tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58736494795990011362024-03-05T01:27:36.086-05:00This Way To Progress!"Truth and Justice"Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-42537788809856758762013-02-28T02:53:00.003-05:002013-02-28T02:55:28.325-05:00A Rough Analogy<span class="userContent">Grade 11 student Carl Niedermeyer unfurled a <a href="http://www.yorkregion.com/news-story/2078924-sutton-students-angry-over-confederate-ban/">torrent of opposition</a> to a newly instituted ban against any display of
the image of the Nazi flag or swastika because of its negative
connotation as a symbol of ra<span class="text_exposed_show">cism.<br /> <br />
"To be told that showing our German pride using this flag is us being
racist is not only an insult to us as human beings, but possibly even a
bit racist in itself," says the 16-year-old Sutton resident.<br /> <br />
The flag with a red background featuring a black swastika in a white
circle flown by German troops during the Second World War of 1939 to
1945 has less to do with imperialist expansion, racism and genocide for
some students than it does a 'folksy' culture of beer halls, the music
of Richard Wagner and rebelling against authority.</span></span>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-61750648895132090842013-02-03T16:54:00.003-05:002013-02-03T16:56:00.483-05:00Conservatives target the unemployed with EI changes<i>This article was originally published at </i><a href="http://www.marxist.ca/canada/federal/840-conservatives-target-the-unemployed-with-ei-changes.html">Fightback</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.marxist.ca/images/stories/unemployment-headlines.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://www.marxist.ca/images/stories/unemployment-headlines.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
Strict new changes to Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) program took
effect across the country on Jan. 6. The Conservatives’ plans to
“reform” EI have been public knowledge since the Harper government
tabled its last federal budget in March. Minister of Human Resources and
Skills Development Diane Finley claimed the new changes merely clarify
what is expected from EI claimants and help better connect job
applicants to available work. In reality, they represent the latest
attempt by the Canadian bourgeoisie to make workers pay for the ongoing
capitalist crisis through austerity and a reduction of the social wage.<br />
<br />
Henceforth, EI claimants will be divided into three categories.
“Long-tenured workers” have paid 30 per cent of their maximum annual EI
premiums for seven of the last ten years, and collected benefits for
less than 35 weeks during the past five years. “Frequent claimants” have
filed more than three claims and collected more than 60 weeks’ benefits
over the previous five years. Anyone else is classified as an
“occasional claimant.” The net effect is to divide EI claimants between
those who pay into the program but never or rarely collect benefits and
those who make more frequent claims.<br />
<br />
The revamped EI program will also introduce more stringent
definitions of “suitable employment” and what constitutes a “reasonable
job search” (in other words, preparing resumes, attending job fairs, and
applying for jobs and job banks). Under the new regulations, the
government will consider several factors when considering whether an EI
claimant is suited for a particular job, including wages, type of work,
commuting time, working conditions, hours of work and personal
circumstances such as family obligations. As an example of what is
considered “suitable,” the regulations define an acceptable commuting
time as one hour each way — although, it could also be a figure that
“could be higher taking into account previous commuting history and
community’s average commuting time.”<br />
<br />
Particularly hard-hit by the changes will be the Atlantic
provinces, the economies of which are more dependent than the rest of
Canada on seasonal employment such as fishing. During the winter months,
when there is little work to be found in rural areas, many residents
rely on EI payments before returning to their jobs when the season
starts. In the wake of Harper’s restructuring of the program, frequent
claimants may be required to take available work off-season rather than
waiting for their old jobs to start up again — even if the new job pays
30 per cent less and is located an hour’s drive away.<br />
<br />
While the government portrays the EI changes as common sense
reforms designed to reduce waste while making it easier for people to
find work, the reality is more complicated. In truth, EI “reform”
represents the latest bourgeois attack on workers as the ruling elite
seeks to make the most vulnerable members of society pay for the crisis
of their system. Seizing on the pretext of a vast increase in the
federal debt caused by corporate tax cuts and bailouts to banks and auto
companies, the bosses are clawing back every historical gain of the
Canadian working class.<br />
<br />
As it aims to restore conditions of profitability, one of the
biggest targets of the capitalist class is the social wage, which
consists of benefits paid through the bourgeois state that workers
managed to wrench from the bosses over years of struggle. This includes
pensions, health care, and unemployment benefits. In order to pay off
the debt and restore the rate of profit, capitalists are targeting every
social program they can find as a source of savings. As always, the
human cost of restoring economic equilibrium to the capitalist system is
borne not by those who order the cuts, but by ordinary working people.<br />
<br />
Youth and female workers, in particular, stand to lose out, as
they are the most vulnerable to long-term changes in the job market that
have reduced eligibility for EI. In recent decades, demand for
ever-greater “flexibility” in the labour market has created a shift
towards more temporary and part-time employment. This is reflected in
numbers from Statistics Canada, which reported that 78.4 per cent of
Canadians who lost their jobs in 2012 were eligible for EI benefits,
compared to 83.9 per cent in 2010. In an economy that emphasizes the
disposability of the worker, fewer and fewer people are able to reach
the threshold of 420 to 700 working hours (generally only attainable at a
full-time job) that allows them to qualify for benefits. The same
Statistics Canada report noted that among EI contributors, the share
working in full-time jobs decreased from 51 per cent in 2011 to 40 per
cent. Eligibility rates for women and youth both dropped.<br />
<br />
By making it harder to qualify for EI benefits and instituting a
sliding scale of benefits that decreases benefits for each week the
recipient is out of work — all while making no effort to reduce premiums
— the Harper government is tightening the screws on the unemployed and
forcing them to accept work in the more precarious short-term, temporary
or part-time positions that increasingly dominate the economic
landscape in advanced capitalist nations. At the same time, cutting
benefits while maintaining premiums will provide the government with an
additional source of funds to pay off the federal debt should EI once
more generate a surplus.<br />
<br />
Such a manoeuvre would come as no surprise from the
Conservative government, which funnelled $55-billion from the EI surplus
to help pay off the debt in 2008 — a move that then-NDP leader Jack
Layton described as “the biggest theft in Canadian history.” But
Harper’s theft was only the most recent in a series of attacks that have
plagued EI for decades.<br />
<br />
Unemployment Insurance was first established as part of Prime
Minister R.B. Bennett’s Employment and Social Insurance Act of 1935, and
was later expanded by the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau, which
made benefits more generous and easily available. Since 1971, those
benefits have been cut and cut again. The federal government, originally
obliged to make financial contributions to the program along with
employers and employees, gradually reduced its contributions until they
were eliminated completely by 1990.<br />
<br />
The Progressive Conservatives cut EI in 1990 and 1993, before
the Liberals took over the hatchet and cut it further in 1994 and 1996.
Amendments made eligibility more difficult by increasing the hours of
work needed to qualify. The Liberals’ role in cutting EI cost them
dearly in lost votes from the Atlantic provinces during the 1997
election. After Harper was elected in 2006, the Conservatives refused to
recognize the existing EI surplus, and in 2008 adopted legislation
freezing the surplus indefinitely and putting EI premiums on a
pay-as-you-go basis. That same year, the Supreme Court of Canada
rejected a court challenge from two Quebec trade unions, the
Confederation des syndicats nationaux (the province’s second largest
union, representing 300,000 workers) and the Syndicat National des
Employes de l’Aluminium, arguing that the government had misappropriated
EI funds.<br />
<br />
Now the Conservatives have further escalated their attacks on
EI. The new changes are only the latest manifestation of the austerity
the party has been mandated by the capitalist class with spearheading,
and which is being felt in every area of economic life through cuts,
layoffs, and downsizing. In simple terms, EI “reform” will force the
unemployed to more quickly accept one of the precarious, low-wage jobs
that are the new norm in Canada by making it more difficult for them to
survive.<br />
<br />
A larger point must also be considered. In the last analysis,
the welfare state, which includes programs such as Employment Insurance,
is only an attempt by the capitalist state to compensate for the
failings of capitalism itself. Ever-subject to the irrational whims of
the market, the capitalist system relies on what Marx called a “reserve
army of labour” (the unemployed) to help keep wages down. The resulting
waste of human potential is staggering. However, in most capitalist
economies, unemployment has gone way over and above what Marx would
consider a “reserve army”. Persistent, chronic, and endemic unemployment
undermines the system from within. Where the anarchic free market
permits human beings to suffer when their labour is not required, a
rationally-planned economy would allow society to fully utilize all of
the “human resources” at its disposal.<br />
<br />
As part of an omnibus budget bill passed by Harper’s
Conservative majority, the EI overhaul will go through as planned unless
stopped in its tracks by a popular mass movement. Canadians have seen
two such movements recently in the forms of the Quebec student strike —
which targeted the tuition hikes of the Charest government — and Idle No
More, which is currently engaged in an all-out battle to stop the
implementation of Bill C-45. At first glance, the unemployed appear only
as a small minority of the general population. But the same could be
said for the Quebec students and First Nations activists who nonetheless
pushed their concerns onto the national agenda, and through their
efforts earned a great deal of support from the wider working class.<br />
<br />
The NDP and many union leaders have come out strongly against
the changes to EI. But ultimately, cuts to assistance for the unemployed
are only a symptom of the larger problem: an economic system of which
unemployment is the inevitable by-product. Bourgeois economists that
refer to a so-called “normal” level of unemployment reflect the degree
to which our present society has acclimatized itself to a certain,
seemingly inevitable degree of human suffering. And indeed, so long as
the means of production are privately-owned and geared towards profit, a
certain subset of the population will be condemned to idleness and
deprivation.<br />
<br />
Only a planned economy under democratic workers’ control, where
the means of production are publicly-owned and oriented towards the
fulfilment of social needs, will allow society to eliminate the scourge
of unemployment once and for all.<br />
<br />Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-13953021374504196782013-01-22T03:26:00.003-05:002013-02-28T03:10:51.494-05:00Four More Years<span class="userContent">HOORAY! I'm so excited for my super cool progressive hero Barack Obama to start his second term!<br /> <br />
Barack is a civil rights hero because he let <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/us/23military.html?_r=0">gay Americans</a> kill brown
people on the other side of the world too. He personally supports gay ma<span class="text_exposed_show">rriage
(now), but believes the states should ultimately decide. A champion of
<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/11/Obama-Won-t-Fight-For-Gay-Marriage-His-Second-Term">states’ rights</a>, the president has clearly learned the lessons of the
Civil War and the civil rights movement!<br /> <br /> He's a champion of the
little guy - ordinary, hardworking Americans like Jaime Dimon and Lloyd
Blankfein. But he's no liberal purist, either: Barack is more than
happy to make little old ladies eat <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2010/08/obamas-cat-food-committee-alan-greenspan-and-dancing-grannies-medicare">cat food</a> if that's what the bankers
demand!<br /> <br /> But he's tough, too! He orders other people to push
buttons that kill terrorists thousands of miles away! I know they're
terrorists because the U.S. government says so, and because any
military-age male killed in a strike zone is <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/">presumed</a> to be a militant.
The administration said so! Barack is standing up to Iran and its
nuclear program, the same way George W. Bush stood up to Iraq and its
nuclear program!<br /> <br /> Barack Obama shows that America is never
afraid to stand up for what's right! That's why he <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-cruel-inhuman-treatment-un">tortures whistleblowers</a> and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/31/obama-justice-department-immunity-bush-cia-torturer">protects torturers</a>.<br /> <br /> And now, here's to four more glorious years. Congratulations, America! You’ve earned it.</span></span><br />
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"> </span></span><br />
<span class="userContent"><span class="text_exposed_show"><a href="http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Obama-Nobel-Peace-Prize.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Obama-Nobel-Peace-Prize.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-59744724798711146222013-01-02T00:20:00.001-05:002013-02-03T17:04:15.372-05:00Idle No More re-ignites social struggle across Canada<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Note: This article was
originally written for the publication </i>Fightback<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> and is expected to appear on their website <a href="http://www.marxist.ca/">www.marxist.ca</a> after the Christmas break.</i><br />
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Thousands of protesters took part in demonstrations across
the country on Dec. 21 under the banner of Idle No More, a grassroots movement
dedicated to protecting the environment and Aboriginal treaty rights against new
federal legislation. First Nations activists and their supporters mobilized
nationwide, with the largest protest on Parliament Hill drawing more than 2,000
people. Solidarity rallies took place around the world from New Zealand to Los
Angeles to the United Kingdom. Some activists also started blocking key roads and railways. In the span of a few weeks, Idle No More has
become the most significant social movement in Canada since Occupy and the
Quebec student strike.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEVt0PNJy90uUCtZyMGgyNDT5TcyxPd6EG7iPJwg3P_nwnfkWtrV_esKppN3AVXZfE7IWC1zaU-7vI8iBC62hggDhKLh7zoCMO75kUV44HK7WSnxgX1D0V6wVcIeFzuz-UwjAXX04FLkk/s1600/idlenomore.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEVt0PNJy90uUCtZyMGgyNDT5TcyxPd6EG7iPJwg3P_nwnfkWtrV_esKppN3AVXZfE7IWC1zaU-7vI8iBC62hggDhKLh7zoCMO75kUV44HK7WSnxgX1D0V6wVcIeFzuz-UwjAXX04FLkk/s320/idlenomore.png" width="207" /></a></div>
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The movement’s recent focus has been on stopping the federal
omnibus budget bill C-45, now the law of the land after having received royal assent.
Idle No More supporters argue that, contrary to Aboriginal treaties, the Harper
government has pushed through Bill C-45 without consulting native leaders or
gaining their free, prior and informed consent. The bill includes changes to
the Indian Act that would give the Aboriginal affairs minister the authority to
call a band meeting or referendum for the purpose of releasing reserve land, potentially
a gateway to privatization.</div>
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Environmental concerns also play a key role in Idle No More.
Changes made in Bill C-45 to the Navigable Waters Protection Act reduce the
number of protected lakes and rivers in Canada from 2.5 million to 82 (coincidentally,
the majority of bodies of water that remain under federal protection are
located in Conservative ridings). The weakening of environmental regulations to
boost corporate profits will increase pollution and contamination in native
communities such as Fort Chipewyan, which has seen cancer rates skyrocket in
recent years due to the nearby oil sands.</div>
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Idle No More supporters are demanding that the Harper
government shelve Bill C-45 until it has met and consulted with native leaders.
Their struggle has become embodied in the hunger strike of Attawapiskat Chief
Theresa Spence, who at the time of writing had gone more than 22<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>days without eating. Leader of a First
Nations community that attracted international attention in 2011 for its appalling
living conditions, the increasingly emaciated Spence has pledged to continue
her fast until the prime minister and governor-general meet with native
leaders. Harper’s continued refusal to grant such a meeting raises the real
possibility that the prime minister of Canada will let this woman die before he
listens to her concerns.</div>
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Fightback unequivocally supports the efforts of First
Nations to defend their land and resource rights as stipulated in the treaties.
But Idle No More addresses issues of concern to all Canadian workers, including
poverty, education, housing, public health, the environment and the Harper
government’s ongoing attacks on democracy. First Nations face the same enemy as
the broader Canadian working class. By forcing these topics into the national
conversation, native activists are taking the lead in the ongoing struggle
against the decaying capitalist system.</div>
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The current activity follows years of steadily mounting
grievances. First Nations have faced state oppression and discrimination
throughout Canadian history. Successive governments in Ottawa cynically signed
and broke treaties depending on their needs of the moment, while Aboriginal
inhabitants were pushed onto reserves with poor land or relegated to the
fringes of urban society to live as a despised minority. State authorities
attempted to erase every aspect of their culture and separated native children
from their families, forcing them to attend abusive residential schools.</div>
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Today, First Nations people statistically suffer social
maladies at rates far worse than the general population: more unemployment,
shorter life expectancy, higher rates of incarceration, poverty and suicide,
lower levels of education and greater substance abuse. More than 75 First
Nations communities live under constant boil-water-advisory conditions, and
residents of towns such as Attawipiskat live in overcrowded, unsanitary
conditions with no running water or proper sewage. Such is the legacy of
centuries of oppression in which Aboriginal Canadians were treated at best as
second-class citizens.</div>
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Abuse inevitably leads to resistance. Over the last few decades,
indigenous peoples in Canada have fought back in whatever way they could,
illustrated during successive crises in Oka (1990), Ipperwash (1995), Gustafsen
Lake (1995) and Burnt Church (1999). National days of action in 2007 and 2008
led to native activists blockading stretches of Highway 401 and the CN railroad
between Toronto and Montreal. Leaders of these actions were often rounded up
and arrested.</div>
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Many First Nations people hoped for change in 2008 after
Stephen Harper issued an official apology on behalf of the Canadian government for
the residential school system. The prime minister pledged a new relationship with
First Nations based on partnership and mutual respect. But the government’s
successive actions exposed Harper’s promise as meaningless verbiage, as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Toronto Star</i> noted on Dec. 20:</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Since 2008, the Harper government has cut aboriginal health funding,
gutted environmental review processes, ignored the more than 600 missing and
murdered Indigenous women across Canada, withheld residential school documents
from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, abandoned land claim
negotiations, and tried to defend its underfunding of First Nations schools and
child welfare agencies.</i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">When some dared call attention to poverty, “corrupt” chiefs were
blamed. Although the minister of Aboriginal Affairs, John Duncan, claims to
have visited 50 First Nations communities and conducted 5,000 consultations, he
and his staff clearly have not gained the First Nations’ consent on the seven
currently tabled bills that Idle No More activists oppose.</i></div>
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After so many broken agreements and cutbacks, Bill C-45 was
clearly the straw that broke the camel’s back – the moment when quantity turned
into quality, when injustices accumulated over many years became too much to
bear.</div>
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Idle No More began with four indigenous and non-indigenous
Saskatchewan women – Sylvia McAdams, Jessica Gordon, Nina Wilson and Sheelah
McLean – who began organizing “teach-ins” in Saskatoon, Regina and Prince
Albert during November to build awareness around Bill C-45. Efforts continued
when the Louis Bull Cree Nation held learning sessions in Alberta, and
organizer Tanya Kappo took to Facebook and Twitter to spread the message
further.</div>
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Momentum built on social media and led to a National Day of
Action on Dec. 10. At the invitation of the New Democratic Party, First Nations
leaders attempted to enter the House of Commons as the bill was being voted on,
but were refused entry. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Agitation therefore
built up further, culminating in an even larger day of protests across the
country on Dec. 21.</div>
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While solidarity rallies took place from Vancouver to
Halifax, the focus was on Ottawa, where legions of supporters were bused in
from as far afield as Regina. By mid-morning on Friday, 500 supporters had
already gathered on Victoria Island outside the compound where Chief Spence is
staying in a teepee during her hunger strike. The demonstrators braved cold
weather to rally on Parliament Hill to hear a variety of speakers including
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo, who said Spence’s hunger
strike and Idle No More had awakened Aboriginal people across Canada.</div>
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Harper appeared unmoved by the day’s rallies, preferring to
<a href="https://twitter.com/pmharper/status/282233267623714816">tweet</a> about his love of bacon. But NDP leader Thomas Mulcair penned a letter to
Harper in which he urged the prime minister to heed the message of Idle No
More, commit to reconciliation and re-engage with native leaders.</div>
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“From coast to coast to coast, an unprecedented wave of
grassroots action is sweeping across First Nations communities,” the Leader of
the Official Opposition wrote. “When you met with First Nations leaders less
than a year ago, you committed your government to working in partnership with
First Nations Canadians. The #IdleNoMore protests are proof that Aboriginal
Canadians are demanding you fulfill that solemn commitment.”</div>
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The NDP leader’s support for the aims of Idle No More is an
encouraging sign, as are letters of support from the Canadian Labour Congress,
the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers
and others. There is a widespread recognition that in challenging corporate
power and standing up for native land and resource rights, First Nations people
are fighting on behalf of all Canadian workers who want decent housing, high
public health and education standards and a clean environment for their
children to grow up in.</div>
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Therefore, Fightback wholeheartedly supports the Idle No
More movement. The struggle of Aboriginal Canadians for basic rights and
dignity reflects the struggle of all working class Canadians seeking a decent
life. But advancing those goals in the long run will require greater unity
between First Nations and the labour movement.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Defend native treaty
rights and the environment!</b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Unity between native
and non-native workers!</b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">For a socialist
Canada with equal opportunities for all!</b></div>
Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-73405245350898735112012-12-23T00:39:00.000-05:002013-02-03T17:00:24.699-05:00Analyzing Right-Wing Propaganda (I)A friend of mine sent me a link to the right-wing propaganda film <a href="http://vimeo.com/52009124"><i>Agenda: Grinding America Down</i></a> and asked for my thoughts on it. Talk about opening the floodgates. Below you will find live-blogging of my experience watching the film in its entirety.<br />
<br />
- Ronald Reagan appears onscreen and I already know this is going to be
good. Given the black and white picture and his relative youth, I
imagine this is a clip from his classic 1964 “A Time for Choosing”
speech in which he claims Medicare represents the beginning of communism
in America and the end of freedom as we know it. I pour my first drink.<br />
-
Bunch of people talk and it’s clear this movie is going to be all about
culture. Culture is the trump card for the right-wing propaganda
machine, because it removes economics completely from the picture.
Instead of being the inevitable byproduct of profit-oriented media eager
to boost the bottom line, the increasing amount of sex and violence in
media is blamed on a nefarious, conspiratorial “liberal elite” and
therefore represents one of the first steps on the path to communism.<br />
-
So liberals are not actually communists, just the “useful idiots” which
the communists use as pawns in their grand scheme to eliminate
everything good and decent about America. Nothing paranoid about this!<br />
-
Less than 3 minutes in and they’ve brought out the Nazi footage! Even
as the talking heads conflate liberalism and communism, it looks like
this movie will follow Glenn Beck’s example by conflating communists and
fascists (aka the most fervent opponents of communism).<br />
- Why would the left continue to push communist policies? “They’re either ignorant, or they’re evil.” Simple!<br />
-
I love how while talking about the left’s evil schemes, they show a
book burning in which one of the books being burned was written by
Lenin. Doublethink – gotta love it.<br />
- Interesting how Curtis Bowers
describes his experiences meeting with the CPUSA. This is a superb
example of framing: if you support feminism or gay rights, what you’re
really supporting is the destruction of morality and the family.<br />
-
Flash-forward to 2008, and Bowers can’t believe how successful their
agenda has been! The disintegration of the family, the massive power
supposedly wielded by the environmental movement, hate crimes
legislation that calls bigotry what it is – all this reveals the utter
narrowness and backwardness of Bowers’ views.<br />
- <i>The Naked Communist
</i> by Cleon Skousen was also one of the books most instrumental in the
development of Glenn Beck’s warped worldview. Birds of a feather...<br />
-
As I look at all the goals of Communist infiltrators outlined by
Skousen, I wonder why I’m supposed to take seriously the paranoid
ramblings of a former FBI agent and right-wing Mormon crank as
definitive proof of leftist goals in the United States.<br />
- “Goal #27:
Discredit the Bible”. You mean like Thomas Jefferson, who ripped out
every page in his Bible he believed to be false and was left with a few
measly pages clinging to the spine?<br />
- John Stormer cites J. Edgar
Hoover calling communists “masters of deceit.” Well, if there’s one
figure in American history who was a paragon of honesty and virtue, it’s a guy who blackmailed public figures for their sexuality while
wearing dresses in his spare time.<br />
- Hearing these guys talk about
Latin America and China and lumping them together as “communist” says
much about the lack of nuance in their worldview. Liberals, social
democrats, socialists, communists, opportunist capitalists calling
themselves communists – whatever, it’s all the same thing!<br />
- Jim
Simpson acknowledges that most of the people supposedly spreading
communism are not communists, instead calling them mere “useful idiots”. So basically, he’s
admitting that any social cause with the merest whiff of progressivism
is identical to communism as far as he’s concerned. If anything, all
he’s doing is identifying himself as an enemy of human progress! I’m
sure if Bowers was alive back in the 1850s, he would have said the same
thing about those nefarious abolitionists trying to destroy the Southern
way of life.<br />
- Great job, Bowers. With your political spectrum,
you’ve once more revealed your utter idiocy and lack of historical
knowledge. Even though he tries to lump together liberals, socialists,
communists and fascists by saying they all worshipped the state, Bowers
seems totally unaware that the Nazis were the declared arch-enemies of
the communists, that they beat up communists before they came to power,
jailed and murdered them after they did come to power, and – oh yeah,
invaded the Soviet Union in the largest act of military aggression in
world history. But forget all that – Nazis were basically the same as
communists.<br />
- Ah, I see – the entire American political spectrum has
moved to the left, not the right. Is that why Obama is cutting Social
Security while starting new wars and claiming the right to execute
American citizens without charges or trial?<br />
- And there is no
opposition to any of this – except, of course, for the entire American
right-wing blathering on endlessly about the socialist threat as if it
actually existed.<br />
- “What’s So Bad About Communism?” Again, these
conservative talking heads have only the most simplistic and base view
of what “communism” is. They can’t grasp that there could be severe
disagreements and criticisms within the communist movement. They have no
apparent awareness of Trotsky’s struggle against the bureaucratic
degeneration in the USSR and how he was outright murdered by Stalin’s
goons, as were so many of the old Bolsheviks. And they’re so very
concerned about how many people were murdered under “communism” – I
wonder what their thoughts are on U.S. imperial wars or the current
policy of assassination-by-drone-strike based on presidential fiat?<br />
- How many people have died due to capitalism? Funny how nobody ever compiles those figures.<br />
-
What a fucking warped view of history these people have. So America’s
public schools are teaching how to carry out genocide? Funny, they
always seemed to mostly ignore what happened to the Native Americans...<br />
- I
was about to praise the narrator for explaining the difference between
socialism and communism – until he said that socialism can be summed up
as “Big Government”. HELP! I’m trapped in a sea of right-wing talking
points!<br />
- The central fallacy – liberalism/socialism/communism are
evil because of “wealth redistribution”, because they take money people
earned through hard work and give it to the undeserving. You know what
that reminds me of? CAPITALISM, which is based on not paying people the
full value of their labour while the capitalist pockets more than his
fair share. That’s where profit comes from. But you’re never going to
hear the right complaining about those lazy capitalists mooching off the
workers.<br />
- Why use an atomic bomb to illustrate how socialism
destroys everything in its path? I checked the social system of the only
country ever to actually use nuclear weapons in war, and it wasn’t
socialist.<br />
- You know, I wish there were as many people on the left
who believed that the final victory of socialism was at hand as there
seem to be on the right.<br />
- Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but
right after David Noebel talked about how Venezuela was “hard-core
Marxist”, I swear I heard him refer to Nicaragua as “N*gger-agua”.<br />
- The “red plague”. Are you kidding me?<br />
-
Watching them talk about how Karl Marx begat the Fabian Socialists who
begat the Students for a Democratic Society who begat the Weather
Underground, and how many of them are still in positions of power, such
as Rev. Jim Wallis. Oh yeah, Rev. Jim Wallis – there’s a figure who will
send shivers down the spine of the ruling elite. Amazing how right-wing
propaganda manages to make the oppressed look like the oppressors and
vice versa.<br />
- Sympathizing with the Viet Cong, how dare he! It’s not
like they were morally in the right, fighting for national liberation
against a military superpower attempting to protect its puppet
government, or anything like that.<br />
- Jim Simpson is correct –
throughout my impressionable years in elementary school, all I ever
heard from my teachers was how great it would be if I grew up to become
an atheist alcoholic homosexual.<br />
- Have to laugh out loud at the
juxtaposition of July 4, baseball and apple pie with a group of
intellectuals plotting behind the scenes to “make America so corrupt it
stinks.”<br />
- There is no middle ground: either the father is the
breadwinner, disciplinarian and protector of his family, or the
government is. Nice to know there is no alternative possibility to the
mother being a domestic slave without her becoming married to “Big
Government”.<br />
- “Cultural Marxism” was also one of the obsessions of
mass-murderer Anders Breivik, who accused young members of the Labour
Party of such when he gunned them down in 2011.<br />
- “Most people will
give over to the [government], because they don’t want the chaos.” Kind
of like how so many people on the right wet their pants and asked Big
Bad Government to protect them after 9/11 with the Patriot Act? And how
they continue to demand government take away their rights to protect
them from the omnipresent threat of “terrorism”? I pour my third drink.<br />
- Thanks to Saul Alinsky, we now know that everyone on the left worships Satan as a matter of course.<br />
- Saul Alinksy defines the modern American left? Funny, I thought lesser-of-two-evillism did.<br />
-
The Piven plan to “overload the welfare system” – how exactly did they
encourage this? Was there an organized strategy to overload the welfare
system? I’d love to see some proof of that, but that would overwhelm the
paranoid fantasy.<br />
- That section on Betty Friedan is almost painfully stupid. But then, so is the rest of the film.<br />
-
Society is falling apart - I’ll grant you that, Bowers. But your
proposed solutions have no relevance to existing power relations.<br />
- “My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.” Awesome Karl Marx quote!<br />
-
The Progressive Caucus of the Democrats – truly, a life-and-death
threat to the government of capitalist America which trembles before its
20% representation in Congress.<br />
- I know, Christianity gets so much
flak in America, more than any other religion. This is especially unfair
when we consider how Christianity has traditionally faced persecution
in U.S. society to a degree unmatched by any other religion.<br />
- As the
narrator says, those who believe in the sanctity of human life have
always been the biggest challenge to those totalitarian regimes who
would impose “Big Government” on all of us. Just ask Pope Pius XII.<br />
-
Why is it that, unlike Aristotle, we now know slavery to be wrong?
Because we have the Bible. ("You may purchase male or female slaves from
among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the
children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born
in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to
your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves
like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be
treated this way." - Leviticus 25:44-46)<br />
- Whether we know it or not, “the Left is at war with God.” Such a thoughtful, nuanced interpretation of events.<br />
- “Anti-God” is the same thing as “Anti-free enterprise”. Perhaps an unintentionally revealing analogy...<br />
-
If we tell people about problems with the environment, racism, etc., we
are stunting their critical thinking skills. If we tell them that the
whole world was created by God and all the proof you will ever need is
in the Bible, we are creating free-spirited independent thinkers.
Gotcha.<br />
- Movie is promoting the idea that it’s all about
self-reliance. How many huge corporations got that way without
government assistance? Just want to know.<br />
- Global warming is nothing but a hoax! Well, there’s a reasonable and well-considered idea.<br />
-
Jim Simpson says socialism will lead to extreme hardship for most
Americans. I suppose that makes sense, if you don’t consider the fact
that 1% of Americans own 40% of the national wealth.Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-68372580131898268002012-12-22T22:34:00.000-05:002013-02-03T17:03:04.188-05:00XL Foods recall: Cost-cutting threatens food and worker safety<i>Originally published at </i><a href="http://www.marxist.ca/analysis/economy/815-xl-foods-recall-cost-cutting-threatens-food-and-worker-safety.html">Fightback</a><i> on Oct. 24.</i><br />
<br />
The discovery of <i>E. Coli </i>in meat from XL Foods has prompted
the largest beef recall in Canadian history. After a routine inspection
along the U.S. border discovered the bacteria in XL meat on Sept. 3, a
recall was eventually expanded to include all of Canada, 40 US states,
and Puerto Rico. At least 15 people have become ill. Ground zero for the
contamination was the massive XL Foods processing facility in Brooks,
Alta., which slaughters a million cattle per year and processes
one-third of Canada’s beef.<br />
<br />
The future of the Brooks facility became uncertain after the
Canadian Food Inspection Agency pulled XL’s operating license on Sept.
27. The company blamed resulting uncertainty for its Oct. 13 decision to
temporarily lay off 2,000 workers at the plant. Only days later, XL
announced that 800 “A shift” workers would temporarily be brought back
onto the job to process carcasses previously cleared by inspectors,
fuelling greater confusion.<br />
<br />
Like any capitalist enterprise, XL Foods has one key goal:
increasing profit. While corporate consolidation grew and agriculture
and meat production became more concentrated, the role of factory
farming in agribusiness became more prominent. Today over 95% of animals
raised and slaughtered for food in Canada are mass-produced on factory
farms. As animals rights groups have pointed out, conditions for animals
there tend to be overcrowded and unsanitary, allowing disease to spread
easily.<br />
<br />
The conditions for human workers are little better than those
of the animals. The unappealing nature of slaughterhouse work has
traditionally attracted those most desperate for employment, and XL
Foods is no different. At its Brooks plant, the company maintained
cost-cutting through a super-exploited workforce consisting largely of
immigrants, refugees, and temporary employees.<br />
<br />
Following the recall, reports started coming in from workers of
a general lack of concern by management for food safety. Under constant
pressure to maintain quotas, employees could not sterilize their tools
between cuts without losing pace. Cleaning equipment was regularly
clogged. Unsanitary conditions reigned. Workers’ reports consistently
state that for the company, processing meat — ensuring profits — was
always the first priority. The health of workers and the public came a
poor second.<br />
<br />
According to the <i>Toronto Star</i> (8 Oct. 2012), many XL
Foods workers developed serious tendon problems in their hands, barely
able to open them due to their constant gripping of work tools on the
line. When some returned to the plant with written recommendations
allowing them modified work, supervisors allegedly tore the forms up.
Many workers were simply fired outright.<br />
<br />
Such naked exploitation eventually led to an explosion in 2005.
A dispute arose when XL Foods workers joined the United Food and
Commercial Workers union (UFCW) and the company’s then-owner Tyson
Foods, refused to negotiate a first contract. When workers voted to
strike, Tyson bused in replacement workers, which are legal under
Alberta law. Tension increased before an RCMP riot squad was called in.
Police charged the plant CEO and other managers with dangerous driving
when their car crashed into the union president’s car and injured him
(the charges were later dropped).<br />
<br />
The union and Tyson eventually reached a deal after three
weeks. But the strike experience led to a new approach by the company,
which began hiring more temporary workers from abroad. When new owners,
the Nilsson brothers, took over the plant in 2009, they increased the
number of foreign temporary employees to one-third of the facility’s
workforce, where 60% already consisted of immigrants and refugees.<br />
<br />
The terms of Canada’s Temporary Workers Program stipulate that
workers recruited under the program may not change jobs or bring in
family for four years, but when their program is up, employers may
nominate them for permanent residency. By dangling such a tantalizing
prospect in front of its workforce, XL Foods successfully convinces many
employees to accept atrocious working conditions, no matter how
dangerous or unhealthy their environment becomes.<br />
<br />
UFCW president Doug O’Halloran has called for better industry
standards and criticized the Nilsson brothers for not making health and
safety a greater priority. Recent developments regarding the temporary
layoffs led him to accuse the owners of poor and erratic management. In a
press release, O’Halloran complained that the CEO had refused to meet
with union representatives to discuss food safety.<br />
<br />
Following the recall, Alberta Agriculture Minister Verlyn Olson
said that food safety was the top priority for everyone involved. But
for a private company like XL Foods, this is never truly the case. More
accurately, their concern is negative publicity eating into profits.
Should the Brooks plant open up again, the focus will still be on
profits, with public gestures of safety intended only as a means of
maintaining the long-term bottom line. In a capitalist enterprise, this
is only to be expected.<br />
<br />
The only way to rationalize agriculture and food production is
through a mode of production based on the satisfaction of human needs
rather than private profit. The agribusiness firms, like all large
corporations that make up the commanding heights of the economy, play a
dominant role in our lives. The consequences for public well-being are
too important for such entities to be left in the hands of private
capitalists.<br />
<br />
Whether the goal is guaranteeing safe working conditions and a
living wage for meat plant workers, or preserving the safety and health
standards of the public food supply, capitalism has proven itself
incapable of ensuring either. For a rational system of food production
that truly values the health of workers and the public above all else,
it is necessary to expropriate the largest agribusiness firms and
nationalize them under democratic control. Only then will food
production be geared primarily towards feeding people rather than
profits.<br />
<br />
<b>Nationalize agribusiness under democratic workers’ control!</b><br />
<br />
<b>Defend collective bargaining rights of agribusiness workers!</b>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-46881827652353363152012-08-31T03:24:00.000-04:002013-02-03T17:02:13.716-05:00By Jingo<h6 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">As
far as I'm concerned, Mitt Romney knocked his RNC speech out of the
park - a masterpiece of nationalist demagoguery. Of course, my eyes
started rolling once he got into specifics. But it's funny how this
billionaire capitalist has somehow become the underdog in this
presidential election, as far as the two corporate parties are
concerned. Nobody really likes this guy, even his supporters. But
tonight, he managed to check all the boxes and appeal to what Americans
most admire about their country. I remember watching the 2008 RNC and
being repelled by the consistent negativity represented by the likes of
Sarah Palin. It's funny how this year, the Republicans have actually
been better overall at creating a more positive vision for the country's
future - even if it's all lies. Obama and the Democrats have nothing to
run on, no popular policies from the last four years - so this time,
they're the ones primarily running on fear and division. Take it from
someone who checks the Fox Nation website every day: the GOP have been
so successful in turning Obama into the supposed Kenyan Muslim socialist
fascist Antichrist that the work is already done, and there's no need
for further divisiveness at the RNC. But still - stellar performance
from the less charismatic corporate empty suit.</span></span></span></span></h6>
<h6 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">In conclusion: vote Jill
Stein.</span></span></span></span></h6>
Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-56063419216348238142012-08-12T18:10:00.000-04:002012-08-12T18:17:19.355-04:00Take the Money and Run: Rat Race (2001) as Socialist Parable<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://themassornament.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ratrace.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1691" height="240" src="http://themassornament.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ratrace.jpg" title="Rat Race" width="320" /></a></span><br />
<i><span style="color: #888888;">Above: Rat Race’s ensemble cast.</span></i><br />
<br />
<i>Originally published at</i> <a href="http://themassornament.com/2012/08/take-the-money-and-run-rat-race-2001-as-socialist-parable/#more">The Mass Ornament</a>.<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Disclaimer</span><i>: </i>This
review is a case study in overanalysis. It is extremely unlikely that
any of the political conclusions drawn here existed in the minds of the
writers when they created the screenplay for this madcap comedy caper.
But one of the virtues of the Marxist method is its ability to provide
new insights into things we would otherwise regard as ordinary or
commonplace. Spoilers ahead.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
“You are horrified at our intending to do away with
private property. But in your existing society, private property is
already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence
for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those
nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a
form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the
non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.”</blockquote>
- Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels<br />
<br />
On its surface, Jerry Zucker’s 2001 film <i>Rat Race</i> is
light-hearted comedic fare with little in the way of profound political
messaging. The plot involves six teams of people at a Las Vegas hotel
and casino who are recruited by the resort’s billionaire owner Donald
Sinclair (John Cleese) to participate in a race for the betting pleasure
of himself and his wealthy peers. A duffel bag containing $2 million in
cash has been stowed away in a train station locker 563 miles away in
Silver City, New Mexico.<br />
Each team receives a key to the locker, and
whichever team reaches the locker first wins the race and keeps the
money.<br />
<span id="more-1689"></span><br />
The teams consist of:<br />
<ol>
<li>an attorney (Breckin Meyer) and a helicopter pilot (Amy Smart);</li>
<li>a disgraced football referee (Cuba Gooding, Jr.);</li>
<li>a pair of twin brother con artists (Seth Green and Vince Vieluf);</li>
<li>a family man (Jon Lovitz), his wife, son, and daughter;</li>
<li>a short-fused businesswoman (Lanai Chapman) with her estranged but kind mother (Whoopi Goldberg); and</li>
<li>an Italian narcoleptic (Rowan Atkinson).</li>
</ol>
Of these characters, businesswoman Merrill Jennings and lawyer Nick
Schaffer would likely have the highest incomes, followed by pilot Tracey
Faucet, referee Owen Templeton and minivan-driving family man Randy
Pear (who lies to his wife about job prospects). Marked by the lowest
incomes are twin con artists Duane and Blaine Cody, as well as the
eccentric foreigner, Enrico Pollini, whose suit is cheap and occupation
unknown.<br />
<br />
In short, the competitors come from a variety of social backgrounds.
It is significant that Nick originally has no interest in competing and
tosses away the key. As an attorney, his likely substantial income
permits him the luxury of throwing away this 1 in 6 chance of becoming
instantly wealthy. He only changes his mind when the Cody brothers’
shenanigans ground all planes at the airport, and his conversation with a
helicopter pilot gives him a solid chance of winning the race.<br />
<br />
A businesswoman who screams into her phone at subordinates, Merrill
is likely the most financially well-off of these “ordinary people”. But
given her enthusiasm for the race, it is doubtful that she possesses
anything approaching the immense riches of someone like Donald Sinclair.<br />
<br />
Mass popular entertainment in capitalist society tends to gloss over class differences. Thus a film like <i>Rat Race</i>
can portray team members from various economic backgrounds as equally
“ordinary”. But for our purposes, the competitors’ clear difference with
Sinclair is the fact that each would stand to benefit substantially
from possessing $2 million, whereas for Sinclair and his pals, such a
hefty sum is mere pocket change. In #occupy terms, this is the story of
the 99% battling it out for the amusement of the 1%.<br />
<br />
All participants seem initially wary of the race, but when Owen
appears to get a head start greed kicks in and the rest quickly run
after him. In their desperation, everyone ends up in a tangled heap at
the bottom of a staircase. The mad race for individual riches has led to
counterproductive in-fighting amongst the individuals chosen to compete
for the enjoyment of the bourgeoisie.<br />
<br />
As representatives of the 1%, Sinclair & Co. are so absurdly
wealthy that they think nothing of gambling away vast quantities of cash
on ridiculous bets. In one scene, Sinclair’s butler Mr. Grisham (Dave
Thomas) asks a high-priced escort how much a bizarre request will cost.
Upon hearing her answer, the wealthy gamblers emerge and pay off the
colleague whose guess was closest.<br />
<br />
Later on, while flying to Colorado, Sinclair has his pilot swerve the
plane violently and the rich men bet on which of them will vomit first.
In a deleted scene, they can be seen playing Monopoly with real money.
This colossal waste of wealth is not too far removed from the reckless
speculation of the parasitical American financial class that led to the
economic collapse of 2008.<br />
<br />
Still stuck on the stairs, one of the competitors suddenly hatches a
brilliant idea: why don’t all the teams just go to Silver City together
and split the money up evenly? Couldn’t they avoid in-fighting if they
simply banded together and distributed the wealth among themselves
equally? At that point, Pollini, who had been trailing, steps over the
heap of people and continues onwards, gleefully proclaiming, “I am in a
race! I am in a race!”<br />
<br />
Instantly the participants renew their struggle to grab all the loot
for themselves. The brief flirtation with a socialist approach has given
way once more to the Hobbesian war of all against all that is typical
of capitalism – an individualist ethos that may be summarized as, “I’ve
got mine, so fuck everybody else.”<br />
<br />
Near the end, the political subtext of the film sharpens once more.
As the teams arrive at the Silver City train station, they all reach the
locker at the same time and struggle to be the first to use their keys.
When one finally opens the locker, they find the duffel bag of money
missing.<br />
<br />
It seems that the butler Grisham has run off with the call girl under
the mistaken belief that she liked him for him, and not the $2 million
he was leading her to. Despite their similar class interests, the
bourgeoisie remains a den of thieves who will happily stab each other in
the back to increase their own personal profits; <a href="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/st_madoff_victims_20081215.html">Bernie Madoff</a> is only the most famous recent example of this phenomenon.<br />
<br />
Chasing after the duffel bag of money while it hangs from a cow that
is dangling from a hot air balloon (don’t ask), the frantic racers
suddenly crash through a wall and find themselves onstage at a charity
concert hosted by Smash Mouth that instantly dates the film. They
finally gain their prize and start helping themselves to wads of cash.<br />
<br />
In a misunderstanding, the charity believes the competitors have come
to donate the money to feed hungry children. The competitors initially
react with horror and attempt to correct this impression. However, the
heartfelt expressions of gratitude by the charity’s organizer, as well
as a representative hungry child, soon compel all competitors to
relinquish their winnings in the name of charity. This sacrifice on
behalf of the needy becomes cathartic, with the former competitors
smiling and/or pumping their fists in the air.<br />
<br />
But Nick isn’t finished. Seizing on the presence of Sinclair and his
cronies, he announces that the affluent gamblers have volunteered to
donate double the total amount of money raised by the charity. The
numbers on a display board increase at a dizzying speed; millions of
dollars which were previously hoarded or pissed away on useless
speculation are forcibly redistributed to serve real and desperate
social needs.<br />
<br />
It is this expropriation of wealth that makes <i>Rat Race</i> more
than just a frivolous comedy. The presence of starving children puts the
main characters’ individual pursuit of riches into perspective.
Capitalism, by its very nature, leads to poverty and vast inequality. As
Che Guevara noted, the central myth of “free enterprise” – that anyone
can become wealthy if they work hard enough – is usually defended with
the example of figures like John D. Rockefeller, while conveniently
ignoring the amount of misery that must be created in order for a
Rockefeller to exist.<br />
<br />
By their own initiative, Sinclair and his friends would never have
used that money to serve positive social ends. It was only when Nick put
them in an impossible position at the charity concert that they were
forced to smile and wave as a portion of their wealth was taken from
them. This is the point at which right-wing ideologues would start
ranting and raving about the injustice of somebody stealing their
hard-earned money (Who earned it for them? The Sinclair gang don’t look
like 9 to 5 types).<br />
<br />
Wealth redistribution is precisely what happens at the end of <i>Rat Race</i>.
And what are the results? A huge number of children who would have gone
to bed hungry, or worse, will now be fed. Lives have been saved – and
the only casualty is the relative freedom of shiftless billionaires to
gamble away huge amounts of money other people earned for them.
Regardless of the filmmakers’ intentions, the socialist subtext of <i>Rat Race</i>
takes what would have otherwise been an unremarkable if entertaining
comedy and gives it a didactic meaning to serve as a rallying cry for
the proletariat.Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-59701978164383918092012-07-10T22:39:00.002-04:002012-07-10T22:52:28.580-04:00Review: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)From a personal standpoint, Mark Webb's reboot of Sony Corporation's most profitable franchise broke new ground: for the first time, I was unexcited about the prospect of a new <i>Spider-Man</i> movie. Given the high caliber of summer 2012's other superhero offerings - Joss Whedon's superlative <i>Avengers</i> adaptation and Christopher Nolan's swan song <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> - as well as trailers depicting another re-telling of Spider-Man's origin, I was highly skeptical of this movie being anything other than a naked cash grab. My lack of interest was expressed most vividly when, offered the chance on opening day to see a new <i>Spider-Man</i> film or a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1915581/">film about male strippers</a>, I chose the latter.<br />
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Having now seen the movie, I will admit that while my initial cynicism may be justified, <i>The Amazing Spider-Man</i> is better than it had any right to be. Though devoting half the film to ground already covered - and better - in Sam Raimi's original <i>Spider-Man</i> (2002), Webb has nevertheless produced an exciting Spider-Man adventure. If one drops all cynicism to simply sit back and enjoy what transpires on screen, TASM is a perfectly satisfying superhero tale. In the pantheon of long underwear characters adapted to film, it is closer to the upper echelon than the lower. As the Big Three go - Superman, Batman, Spider-Man - TASM is miles above the disappointing <i>Superman Returns</i> while not quite reaching the heights of Nolan's Batman films.<br />
<br />
Praise for the movie has justifiably tended to focus on the performances of Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. Each does an outstanding job with their character. In her role as the token love interest, Stone improves considerably on Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson, although partial credit must go to the screenwriters, who render her Gwen Stacy a stronger and more independent character than Raimi's indecisive, narcissistic MJ. That said, there is no iconic moment to rival the kiss in the rain from the Raimi original.<br />
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Garfield's performance must be rated on a dualistic basis. As Spider-Man, he is far and away a more charismatic and amusing Spidey than Tobey Maguire's interpretation. Garfield's hero makes constant quips - something sorely lacking when Maguire wore the tights, and truer to the presentation of Spider-Man in the comics (where the shy Parker seems to become a different person under the mask, wittier and funnier).<br />
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As Peter Parker - specifically, as a high school-age Parker - Garfield comes up short of Maguire, who I could believe as an unpopular and awkward nerd. As has been <a href="http://wafflemovies.com/amazingspiderman.html">pointed out</a> by other reviewers, Garfield is simply too good-looking to buy as a social pariah or the hapless victim of bullies. Perhaps this is a reflection on the state of culture ten years after the original, when nerds like Mark Zuckerberg have become globe-straddling trendsetters. This Peter rides a skateboard, and his clothes and bedroom are festooned with "hip" cultural icons - The Clash, The Ramones, Johnny Cash. Garfield's Peter is perfectly likeable and there's nothing wrong with his acting; I simply couldn't buy him as a geek.<br />
<br />
But there is a caveat, because this only refers to a single aspect of the character. Tobey Maguire played the "nerdy" Peter to perfection, but unfortunately never evolved beyond this. Throughout all three of Raimi's films, Maguire's Parker remained socially awkward to the point where it became irritating by the third movie. Where was the character development? In the comics, Peter eventually became more confident and cool, which was a nice transition to see. Unlike Maguire, Garfield has this aspect nailed down. While off-putting to me in the depiction of a teenage Parker, I believe this quality will accrue to Garfield's advantage as an older Peter when the inevitable sequel(s) see the light of day.<br />
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The choice of The Lizard as villain is a strange one for a movie that occasionally seems to be aping the "gritty, realistic" character of the Nolan Batman films, which leads us to a crucial point: the world of Spider-Man is in no sense "gritty" or "realistic". We're talking about a hero who is bitten by a spider and gains spider-like superpowers, fighting a giant lizard in the streets of Manhattan. It is literally impossible to depict such events in a "realistic" manner. If that's what the filmmakers were going for, they failed. But I don't think they were.<br />
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Ultimately, this is a perfectly serviceable popcorn flick. It likely won't be remembered as long as the 2002 film, and certainly won't have the same cultural impact, but plays well while you're watching it. Rhys Ifans does a fine job as Dr. Curt Connors, aka The Lizard. The special effects are far superior to Raimi's original films, helped along by the fact that whenever possible the filmmakers used real stunts for the webslinging rather than CGI.<br />
<br />
There are some plot holes. Peter is driven to seek revenge on Uncle Ben's killer, yet the matter is effectively dropped after The Lizard becomes a real threat. The possibility that the plotline will be resolved in a sequel is an annoying side-effect of the blockbuster franchise era. But there is a more pernicious aspect to this plot thread. It may be argued that this movie sidesteps the entire theme of the Spider-Man story - "with great power comes great responsibility". In the comics and the first Raimi film, Spider-Man is directly responsible for causing Uncle Ben's death by failing to apprehend the killer when he had the chance, and channels that guilt and anger into his life as a crimefighter.<br />
<br />
In Webb's interpretation, that responsibility is less direct; there is less guilt and more anger. Sure, Uncle Ben gets killed while looking for Peter, who left their home in anger. But by turning Peter's motivation for becoming Spider-Man into a mission primarily of vengeance - only to leave that plotline unresolved - Webb essentially defeats the point of devoting half the movie to re-telling the origin story.<br />
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In the end, my praise for this movie likely comes as a result of my expectations being so low. I was pleasantly surprised, but am looking forward to a sequel more now that the origin is out of the way.<br />
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Final note: there is absolutely no point in seeing this movie in 3-D. For long periods I forgot I was even wearing the glasses. Go 2-D if you can.Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-64554582718207394022012-04-25T08:21:00.002-04:002012-04-25T08:23:23.953-04:00Toronto library workers reach settlement after strike<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>This article originally appeared at </i><a href="http://www.marxist.ca/labour/labour-news/756-toronto-library-workers-reach-settlement-after-strike-.html">Fightback</a>.<br />
<br />
Ending an 11-day strike, Toronto public library employees
returned to work on Friday, March 30 after members of CUPE Local 4948
voted to accept a new contract.<br />
<br />
Workers had walked off the job after contract negotiations with
the Library Board broke down. City representatives desired greater
“flexibility” in denying job security to permanent library employees, by
making it easier to lay off workers in the event of outsourcing or
technological changes.<br />
<br />
Under the terms of the collective agreement that expired on
Dec. 31, no permanent library workers could be laid off even if the city
outsourced their jobs. Such job security provisions were the main
target of the municipal government during negotiations.<br />
<br />
Local 4948 represents 2,300 library workers, the majority of
them women, including 440 librarians, 730 part-time pages (often
students) who stock shelves, and hundreds of customer service
assistants. More than half the workers are employed in part-time
positions.<br />
<br />
By going on strike, Toronto library workers illustrated that
the only way to fight austerity is by challenging the bosses and their
government lackeys head-on. Yet we must realize that the final agreement
only softens the blow.<br />
<br />
All library workers will receive a small wage increase that
fails to keep pace with the current rate of inflation. The union managed
to protect benefits, but sacrificed job security for younger workers – a
major concession on the key issue.<br />
<br />
<i>The Toronto Star</i> reported:<br />
<blockquote>
Under the new four-year collective agreement, full-time and
part-time workers will be protected from layoffs after they earn 11
years of seniority. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
[...] </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The agreement includes a wage freeze this year, a lump-sum
payment of 1.5 per cent at the beginning of 2013 (less for part-time
workers), and increases of 0.225 per cent in 2013, 1.75 per cent in
2014, and 2.25 per cent in 2015. That is slightly less than the outdoor
workers received from Ford.<br /><br />
Under the contract, no full-time jobs will be converted to
part-time jobs and a “modest” number of full-time jobs will be created,
[union president Maureen] O’Reilly said.</blockquote>
The dominant feeling expressed by union representatives after
the final deal was that this was the best deal workers could get. Such
sentiments indicate that labour remains on the defensive.<br />
<br />
Despite trumpeting its victory over Mayor Rob Ford in the 2012
budget by preventing some of the more unpopular service cuts, Toronto
City Council still voted in January to eliminate 107 full-time library
service positions and shrink the collections budget. Even with the new
agreement, the long-term trajectory of the city’s public library system
remains dire.<br />
<br />
Once the new layoffs are implemented, library staff will have
decreased by 17% since amalgamation even as circulation increased 23%.
Dwindling job security, including the proliferation of part-time
employment, has developed alongside a heavier workload as budget cuts
put greater pressure on remaining workers at the library’s 98 branches.<br />
<br />
In its document “The New Threat”, OurPublicLibrary.to, a
network sponsored by the Toronto Public Library Workers Union, argued
that the offensive on workers is part of an attempt by the Ford
administration to hollow out the public library system from
within.“Lowering the quality of public services and increasing public
dissatisfaction,” it notes, “is a tried and true strategy for
privatization.”<br />
<br />
Introduction of the profit motive through privatization would
inevitably result in the closure of branches, higher user fees, fewer
books, and reduced accessibility of information and services. It would
also accelerate the process of layoffs and attacks on job security for
library workers.<br />
<br />
Despite the limited nature of their gains, the library workers’
strike – the first of Rob Ford’s 15-month administration – underscores a
growing shift in consciousness. Workers increasingly realize they can
trust no one but themselves. Experiences on the picket line are creating
a new sense of solidarity and recognition of their own power.<br />
<br />
Members of the Toronto Young New Democrats repeatedly
intervened at picket lines during the strike to show solidarity with
union members. The workers and youth sang traditional labour songs
together, including “Which Side Are You On?” and “Solidarity Forever”.<br />
<br />
“I was tremendously appreciative of TYND showing up to support
us in our efforts to gain a fair deal with the employer,” said Alan
Harnum, Senior Applications Specialist in E-Services and picket captain
at the Toronto Reference Library, in an e-mail. “One of the biggest
morale-boosters while on strike is being supported by those without an
apparent direct personal stake in the dispute with the employer.<br />
<br />
“Speaking personally,” he wrote, “the strike experience has
been an extensive practical lesson for me in the value of solidarity:
with my co-workers on the line, with the members of other unions who
showed up to support us, with groups like the Toronto Young New
Democrats, and with citizens from all walks of life who walked the
picket line with us for a time or otherwise offered support.<br />
<br />
“If the union ‘won’ the strike, it was because we successfully
persuaded people that we were not engaged in protectionism, but [were]
conscious participants on one side of a struggle against institutional
forces seeking the diminishment and destruction of valued public
services.<br />
<br />
“I emerged from the strike with a greater sense of connection to many of my fellow workers at Toronto Public Library.”<br />
<br />
<i> The workers united will never be defeated</i> is no mere
slogan, but the only way forward in the face of a vicious onslaught by
the capitalist elite against working people. The NDP must take a firm
stance against these attacks. Only a militant labour movement, with
solidarity actions to unite workers and youth, can fight austerity and
win.Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-49612386918969760862012-04-10T20:38:00.004-04:002012-04-10T20:42:52.179-04:00Welcome to the New Security State: Conservatives' Omnibus Crime Bill Criminalizes Youth and Workers<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5mFLef4Od3OvxbxsxGgDdRUzekRm2nsA1OGmxd_MpCfWEnSnwLgTY9lJh5t4JVS7Z3xs1yecMkys-hFVBvNxQpscnpZi3Lt_AqDmg0osFcUucKctMLK6YzunAMzWmAFDRL1H4gX_D_1Q/s1600/jails-canada.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 242px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5mFLef4Od3OvxbxsxGgDdRUzekRm2nsA1OGmxd_MpCfWEnSnwLgTY9lJh5t4JVS7Z3xs1yecMkys-hFVBvNxQpscnpZi3Lt_AqDmg0osFcUucKctMLK6YzunAMzWmAFDRL1H4gX_D_1Q/s400/jails-canada.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729936384502714498" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">This article originally appeared in</span> <a href="http://www.marxist.ca/canada/federal/755-welcome-to-the-new-security-state-conservatives-omnibus-crime-bill-criminalizes-youth-and-workers.html">Fightback</a>.<br /><br />The relentless austerity measures currently being visited upon the Canadian working class are typically justified by the mantra, “There is no money.” We are constantly told that all levels of government are broke, spending cuts are needed, and that workers must tighten their belts and permanently accept a lower standard of living. <p>But for the state security apparatus, things are very different.</p> <p>Despite an apparently desperate need to cut public spending, including the possibility of sacking up to a third of the federal civil service, the Conservative government plans to massively increase spending on domestic and foreign defence. None of this security spending will aid working-class people (either in Canada or abroad); instead, it is very likely that our own money will be used against us in our attempts to fight austerity.</p> <p>Amidst a general rise in military spending, the Harper government had already allocated $9-billion of federal funds towards the purchase of F-35 fighter jets when delays and cost overruns at Lockheed-Martin forced it to consider alternatives. On Feb. 15, the <em>National Post</em> reported that the Department of National Defence was preparing to tender a contract for six armed unmanned air vehicles (UAVs, commonly referred to as drones). Remotely-piloted aircraft such as the MQ-9 Reaper cost an estimated $30-million each.</p> <p>Among countries on the receiving end of US imperialism, drones have become notorious in recent years as the most terrifying incarnation of the U.S. military’s advanced weaponry. The ongoing slaughter of innocents at the hands of unmanned aircraft in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya have provoked the ire of civilian populations and served as a rallying point for armed insurrection.</p> <p>The Canadian military has leased drones in the past from Israel for reconnaissance missions in Afghanistan, but the <em>Post</em> reported that the primary “attraction for the government, apart from the price, is the increasing flexibility of UAVs to conduct domestic patrols along Canada’s borders and mount offensive missions.”</p> <p>Spending on state security forces has continued to rise in Canada and the United States, even as severe austerity grinds down the working class. Harsher sentences, increased police powers, more advanced weaponry, and greater surveillance of ordinary citizens are all on the agenda as Canada adopts a more aggressive military posture, as well as a more punitive and merciless criminal justice system.</p> <p>Harper’s “tough on crime” policies are most clearly exemplified by his omnibus crime bill, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, which passed the House of Commons in December and could come into effect as early as March. Bill C-10 combines nine separate measures that failed to pass under the previous Conservative minority governments, including:</p> <ul><li><span style="font-size:small;">Adult sentences for juvenile offenders as young as 14.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:small;">Mandatory minimum sentences for sex crimes.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:small;">Eliminating house arrest as a sentencing option for certain offences.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:small;">Longer wait times on pardons, or eliminating them altogether in certain cases.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:small;">Allowing police to arrest citizens on conditional release without warrant if perceived to be in violation of those conditions.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:small;">Mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession “for the purpose of trafficking”.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:small;">Increasing hurdles on re-entry for Canadians convicted abroad.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:small;">Allowing victims of terrorism to sue “perpetrators and supporters”.</span></li></ul> <p>The imposition of mandatory minimum sentences will drastically swell Canada’s prison population. Officials in Quebec, Ontario, and Newfoundland have already voiced concerns about prison overcrowding. In Ontario alone, Correctional Services minister Madeline Meilleur estimated that the omnibus crime bill could cost Ontario taxpayers over $1-billion in added police and correctional service costs. This is at the same time as when workers are being told they must endure painful sacrifices to plug government deficits, with the federal 2012 deficit standing at $17.3-billion.</p> <p>Naturally, the corporate media takes care not to remind readers and viewers that these deficits exploded after the 2008 bailout of the banking and automotive sectors. That year, the federal government transferred $75-billion of debt from the banks’ ledgers to the government through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and established an additional $200-billion fund to lend to the bankers. Billions were borrowed for this purpose, with interest on those loans billed to ordinary people. Governments, including those in Canada, have proceeded to pay back these debts on the backs of working-class people.</p> <p>While the criminals on Wall Street and Bay Street are protected from their crimes and rewarded with bailouts, Canadian workers face economic insecurity and a vastly strengthened state security apparatus. Homelessness, evictions, and hunger are on the rise across the country, but only the military and police forces are immune from further spending cuts, even as the national crime rate continues a 20-year decline. The Harper government’s decision to spend $1-billion on security at the G20 summit in Toronto — a meeting of world leaders specifically on how to push through austerity — was a harbinger of things to come.</p> <p>Seemingly not satisfied with the omnibus crime bill, the Conservatives introduced Bill C-30 into the House of Commons on Feb. 14. As the <em>National Post</em> reported, the deceptively-named Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act would “require telecommunications companies to give police customers’ information without a court order. The bill will also require ISPs (internet service providers) and cell-phone companies to install equipment for real-time surveillance and create new police powers designed to obtain access to the surveillance data.”</p> <p>Despite the bluster of Public Safety minister Vic Toews that Canadians “can either stand with us or with the child pornographers”, the ostensible goal of cracking down on kiddie porn is merely the pretext for a wide-ranging assault on privacy and vast escalation of the state’s surveillance powers. Opponents are likely to mount a court challenge to the bill on the basis that it violates the section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protecting against unlawful search and seizure. But, as the British Marxist Ted Grant liked to point out, the capitalists can move from “democracy” to dictatorship as easily as a person in his day could move from the non-smoking to the smoking compartment of a train.</p> <p>In the context of such an aggressive increase in the power of the state apparatus and the surveillance of Canadians, the fact that the Harper government is considering the purchase of American drones for the purpose of “domestic patrols” can only be regarded by Canadian workers and activists with alarm.</p> <p><em>The Los Angeles Times</em> reported in December that police in North Dakota used a Predator B drone to locate and apprehend three men. That same month, <em>The Wall Street Journal</em> reported that the Obama administration was making a concerted effort to sell armed drones to its allies in order to ease the American burden in its various overseas conflicts. As the world’s largest arms dealer, the U.S. has now turned to Canada and apparently found a willing buyer in the Harper government for its arsenal of flying death machines.</p> <p>Should the government purchases these drones — with its commitments in Afghanistan winding down and the effects of austerity creating an angrier, more rebellious working class — it is inevitable that these drones will eventually be turned against the civilian population of Canada to assist police with surveillance and apprehension. Given the criminalization of dissent at the G20, such an outcome should be cause for worry for anyone opposed to the austerity agenda.</p> <p>As Marxists, we understand that the state is a product of irreconcilable class antagonisms, consisting in the end of armed bodies of men in defence of existing property relations. The collapse of the world capitalist economy has led to austerity measures that aim to pay for the crisis by bleeding dry the most vulnerable segments of the population. Declining economic prospects for Canadian workers and youth will inevitably lead to an explosion of social anger. Already we have seen the forces of the state deployed against peaceful demonstrators at the G20, and in imposing the closure of Occupy encampments across the country.</p> <p>The erosion of civil liberties in Canada and the United States reflects the erosion of the state’s legitimacy as an expression of the popular will and its increasing resort to naked force to defend the existing social order. While Harper’s crime policies are justified on the basis of cracking down on killers and child predators, in reality they will be more extensively utilized to crush challenges to the austerity regime imposed on the working class in the interests of global financiers.</p> <p>It is up to the organized working class to resist such measures wherever possible. As the Official Opposition, the NDP must take a lead in fighting against each new draconian crime and surveillance bill pushed by the Harper Conservatives. The trade unions must use every weapon in their arsenal, including strikes, to challenge the legitimacy of the encroaching security state.</p> <p>However, so long as the capitalist mode of production prevails and a tiny majority control the wealth of society, a well-funded state security apparatus will remain a much-needed last line of defence for the ruling class against working-class demands for a more equitable system.</p> <p>Only through the elimination of class antagonisms can we eradicate completely the need for the state and its armed bodies of men. Only through expropriation of the capitalists and the transition to a socialist economy can working people begin to run society for themselves along truly democratic lines.</p>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-53337961991670953022012-03-09T15:17:00.003-05:002012-03-09T15:19:44.920-05:00Robocalls Scandal Further Exposes Façade of Bourgeois Democracy<span style="font-style: italic;">This article originally published at</span> <a href="http://www.marxist.ca/canada/federal/742-robocalls-scandal-further-exposes-facade-of-bourgeois-democracy.html">Fightback</a>.<br /><br /><div class="sharemecompactbutton"> <div class="sharemecompactbuttont"> </div> </div> <p><img src="http://www.marxist.ca/images/stories/vote-trash.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 5px 10px; border: 1px solid black;" border="0" width="300" />The Harper government has come under fire after Elections Canada’s announcement in February that it had traced fraudulent phone calls made during the last federal election to an Edmonton-based call centre that worked for the Conservative Party in ridings across the country.</p> <p>Elections Canada launched an investigation after receiving thousands of election day complaints from Guelph, one of 18 ridings in which voters received harassing or deceptive phone calls designed to discourage turnout. Guelph was the focus of a particularly tight race between the Conservatives and Liberals.</p> <p>In cases of harassment, voters received messages purportedly from Liberal Party campaign workers at dinner hours, late at night, or on the Sabbath for Jewish voters.</p> <p>In other instances, purely deceptive tactics were used. On election day, voters in Guelph received a message, apparently from Elections Canada, informing them that their polling stations had moved. Such disinformation led to chaotic scenes at polls and in many instances discouraged voters from casting their ballots at all.</p> <p>Elections Canada traced the calls to Racknine Inc., a call centre that worked for the Conservative Party’s national campaign and the campaigns of at least nine Conservative candidates, including Stephen Harper’s own race in Calgary Southwest.</p> <p>The “robocall” allegations have led to a flurry of accusations and denials on Parliament Hill. Unsurprisingly, the Prime Minister has strenuously denied any allegations of wrongdoing, asserting that “the Conservative Party...has no role in any of this.” His party’s MPs, meanwhile, have fired back at a variety of targets.</p> <p>Conservative backbencher Maurice Vellacott suggested that Elections Canada voter lists were flawed. Harper’s parliamentary secretary Dean Del Mastro, taking a lead from his boss, turned the tables by arguing it was in fact the opposition parties who had been conducting a sleaze campaign. Del Mastro accused Liberal MP Joe Volpe of hiring a North Dakota-based automated calling company during the federal election. Del Mastro’s accusations have subsequently been proven false. But, voters in Volpe’s riding did receive harassing phone calls that were traced to a North Dakota area code.</p> <p>Harper’s former chief of staff Guy Giorno went on the offensive, self-righteously proclaiming to the Toronto Star that “suppression of vote is a despicable, reprehensible practice and everybody ought to condemn it...I wish Godspeed to Elections Canada and the RCMP investigators. We want them to get to the bottom of this and let’s hope the full weight of the law is applied.”</p> <p>To date, Elections Canada has received a massive 31,000 complaints related to the federal election. Jean-Pierre Kingsley, the chief electoral officer of Canada from 1990 to 2007, described the level of complaints as unprecedented; the agency typically receives between 500 and 1,200 complaints per election.</p> <p>The robocalls fiasco underscores the hypocrisy that underlies the facade of bourgeois democracy. The Canadian government, like its counterpart in the United States, parades around the world as a self-appointed expert in freedom and democracy, even running overseas “democracy training” programs.<br /><br />We are told that we live in a thriving democratic society in which everyone’s vote counts. As Canadian workers increasingly realize, this <em>Schoolhouse Rock</em> conception of how government works is largely myth, yet it remains enshrined in ruling class dogma.</p> <p>After the latest scandal came to light, the universal reaction among bourgeois analysts was to condemn it as an isolated instance of corruption in an otherwise functional democracy. “This is a direct affront to the very foundation of our system,” said Kingsley. “We’re talking now about the very core of it.”<br /><br />But contrary to the proclamations of bourgeois moralists, such corruption is not an exception in an otherwise fair and democratic system. Rather, it is the inevitable consequence of a system that is unfair at its core.</p> <p>In his book <em>The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State</em> (1884), Friedrich Engels noted:</p> <blockquote> <p>The democratic republic no longer officially recognizes differences of property. Wealth here employs its power indirectly, but all the more surely. It does this in two ways: by plain corruption of officials, of which America is the classic example, and by an alliance between the government and the stock exchange.</p> </blockquote> <p>Engels went on to describe universal suffrage as merely another instrument of bourgeois rule:</p> <blockquote> <p>Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more, in the present-day state; but that is sufficient. On the day the thermometer of universal suffrage registers boiling point among the workers, both they and the capitalists will know what to do.</p> </blockquote> <p>The robocalls scandal has led to a visceral sense of anger among the Canadian working class and brought it that much closer to boiling point. Demonstrations have already taken place in Ottawa and Vancouver. At the time of writing, more protests are planned in Toronto and Calgary.</p> <p>The bourgeois parties’ involvement in the robocalls has deepened a growing sense among Canadian workers that their democracy is a sham. The anger against the robocalls recalls the widespread protests that accompanied Harper’s repeated prorogations of Parliament.</p> <p>Harper first prorogued Parliament in 2008 to defeat the proposed Liberal-NDP Coalition. At the end of 2009, Harper again prorogued Parliament, ostensibly to keep the legislature in recess for the duration of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. But the move was widely seen as an attempt to distract attention from revelations of Afghan detainee abuse. <a href="http://www.marxist.ca/canada/federal/526-20000-protest-prorogation-where-now-for-the-movement.html"><strong>20,000 people across the country protested Harper’s blatantly anti-democratic move.</strong></a></p> <p>In each case, the Conservative leader turned to an unelected representative of an unelected monarch, the Queen of England, to shut down the democratically-elected Parliament. As Fightback pointed out in 2010, any such move by an opponent of Western imperialism, such as Hugo Chavez, would be endlessly decried in the bourgeois press as an authoritarian affront to democracy.</p> <p>Many commentators have suggested that the robocalls scandal may represent Harper’s “Nixon moment.” Indeed, there are many parallels between the two leaders in terms of their obsessive desire for secrecy and total control. However, objective conditions have changed greatly in the past four decades.<br /><br />Today, the capitalist system is in crisis everywhere. Credit was used for decades to artificially extend the postwar boom, but the 2008 crisis indicated that the economic day of reckoning could be postponed no further. At present there is nothing on the agenda for workers but austerity, layoffs, cuts and poverty.</p> <p>Workers now broadly perceive the blatant inequality of the system. If the bank bailouts illustrated that the wealthy have incomparably greater sway over elected politicians than ordinary workers, anti-democratic moves like prorogation and the robocalls have thrown into doubt one of the most cherished myths propagated by the ruling class: that the Canadian form of government is fair and democratic.</p> <p>The suppression of democracy in Canada is only an expression of a deeper crisis within the system. The Occupy movement struck a chord in its depiction of a battle between the long-suffering majority in society and an obscenely wealthy minority that controls the levers of power. An ever increasing number of workers and youth realize that, in truth, the vast majority of Canadians have little say over the political process.</p> <p>Record low turnouts in recent elections are an expression of the instinctual feeling among Canadian workers that their votes do not count, that no matter which party wins the banks and corporations decide policy. The robocalls scandal, like prorogation, is only the clearest manifestation of the contempt that the ruling elite has always held for democracy, which is favoured only when it is convenient.</p> <p>Any movement against the anti-democratic actions of the government, whether real or alleged, will inevitably find itself awash in opportunists from the Liberal Party and elsewhere. The NDP and the unions must put themselves at the forefront of the fight by making concrete demands that illustrate the connection between economic and political democracy.</p> <p>So long as a tiny minority controls the wealth of society, the notion that we live in anything approaching a real democracy will always remain a farce. True democracy can only be attained when the majority of the population, in the form of the working class, gains control over the economy and runs it democratically for the benefit of all.</p>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-3834155590462466882012-02-23T14:32:00.004-05:002012-02-23T14:37:22.700-05:00Northeast Marxist School Points The Way Forward<span style="font-style: italic;">This article originally appeared at </span><a href="http://www.marxist.ca/about-us/reports-from-meeting/735-northeast-marxist-school-points-the-way-forward.html">Fightback</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> and </span><a href="http://www.marxist.com/northeast-american-marxist-school-2012.htm">In Defence of Marxism</a><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /><br />Over 50 comrades attended the second annual Northeast Marxist School in Montreal last weekend. Organized by supporters of La Riposte Quebec, Fightback Canada and Socialist Appeal USA, the school was a resounding success that saw a 30% rise in attendance from the previous year. Comrades from Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, New York and New Jersey enjoyed two days of vibrant political discussion and revolutionary socials.<div class="articletext"><span class="articletextblurb"> </span> <p><span class="wf_caption" style="float: right; display: inline-block;"><a class="jcepopup" href="http://www.marxist.com/images/stories/imt/Canad-winter-school-2012.jpg" target="_blank"><img style="margin: auto;" src="http://www.marxist.com/images/stories/imt/thumbnails/thumb_Canad-winter-school-2012.jpg" alt="North American Marxist Winter School in Montreal" height="188" width="250" /></a><span style="clear: both; width: 250px; display: block;"></span></span><br />The most important lesson of the weekend was the pressing need for a revolutionary tendency with correct Marxist ideas to help the working class achieve its emancipation. This year’s sharp increase in attendance is a reflection of the revolutionary epoch we have entered.</p> <p>Since last year’s school, which took place in the immediate wake of revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, we have witnessed the wider Arab Spring, pre-revolutionary turmoil in Greece, and massive protest movements around the globe including the Spanish <em>indignados</em>, the Occupy movement and the anti-Putin protests in Russia. The inability of ruling classes to resolve the contradictions of capitalism have led to a global impasse. More and more workers and youth are turning to the ideas of Marxism in order to explain the world we live in and to present a viable alternative.</p> <p>Arriving on Friday night to a social at the Jazz Hostel, comrades awoke early Saturday morning for a veritable two-day Marx-a-thon. Alex Grant from <em>Fightback’s</em> editorial board delivered the opening presentation, “Perspectives on the World Capitalist Crisis”, which briefly covered the broad historical movements of 20th century capitalism – its boom and bust periods, its contradictions leading to wars and revolutions – as a background for the new crisis we find ourselves in today.</p> <p>The mass movements in the Arab world, Europe, Africa and North America illustrate that we have entered a tumultuous new period. The presence of all the objective factors for revolution is contrasted by the lack of an organized revolutionary tendency to harness the energy of the working class. If not addressed, this contradiction will play a tragic role in future developments.</p> <p>Time limits prevented inclusion of some key topics in the lead-off, such as Latin America, but comrades in attendance were more than happy to fill in the blanks and provide their own perspectives during the subsequent discussion period. This was to be a recurring pattern throughout the weekend, as each participant drew upon their individual knowledge to raise the theoretical level of all.</p> <p>After lunch, Camilo Cahis gave a lead-off on “Lessons of the Spanish Revolution”, a crucial struggle of the interwar period rife with lessons for today’s revolutionaries. The involvement of so many political tendencies in this struggle from 1931-1938 – Marxists, Stalinists, centrists, liberals, anarchists, fascists, conservative nationalists – renders study of the Spanish Revolution an indispensable primer on how the interaction of objective and subjective factors can make or break a workers’ revolution. Not coincidentally, Fightback just released a new booklet reprinting works of Leon Trotsky, Pierre Broué, and Ted Grant on the Spanish Revolution. These booklets were eagerly snapped up by attendees seeking more information.</p> <p>The last session of the day was “The History of Marxist Organizing”, with Tom Trottier discussing the development of Trotskyist tendencies in the United States and Britain. He examined the strengths and weaknesses of prominent American Trotskyists, particularly James P. Cannon, and how the inability of the leaders of the Fourth International to absorb Trotsky’s method after his death led to a series of splits and muddled opportunistic positions in the ensuing decades.</p> <p>Tom’s parallel history of the Militant tendency in Britain made the case that Ted Grant had a superior grasp of the Marxist method in his approach to organization and theory. Unfortunately, Militant was not immune to errors or objective factors that led to its eventual split. The importance of these lessons in building a new revolutionary tendency can be found in the old cliché that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”</p> <p>As Saturday drew to a close, comrades adjourned to the Jazz Hostel for that night’s social. Despite the ostensible goal of unwinding after a long day, the quality of the presentations fuelled many in-depth political discussions over beer that evening, and a splendid time was had by all.</p> <p>Refreshed comrades returned the next day to hear Mark Rahman from the US Workers’ International League give a presentation about “The Minneapolis Teamster Rebellion of 1934”, a pivotal Depression-era struggle that saw American Trotskyists play a key organizational role.</p> <p>Joel Bergman from <em>La Riposte</em> (Quebec) gave a final presentation on Trotsky’s <em>In Defence of Marxism</em>, a compilation of letters and essays the “Old Man” wrote to his American followers in the 1930s. One of the most important lessons comrades absorbed was Trotsky’s use of the proper Marxist method. Unlike the Stalinists and sectarians who attempt to resolve political differences through organizational means such as expulsions, Lenin and Trotsky always attempted to use every dispute as a means of raising the general political level of the cadres.</p> <p>The comrades capped off the weekend with raucous renditions of “The Internationale” and “Bandiera Rossa”. As the weekend school ended, enthusiasm among attendees was palpable. For the first time in decades, Marxists are no longer swimming against the tide. Not only do Marxist ideas make sense of current events – far more so than the confused commentary of the bourgeois media – but workers and youth are eager to hear them, as the Northeast school demonstrated.</p> <p>The current crisis of capitalism is not going away anytime soon. In the absence of an organized revolutionary tendency, the capitalist system will continue to cause unspeakable horror and misery for the vast majority of the human race. Development of this subjective factor must be the primary focus for all Marxists going forward. This school played an important role in this development and helped build unity between revolutionaries in Quebec, Canada, and the United States.</p></div>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-30363267778936780642012-02-21T13:45:00.005-05:002012-02-21T13:51:05.501-05:00Workers and Hustlers: Conservative Ideology in the Film "Cocktail"<span style="font-style: italic;">This essay was originally published at</span> <a href="http://themassornament.com/2012/02/workers-and-hustlers-cocktail/">The Mass Ornament</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. Spoilers abound.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj85PcdAaTVACKxVRWsHITFnXsYxVP9_otwLM-09VEQvMoISYVxmwO52k4FH8ZLVQFlSUnn0Lpu2WgSp4dS6VSpnA5CdRanyaaaudMj5KyWsOTDLILfECQkZP52sqpu-G_1pGU8ugYmOBU/s1600/cocktail_1988_580x836_199953.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 278px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj85PcdAaTVACKxVRWsHITFnXsYxVP9_otwLM-09VEQvMoISYVxmwO52k4FH8ZLVQFlSUnn0Lpu2WgSp4dS6VSpnA5CdRanyaaaudMj5KyWsOTDLILfECQkZP52sqpu-G_1pGU8ugYmOBU/s400/cocktail_1988_580x836_199953.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711662705324516002" border="0" /></a>The reactionary turn of U.S. politics embodied in the Reagan administration had an indelible impact on American popular culture, both in the 1980s and the decades that followed. As David Sirota argued in his book <em>Back to Our Future</em>, contemporary historiography blamed the unrest of the Sixties on the supposed liberal excesses of hippies and the counterculture, the antiwar movement, black civil rights activists, and the welfare state. These were to be remedied by a strong dose of conservatism, aiming to resurrect a mythical version of the Fifties. The New Right celebrated so-called traditional American values: patriotism, militarism, Christianity, the family, and – most importantly – free enterprise.<br /><br /><p>In reality, non-economic elements in the New Right’s worldview were always peripheral to the centrality of a revived neoliberal capitalism. <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monetarist">Monetarist</a> thinkers like Milton Friedman argued that the unfettered free market was the most efficient allocator of resources. Outside of the state security apparatus, government could only interfere in this self-regulating process. There was nothing new about these economic ideas, which merely rehashed pre-Depression <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shibboleth">shibboleths</a> about the self-correcting market.</p> <p>Right-wing political figures like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher soon institutionalized monetarism through radical programs of deregulation, privatization, aggressive attacks on unions and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Such blatant anti-worker policies – the real core of neo-conservative ideology – were justified through a political smoke screen that lauded patriotism, individualism and self-reliance. Anyone, it was claimed, could become rich and successful if they worked hard enough.</p> <p>Roger Donaldson’s 1988 film <em>Cocktail</em>, produced near the end of Reagan’s second term, embodies the worship of naked capitalism that characterized the 1980s – a decade that completely missed the irony in Gordon Gekko’s infamous declaration that “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONXpaBQnBvE">greed is good</a>.”</p> <p>The story of young bartender Brian Flanagan (Tom Cruise), <em>Cocktail</em> mythologizes the self-made entrepreneur at the root of the neoliberal ideology that dominates mainstream culture to this day. But even as it extols the glories of wealth and free market capitalism, the film has an ambivalent relationship to the working class.</p> <p>In Marxist terms, <em>Cocktail</em> documents Brian’s journey from <em>proletarian</em> to <em>petit-bourgeois</em>. Beginning as the humble bartender of a low-rent New York City tavern, Brian dreams of wealth and fame. By the end of the film he realizes his goal, opening his own bar (appropriately called “Flanagan’s Cocktails and Dreams”) and becoming a successful small business owner. While he has not turned the bar into a nationwide franchise and joined the ranks of the big bourgeoisie, Brian is nevertheless pushed much further along the road to this dream than he would be if the film maintained any connection to economic reality.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH5fvgpZT-YwT8klLoeHgdAuZGFPYwKzhBkyrBSy6EtPwLiD6yI_koH6TqkfOu6rEZUfVylHqHLEEVKmK3JmBlgv8DLNc6rRGSFIIpPWilLA7t3fjyTBUlixcj9sGf4ks1dmiuQiFOBJU/s1600/Cocktail-Tom-Cruise-and-Bryan-Brown-4.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 290px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH5fvgpZT-YwT8klLoeHgdAuZGFPYwKzhBkyrBSy6EtPwLiD6yI_koH6TqkfOu6rEZUfVylHqHLEEVKmK3JmBlgv8DLNc6rRGSFIIpPWilLA7t3fjyTBUlixcj9sGf4ks1dmiuQiFOBJU/s400/Cocktail-Tom-Cruise-and-Bryan-Brown-4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711663279228459426" border="0" /></a></p> <p><span style="color:#888888;"><em>Above: Cocktail’s version of working-class stiffs.</em></span></p> <p>At the same time as <em>Cocktail</em> pretends to identify with ordinary workers, it revels in the same ruling class worldview that ridicules the working class as unsuccessful losers. This paradox is encapsulated in a diatribe by Brian’s world-weary mentor, Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown), upon re-encountering his protégé at a bar in Jamaica:</p> <blockquote><p>Doug:<em> Biology is destiny [...] There are two kinds of people in this world, the workers and the hustlers. The hustlers never work and the workers never hustle. You, my friend, are a worker [...] It’s there, ingrained in your immigrant blood. Look how tasty your cocktails are, how clean you keep your bar. Why man, you actually take pride in your work.</em></p> <p>Brian: <em>I do not.</em></p> <p>Doug:<em> Is he or isn’t he a great bartender?</em></p> <p>Brian:<em> Listen bozo, if you think I’m stuck in this gig…</em></p> <p>Doug:<em> Face it, you’re a career proletarian. You’ve been standing in a puddle so long you’ve got wet feet.</em></p></blockquote> <p>That dichotomy – of celebrating ordinary workers in theory while belittling them in practice – is the bread and butter of the modern conservative movement. The contradiction is expressed in <a href="http://civilizeddiscontent.blogspot.com/2011/10/you-are-99-whether-you-like-it-or-not.html">the self-loathing of many working class conservatives</a>: Brian sees blue collar work as an embarrassing way to make a living, a placeholder until he can gain respect through the acquisition of vast riches.</p> <p>While income inequality is acknowledged in the film, the question is never how to achieve a more equitable distribution of society’s wealth, but rather how the characters can enrich themselves. Brian and Doug maintain self-respect only by viewing themselves as better than the rest of the working class, destined by virtue of their talents and their profession to rise above the rabble and one day join the ranks of the Manhattan bourgeoisie:</p> <blockquote><p>Doug:<em> Within one square mile of this saloon lies the greatest concentration of wealth in the world.</em></p> <p>Brian:<em> Yes, but how is a bartender going to get his hands on any of it?</em></p> <p>Doug:<em> A bartender is the aristocrat of the working class. You can make all kinds of moves if you’re smart. There are investors out there, there are angels, there are suckers, there are rich women with nothing to do with their money. You stand in this bar and you can be struck by lightning.</em></p></blockquote> <p>Brian’s attitude reflects the class contradictions at the heart of modern conservative ideology, recently exposed in the Republican presidential primaries. At the time of writing, the class dynamics of the primaries have thus far resulted in a standoff between blue-blood Mitt Romney, quintessential representative of the moneyed Establishment, and his rivals, equally beholden to the bourgeoisie but who nevertheless claim to speak for “populist” conservatives (a contradiction in terms).</p> <p>The heroic figures of popular entertainment in recent decades typically draw upon conservative tropes, regularly seen in action films and today informing the Fox News conception of “real Americans” as distinct from “liberal elites”, that inculcate ruling class ideology into unsuspecting audience members by paradoxically identifying that ideology with the common man. Such indoctrination plays upon crude political stereotypes typically advanced by right-wing culture warriors.</p> <p>The conservative is often portrayed as a hardworking, down-to-earth regular guy, preferably from the rural heartland of America – religious, patriotic, supportive of the military, interested in cars, sports, girls, and rock ‘n’ roll, socially conservative. Beverage of choice: beer.</p> <p>By contrast, the liberal is seen as an effete, city-dwelling elitist – secular, leftist, “America-hating”, educated, antiwar, socially liberal. Beverage of choice: wine and lattes.</p> <p>The 1980s particularly revelled in this contrived image of conservative manhood, represented in music by Bruce Springsteen (despite the fact that Springsteen himself was a stalwart defender of progressive causes and opponent of Reaganism) as well as on film through the larger-than-life action pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis. <em>Cocktail</em> draws heavily on this idealized conservative masculinity.</p> <p>At the beginning of the film, as Starship’s pop-rock anthem “Wild Again” blares on the soundtrack, the Cruise character speeds down a rural highway with his fellow soldiers in a car festooned with American flags, chasing the Greyhound bus that will take him to New York.</p> <p>It is established that Brian has recently been discharged from the army. Although the particulars are vague, his military past nevertheless permits him to occupy the moral high ground as a patriotic “real American”. No contemporary U.S. military conflicts, such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada_%281983%29">invasion of Grenada</a>, are specifically mentioned. But this badge of patriotism, identified with the military, allows Brian to challenge his uncle: “Your nephew comes home from <em>serving his country</em> and he doesn’t even rate a beer on the house?”</p> <p>Upon his arrival in New York, Brian immediately stops off at a bar owned by his Uncle Pat (Ron Dean), who gives him an impromptu lecture on how to become a successful capitalist. Uncle Pat relates how the Mets won the 1969 World Series. When a patron named Eddie suggested free drinks to celebrate, Pat gave him a violent lesson in the spirit of free enterprise:</p> <blockquote><p>Eddie:<em> He whacked me with a club. Almost knocked the eyes out of my head.</em></p> <p>Brian:<em> That’s your way of making money?</em></p> <p>Uncle Pat:<em> You outwork, outthink, outscheme and outmaneuver. You make no friends. You trust nobody. And you make damn sure you’re the smartest guy in the room whenever the subject of money comes up.</em></p> <p>Brian:<em> I don’t know, Uncle Pat. Doesn’t sound like too much fun to me.</em></p> <p>Pat:<em> Fun? You want fun, you go play at the beach.</em></p></blockquote> <p>As the film continues, it becomes clear that this mentality of ruthless capitalism offers no capacity for human warmth. While Brian and Doug imagine creating their own bar together, their friendship is soon torn apart by vicious competition – not over money, but over a woman.</p> <p>Brian initially has dreams of making it big on Wall Street – at one point, writing his imaginary obituary for a class assignment, he envisions the following ideal future for himself in a narrative that repositions pre-Depression oligarchs as <a href="http://vimeo.com/27393748">Randian heroes</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>Brian:<em> Brian Flanagan…</em>Senator <em>Brian Flanagan…</em>billionaire governor<em> Brian Flanagan, whose self-propelled meteoric rise to wealth and fame would have made even J.D. Rockefeller envious, died early yesterday morning at the age of 99 while bedding his 18-year-old seventh wife Heidi, who is recovering from exhaustion at the local hospital and will be unable to attend the funeral.</em></p></blockquote> <p>However, through a series of unsuccessful job interviews, he finds that in the Land of Opportunity, there are no such opportunities even for a young go-getter like himself in the absence of a college degree:</p> <blockquote><p>Brian:<em> I’m willing to start at the bottom.</em></p> <p>Job Interviewer:<em> You’re aiming too high.</em></p></blockquote> <p>As a result, Brian enrols in some business courses and soon finds himself held captive by a monstrous caricature of a professor who delights in verbally abusing and humiliating his students.</p> <p>The highly negative portrayal of educators in this film reflects the broader anti-intellectualism of the conservative movement. Just as Marxists, university professors, climate scientists and other opponents of the conservative agenda tend to be smeared as “liberal” elitists out of touch with the real world, Brian responds to his professor’s description of him as a “dreamer who can’t take the criticism” by attacking the snooty, mean-spirited academic as someone who “hides here because he can’t hack it in the real world.”</p> <p>Later, Brian confides to Doug that “not a goddamn thing any one of those professors says makes a difference on the street”, further driving home the irrelevance of higher education. At one point, an English professor tells his class, “I realize I’ve got a class of budding capitalists here, that most of you are seeking the fast track to a career in investment banking or some other socially useful pursuit.” Viewed from the age of credit default swaps, massive financial fraud and government bailouts, it remains unclear whether the teacher is serious or not.</p> <p>The young hero dreams of franchising his own bar to every suburban mall in America. By becoming the CEO of such a vast enterprise, Brian would ascend at last into the ranks of the big bourgeoisie – the ultra-rich, those who fundamentally control the wealth of society. But that dream is belied by his mundane existence as a member of the proletariat, selling his labour-power to an employer for a paltry wage.</p> <p>Rejected by Wall Street, Brian finds work at Doug Coughlin’s bar. Although a horrible bartender at first, Brian learns quickly from Doug a myriad of impressive bartending tricks (“flairing”) which they use to entertain customers. Soon the pair is a hit, attracting rave notices from bar patrons evidently unperturbed by having to wait an extra five minutes for drinks while Brian and Doug execute their flashy moves. A successful-looking businessman invites the pair to perform at his own club, where the “World’s First Yuppie Poet” delivers his poem entitled <em>The Bottom Line</em>:</p> <blockquote><p><em>Money isn’t everything, they say.</em><br /><em>Okay, so what is? Sex? Did you ever make love to a plumber? Pee-yoo!</em><br /><em>Revolution? It takes money to overthrow the government, you know.</em><br /><em>Art? The more it costs, the better it is.</em><br /><em>And that’s the bottom line!</em></p></blockquote> <p>The moral of the yuppie poem: money <em>is</em> everything.</p> <p><a href="http://themassornament.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tom-cruise-Cocktail-01.jpg"><img src="http://themassornament.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tom-cruise-Cocktail-01.jpg" style="display: block;" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1510" title="Tom Cruise - Bartending skills" alt="" height="297" width="438" /></a></p> <p>At this point in the film, Brian seems to be following the outline of the archetypal American success story: starting from difficult origins, he works hard and develops his talent to become one of the best bartenders in the city, becoming a minor celebrity. But following plot machinations revolving around Brian and Doug’s quarrel over the aforementioned groupie, the pair come to blows and Brian storms out.</p> <p>The difficulties in Brian’s efforts to realize his dream up to this point provide some sense of conflict and drama, making the film more relatable to those audience members not currently living out their own dreams. Brian leaves for Jamaica, glorified as a no-tax capitalist paradise where he can earn enough money to one day finance his own establishment.</p> <p>Working at a bar in Jamaica, Brian meets his eventual love interest Jordan Mooney (Elizabeth Shue). Taking a seat at the bar, she turns down Brian’s offer of a fancy mixed drink and requests a beer; “my kind of woman,” he responds. Given the popular view of beer as a working class drink, Jordan thereby establishes herself as a down-to-earth working girl, someone who shares Brian’s own economic struggles. That perception is later reinforced when Jordan paints Brian’s portrait on the beach. Asking her if it pays the bills, she replies that “it will someday,”, explaining that she currently works as a waitress in New York.</p> <p>Doug eventually shows up at the bar where Brian is working and announces that he has married a rich woman named Kerry (Kelly Lynch), engendering a new plot twist. Angered by Doug teasing him as a “career proletarian”, Brian implies that Doug only found a rich woman through luck. Doug, declaring it a matter of not luck but skill, bets Brian that he cannot successfully woo a rich older woman named Bonnie (Lisa Banes).</p> <p>To summarize the next few plot developments: Brian beds Bonnie; Jordan finds out and flies back to New York, devastated after spending several romantic days with Brian; Brian flies back to New York with Bonnie in the expectation that he will be placed high in the company she owns due to their romantic attachment.</p> <p>Unfortunately, the payoff is too slow. Almost immediately there is a culture clash between the working class Brian and the spoiled upper-class Bonnie. Upon waking up to Bonnie doing aerobics, Brian’s would-be sugar mama asks him to fetch her some carrot juice. When they attend an art exhibition, a drunk Brian gets in a fight with the sculptor who is depicted as an insufferable snob (“haven’t got this one housebroken yet?” he sneers). Finally, Brian and Bonnie part; as he confides to her, “I tried to sell out to you, but I couldn’t close the deal.”</p> <p>Again, we see the film’s contradictory relationship to wealth. At the same time as Brian aspires to great riches and both he and Doug see sleeping with moneyed women as a shortcut, the wealthy are presented as alien to ordinary “working Joes” like Brian – they are snobby elitists. This is the same inescapable contradiction of Reaganism, which has dominated conservative thought in North America to this day: glorifying wealth on one hand as the fulfillment and embodiment of the American dream, and on the other harnessing the resentment of poor and working class Americans against upper-class elites when it is politically advantageous. Under a capitalist mode of production, this contradiction can never truly be resolved.</p> <p>Brian seeks out Jordan at the restaurant where she waits tables. As they are talking, an impatient couple loudly complains: “Miss, we have theatre tickets!” We are meant to empathize with the working class Jordan and Brian, and to resent these clueless bourgeois types.</p> <p>But then comes a new plot twist: when Jordan runs off to stay with her parents in their Park Avenue<em> </em>apartment, it becomes clear that even as she maintained a working class facade, in actual fact Jordan was from an extraordinarily wealthy family the whole time.</p> <p>Aside from cheapening the earlier presentation of Jordan as a struggling waitress – since it is merely her personal choice rather than a necessity and she can always fall back on her parents – this revelation allows the film to make a detour into clichéd cinematic territory, to wit: the rich girl’s parents disapprove of her relationship with the poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks.</p> <p>It should be noted that when Jordan announces to Brian that she is pregnant and wants him out of her life, abortion is never even considered – another mark of the conservative mentality that dominates this film. It also adds a family-values element to Brian’s determination to win her back: “our kid needs a father,” he tells her.</p> <p>Jordan’s father (Lawrence Luckinbill) angrily offers Brian money to stay away from her, and when he refuses, adds some upper class condescension to further express his disapproval:</p> <blockquote><p>Brian:<em> $10,000? Is that all your daughter’s worth?</em></p> <p>Mr. Mooney:<em> Okay. How much will it take?</em></p> <p>Brian:<em> I don’t want your goddamn money. You can’t buy me out of Jordan’s life.</em></p> <p>Mr. Mooney:<em> You think I’m letting some bartender walk into my family and destroy my daughter’s life?</em></p></blockquote> <p>When Jordan enters the room, he confronts her:</p> <blockquote><p>Brian:<em> Were you so honest? Why didn’t you tell me you were the original rich chick?</em></p> <p>Jordan:<em> Because you’re so hung up on money, I was afraid I’d never know how you really felt about me. Me.</em></p> <p>Brian<em> </em>[ripping up cheque]: <em>This is how hung up on money I am.</em></p></blockquote> <p>The scene is meant to represent a significant turning point in Brian’s character arc, as he realizes that money and wealth are not the most important things in the world, and that love is truly all you need. But as we shall see in the ending, this proves to be an extremely hollow sentiment that the film itself does not live up to.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Doug’s world has been slowly unravelling. While we saw from her first scene that Doug’s rich wife Kerry blatantly flirts with other men in his presence, by the climax of the film things have gone from bad to worse. Having lost a bet that he would not be working for Doug by St. Patrick’s Day, Brian brings him a bottle of highly expensive Rémy Martin Louis XIII cognac / Baccarat Crystal. (Where Brian got the money for such an expensive gift remains a mystery, but mysterious sources of income prove a recurring problem in the film’s climax.) As they sit in Kerry’s yacht to share the bottle, Doug confides to Brian that he has gambled away almost all of his wife’s money on the commodities market.</p> <p>With Doug too drunk to drive, Brian escorts Kerry home, at which point she kisses him. When he backs away, she asks how she can sleep with only one person for the rest of her life (“it’s called marriage” he responds, echoing the family values theme). Returning to the yacht, Brian is devastated to see that Doug has committed suicide using shards of the broken cognac bottle.</p> <p>The context and method of Doug’s suicide seem to provide a vivid metaphor indicating that his single-minded obsession with wealth killed him in the end. Certainly, without Doug’s financially-motivated marriage to Kerry, he never would have been in a position either to gamble away enough money on the commodities market to want to kill himself or to offer Brian a job, which was the basis for the bet in the first place. Doug’s suicide drives Brian back to Jordan.<em> </em></p> <p>Soon after, we see Brian and Jordan enjoying their wedding reception at Uncle Pat’s pub in a raucous working class celebration. Jordan, we have seen, has closed off any assistance from her wealthy family. Brian has lost the immediate possibility of a high-earning job. Nevertheless, the two are getting married and starting a family. Brian is no closer to his capitalist dream than when the film began, but he is happy. He has matured and is ready to become a father. Most significantly, he has realized that love is more important to him than money could ever be. It is a poignant reminder that while we may not achieve our dreams of wealth and fame, we can still find happiness with the ones we love.</p> <p>The film then proceeds to take that message and blow it to kingdom come.</p> <p>Suddenly we cut to the flashing neon exterior of a bar. It is “Flanagan’s Cocktails and Dreams.” Inside is Brian, pouring drinks and reciting a poem to the patrons about his lovely wife and their unborn child. Brian has done it after all! He did manage to start his own bar and attain his dream. If not yet the bourgeois head of a nationwide bar franchise, he is nevertheless a successful petit-bourgeois small business owner who could very well be on his way to vast riches some day.</p> <p>The only problem? There is little to no explanation of how Brian scraped together the money to start his own bar smack-dab in the middle of the world’s most expensive real estate market.</p> <p>In his review of <em>Cocktail</em>, Roger Ebert pondered the question:</p> <blockquote><p><em>How did he finance it? There’s a throwaway line about how he got some money from his uncle, a subsistence-level bartender who can’t even afford a late-model car. Sure. It costs a fortune to open a slick singles bar in Manhattan, and so we are left with the assumption that Cruise’s rich father-in-law came through with the financing. If the movie didn’t want to leave that impression, it shouldn’t have ended with the scene in the bar. But then this is the kind of movie that uses Cruise’s materialism as a target all through the story and then rewards him for it at the end. The more you think about what really happens in </em>Cocktail<em>, the more you realize how empty and fabricated it really is.</em></p></blockquote> <p>Ultimately, the film is guilty of the same kind of magical thinking that animates the modern conservative movement. Just as advocates of supply-side economics maintain that it is somehow possible to cut taxes <em>and</em> dramatically increase military spending while balancing the budget, <em>Cocktail</em> holds that a down-on-his-luck bartender, whose wife is pregnant with twins but who has “saved money” and worked out a loan with his (by no means rich) uncle, can end up running his own classy singles bar in downtown Manhattan.</p> <p>Drenched in the imagery and discourse of Reaganism, <em>Cocktail</em>’s presentation of the hero’s transition from hardscrabble worker to successful business owner is ultimately as false and meaningless as the American Dream itself in capitalist society. Given the much more adverse economic conditions of 2012, and the large-scale immunity of political and financial elites from criminal prosecution, the old cliché that anyone can become rich and successful in America if they work hard and play by the rules today rings more hollow than ever.</p> <p>Had it not been for the ending, <em>Cocktail</em> might have remained a satisfactory parable, à la <em>It’s a Wonderful Life</em>, of failing to achieve your dreams but finding happiness nonetheless. In the final product, however, Brian achieves his dream almost as an afterthought barely tethered to the plot developments that preceded it. More than any other aspect of the film, that unearned and unrealistic ending illustrates the superficiality of the film itself, the decade from which it came, and conservative politics in general. It also gives further credence to George Carlin’s immortal observation: “they call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”</p> <p><a href="http://themassornament.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Cocktails-and-Dreams.jpg"><img src="http://themassornament.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Cocktails-and-Dreams.jpg" style="display: block;" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1513" title="Cocktails and Dreams" alt="" height="288" width="333" /></a></p> <div class="post_tags clear"> </div>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-11178404470802276362012-02-10T05:23:00.036-05:002012-02-10T16:17:59.368-05:00Marxism, Ideology and Media "Objectivity"<span></span><blockquote>"Having an ideology is not a sin but a sign of principles."<br /><blockquote> - Julian Benson</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><br />Marxism, like any analysis, assembles the available facts, draws connections, notes contradictions and tries to recognize patterns. But I would argue that as an analytical method, it is more rigorous than most.<br /><br />One of the greatest myths of establishment media is that it is somehow objective. No one can be objective when unique life experiences inevitably shape and influence our views, yet corporate media figures continue to proclaim their status as "objective journalists" when they are anything but. Media bias is a common complaint from all ends of the political spectrum. The logical fallacy lies in the belief that media can ever be truly objective.<br /><br />What do you think of as "objective" media? Probably what's in the newspapers, right? The Associated Press. I read AP stories every day. On one hand, it provides the blandest possible account of the relevant facts. On the other, there are scores of hidden biases surrounding each story that the reader rarely dwells upon. Why are they reporting on this story instead of that one? Why do they give more weight to official sources in our country than in the designated "enemy" country? Why are they painting this guy as the good guy and the other as the bad guy?<br /><br />Our newspapers talk about human rights abuses in China or in Russia or Iran. Our politicians, they say, are <i>so very</i> concerned about human rights. But they never habitually mention the human rights abuses of our own governments as they do in stories about China or Iran. They don't talk about the disastrous effects of our wars of aggression or CIA torture camps.<br /><br />Even so, the facts eventually get out. It's no big secret, the information is out there. Everybody knows the Iraq War was based on lies. People knew about the firebombing of Dresden and the bombing of Hiroshima. The question is why people accept these things. We're told by politicians, by the media, that state crimes were either necessary (in the case of destructive large-scale military actions) or aberrations (such as the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse). And then we move on. The message is clear: we're still fundamentally <i>good people</i> and our governments <i>represent us</i>.<br /><br /><a href="http://media.nowpublic.net/images//32/2/322112cc3c9a8dc5a7957aaafdde6519.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 340px; height: 450px;" src="http://media.nowpublic.net/images//32/2/322112cc3c9a8dc5a7957aaafdde6519.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />We might have political disagreements with our fellow citizens. The liberal point of view criticizes the excesses of big business, but never seriously challenges it. The conservatives worship big business, or want to reverse history and go back to a utopia of small businesses (libertarians). But this is the spectrum of acceptable political thought in the United States.<br /><br />In America you can go pretty much as far right as you want, so long as you're not an actual fascist, neo-Nazi or KKK. Fox News will demonize liberals (which basically translates to "not conservative"), but otherwise you're pretty solidly in the mainstream. Social democrat - discouraged but tolerable. Socialist...hmm, okay, you're getting a little out there. You might even be "destroying America". But full-on Marxist? You're kidding! Are you crazy? Don't you know that communism doesn't work? "Everyone tells me that communism is evil, and after reading <i>The Communist Manifesto</i> once that's enough for me!"<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhadLsADk9fqEJbNWax6fH1HlJfUFJ5d_mOrXCE3BqGcXRTLJzt-1ILlzfcH29YZftF7Ro8xFXe4hQx5buPNlut5APIapNphIukIXU7wBjAIBfSBtongtg3OfzTDarpMeHAOGUA33r64pw/s320/darwin_marx.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 137px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhadLsADk9fqEJbNWax6fH1HlJfUFJ5d_mOrXCE3BqGcXRTLJzt-1ILlzfcH29YZftF7Ro8xFXe4hQx5buPNlut5APIapNphIukIXU7wBjAIBfSBtongtg3OfzTDarpMeHAOGUA33r64pw/s320/darwin_marx.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>It doesn't matter to such individuals if Karl Marx produced the most detailed analysis of the capitalist mode of production ever written. In terms of how he changed the way we look at ourselves, I can only compare him to Charles Darwin. Darwin revolutionized the way we looked at the natural development of species, including the evolution of humans. Marx revolutionized how we looked at the historical development of humanity and the evolution of societies.<br /><br />We live in a capitalist economy. Everyone knows that, but Marxists think outside the box (as do anarchists, the Zeitgeist Movement and other anti-capitalists, though I would argue Marxism provides a superior theoretical framework). Mainstream economists are great at explaining what went wrong after the fact, not so great at predicting the future. The more successful ones are those who can keep the boom cycle going. People like Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan. These economists win Nobel Prizes. When capitalism is in a boom period, they're feted as the Masters of the Universe.<br /><br />But in an economic crisis, suddenly, there's nothing they can do. They're helpless to provide any solutions to the problems of capitalism within the framework of the current system. Unemployment in the United States today is a national emergency. So is the wave of home foreclosures. But this is not a priority of the government, which is all about more war and lower corporate taxes while<i> somehow cutting the deficit</i> and paying back the bankers. It's insane, and the inevitable result of such insane policies is that the debt has to be paid off on the backs of workers through massive cuts and layoffs.<br /><br />You won't hear that explicit view in the mainstream media. They don't provide any real solutions to the crisis. This is the central contradiction in class society: between the desires of the masses and the desire of a tiny elite. And you never hear about it in ruling class media, at least until the Occupy movement forced the issue.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRRg_44aktUh08o3j3GletMPkLbqP6n7ROM5jQqapqgQqTSZz6O_CmAPiIysOepr-Dhr6Evwru8ejsZ-aYnMk6dXnDy_audgNvdCXdt6gIviE-ijI9Hv9FpRQ-1ozrGWUcqzrN_mf6clE/s1600/200661_788730137131_81004598_44943108_4582043_n.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRRg_44aktUh08o3j3GletMPkLbqP6n7ROM5jQqapqgQqTSZz6O_CmAPiIysOepr-Dhr6Evwru8ejsZ-aYnMk6dXnDy_audgNvdCXdt6gIviE-ijI9Hv9FpRQ-1ozrGWUcqzrN_mf6clE/s400/200661_788730137131_81004598_44943108_4582043_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5707454738681408082" border="0" /></a><br />You will hear it in Marxist tracts. And yet somehow, the Marxists are criticized for not being objective? The so-called "objective" news sources can't paint an objective picture of how the world economy really works?<br /><br />I make no pretensions to objectivity. As a Marxist, I advocate a specific point of view: for the interests of the working class. And those interests are very concrete: good housing, well-paying jobs, education, pensions, health care, free time and yes, consumer goods. Doesn't everybody want these things?<br /><br />Yet workers more and more have to fight to fulfill those basic needs, because under the wage system, they are a) always at the mercy of their employers, b) shortchanged in pay which accrues as profit to the capitalist, and c) far more likely to suffer in an economic downturn.<br /><br />If I link to an article from the <a href="http://www.marxist.com/">International Marxist Tendency</a>, I do not claim it to be "objective". I merely think it correct from the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism.<br /><br />People need to get past the view that ideology is bad, because there is a sharp difference between merely having an ideology and being an ideologue.Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-5823311693869268912012-02-08T20:46:00.011-05:002012-02-08T21:06:01.005-05:00A Century of Global Class StruggleDuring a recent debate, an American libertarian informed me in no uncertain terms that "even when their lives are crumbling, workers have never banded together globally."<br /><br />However, a cursory examination of the past century indicates certain periods are more conducive to revolutionary sentiment around the world:<br /><br /><b>1917-1923</b><br /><ul><li>Successful socialist revolution in Russia (October 1917) leads to short-lived Soviet republics in Hungary and Bavaria</li><li>Workers' councils take control in Germany (November 1918) and force an end to World War I</li><li>Egyptian Revolution of 1919 leads to Britain recognizing independence in 1922</li><li>Mexican Revolution ends with victory of social democratic forces</li><li>Irish War of Independence (1918-1921) against British rule</li><li>Revolutionary conditions in Italy with mass strikes, factory occupations, and rule by workers' councils that led to the Fascists taking power to crush the labor movement</li><li>First Red Scare in the United States (1919-1920). Authorities were very seriously afraid of revolution after labor unrest such as the Seattle General Strike, resulting in the Palmer Raids to arrest and deport radical leftists</li><li>Winnipeg General Strike (1919) in Canada leads to a situation of dual power between strike committees and the bourgeois municipal government</li></ul><b>1931-1939</b><br /><ul><li>Spanish Revolution; threat of the radical left in Spain (anarchists, communists) and mass labor unrest leads to military coup against the Republican government</li><li>Germany and Italy support Franco's Fascist forces because - as I was just reading the other day in Ian Kershaw's definitive biography on Hitler - the Nazi leader was deathly afraid of Bolshevism taking root in western Europe</li><li>Leftist volunteers from many countries, including France, Britain, the United States, Canada and Poland, go to Spain to fight for the Republican forces</li></ul><br /><b>1960s</b><br /><ul><li>Colonial Revolution continues in the developing countries, with many countries gaining independence through anti-colonial struggle or waging war against imperialist powers (Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba) and instituting nationalized planned economies</li><li>Civil rights movement, counterculture, antiwar protests, Black Panther Party (Marxist militants) in the United States. Domestic turmoil practically tears the country apart.</li><li>Cultural Revolution in China. Mao was merely trying to re-assert his own power, but the spontaneous revolutionary action of millions of youth in China clearly indicated some real resentments in society (shared by confused Maoist students in the West). There were many corrupt and bourgeois elements in Chinese society at the time; Mao simply exploited that mass feeling for his own cynical ends.</li><li>Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia (1968) - period of political liberalization calling for "socialism with a human face." Crushed by Stalinists.</li><li>May 1968 in France. Mass protests begin with student occupations, later joined by workers. Largest general strike ever brings economy to a standstill. Government leaders literally feared civil war or revolution. Betrayed by leaders of the trade unions and French Communist Party, who sided with the de Gaulle government.</li></ul><br /><b>1998-2011</b><br /><ul><li>Election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (1998) leads to Turn to the Left throughout Latin America</li><li>Left-wing or left-leaning governments elected in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, etc.</li><li>Anti-globalization movement targets World Bank and the IMF before post-9/11 reaction<br /></li></ul><br /><b>2011-2012</b><br /><ul><li>Arab Spring</li><li>Occupy movement</li><li><span style="font-style: italic;">Indignados</span> in Spain</li><li>Anti-Putin protests in Russia</li></ul>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-38494972751890587962012-02-08T20:38:00.004-05:002012-02-08T20:45:37.108-05:00Insiders and OutsidersMost Americans are suffering the negative effects of capitalism right now, and they're angry about it. But they don't know where to turn or what to do because the ruling class has hegemony over popular culture.<br /><br />A handful of giant corporations control almost everything we hear, watch and read - and it's in their interests to say that American politics boils down to Democrats and Republicans. Nothing exists outside of that two-party duopoly for them, and since we are conditioned to consider that "the mainstream", Americans will go to the polls in November and most will vote for a Democrat or a Republican.<br /><br />But what choice do they have, really? There are a myriad of institutional obstacles that the duopoly throws up for any third party candidate. The difference in resources is simply too vast for anyone to compete with the two corporately-funded parties, with one exception: the trade unions. American labor unions must break with the Democrats and put their resources into backing independent labor candidates.<br /><br />Occupy Wall Street is a grassroots movement that exists because people realize the two parties walk in lockstep on behalf of corporate interests. The Tea Party is largely astroturf, and is obviously a confused bastion of reactionary beliefs, but the populist elements within it understand on some level that the government does not work in their interests. The common element in rank-and-file supporters of OWS and the Tea Party is a perception that both parties work for self-interested elites and not ordinary Americans.<br /><br />This will be thrown into even sharper relief if the 2012 presidential election comes down to a race between the two corporate empty suits, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Rank-and-file conservatives don't like or trust Romney, and principled progressives realize Obama offers nothing but empty words.<br /><br />Despite all the usual nationalist bromides, the rulers of the United States effectively speak a different language than the country's working class. While the ruling elite talks incessantly of deficits, "fiscal responsibility", "shared sacrifice". and endless war to defend oil interests, American workers want to hear about good jobs, education, health care, preserving Social Security, clean energy and ending the wars.Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-82644100164421957532012-02-03T17:51:00.003-05:002012-02-03T17:54:29.950-05:00Caterpillar Closes Electro-Motive PlantOne of the big labor issues here in Canada is the U.S.-based Caterpillar corporation locking out workers at its Electro-Motive plant in London, Ontario, and threatening to move the factory unless workers took a 50% pay cut.<br /><br />There was a massive demonstration in London a couple weeks ago. Some of my comrades from Toronto went in solidarity, along with masses of union workers from all over North America. But apparently, it was all for naught: the company just voted to close down the plant.<br /><span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);" class=" down" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link"><img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span><br />From the <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1125920--walkom-caterpillar-closing-part-of-a-coordinated-attack-on-unions?bn=1"><span style="font-style: italic;">Toronto Star</span></a>:<br /><blockquote><br />The timing of Caterpillar Inc.’s decision to close its locked-out London locomotive plant was no accident.<br /><br />On Wednesday, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law a so-called right-to-work bill making his state the first in the U.S. industrial north to directly take on private-sector unions.<br /><br />Two days later, Caterpillar — which is based in next-door Illinois — closed its unionized London plant.<br /><br />Since it locked out 460 Canadian workers in January, the giant U.S. firm had made little secret of its intent to move their jobs to Muncie, Indiana.<br /><br />All it was waiting for, apparently, was a signal that the state government there was serious about crippling trade unions.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The London plant closing is not an isolated event. It is part of a coordinated attack across North America on unions and wages.</span></blockquote><br /><br />So now Indiana is a "right-to-work" state? Bad news for unions in the northern states.<br /><br />Workers everywhere need to stand firm together against the aggression of the bosses and their servants in government. I agree with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP): the government "should <a href="http://cep.ca/en/news/media-releases/government-should-seize-caterpillar-assets">seize the Caterpillar assets</a> in London and ensure that all community and worker obligations are fully met."<br /><br />Of course, that'll never happen under the Harper regime. But it's still a good sign that the union is advocating such measures.Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-57858607936236545832012-01-24T19:39:00.003-05:002012-01-24T19:51:58.263-05:00Unemployment Blues<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7WX0xcx8N2E?fs=1" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" width="459"></iframe><br /><br />Recently got involved with a staffing/recruiting agency that's been getting me temp jobs, mostly in data entry. I worked for a couple days at a hospital last week. This week I had an interview for a two-week (!) position at a mining company, but didn't get it.<br /><br />Temp jobs make me much more conscious of my existence as a wage slave. It's like, "no, you can't make a living here or anything, but we're happy to buy your labour-power for a week!"<br /><br />Sometimes I feel like I'd like to go back to school and get my PhD, but the prospect of going thousands and thousands of dollars into debt, only to come out and face renewed unemployment, makes me think twice.<br /><br />A third year English student from my alma mater called me tonight to ask for money on behalf of the university. My response was a no-brainer: "As you know, I was an English major, and am therefore 'between jobs' right now."Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-49753099227611394552011-08-10T09:38:00.002-04:002011-08-10T09:42:09.389-04:00Lame and predictableLooks like the union-backed drive to recall Republican politicians in Wisconsin and replace them with Democrats has <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/10/us_wisconsin_recalls_1/index.html">failed</a>. It was a predictable result, but even success for the Dems wouldn't have changed the fundamental issues at stake.
<br /><div class="deck md"> <p>As soon as the energy and activism of the Wisconsin protests was diverted into harmless electoral channels, this movement stopped being about anything but the Democrats' political interests. When the workers of Wisconsin were leading the protests, there was a genuine Egypt-like quality to it, of the people getting pissed off enough to take their destiny into their own hands. The logical next step should have been a general strike.</p> <p>Unfortunately, no matter how many times the Democrats piss on the interests of the rank-and-file union members (and the working class in general), the corrupt union leadership is only too willing to make recalling Republicans and electing Democrats the entire focus of the movement - as if that would make any difference whatsoever to the push for austerity and the attack on collective bargaining rights.</p> <p>I've said that the American political system won't really change until progressives, the left and the working class unshackle themselves from the anchor of a corrupt, corporatized Democratic Party. But one of the biggest problems is that the leaders of the union are still perfectly cozy with the current arrangement. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter to the union bureaucrats if the Dems break all their promises and spit on unions by neglecting things like the Employee Free Choice Act; all that matters is that THEY get to retain their privileges and hefty salaries. It's the predictable outcome of bureaucracy in all its forms - bureaucrats that raise themselves above the rank-and-file forget who they represent and become consumed only with preserving their own interests and perks.</p> <p>The working class needs to fight against the Democratic Party as much as against the Republican Party, but there's one massive obstacle that unions (the most organized workers) need to get past - the corrupt leadership that continues to tie them to the Democrats.</p> </div>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-64573362834884942672011-07-17T23:41:00.004-04:002011-07-17T23:50:29.257-04:00In Defence of Marxism<span style="font-style: italic;">From a recent exchange on Facebook.</span><br /><br /><span>A Facebook-friend of a friend made the following remark during a discussion about the Greek debt crisis:</span><br /><blockquote><br /><span jsid="text">Marxist theory is hopelessly shallow in its perception of how people see themselves. Very few identify as "working class" or "bourgeois" but <span class="text_exposed_show">many would escribe themselves as "Canadian" or "humanist" or "young," "Muslim" or "father." Class identity is important but not all-important.</span></span></blockquote><span jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show"></span></span><span>My response:</span><br /><br />Marxists explained a long time ago that there is no final crisis of capitalism - the bourgeoisie will always find a way out until the working class takes power into its own hands.<br /><br />Please excuse the Marxian terminology (you might say jargon), but it's the most accurate way for describing the broad movements of the economy in terms of who actually produces the wealth (workers). Marxism is actually much more complex than the simple dichotomy of "bourgeoisie/proletariat". It allows for the petty bourgeoisie (small business owners and professionals), lumpen-proletariat (swindlers, criminals, beggars, those on the margins of society), peasants if there are any. And that's just in recent history - in earlier times there were different classes - freeman/slave, lord/serf, etc. As a way of sketching out the broad class formations in social relations, Marxist theory is indispensable.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQrkNQShs5xZs9ZmlVm2H2FQfusTauKqZkbxNCKCperV4OCLLBj-ZM3FHpDbfkIUnO0nmDVCt5c8vNJYJK03Dt2XvwSjwSc2W5IqQzrIPbQeNHXccxrye5bZdWGfW2wguVSf4usfztCe0/s1600/communism.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQrkNQShs5xZs9ZmlVm2H2FQfusTauKqZkbxNCKCperV4OCLLBj-ZM3FHpDbfkIUnO0nmDVCt5c8vNJYJK03Dt2XvwSjwSc2W5IqQzrIPbQeNHXccxrye5bZdWGfW2wguVSf4usfztCe0/s200/communism.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5630534339267120898" border="0" /></a>But Marxism doesn't JUST talk about class. That's an understandable misconception. Like any good method of analysis, it takes into account as much information and facts as possible, including gender, race, nationality, and so on. At the same time, it realizes that class is ultimately the determining factor when it comes to actual change of the social order. What we think of as "the middle class" is actually the working class that is enjoying the benefits of past struggles - for the 8-hour work day, overtime pay, pensions, collective bargaining rights. All these are now being taken away from us. Why? Because capitalism is in crisis worldwide.<br /><br />It's only a Greek problem? Wrong. (Just ask the Wall Street Journal.) When Greece defaults - and it will, no matter what austerity measures are put in place - we'll get defaults in Ireland and Portugal, followed by a financial crisis in Spain, dragging the whole of Europe and the United States into it. French and German banks have the most to lose from a Greek default, which is why their governments are pushing for bailouts of the debtor nation.<br /><br />The problem is, these kinds of periodic crises are endemic to the capitalist system, and even its most ardent defenders will admit that. Duh - boom and bust, right? Everybody knows a capitalist economy will have recessions and depressions. BUT: It's only the people who win under capitalism that are cushioned from the effects. The working majority always lose out.<br /><br />Why is there massive unemployment that just seems to get worse all the time? Why are people with jobs being forced to work longer hours for less pay and benefits? Why are governments cutting social services everywhere? I live in Toronto and our mayor wants to cut the budget of all departments by 10%, including the fire department. Why is all this happening? Because this kind of thing always happens when the capitalist party ends and the working class gets the hangover ("Wall Street got drunk" - George W. Bush). Bankers blew a hole in the global economy. They, along with other corporations and the wealthy, control our governments (the Golden Rule - "he who has the gold makes the rules"), and now they want to make the working class pay for a crisis they caused.<br /><br />The media constantly chirp about a recovery. In truth, the long postwar economic boom has been pushed far past its shelf life through increased debt. A little fast history: capitalism was effectively pulled out of the Great Depression by World War II, which served as an artificial stimulus to a massive armaments boom. The technologies that emerged from the war and the new markets opened up to the United States led to a long economic boom that started to plateau in the late 60s and stagnated in the 70s. As a reaction, the deregulation of the 80s and development of ever more exotic financial securities led to the ever-increasing financialization of the economy and to a large extent de-coupled financial markets from the "real" economy. (Stocks numbers are great right now, employment figures not so much.)<br /><br />Over the last 30 years of reaction, workers' wages stagnated while the bosses' have skyrocketed (this was partly masked by greater consumer debt). Income inequality is worse than ever, and there seems to be no real recovery in sight. This is not a matter of me reading a Marxist book and thinking about rrrrrevolution! It's about being sick of a system that's left our world a stinking impoverished mess. I'm sick of the wars, inequality, the hunger, the environmental degradation, the national rivalries and racism - and the system of private profit at the root of it all.<br /><br />People react strangely to the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", because they associate the first word with individual tyrants. In fact, it just means power, and it makes a lot more sense if you consider that right now we live under the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". Ever get the feeling that your vote doesn't matter? In some ways, it doesn't - not when the game is rigged and the same people are pulling the strings no matter who gets elected to office. If you want to describe who those people are, bourgeoisie is as good a term as any.<br /><br />One last point I want to make, and I congratulate anyone who's made it this far. I used to think that the idea of two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, duking it out was an antiquated 19th century notion. I hope I've absolved you of any confusion there. When Marxists talks about the "working class", people tend to think about workers in factories. But it's really about producing surplus value (i.e. goods and services), and the tools and machines you use to make those (if any) don't really make a difference. So that includes service jobs, like working at Wal-Mart or being a waitress. It includes white collar office jobs and blue collar industrial jobs. Basically, it's anybody who earns a wage for a living.<br /><br />Marxists don't back the working class because of some romantic idea of what it means to be a worker or because we think they're great people. We support them because they are the only class capable of transforming society - in the first place, by shutting it down.<br /><br />If Richard Branson or Bill Gates goes on strike for a year...who cares? But if there's a general strike for just one day, everything stops. Nothing can get done, nothing can be produced. You'll notice that in Egypt, it was only when the Egyptian working class mobilized - when we saw strikes in factories, among unionized workers of all kinds - that Muburak was finally pressured to step down. Essentially, if you're sick of the world we live in right now, there's only one group in society that can change that: the international working class. Workers in Egypt have more in common with workers in Canada than either of us have with our elected national "leaders".Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-24461249098580937192011-06-14T23:17:00.004-04:002011-06-14T23:58:37.708-04:00On ClarityThe worse things get, the clearer the solution becomes.<br /><br />I can't remember the last time I read the news and did not become actively pissed off at what I was hearing. Regardless of whether I learn something on corporate news networks or a Marxist blog, the facts themselves are almost always enraging. Despite the brief rays of hope we saw during the Arab Spring, and the events around the world inspired by the heroic struggles of the Middle East (e.g. Wisconsin), the powers-that-be are still to strong to allow events to spiral out of their control for too long. When the Arabs finally rose up in revolt against the brutal Western-backed dictators that had held them down for decades, the corporate elite was taken totally by surprise. Yet they clawed their way back to relevance through the most blunt expression of their power: brute military force.<br /><br />NATO's Libya adventure has now lasted for months and is probably the most visible expression of the increasing lawlessness of the Western bourgeoisie. Barack Obama's autocratic decision to commit the United States to another Middle Eastern war was helped along by a Congress seemingly more eager than ever to demonstrate its own irrelevance. The Obamabots - those Democratic loyalists who will cheer whatever Obama does, despite criticizing the same conduct when Bush did it - fell for the ruse of a "humanitarian war" hook, line and sinker. The accompanying propaganda has been excruciating, as another designated official enemy - in this case, Libyan strongman Col. Qaddafi - becomes the latest Hitler.<br /><br />Most mornings on the way to work, I read the free newspaper <span style="font-style: italic;">Metro</span> that they hand out at the TTC train stations. It contains recut articles from the Associated Press and so you get the most blandly uninformative, "objective" (i.e. corporate-friendly) account of the news possible. Ever since the Libya war began, Western reporters have dutifully fallen in line, accepting any and all propaganda their governments feed them while playing the part of adversarial, hardcore journalists when it comes to reporting on the Libyan side. There's <a href="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-baker/36758/did-qaddafi-really-order-mass-rapes-or-is-the-west-falling-victim-to-a-viagra-strength-scam">plenty of reason</a> to doubt the allegations of Qaddafi equipping his troops with Viagra and condoms and ordering them to engage in mass rapes, but our "free press" are the best stenographers around when it comes to swallowing government claims wholesale.<br /><br />Oh, today Obama dramatically escalated his other undeclared<a href="http://www.salon.com/news/yemen/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2011/06/14/yemen_illegal_war"> illegal war in Yemen</a>, giving the CIA <span style="font-style: italic;">carte blanche</span> to intensify its drone strikes. During all of this, of course, the overriding concern of the crusading journalists in the U.S. media was <a href="http://socialistworker.org/2011/06/14/real-scandal-is-the-media">Anthony Wiener's wiener</a> - naturally overlooking the fact that nothing illegal happened and this was a purely personal matter between the Representative and his wife. It makes me sick to see them question a humiliated, powerless figure like Wiener (despite the fact that I'm no fan of his slavish pandering to Israel and AIPAC) and pretend that they're the heroic checks on power they apparently still think they are. As always, <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/06/07/weiner/index.html">Glenn Greenwald said it best</a>.<br /><br />Why do I mention all these disparate subjects? I guess because they illustrate the rapid decline of our media, politics, and socio-economic system over the last few decades, but especially the American one. All the way up to a few years ago, I would read blogs like Crooks and Liars to hear the latest inanities uttered by some Republican politician and get annoyed that anybody could be stupid enough to believe their lies. Now, of course, things are so exponentially worse that I don't even notice things like that anymore. I almost have more respect for the deluded Republican base than the Obamabots, because at least they're opposed to Obama, despite it being for completely fictitious and nonsensical reasons cooked up at False News and right-wing talk radio. I certainly have more "respect" (not the right word, but the best I could think of) for Republicans than Democrats, because at least they're basically honest about screwing working people and fellating the rich, while the Democrats lie their asses off pretending to care about ordinary people.<br /><br />With the total bankruptcy of the two-party system - and that includes both Democrats/Republicans in the U.S. and the Liberals/Conservatives in Canada - the necessity for a socialist alternative has never been greater. In Canada the NDP is coming off strong from the recent federal election, when it finally became the Official Opposition. Down south, the need for a Labor Party is increasingly obvious even to the reformists; witness AFL-CIO head <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2011/05/06/trumka_on_new_labor_independence">Richard Trumka finally getting the message</a> and beginning the process of jettisoning labour from the Democratic Party. Most people in North America are far from having any kind of socialist ideology, but I've learned so much in the past several months from Fightback and the International Marxist Tendency that I have a far better grasp of theory than ever. The class struggle is an objective reality and most workers are beginning to realize that.<br /><br />That's why the struggle in the years ahead, despite its difficulties, paints a clear picture of objective class relations that will become more and more obvious to everyone the worse the global economy gets and the more they push these austerity policies on us. I started writing again today because I've been reading for so long and it's time for me to start speaking out once more using the power of the pen. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Air Canada employees have both begun strike actions recently, which will set the tone for the years of struggle to come. It's time to get down to business - meaning it's time to fight business.Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-57653527823370093972011-06-13T23:17:00.002-04:002011-06-13T23:19:49.202-04:00Toronto: Fred Weston speaks on the Syrian uprising<p><span style="font-style: italic;">Originally published at </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.marxist.ca/content/view/666/1/">Fightback</a><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /></p><p>Fresh from his appearance at Fightback’s 2011 national conference, <a href="http://www.marxist.com/" target="_blank"><b>In Defence of Marxism</b></a> editor Fred Weston spoke at the University of Toronto’s OISE building on May 24 to discuss the Arab Revolution and specifically its effects on Syria. </p> <p> While the fate of the Assad regime remains uncertain, the widespread revolts that have shaken the country to its foundations are only the beginning of a long process, which Fred put in the context of the wider Arab Revolution. </p> <p> The bourgeoisie had been completely taken aback by the mass revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. Prior to the eruption of popular anger, the <i>Economist</i> had described revolution in Tunisia as unlikely, given that the country was more “Westernized”. By contrast, once Ben Ali was deposed, the BBC stressed the unlikelihood of revolution spreading to Egypt on the conceit that that country was so <i>unlike</i> the West. This racist portrayal of a passive and sedate Arab population, combined with a belief that revolution was purely a phenomenon of the past, gave the bourgeois a sense of false confidence. </p> <p> The sudden mobilization of the Tunisian and Egyptian proletariat revealed the true balance of power. As Fred outlined, the global working class has actually never been stronger than it is today – both numerically and as a percentage of the population. Many of the Arab countries currently roiled by revolution were actually experiencing China-level economic growth at the time. Yet the distribution of wealth was skewed towards the capitalists and the workers saw no improvement in their standard of living – a worldwide phenomenon. The anger of the working class was already evident in the explosive protests across Europe during the fall of 2010 – the strikes in Spain and Portugal, riots in Greece, and the largest student protest ever in Britain. </p> <p> This revolutionary turmoil came not as a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky, but was the culmination of decades of economic policy. The past 30 years saw extensive privatization and ruthless cuts to welfare and social services. Bourgeois economists’ worship of the “free market” and supposed contempt for government was utterly discredited in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, when the bankers were bailed out to the tune of billions by capitalist governments. In the Arab world, the move to privatization accelerated in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, when the state’s role in the economy began to shrink. </p> <p> The revolutions in Africa and the Middle East, Fred argued, confirmed the Marxist theory of the state. In the 1970s, many leftist groups advocated terrorist methods while genuine Marxists said this would only strengthen the state (e.g. Palestinian use of terrorist methods only strengthened the Zionist state). Under the pressure of a mass movement, the state apparatus can break down. We saw this in Tunisia when a soldier first saluted a coffin, and in Egypt (with its 1.5 million armed men), when the determination of the masses swayed ordinary soldiers. </p> <p> <b>Bahrain and Libya </b> </p> <p> Fred briefly touched on the events in Bahrain and Libya. He exposed the hypocrisy of imperialist claims to be “protecting civilians” in Libya with bombing raids, while the United States quietly backed Saudi Arabia’s invasion of Bahrain to quash non-violent protesters. With the U.S. fleet based in Bahrain, much-ballyhooed concerns for “democracy” and “human rights” did not apply. </p> <p> Quite simply, it was in the imperialists’ interests to intervene in Libya but not in Bahrain, with its more reliable authoritarian regime. On a more strategic level, Libya gave the bourgeoisie the opportunity to intervene militarily in the Arab Revolution, which had caught it completely off-guard. </p> <p> Where Egypt had led to the idea that all you needed to overthrow an authoritarian government was to go on Facebook and Twiter and gather enough people together in a square, Libya illustrated that it wasn’t so simple. In Libya, regime figures defected early out of a belief that they could channel the revolution towards their own ends. Right from the start, there was a conflict between the revolutionary youth and the interim government, which saw the events in terms of a military struggle. </p> <p> There is no real difference between the economic policies of Qaddafi and the “rebel” leaders, who would promptly hand over control of Libya’s resources to the imperialists. While the dictators are now gone in Tunisia and Egypt, the regimes they headed are still largely intact. Those in power shuffle the chairs on the deck, but the same powerful economic interests always prevail. </p> <p> <b>Syria</b> </p> <p> Following the coup that established the Assad regime in the 1970s, Syria pursued the Soviet model of development, which provided some genuine benefits to the population. Syria experienced phenomenal growth rates in its early decades of well over 50%. By the 1980s, this had slowed to 33% growth per annum. Today, it is an anaemic 1%. The masses supported the Syrian government in the 1960s and 70s, when it provided real material benefits and the country’s oil money was partly used to fund social services. </p> <p> Syria’s economic decline paralleled the stagnation of the USSR. Emphasizing that real socialism requires workers’ democracy in addition to a nationalized planned economy, Fred noted that the privileged Syrian bureaucracy became increasingly resented as the country’s economy stalled. Following the Soviet collapse, the Syrian government began taking tentative steps towards a market economy, beginning with private banking in 1991 and later progressing to foreign investment and a stock market. </p> <p> Assad’s government privatized and passed on the fruits of the country’s wealth to its own cronies. In essence, the Syrian elites strove to emulate the Chinese model, transferring the means of production from public to private ownership. Identical terms were even used – e.g. “social market economy”. Having lost most of its claims to legitimacy, the Syrian regime as it stands today is one of the world’s most brutal. Legions of police are tasked specifically with monitoring the internet for any signs of dissent. </p> <p> Like the Tunisian Revolution, which began when a young men harassed by the police set himself on fire, the Syrian revolt began with a small event on February 17, when hundreds of bystanders intervened after watching the police harass two motorists. Protests soon swelled to over 1500 and one of the government’s ministers was forced to intervene. Throughout February and March, the movement gradually gained in strength, with the most affected layers being the youth (who constitute 60% of the population) and the poor. </p> <p> In addition to its use of brute force to repress the protests, the Assad regime has also sought to exploit certain “moderate” dissidents to dampen the revolutionary fervour. The Syrian working class pushes ahead, but the threat posed by reformist elements reflects those of leftists around the world. The task in Syria remains the same as elsewhere: building a mass revolutionary party to provide a programme and leadership for the workers’ movement. </p> <p> Special brigades have been deployed to put down the Uprising, but the government does not have enough forces to repress the entire country at once. Thus far the protests have largely been confined to individual cities, allowing the security forces to move wherever trouble appears. The lesson is obvious: a truly national movement is necessary to exploit the state’s weakness. </p> <p> What comes next? Fred theorized that, should the Syrian workers succeed in overthrowing Assad, the resulting government would likely follow the pattern set out by Tunisia and Egypt – probably some form of bourgeois democracy. Yet democracy is only a means to an end, and bourgeois democracy cannot solve the problems faced by Syrians today. Even in the advanced capitalist countries, the system is incapable of alleviating severe unemployment – why would it be any different in Syria? </p> <p> In order to progress, the protest movements require a solid programme and revolutionary leadership. The means of production must be nationalized under the control of the workers themselves, and a genuine proletarian democracy established. The task of the Marxists is helping youth in the Arab world reach these conclusions and fight for an Arab socialist federation. </p> <p> <b>Q & A </b> </p> <p> During the question and answer period, a member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq asked about the absence of socialist or communist groups in the February protests. While frontline organizers were individual working class activists, mainstream socialist parties seemed closer to the state – a dangerous development when the Iraqi government recently announced its own privatization programme. </p> <p> Fred responded that when examining a jar, one should not merely read the label, but rather examine the contents inside. The leaders of so-called working class, “socialist” and “communist” parties worldwide are not up to the tasks facing humanity. There is a huge gap between the leadership and the rank-and-file. Reformist leaders came of age at a time when capitalism seemed to be able to offer reforms such as free health care and public education. </p> <p> Regarding the self-proclaimed socialist/communist parties, Fred reminded his audience of the Stalinist “two-stage theory”, which these corrupted figures used to derail revolutionary situations. By claiming the need to first have a “democratic” revolution before attempting socialism later, and therefore arguing that the working class should ally itself with the “progressive” bourgeoisie now, the Stalinists abort revolutions before they begin. </p> <p> In order to solve this problem, the working class must change the leadership of its mass organizations. When Fightback supporter Arash Azizi asked what the task of real socialists in Syria should be, Fred called for strikes in all industries, for Syrian youth and workers to occupy the schools and the factories, and for election of workers’ representatives to create an economic programme that will allow the working class to take total control of the country. The pressing need is for a mass revolutionary leadership. </p>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-35698880075322952402011-04-13T09:43:00.002-04:002011-04-13T09:45:24.293-04:00ScapegoatsSpreading the meme, via Leo Lincourt:<br /><br /><blockquote>Remember when teachers, public employees, planned parenthood, and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither. Re-post if you can't remember either.</blockquote>Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873649479599001136.post-83010624868025527302011-03-17T23:15:00.006-04:002011-03-17T23:24:40.865-04:00Death Agony of CapitalismU.N. Security Council <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/united_nations/index.html?story=/news/feature/2011/03/17/libya_diplomacy">just voted</a> 10-0 to establish a no-fly zone over Libya. Why all the urgency of military action in Libya compared to, say, Egypt? Clearly, the former country's vast oil reserves played more than a supporting role in the full-scale mobilization of the American media to finally "deal with Qaddafi", who they never really trusted. The aging dictator's future is even more uncertain than before now, with a multinational (read: U.S.-dominated) bombing raid set to begin within a few hours.<br /><br />At the same time the Japanese earthquake has laid bare the short-sighted thinking of the country's elites who placed dozens of nuclear power plants near the planet's biggest fault line. The ongoing destruction of the planet, the shocking realization that the apocalyptic Gulf oil spill of 2010 seems long forgotten, the crisis of capitalism squeezing working people everywhere...<br /><br />I could go on. Things are bad. Mass revolutionary parties in every country are an urgent necessity.Mulciberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15345661028443939644noreply@blogger.com0