Showing posts with label state captialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label state captialism. Show all posts

Monday, September 17, 2007

Stating The Obvious Redux


"the Iraq War is largely about oil." Allan Greenspan.


And all the U.S. media and pundits are all agog over this confession. Well duh, what did you think it was about? The funniest was to hear Chris Matthews on Hardball refer to Greenspan's analysis as Marxist. Hey I said that here.

Matthews: "So if you're in the European left and never liked Bush, to start with, now you got his Fed chairman say it's all about oil, you love it, right? This is the old Marxist analysis."
Yet some folks in the White House continue to live the lie, and remain in implausible denial.

In the book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Greenspan writes, "the Iraq war is largely about oil." The comments, released before publication, put Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the defensive as he made the Sunday talk-show rounds following major recommendations on war policy last week.

"I know the same allegation was made about the Gulf War in 1991, and I just don't don't believe it's true," Gates said, appearing on ABC's "This Week."

But it was as much about oil then as it was being the first high tech war declaring the New World Order of the 21st Century. Just as this war was about oil and revenge.

Jill Zuckman, Chicago Tribune: "I think this is one of the reasons why what Greenspan says has so much resonance because this is the Texas oil crowd in the White House and so-"

Matthews: "The oil patch crowd."

Zuckman: "-people assume that a lot of what they do is motivated."

Matthews: "Okay let me ask you this. Exxon, Mobil, making tens of billions of dollars in profits this year. So the war worked out well for them right?"

Zuckman: "Yes and we can pay crazy amounts of money at the pump."

Matthews: "Should we put Exxon signs up over Arlington Cemetery and Mobil signs up there, like they have at baseball stadiums?"

And Halliburton, Bechtel and Blackwater too.



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Friday, August 31, 2007

Bad News For Bush

Business as usual in Iraq. Surge or not.


Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report.

"While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved." "Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised.

Iraq needs $100-150 bln for reconstruction: Finance minister

AMMAN (Reuters) - Iraq needs at least $100 billion to rebuild its shattered infrastructure after four years of violence and lawlessness following the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, Finance Minister Bayan Jabor said on Monday.

"The country is devastated and we are in need of at least $100 billion to $150 billion to restore infrastructure -- from sewerage to water to electricity to bridges and basic needs of the country," he told Reuters in Amman.

He said about $4 billion had been spent on infrastructure projects so far this year, more than in all of 2006, when internal violence and the limited capacity of the Iraqi private sector meant only about 40 percent of $6 billion allocated in the budget was used.

"What happened last year was ... a failure in the government's ability to execute," Jabor said.

Health and humanitarian crisis in Iraq

The billions of dollars planned for reconstruction are going unspent as the situation on the ground has spelled suspension for reconstruction efforts. While the coalition forces had not predicted the downward spiral that ensued - predicting a peaceful transition from one regime to another - investments have been mainly made in reconstruction efforts and in comparison, next to nothing, has been set aside for humanitarian assistance.

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction

July 30, 2007 Quarterly and Semiannual Report to Congress (Highlights, All Sections and Appendices)


Asset Transfer
SIGIR produced another audit on the asset-transfer process,
looking at how completed projects are transferred to
Iraqi control. During the course of the audit, SIGIR found
that the Government of Iraq (GOI) has failed to accept a
single U.S.-constructed project since July 2006. Although
local Iraqi officials have accepted projects, the national
government has not. Moreover, SIGIR learned that the U.S.
government is unilaterally transferring projects to Iraq. The
failure of the asset-transfer program raises concerns about
the continuing operation and maintenance of U.S.-constructed
projects.

First Focused Financial Review
This quarter, SIGIR completed the first in a series of
focused financial reviews of large contracts funded by
the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF). These
reviews will meet the “forensic audit” requirement
that the Congress imposed upon SIGIR last December
through the Iraq Reconstruction Accountability Act of
2006.

This initial review examined the work performed
by Bechtel under its Phase II IRRF contract. SIGIR’s
findings from the Bechtel audit are emblematic of
the many challenges faced by contractors in the Iraq
reconstruction program, including insufficient oversight,
descoping, project cancellations, cost overruns,
and significant delays in completing projects. SIGIR has
announced the next round of focused financial reviews,
which will audit the largest contracts in the Iraq reconstruction
program over the next year.

Anti corruption
The Embassy made progress on several fronts to address the endemic corruption in Iraq, which SIGIR views as a “second insurgency.” This quarter saw the inception of the Iraqi-created Joint Anti-Corruption Council (JACC), comprising the three main anticorruption organizations in Iraq, as well as other governmental representatives. A SIGIR audit this quarter identified continuing challenges to the implementation of a coherent anticorruption effort, including the absence of a program manager with the authority to coordinate the overall anticorruption effort and the lack of a comprehensive plan that ties anti corruption programs to the U.S. Embassy’s Iraq strategy.

Officer overseeing Iraq reconstruction projects urges patience

Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, commander of the Corps of Engineers' Gulf Region Division in Baghdad since Oct. 14, 2006, is responsible for overseeing the bulk of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in Iraq. Earlier this summer, Government Executive senior correspondent Katherine McIntire Peters interviewed Walsh when he was in Washington during a brief leave from Iraq. The following is an edited transcript:

Q: You've been in Iraq more than eight months now. How have things gone with reconstruction during that time?

A: The security issue had an impact on about 12 percent of our projects when I got there, and now it's up to about 19 percent. Certainly part of the requirements in building, whether in the United States or Iraq, is to make sure you get the skilled labor, the equipment and the materials you need. In Iraq, you also need to make sure the security piece is taken care of, and then make sure the politics are OK with the local tribes and the provincial leadership. If any one of those four or five things is not in alignment, then you have to slow down or stop a project.

About 60 percent of our contracts are now with Iraqi firms. If an Iraqi principal or an Iraqi senior worker receives a cell phone call threatening him or his wife, he may not come to work. That's what we call an impact to the construction schedule. There also have been some attacks on particular project sites. Some small percentage have been damaged beyond repair. So far, we've completed 3,200 projects. I would say probably less than 1 percent of those have been destroyed. It's a very small percentage.



Troops Confront Waste In Iraq Reconstruction

Maj. Craig Whiteside's anger grew as he walked through the sprawling school where U.S. military commanders had invested money and hope. Portions of the workshop's ceiling were cracked or curved. The cafeteria floor had a gaping hole and concrete chunks. The auditorium was unfinished, with cracked floors and poorly painted walls peppered with holes.

Whiteside blamed the school director for not monitoring the renovation. The director retorted that the military should have had better oversight. The contract shows the Iraqi contractor was paid $679,000.

Americans who report Iraq corruption pay a price

Corruption has long plagued Iraq's reconstruction. Congress approved more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.

Yet there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.

William Weaver, a professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and a senior adviser to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, said, "If you do it, you will be destroyed."

Investigating an Outsourced War

The United States government detained Donald Vance just outside Baghdad for 97 days. They hooded him, interrogated him ruthlessly, and blasted his cell with heavy metal music. He was accused of selling weapons to terrorists. His real crime appears to be telling the FBI about corrupt contracting practices in Iraq. Vance is among a select group of state enemies: whistleblowers.

We know this because of an Associated Press story that uncovered Vance’s ordeal. Vance, suspicious that the contractor he worked for was supplying weapons to insurgents, started supplying information to the FBI back in the States. But he was soon detained by Army Special Forces and brought to Camp Cropper for his 97-day stay.

The story also reported the fate of other whistleblowers who have tried to halt the massive boondoggles still ongoing in Iraq: they have been “vilified, fired, and demoted.”

Bunnatine Greenhouse, a high-ranking civilian in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who testified about the corrupt practices of a Halliburton subsidiary now “sits in a tiny cubicle in a different department with very little to do and no decision-making authority, at the end of an otherwise exemplary 20-year career.” Julie McBride testified about the same Halliburton company’s cost exaggerations and skimming. What happened? “Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion. My property was searched, and I was specifically told that I was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country.”

Pentagon auditors investigating alleged Iraq contract fraud

Mike Rosen-Molina at 7:13 PM ET

Photo source or description
[JURIST] The US Department of Defense will send an investigative team headed by Pentagon Inspector General Claude M. Kicklighter to Iraq to probe allegations of fraud and corruption related to military contracts, a DOD spokesman said Tuesday. The team will concentrate on incongruities concerning weapons and supplies bought by the US and intended for the use of Iraqi forces. As of last week, 73 criminal investigations were underway into contracts valued at more than $5 billion, Army spokesman Col. Dan Baggio said Monday; 20 military and civilian figures, including an officer who worked closely with Gen. David Petraeus , have already been indicted. The New York Times reported Tuesday that multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are conducting their own investigations into the matter.


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The Rip-off in Iraq: You Will Not Believe How Low the War Profiteers Have Gone

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.


Humanitarian disillusions

On August 28th, Al-Jazeera English broadcast a report that the Salvadorian contingent of the MNF-I will be renewed in Iraq, highlighting their “reconstruction and humanitarian assignment”. It’s not the first misuse of the humanitarian concept. Everyone is aware of the existence of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps fewer people know that some Private Security Companies (PSCs), that are often compared to mercenary companies, justify their presence through “humanitarian” reasons.

For example, the British Aegis, well known in Iraq for the video broadcast by its personnel showing them firing at civilian vehicles with Elvis Presley as accompanying background music. As one of the largest PSC worldwide they have created the “Aegis Foundation”, which has been active across Iraq since 2004 and “has completed a wide range of projects assisting communities in urgent need, from providing clean drinking water for schools and inoculations against water-borne diseases to supplying hospitals and medical clinics with generators and essential equipment.” The International Peace Operation Association (IPOA), which, at the exact opposite of what its name suggest is a trade association of some of the most prominent PSC and has rules of engagement in its Code of Conduct, doesn’t hesitate to talk about the “benefits of military in humanitarian role” in its newsletter.



SEE:

Military Industrial Complex

The Cost of War

U.S. Supplies Iraqi Insurgents With Weapons

Surge Blackout

What He Didn't Say

Iraq; The War For Oil

Look In Your Own Backyard

Iraq Inspector General

Another Privatization Failure

Conservative Nanny State

Another Privatization Myth Busted

Halliburton

Privatization of War

Privatization



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Monday, August 27, 2007

Whose Economic Policy

It is not only the political process in Iraq that is a failure due to American hegemonic influence. It is also the Iraq economy that is suffering from America's hegemonic policies. And as usual America failed to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi's before making its puppet government apply its economic agenda.

An economic expert said that the political change in Iraq was accompanied by a change in principle of Iraq's economic vision, but details of the economic reforms are not yet complete. He noted that community involvement in the formulation of economic policy requires a democratic approach be followed by the State, involving concerted efforts of the concerned community of civil society organizations, university professors, the private sector, economic specialists and others in drafting of an economic vision.

Manaf Al-Saiyigh, expert at the Iraqi Center for Economic Reform, added that in the absence of this interaction between society and government any policy will suffer from a lack of understanding in society, and could lead to opposition and rejection.

Al-Saiyigh noted the existence of other policies with significant economic impacts such as privatization, reform of governmental supports, and implementation of the investment law, which doubtless will arouse strong reactions.

IMF advises Iraq to shore up reconstruction, oil investment

For the first time in 25 years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has advised Iraq to increase the pace of reconstruction and investment, mainly in the oil sector.

"Directors commended the Iraqi authorities for keeping their economic programme on track by strengthening economic policies and making progress in structural reforms, despite an unsettled political situation and a very difficult security environment," said the IMF in a statement Tuesday summarizing its Executive Board assessment on Iraq's economic performance.

"The expansion of oil production is lagging, and that inflation, while on a downward path, remains high, reflecting in large part continued shortages, notably of fuel products," added the statement.

Oil majors to meet with the Iraq Government at the world's leading energy summit for Iraq

All attending Iraqi Ministries will be outlining the requirements for their relevant sectors in front of the senior corporate audience, before holding private consultations with some of the pre-eminent operators within the global energy sector.

These best-in-breed operators and companies will be represented at board level in order to build the relationships that will be crucial to the future of the Iraqi energy sector and include the likes of BP, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Lukoil, Statoil, Marathon Oil, Total, Shell, Kuwait National Petroleum, Annadarko, Schlumberger, ABB, ONGC, General Electric, Cummins Power, Mitsui, Aegis, ArmorGroup, Janussian, Control Risks Group, Unity, Hart, Olive Security, GardaWorld and Triple Canopy.


All attending Iraqi Ministries will be outlining the requirements for their relevant sectors in front of the senior corporate audience, before holding private consultations with some of the pre-eminent operators within the global energy sector.

These best-in-breed operators and companies will be represented at board level in order to build the relationships that will be crucial to the future of the Iraqi energy sector and include the likes of BP, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Lukoil, Statoil, Marathon Oil, Total, Shell, Kuwait National Petroleum, Annadarko, Schlumberger, ABB, ONGC, General Electric, Cummins Power, Mitsui, Aegis, ArmorGroup, Janussian, Control Risks Group, Unity, Hart, Olive Security, GardaWorld and Triple Canopy.


Analysis: Kurd oil law drives Iraq oil

The KRG has already signed contracts with small companies to explore for and develop its oil and gas, a move derided by Baghdad for allegedly overreaching its authority. The Kurds are also keen on breaking the nationalized oil sector open to a free market, a prerogative so controversial it is a major stalling factor of the federal oil law and a move the oil unions have threatened to strike to prevent.

To ensure passage of the constitution, its authors left parts vague. Arguments over the federal oil law are in many ways rooted in the mixed interpretations of the constitutional articles applying to Iraq’s oil, which are the third-largest reserves in the world. It calls for the central government to work with the oil-rich regions and provinces in “the management of oil and gas extracted from present fields” and “formulate the necessary strategic policies to develop the oil and gas wealth in a way that achieves the highest benefit to the Iraqi people.”


Iraq lowers light crude oil price for USA and increases it for Asia and Europe

An Iraqi official announced that Iraq lowered the official selling price of Basra light crude oil destined to be exported to the USA. In the meantime it raised the same which is destined to be delivered to Asian and European countries.


George Bush was correct. America is not Nation Building in Iraq and it is doing a lousy job of colonialisation as an Empire.

MR. RUSSERT: Richard Engel, I, I quoted your conversation with Prime Minister Maliki to Senator Warner, saying that Sadr, the leader of the Shiite militias, is of the same school.

MR. RICHARD ENGEL: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: Joe Klein in Time magazine wrote this, that “US Ambassador Ryan Crocker” said, “‘The fall of the Maliki government, when it happens, might be a good thing.’” And then Klein asks, “But replace it with what?” Half of Maliki’s Cabinet has abandoned his government. Are his days numbered?

MR. ENGEL: His days are certainly numbered. This government is going to collapse. The problem is, it’s going to take several months to form a new government. And there’s a very likely and real possibility that you could have a series of unstable governments that come and then collapse, sort of like a parliamentary system you may have had in Italy in the 1980s. And that weak political structure is not one that is suitable for Iraq’s problems. I think we need to totally change the, the rules of the game and change the political structure in such that the president or the prime minister has much more authority. This idea of a power-sharing government, while it may be the pinnacle of democracy, is not one that is strong enough to get the—help Iraq get over its very real problems.

MR. RUSSERT: Tom Ricks, you write this, and we’ll end on a literary note. “Shakespeare’s tragedies have five acts, and I fear we have not yet seen the beginning of Act IV.” What’s Act IV and V?

MR. RICKS: Well, Act III is the Petraeus phase. Act IV, I think, would be the spreading of the war, the next phase, maybe the post-American phase. And Act V will be the regional consequences. I think the point is Iraq, I think, is going to be much more difficult for this country than the Vietnam War was.

MR. RUSSERT: Why?

MR. RICKS: Because we could walk away from Vietnam. And it was bad for the Cambodians, bad for many Vietnamese, but we could wash our hands of it. I think Iraq is not going to be so easy to get out of. We have stepped into something in the middle of a economically vital region for the entire world.

Because America's Military Industrial Complex is attempting to privatize a State Capitalist economy in order to pay off it's war debt.

Iraq Resconstruction Teams Struggle to Sustain Grassroots Projects

As security improved in Anbar province, U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) -- some military-led, some commanded by State Department specialists -- moved to restore Ramadi's connection to the national power grid. Now 80 percent of residents have regular power, according to Col. John Charlton, an Army commander in the province.

The electricity somewhat benefited the area's state-owned businesses -- cement is the major product -- but widespread hirings failed to materialize, according to Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Walter Gaskin, senior commander in Anbar. "The biggest employer is still the army."

Despite disappointing results, PRTs like those in Ramadi remain at the forefront of the U.S. and coalition strategy in Iraq. All told, there are dozens of reconstruction teams: Their number has doubled since the beginning of "surge" operations in December. PRTs in safer areas include just a few people, others in more dangerous regions are manned by hundreds of soldiers with heavy weapons. The idea is to work with local employers and government officials to shore up basic infrastructure and institutions and get people working, in hopes that grassroots improvements might somehow spread and trickle up to the higher levels of Iraqi government, where sectarian squabbles have resulted in gridlock.

"Decentralization of [Iraqi] government services is one major area of emphasis for us," Reeker says.



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Friday, August 10, 2007

Tin Man


Gee who do you think might have been responsible for this?
In the grip of speculators, tin hits 18-year high
And has lots of cold hard cash to invest?


China

China is also one of the major tin-producing countries; the main producing area is the Gejiu complex in Yunnan which has accounted for a large proportion of the total output in China for many years.

Total mined production of tin in 1990 (as ores and concentrates) was 211,000 tonnes, with the major producing nations being Brazil, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bolivia and Thailand.

Thus an alliance that once was part of the non-aligned anti-Imperialist bloc now becomes aligned with the new Imperialist player on the block, who can throw some coin their way in the global marketplace.


SEE:

Turning Lead into Gold

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

China: The Triumph of State Capitalism

China No Longer Red Nor In The Red

US vs China for Global Hegemony

Afghanistan or Africa


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Monday, July 30, 2007

The New Imperial Age


China's Imperialism. In Africa, the Ugly American has been replaced by the equally ugly Chinese trader.

The People's Republic has been so shameless in its wooing of other nations that it now receives the type of anti-imperialist criticisms once reserved for America. It stands accused of exploiting foreign populations for economic gain; of stacking the international political deck in its own favour; of ploughing forward with no regard for environmental sustainability.

As trade and diplomacy between China and other countries in the developing world has skyrocketed, America's relationship with poor countries has crumbled – nurtured by years of unpopular wars, military interventions and one-sided economic policies.

In East Asia, where many of China's new friends are located, the animosity toward the U.S. veers on cartoonish. In Seoul, roughly half of young people polled said their country should support North Korea in a nuclear war with America. Kurlantzick doesn't say this may have been a knee-jerk reaction to a fresh outrage – U.S. soldiers crushed two 14-year-old South Korean girls in an armoured vehicle – but the sentiment is widespread.

In Africa, a continent wooed intensely by Chinese officials, the U.S. has likewise soiled its reputation to China's benefit. America even threatened poor, famished Niger with sanctions when it tried to support the International Criminal Court, which the U.S. opposes.

As America rolls back from Africa, cutting aid, China has moved – straight into the worst neighbourhoods. China now controls about 40 per cent of Sudan's oil consortium and regularly courts mass murderers such as Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.

But China's support of African despots is well documented. Kurlantzick is valuable because he traces, first-hand, the cutthroat romp of Chinese industry all the way to Latin America.

Kurlantzick notes, though, that China's efforts haven't been seamless: There is anger at hollow trade deals; resentment at the huge trade deficits; protests by Africans upset by Chinese firms' preference for exported Chinese labour.

SEE:

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

Neo-Liberal State Capitalism In Asia

China: The Triumph of State Capitalism

US vs China for Global Hegemony

China No Longer Red Nor In The Red

Free Trade Not Aid

Bureaucratic Collectivist Capitalism

Russian Oligarchy

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Thursday, March 08, 2007

IWD: Raya Dunayevskaya

Since today is International Women's Day I thought I would blog about anRaya Dunayevskaya Archive overlooked founder of the New Left and Marxist Feminism; Raya Dunayevskaya.
Founder of News and Letters, and a Marxist philosopher whose praxis focused on the revolutionary potential of youth, women and black workers and the anti-war movement.

I cannot recommend highly enough Eugene Gogol's historical biography of her life and work which she termed Marxist Humanism.
Raya Dunayevskaya: Philosopher of Marxist-Humanism, Wipfandstock Publishers: Eugene, Oregon, 2003. This extraordinarily accessible work covers the development of her ideas and theories in relation to her life which was a revolutionary praxis.

I can think of no higher praise then the fact that I lent the book to a friend who while a Leftist had not heard of Dunayevskaya. He read the whole work in week, and while the work deals with Hegelian and Marxist Philosophy, Gogols presentation, within the context of her life and political development, my friend was suitably impressed that he went in search of her works online. He returned the book, and related to me that not being as computer literate as some, this was the first time he had downloaded her papers to read later. If you know nothing of her, then this is the political biography to read.

This philosophical comprehension of Marx's mature work of political economy needs to be reckoned with by today's "anti-globalization" movement. That movement is largely motivated by the injustice of the huge disparity in wealth between the northern, advanced capitalist nations and the nations of the south. The rallying cry is for a more just distribution of the world's wealth. Marxism and Freedom moves beyond this politics of equity. It illuminates how deeply capital must be uprooted in order to transform labor into an activity for human development and the realization of individual potentialities.

Dunayevskaya highlights the question, "What are we for?" Typically it is more immediately clear what we are against-capital's globalized reach, or imperialism. The question of the kind of society we are working for is usually ducked as too remote or potentially divisive. Dunayevskaya nonetheless insists on the need for full-fledged discussion within the movement and a collective focus for working it out.

This orientation comes out of Dunayevskaya's embrace of Hegel's method of the negation of the negation. She likens it to Marx's concept of "revolution in permanence," which "made it clear that the revolution does not end with the overthrow of the old but must continue to the new, so you begin to feel this presence of the future in the present" (12). The revolutionary impulse thus seeks the creation of a new human being beyond the uprooting of the old society. Only this ceaseless negation, including the negation of the initial attempts at negation, can lead us beyond a reshuffling of the cards so as to achieve an equitable redistribution of the world's wealth.

For Dunayevskaya the dialectic of negativity is the notion that forward movement emerges from the negation of obstacles to freedom. Negation needs to go further than the refutation of the given, because the first negation is still imprinted with the old. Only when negativity goes on to become self-directed, self-related, or in Hegelian terms "absolute," does it create the positive and the truly new.

While the aim of a humanistic transformation of society has this dialectical philosophical basis, it emerges out of actual human struggles. Dunayevskaya anticipates the focus on fighting for "new human relations" that later became central to the women's, Black liberation and workers' struggles. She quotes a young worker from Los Angeles who asked: "What skill do you need in this day of Automation? What pride can you have in your work if everything is done electronically...? What about the human being?"




She was raised in the Ukrainian diaspora in Chicago. Amongst the immigrant workers who shared the ghetto and jobs in the meat packing plants with their African American neighbors. It was in this community that Raya began as a young Communist to identify the indigenous class struggle in America as dealing with the Negro Question and Womens Liberation. They were not side issues, or matters simply of oppression, for her they were were key to class struggle.

"Those who have dedicated their lives to the creation of more just societies stand back now and take stock of the disintegration of so many of the socialist experiments. Feminism was palpably missing from those plans drawn up by men. Raya Dunayevskaya knew the importance of a feminist vision and hers informed the Marxist-Humanism she explained so well. Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution is as relevant today as when it was written, perhaps more so. This is necessary reading for all who want to know what went wrong and how to do it better next time."— Margaret Randall


While many will point to others as founders of the New Left, in reality it was her and her comrade's C.L. R. James and Grace Lee Boggs that really gave birth to the American Marxist New Left. While much of the New Left in America was shaped by the baby boom and subsequent proletarianization of post secondary education and the consequences of the draft which created a youth revolt, it was the change in production that is Fordism that really was key to Dunayevskaya's work.

under capitalism machines exploit labor. “Capital is then a material thing which exploits labor” (p. 13). Instead of analyzing the capitalist labor process and thus discovering how a material thing becomes an exploiting force, ........that the thing, means of production, has become the social relation, capital, because of what Marx calls “the contradiction between the personification of objects and the representation of persons by things.”

The focal point of Marx’s analysis of capitalist society is his critique of capitalist production. The ideology which flows from this historic mode of production is enveloped in the perverted relation of dead to living labor. Marx pointed out that the very simple relation—capital uses labor—expresses “the personification of things and the reification of people.” That is to say, the means of production become capital and are personified as capitalists at the same time that the workers become reified, that is, their labor becomes objectified into the property of others.

Marx’s critique of capitalist society, based primarily on this inverted relation of dead to living labor at the point of production, extends also to the surface of society (the market), where the social relation between people assumes “the fantastic form of a relation between things.”This is the fetishism of commodities.

Marx proceeds to analyze the capitalist mode of production. Now that the worker is in the factory, the “social relation” becomes a production relation.

By virtue of that fact his relationship to the boss is very clear; it in no sense assumes the fantastic form of a relation between things. On the contrary, there the worker overestimates the capitalist’s might. He thinks that the capitalist alone is responsible for his plight instead of seeing the cause in the mode of production which the capitalist represents. There the worker personifies things: the means of production used as capital become the capitalists. We are here confronted with what Marx called “the personification of things and the reification of people.” Marx was most emphatic in laying bare this “reification of people” because that is the very heart of his critique of political economy. He grasped this very early. “When one speaks of private property,” wrote the young Marx in 1844, “one thinks of something outside of man. When one speaks of labor, one has to do immediately with man himself. The new formulation of the question already involves its solution.”

Dunayevskaya Outline of Marx's Capital--volume one

In evolving through the Communist party to Trotskyism, Dunayevskaya and James became the Forrest Johnson Tendency after Trotsky's death as a political crisis shook the Fourth International. They articulated the earliest State Capitalist critique , within Trotskyism, of the Soviet Union and subsequently of historical capitalism as it evolved through WWII and the Cold War.

She became Leon Trotsky’s Russian-language secretary in 1937 during his exile in Mexico, but broke with him in 1939 at the time of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Her simultaneous study of the Russian economy and of Marx’s early writings (later known as the 1844 Humanist Essays) led to her 1941-42 analysis that not only was Russia a state-capitalist society, but that state-capitalism was a new world stage.

It was this articulation plus their emphasis on women, blacks and youth as part of the class struggle, culturally as well as politically and economically that set them apart from the rest of the Left. They were part of a movement known as the third way, but different from its other proponents because even though they were steeped in Leninism, they confronted the failure of the Vanguard of professional revolutionaries and their parties, to really speak for the whole of the class.

When we reach state-capitalism, one-party state, cold war, hydrogen bomb, it is obvious that we have reached ultimates. We are now at the stage where all universal questions are matters of concrete specific urgency for society in general as well as for every individual. As we wrote in The Invading Socialist Society:

“It is precisely the character of our age and the maturity of humanity that obliterates the opposition between theory and practice, between the intellectual occupations of the ‘educated’ and the masses.” (p. 14.)

All previous distinctions, politics and economics, war and peace, agitation and propaganda, party and mass, the individual and society, national, civil and imperialist war, single country and one world, immediate needs and ultimate solutions – all these it is impossible to keep separate any longer. Total planning is inseparable from permanent crisis, the world struggle for the minds of men from the world tendency to the complete mechanization of men.

State-capitalism is in itself the total contradiction, absolute antagonism. In it are concentrated all the contradictions of revolution and counter-revolution. The proletariat, never so revolutionary as it is today, is over half the world in the stranglehold of Stalinism, the form of the counter-revolution in our day, the absolute opposite of the proletarian revolution.

It is the totality of these contradictions that today compels philosophy, a total conception. Hence the propaganda ministry of Hitler, the omnipresent orthodoxy of Stalinism, the Voice of America. The war over productivity is fought in terms of philosophy, a way of life. When men question not the fruits of toil but the toil itself, then philosophy in Marx’s sense of human activity has become actual.

World War I plunged the world into complete chaos. Lenin between 1914 and 1917 established in theory: (a) the economic basis of the counter-revolutionary Social Democracy (The economic basis of imperialist war had been established before him.); (b) the Soviet democracy in contradistinction to bourgeois democracy. But before he did this, he had to break with the philosophical method of the Second International. He worked at this privately in a profound study of the Hegelian dialectic applied to Marx’s Capital, the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Thirty years have now passed. Lenin’s method of economic analysis is ours to use, not to repeat his findings. His political conception of complete abolition of bureaucracy and all ordering from above is today to be driven to its ultimate as the revolutionary weapon against the one-party state. But today the problems of production which Lenin had to tackle in Russia in 1920 are universal. No longer to be ignored is the philosophical method he used in holding fast to the creation of a new and higher social organization of labor as "the essence” of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is not the Marxists who have compelled society to face this issue. Today in every layer of society, the great philosophical battles that matter are precisely those over production, the role of the proletariat, the one-party state, and many of the combatants are professed dialecticians.

The crisis of production today is the crisis of the antagonism between manual and intellectual labor. The problem of modern philosophy from Descartes in the sixteenth century to Stalinism in 1950 is the problem of the division of labor between the intellectuals and the workers.

Source: State Capitalism and World Revolution, by C.L.R. James in collaboration with Raya Dunayevskaya & Grace Lee; with a new introduction by Paul Buhle. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1986. Chapter XI, pp. 113-135. Original publication: 1950. Note: Asterisks were changed to numbered footnotes for greater clarity.

News and Letters, Dunayevskaya's organization evolved out of the post war Cold War as the Left faced the crisis of Imperialism and Stalinism. Those who came out of the Trotskyist movement created a new force on the Left called the Third Way, neither supporting Stalinism or American Imperialism. In Europe they moved beyond Trotskyism into Libertarian Marxism and Socialism.

Like News and Letters, these organizations were small and centered around the need to build radical rank and file based proletarian organizations, like the ICC and Socialism and Barbarism in France and England. These organizations originated out of the crisis of the Fourth International as well as the Left/Council Communist movement.

What made News and Letters unique, was they did not give up on class struggle, instead they focused on the new wave of post WWII Fordist industrialization and the new proletarianization of African Americans, women and youth.

While originating out of Leninism, James and Dunayevskaya's praxis made them critical of the Leninist, Trotskyist and Stalinist left, and its failure to see the working class as a broad based movement of race, sex and class. Most of the left had identified with the white industrial working class, rather than understanding the key to class struggle in America was the self organization of the most oppressed and exploited proletarians.

The New Left would mistakenly identify this later as groups who were the revolutionary vanguard, always looking for a vanguard to be the vanguard party of. Third Worldism, support for Black Power and the Black Panthers, the very origins of todays 'identity politics' by the New Left saw youth, blacks, the oppressed in general as revolutionary and rejected the white industrial working class as reactionary.

Such was not the case with Dunyaveskaya and her group News and Letters. In fact one of her collaborators for many years was Martin Glaberman. Together they identified with and worked in building rank and file movements in the Detroit area unions, the very heart of modern and post modern Fordism.

In 1953, Dunayevskaya split with Lee and James, leading to the formation of Marxist-Humanism by Dunayevskaya (later solidified into the group News and Letters), while James and Lee would go on to form a new group, Facing Reality, which would eventually see the split between James and now Grace Lee-Boggs. James' work would continue to influence other people through the journal started by longtime co-revolutionary Martin Glaberman called "Radical America", whose writers are a virtual "Who's Who of the Marxist critique of racism and white supremacy, including George Rawick and David Roediger. The group Sojourner Truth was influenced by James' work and took up the name of autonomist Marxism, but independent of James' practical organisational efforts. The work of Noel Ignatiev and Race Traitor would form the other well known tendency within the Marxist critique of white supremacy through the theory of 'white skin privilege.'

Dunayevskaya and News and Letters have been influenced by the early Hegelians and the Frankfurt School and themselves represent one of the more vocal defenders of a Hegelian Marxism which they refer to as Marxist-Humanism, having made theoretical contributions to the study of Marx and Hegel and the post-Marx Marxist world, as well as innovative readings of Lenin and issues of race, gender and sexuality. The group is also influenced by Rosa Luxemburg and did much to resurrect her in the English-speaking world as a major theorist.

Rank and file organizing against the union bosses and bureaucracy, self organization, the need for revolutionaries to recognize all struggles of the oppressed in America as part of the class struggle took News and Letters and Glaberman and Dunayevskaya, into a different non-Leninist non-vanguard form of revolutionary organization and praxis. As their detractors have pointed out; There is also a close internal relationship between Dunayevskaya and the morality of anarchism.

Indeed Dunayevskaya, Glaberman and James influenced many of the anarchist and autonomists of the 1970's. In Canada their works influenced a Toronto Libertarian Socialist mileux called Lotta Continua, aka The New Tendency which was situated in the Post Office. Most of the Left at this time was adopting a back to the factories approach to revolutionary politics. The failure of the social revolution to occur through and around the Anti-War and Youth movements, led the socialist groups in Canada to identify student and anti-war movements as petite-bourgeoisie and they needed to hone their revolutionary practice by engaging the working class.

What they overlooked was that they were the proletariat, whether in school or in the factory. Many went to work in auto plants in Southern Ontario, but by far the vast majority went to work at the Post Office. The Post Office struggles became the class struggle for the left in Canada, every one of Canada's socialist groups had a cell in the Post Office, and still do today, their influence is felt in CUPW the postal workers union they helped build in practice. Which is why CUPW still to this day uses the slogan Lotta Continua, the Struggle Continues.

That praxis was far more in keeping with the class struggle as Glaberman and Dunayevskaya saw it than the ideologies of the Heinz 57 varieties of Leninist organizations that headed back to the factories.

I was introduced to their works from having heard CLR James speak in Edmonton, in the Seventies, and we carried their books at our anarchist bookstore Erewhon Books.

All her life as a revolutionary Dunayevskaya was an optimist, she saw the revolution not as armed struggle, or a mere moment in history, she like Marx saw class struggle as the evolution of society towards a better more human future.
And her view of that class struggle was inclusive formulated as it was in the Chicago ghetto where she grew up.


Her work is approachable, important and still relevant.


MARX AND CRITICAL THOUGHT.

Raya Dunayevskaya Archive




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Friday, February 02, 2007

Nail In The Coffin


This is the final nail in the coffin of so called 'socialism' in China. Which of course was not socialism but state capitalism. A form of capitalism that allows the state to act as the capitalist in an underdeveloped society. Now China will be free to have lots of capitalists, and capital, and to further challenge American Hegemony politically, militarily and economically.


China to Pass Landmark Property Law


China's parliament is set to discuss a landmark property law when it meets in March. Beijing is thus one step closer to approving the newest draft version of the legislation, which has been reworked seven times because of its apparent capitalistic penchant which conflicts with China's socialist orientation.

The law to protect private property has been a political hot potato in China where state ownership still dominates key parts of the economy.
Zhang Weiying, dean of Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, said he believes the bill would pass the parliament.

"The parliament will pass the law. That will be a very important signal," he said in a recent interview.

Zhang said passing the bill will "give more confidence" to China's rising entrepreneurs, who are "crucial" for China's economic development.

"When people have security, they will know what they will get. They will be more motivated to work, make more money and invest," he said.

Zhang said a well-adopted property law can be a tool for a value creation and wealth redistribution.

See

Outsourcing IT

Business As Usual

Sweatshop Secrets of Success

Japanese State Capitalism

New Asian Dragon

China Needs Free Unions



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