidence demands that we conclude - Stalin was innocent and in fact put a stop to this massive crime, why were Ezhov and his men able to go on killing many innocent people for more than a year? The present study answers these questions. Grover Furr has studied all the available evidence, most of it from formerly-secret Soviet archives. He offers original translations of key historical documents and detailed analysis of their significance in an important synthesis that effectively reconsiders one of the pivotal events of Soviet history.

an excerpt:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6h5pAEWkAAtcEt.jpg

I have been working through Lenin's "State and Revolution". It is taking me a while to say 'I am finished', because I go to sources Lenin sites, then have to reread sections of "S and R", because I had made a bad assumption or now it makes more sense or whatever. But you could have an entire college course on just this title, alone.

I have been working through Lenin's "State and Revolution". It is taking me a while to say 'I am finished', because I go to sources Lenin sites, then have to reread sections of "S and R", because I had made a bad assumption or now it makes more sense or whatever. But you could have an entire college course on just this title, alone.

When I was 11 or 12 I set out to read Origin of the Species, laying on the floor with a dictionary at my side. I made a lot of assumptions about what some words meant, which were generally at least 1/2 wrong. Somehow I got the gist of it, to the despair of the nuns.

So I'm reading 'Ten Days That Shook The World'. It's a 1960 'Modern Library' printing. The editor is some sort of trot or other reactionary who feels the need to contradict Reed in footnotes every few pages while consigning Reed's footnotes to the back of the book. Agenda much? Nonetheless it's great, the first chapter strongly bringing to mind current events in Venezuela, the attitudes and actions of the classes are so similar.

I've just ordered Chernyshevsky's What Is To Be Done. Maybe at some point I can show a comparison with it and Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. Tell you right now the latter does not stand up to the former.

this could be interesting....

China is Communist, Dammit!: Dawn of the Red Dynasty Paperback – April 2, 2017
by Jeff J Brown (Author)

"Without exaggeration, this may be the most important book you read in years. The end of the Western-dominated era is arriving. Mighty rebellion is brewing. Three great countries: China, Russia and Iran, are now firmly at the forefront of the great struggle for better and truly free world. Jeff J. Brown has amassed amazing evidence, and he proves it again and again, how progressive, humanist and reasonable China really is, the most populous country on Earth. His conclusion is clear: China is Communist! It is, despite what Western propaganda keeps regurgitating. China is Communist, and it is extremely 'successful', not just successful economically, but above all socially, culturally and morally. 'China is Communist, Dammit! Dawn of the Red Dynasty' is perhaps the best book written about this country in years. It will help to build bridges and disperse fears. It will smash all the empty stereotypes and cliches to pieces. It will put things into proper perspective. It will explain China to all those people living around the world, who somehow manage to retain an open mind and a thirst for knowledge. It could even prevent a new and devastating war. Like China's journey back, towards its well-deserved prominence, the author's book is part of this extremely important process; it is not the final word. Jeff J. Brown has produced a masterpiece, and many more will undoubtedly follow!" – Andre Vltchek Author of 'Exposing Lies of the Empire' and 'Aurora'

Dunno about this Vichek guy, on my timeline, fuckin philosopher.....

the 'Dynasty' shit gives me the creeps, still, need to look

edit:


http://youtu.be/ZcbyOSEOK50

"interesting"

I bought a second-hand copy of Chernyshevsky's WITBD. I just can't stand reading on a computer - I do it all the time, no way out, but if I can get a cheap book I will. This is a pretty good translation of a Commie pub, so that's good.

Anyway, I'm about a hundred pages in and I am just loving this book. I read it first about six or seven years ago, or so, but it is even better this time around! Maybe I am just an enthusiast, but I think this is a really good book, well written, and chocked-full of just terrific tidbits. Anyway, I'll get back to reading and sharpening my knife for Turgenev...

I bought a second-hand copy of Chernyshevsky's WITBD. I just can't stand reading on a computer - I do it all the time, no way out, but if I can get a cheap book I will. This is a pretty good translation of a Commie pub, so that's good.

Anyway, I'm about a hundred pages in and I am just loving this book. I read it first about six or seven years ago, or so, but it is even better this time around! Maybe I am just an enthusiast, but I think this is a really good book, well written, and chocked-full of just terrific tidbits. Anyway, I'll get back to reading and sharpening my knife for Turgenev...

I'll be re-reading my copy within the next year I guess in preparation for seriously thinking about trying to write an update. Doubt I can do it but gonna try. Also taking inspiration from In Watermelon Sugar and a couple bad 70s scifi novels for arcane and indirect reasons; The Troika Incident and The Centuri Device . It will probably be a disaster but I've talked myself into it in a fit of guilt and masochism.

I'll be re-reading my copy within the next year I guess in preparation for seriously thinking about trying to write an update. Doubt I can do it but gonna try. Also taking inspiration from In Watermelon Sugar and a couple bad 70s scifi novels for arcane and indirect reasons; The Troika Incident and The Centuri Device . It will probably be a disaster but I've talked myself into it in a fit of guilt and masochism.

Do it! Cherneshevsky wrote WITBD while in a cell at Peter and Paul prison. No pressure - ha!

Do it! Cherneshevsky wrote WITBD while in a cell at Peter and Paul prison. No pressure - ha!

Well, I got mold issues in the basement where I'll work, does that count?(snakes & poison lizards too..) And there's a czarina...

What you said about reading off screen, totally agree, wears my eyes out. Only complete book I've read on line was that Lorsudo thing a few years back and it was an ordeal.